interesting when it came out that there was potentially a criminal investigation because if there is mass organizational incompetence, that s not going to be criminal. people may need to be fired. congress may need to get involved. but when you see there is potential criminality, that s tells me there was some intentionality about this, some decision made, hey, let s not preserve these, because we may not want them to fall into certain hands, or even worse yet, let s delete them. we don t know, we haven t seen concrete evidence that either of those things happened, but if they re looking at this criminally, jim, that s the kind of questions they re asking. okay. let s look then at patrick philbin, deputy white house counsel, a point was made yesterday that for him and for cipollone, the grand jury situation different from january 6th, and they can t claim as broad an executive privilege here to refuse to answer questions. i wonder do you agree with that? i know it is going to go to c
embarrassment to say the least for the tele band, on two fronts, one hand, in front of the international community, the taliban has vowed to not allow jihadist groups community, the taliban has vowed to not allowjihadist groups using afghan style to plot attacks. on the other, it has been an embarrassment within thejihadist other, it has been an embarrassment within the jihadist community, so there is a different debate going on these platforms where they say it, especially supporters of isis, a staunch rival of the taliban and al-anda, they are saying was the taliban involved in this? with a colluding with the us to preclude prove their credentials to the international community? the taliban and is in a difficult position within the community hardliners, but also within the international community. there were rumours, of course, that the taliban was still offering some kind of support to al-anda, but both groups had denied that. this is the first concrete evidence that there was a
extremely high, and that is something that i think is still missing at least in the public hearings and the public presentation so far of what we heard from the january 6th select committee. it s possible that the department of justice has already gathered more information about the direct communications that were taking place with donald trump that could provide more concrete evidence that would help build that criminal case against him, but i think without some of what we ve seen, some of these witnesses claim previous executive privilege over, it s going to be extremely challenging to prosecute that case. that being said, that s why it s so important for the january 6th select committee to continue to do what they re doing in the case that the department of justice ultimately isn t able to move forward or at least successfully prosecute this case. they re serving an extremely important, the committee that is, purpose in serving factual
i ll agree with what was just said. it is a competitive news cycle and to do it in the midst of this. the other name i would add was pat cipollone and they ve been trying to pursue pat cipollone, which was left hanging in the last hearings, where was he, what is he doing and all of that. the other unanswered question was exactly, this pardon question, which they released the list of names then denied it. and it maybe something as a follow up to that where there s more concrete evidence of that. but when we re in a news cycle in the midst of roe heading into a fourth of july weekend doing this on sudden notice, you have to be the import of that so trounced all of those other considerations. well, do you think, matthew, that they would want to respond to something as you bring up the pardons. so if they, and they did present the evidence from several people talking about requests for
they will only say that they are aware that an american citizen was reported missing in recent weeks, and that that individual had come to ukraine to take up arms. russian state media, as you said, has published photos and the video allegedly showing alex tricky, and andy when in captivity. the state department has told us that they are aware of the photos and the video, and they say they are in contact with ukrainian authorities, the international red cross, as well as the families. but due to privacy considerations, they say that they are not commenting further. a couple of days ago this top spokesperson for the state department said, that they had not gotten any sort of concrete evidence, or seen anything from russian forces, to indicate these two men are in captivity. but again, he had also reiterated what we heard president biden say there, that they want any american citizen, who is in ukraine to leave if it is safe to do so. because they say it is not safe