more than a thousand witness interviews including those with leaders from the proud boys from the doj s letter in part, read this, it is now readily apparent that the interviews the select committee conducted are not just potentially relevant to our overall criminal investigations, but are likely relevant to specific prosecutions that have already commenced. well, the news that we alluded to this afternoon, a spokesman confirmed an earlier new york times scoop to our team on the hill that the committee will cooperate with the doj. what that could mean and how that partnership could play out, we will have more on that in just a few moments, but first, one of this week s central questions was whether or not the committee would eventually vote on referring trump to the department of justice for a potential criminal case. watching yesterday s explosive hearing, politico suggests this, the committee is making that referral in its own way presenting evidence in a clear chronology t
for hearings next week to continue their investigation and deal with what s coming out, sort of day by day as these hearings are ongoing and i read that statement today as just an indication that the committee is indeed talking to the department of justice about some sort of a time line of when to share those transcriptses and what that full cooperation could ultimately look like, but as the committee spokesman said they seem to be low to share those details with the public, but i don t see it as a reversal of what the chairman said to the reporters yesterday. so, chuck, i want to go back to that assessment that we brought up at the top of the hour. politico suggesting that the january 6th committee has asked doj to investigate donald trump and that it is still making that case in its own way. from that piece, quote, from all of the panel s public quibbling over whether to vote on referring trump to the justice department for a possible criminal case, members did it their own way. th
these hears and the committee is doing its best to show that donald trump knew what he was doing was illegal because he had been told as such by advisers that the election was not stolen. there was no fraud, and they kept repeating it to him. the committee has a much lower bar than a courtroom, but as you as a former prosecutor have you seen what you need to see to be convinced that, in fact, donald trump knew what he was asking of mike pence and what he was doing by pushing this big lie was illegal? simply, i think they re getting closer to that important question and let me tell you why they re not there yet, eamon. there s a difference between what trump was told and what the department of justice can prove trump knew. let me give you an example. if you, eamon, told me your favorite flavor of ice cream was vanilla and people witnessed that conversation we can prove that you told me that and you can assume that i understand that because that s not really complicated. if you spent the
as some of their most compelling evidence and thereby, mount a case with attorney general merrick garland. watching that trump broke the law in his effort to make former vice president mike pence single-handedly overturn the election. chuck, do you see do you see it that way that the committee makes a gesture to make it an official referral and they ve done it in their own way? well, they have done it in their own way, but i would like to change the question, if you don t mind? please. the department and justice and i worked there for many years and prides itself on being independent and apolitical. if they were to get a mostly partisan referral from the house of representatives, it would look like, if they opened an investigation or charged someone as a result, they were doing the political bidding of the house and that would be a huge mistake. so the house can characterize
hotel and other hotels around the city who already primed to believe that election fraud had occurred. and so throughout the reporting, we really saw that there was a disconnect between people who believed trump and people who just believed that fraud had occurred. it was really clear that the trump campaign had stepped away, was already breaking down and breaking away from these claims, and i think it was by by the time giuliani held his big press conference with sidney powell, claiming they had reams of fraud to present to the public, that the, you know, trump campaign had really stepped away entirely from trying to prove this, but they weren t saying it publicly. they were just saying it privately behind the scenes. and the interesting thing, also, sarah, just to pick up on some more of your reporting. you write that giuliani knew the courts weren t going to wade into deciding an election.