tonight, the january 6th hearings. good evening. thank you so much for being here with us tonight. we know that you have a lot of options for where to watch and how to watch tonight s hearing. it makes us all the more grateful that you have chosen to be here with us on msnbc. i m rachel maddo with joy reid. tonight is a big night for us. a big night for american democracy. we have had a few other instances in our modern history of big, public hearings. all the networks scuttling their schedules to air the proceedings live, but none of us have ever covered something quite like this before. the january 6th investigation is about the first time in american history that the transfer of power between presidents was not peaceful. tonight in the ornate cannon caucus room inside the u.s. capitol the january 6 ths investigators said they would give them a skralg amount. the investigators plan to show video footage from the attack that s never been seen by the public before, including
so we know now that republicans are going to get control of the house next year barely. and because it is barely, because their majority is so small, that means any small group of republican members of congress, even sometimes a single member of congress will have the opportunity to monkey wrench things for the republican leadership. over the past few days, we have just learned that one of the things republican leader kevin mccarthy had to promise to do in order to get one particular republican to vote for him to be speaker was that he had to promise her that once he becomes speaker, he will launch congressional investigations of the u.s. justice department over their prosecutions of people who participated in the attack on the capitol last january 6th. so the republicans now say they will launch congressional investigations of the justice department for prosecuting the people who attacked the capitol. that is a promise kevin mccarthy will to motorcycle to marjorie taylor greene who ha
out of pursuing the the prosecutions. to make it seem like the prosecutions themselves were a scandal. which is exactly what the republicans are promising to do now with the january 6th investigations. back in the 1940s, when this happened then, senator burton wheeler was successful in his political pressure campaign when he threatened the attorney general that he would investigate the justice department if they didn t fire the prosecutor in this sedition case. attorney general francis biddle caved to those threats. the justice department fared that prosecutor. and then when another prosecutor took his case, and his investigation fell devastating further evidence, including in the nazi s own files, evidence that the sedition defendants were working with the nazis. evidence that senator wheeler himself was more up to his neck in that plot than anyone had previously known, well, senator wheeler turned on the jets again. this time he didn t go just to the attorney general.
there the next day. so he doesn t have to deal with that as well. he s no longer a sitting president. a former president. and then you don t have to white house and at times the justice department on the opposite side trying to actively curtailing and thwart what you re doing. here you have the white house saying they ll be completely hands off. and you don t have bill barr in the justice department working to undermine what they re doing. so he has but you do have a congress now, a republican-controlled congress where they re explicitly saying we want to investigate the justice department for even prosecuting january 6th attackers, let alone about bringing any investigations of trump. what is the what is the difference in how it feels to be getting that kind of pressure from capitol hill versus the justice department and inside the white house? i think you re seeing it, actually. i think you re seeing signs that merrick garland is figuring out
listen to on your thanksgiving. now the sedition trial of the paramilitary attackers continues. the jury is getting that case tomorrow morning. as individual participants in the attack on the government are continuing to be convicted in federal court even today. as a second special counsel is appointed to investigate among other things the former president s alleged involvement in the january 6th effort to overthrow the government. one of the things to know about this type of american history, one of the reasons i did this podcast, ultra, is because the lesson here. it is an uncomfortable one. in the face of an anti-democratic movement, anti-small d movement, a fascist movement with support from powerful elected officials, even when they go so far as to try to overthrow the government by force. in that instance, the criminal law has never proved to work all that well against it. and that s both because we ve got constitutional protections