the committee investigating january 6th says that they have got testimony that the then-president did nothing as he repeatedly urged as he was repeatedly urged to stop the rioters at the capitol. but leaders of his party, well, they want you to look elsewhere. they want to distract you with a trump presser at his florida club or focus on the democrats. house minority leader kevin mccarthy sending a letter to his caucus calling what happened on january 6th lawless, then attacking democrats for using it as what he calls a quote partisan political weapon to further divide our country. i want to bring in cnn political commentator scott jennings and cnn senior political analyst kirsten powers, who is also the author of saving grace by kirsten powers of course. good evening to both of you. thank you for joining. happy new year to you both.
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going to go for a full bore impeachment process as soon as she leaves that process today. or if this is continuing to lay some groundwork she s paving a path to get there. we ll see when she comes out of that caucus. but remember, there are two things that she has always pointed to that we still don t know have changed. one, i think we do know. the republicans, it doesn t seem there are any republicans on board with this yet. and two, the american people. and it s not clear yet if the american people have moved on impeachment. we ll see as future polls come out after this story seeps into the public consciousness. but those two i think thes are things nancy pelosi is watching. the thing that puts us in a different place, alisyn, and i ve said this to you guys on this show for many months, it was never about the quantity of democrats in our caucus calling for impeachment. it was about the quality. were they the democrats from those districts that delivered her the majority? that flipped
the gun safety battles including heat on mitch mcconnell. neal katyal is here later. but our top story tonight is this new intensity in congressional opposition to trump, including developments in a probe that some democrats say could actually change the future of the trump presidency. democrats in congress are now preparing for what will be their last major legislative session before all eyes turn, of course, to the 2020 race next year. and now i can tell you they re outlining a new way they want to check president trump. now, the context here is something you know about, it s something you know from your calendar. summer is over. when democrats left for this summer recess, the members in their caucus calling for impeachment were in the minority. and now, they are the majority of the democratic caucus, which may explain why congressional democrats are pushing these newly aggressive probes into some admittedly familiar topics. investigative hearings on hush money payments that donald
it s hard to believe that the congressman lieu when he was on with me said that, you know, the public perception should play a role and, you know, in a few days they will know more. do you feel, i mean, in talking to people there and staff members, is there any kind of rise in interest in impeachment or is there kind of deflation of it. i think there is slowly a rise among the democratic members in the caucus calling for it and that s what was interesting about this closed door meeting tonight because there were a number of members that wanted to pursue this route, expect more to announce that publicly and anderson, it was some people are interpreting pelosi s comments to me when i asked her about her past concerns about the senate republicans not moving forward on convicting the president if the house were to impeach and that being a reason they shouldn t move for an impeachment. she pushed back on that. a lot of people view that as a potential shift because she s talking about th