hearing takes new turns. the january 6 committee accusing donald trump of scamming his supporters out of $250 million. laying 0 out the case that trump solicited money from backers by using lies as a fundraising tool. adding that he sent up to 25 emails a day, soliciting donations for illegal funds that simply didn t exist. but is it potentially criminal and will attorney general merrick garland pursue or prosecute it as such? those are the key questions emerging from the hearings overall. and there seems to be a new rift emerging from the january 6 committee itself on the very subject. whether they will make a specific criminal referral to the justice department. as for witnesses, some of the most stark testimony is coming from trump s former attorney general william barr who offered a line-by-line debunking of some of trump s ongoing lies about fraud. and he calls trump detached from reality after the election. cnn is live with the new reporting, trump s supporters, kai
john, do the people who donated care? when you confront it with the fact that all of this money was essentially going to all of these other things, if they actually knew that, would they say, well, that s okay, i thought it was x, y is z? i don t know that the victims cared that this whole thing was agrift? do they care? at the end of the day, the victim doesn t have to complain. but as a practical matter, if there are no victims and people s credit cards were charged, not save america funds but something else. that s where the devil gets into the details. people are saying fleece me. and that doesn t matter legally. what we do know, for the people arrested for the attack on the capitol, one of the consistent defenses is donald trump, i believed him, i was lied to. that would indicate, you know, we saw that in the committee s tapes yesterday. the lies coming from the top
we all want a game seven on sunday, right? no, that s fine. we don t need one. that s great. my team s winning. great with game not seven. andy, thank you very much. new day continues right now. good morning to our viewers here in the united states and all around the world, it is tuesday, june 14th. i m john berman with brianna keilar. the january 6 committee accusing donald trump of more or less bilking his supporters out of $250 million. trump using lies as a fundraising tool, adding he solicited donations for a legal fund that simply didn t exist. but is that criminal? will attorney general merrick
it s not their role to make it because of the political statement that they might send, what are they trying to do here? i think what happened, the chair got over its skis so to speak. not only liz cheney and other members of the committee, they re saying hold on, we haven t made that decision yet. so the chairman seems to be speaking out of turn. there s question the precedent and the for example, the mueller report, if things are not formally recommended, it s unlikely to happen in this case. it s also great questions about whether actual criminal penalties could apply here. some people think they could. some people think certain of the things alleged are a bridge too far. but this confusion of the january 6 committee is a real problem. and it was an unforced error. the question is whose skis are they? chairman bennie thompson, they re his skis. but it s a question for another time. i do want to ask the counselor,
very well how to investigate these cases on its own. we have the attorney general now on the record saying i m watching everything carefully, he may be dvr ing it. the prosecutors are watching it, he s watching it, he s paying attention. there s so many hard calls in this investigation in this case, i don t know why to make the issue sort of look like they re not all on the same page? except perhaps if merrick garland chooses not to prosecute, a criminal referral voted on by congress could be the only actual document to come from this? but they can issue a report that didn t have to, at the end, say, we refer the matter to the department of justice for a criminal prosecution. so there s a difference between a report that summarizes its finding. and summarizes the evidence. and the actual referral saying, please department of justice, prosecute this case. i can see a point where there are people on the committee who believe that a criminal referral should be made. and yet, they de