obviously there have been over 1,000 witnesses interviewed by the january 6th committee. you ve seen several of them appear on camera. so that rules them out. you know it s not those who have appeared since she said it is a witness you have not yet seen here on camera or in person. but of course the big question is who is it. and of course you ve seen people in trump s orbit already pushing back on this saying cheney is allowed to say these things with them going unchallenged or unconfirmed. there are so many witnesses it could potentially be. but obviously this person felt uncomfortable with the former calling them to the point where they did not answer the phone, they had said phoned the january 6th committee and told them about this, who then in turn turned this over to the justice department. so there is still a lot to learn about this and i think you do need to keep in mind the context of the former president, who has been accused of verging on witness tampering before, whether it
democratic congressman pete aguilar of california is joining us now live. congressman, thank you so much for joining us on this historic but very, very busy day. first, what more if anything can you tell us about this truly explosive revelation from the vice chair of the select committee liz cheney that former president trump actually tried to call one of your witnesses? do you have evidence, congressman, to suggest trump knew that person would be a witness? well, what we know is what we ve said from the very beginning, which is we take it very seriously when individuals reach out to potential witnesses for the january 6th committee. we re not going to let them be intimidated. we re going to keep pursuing our work. and in this case as the vice chair detailed, this individual handled it exactly how we would want them to handle it. we have turned that material over to the department of justice, that their lawyer gave to the committee. and we re just going to leave it at that. but clear
actions were improper? also, we saw a lot of information today about the reach and power of the president s words. and any indication of how he might have known that his twitter following of 70 million people, however large it was, he had the power to call off a crowd or make it disperse or come together. and you saw a lot of evidence and information of that. so very powerful from any of those insiders. we also haven t talked about witness tampering, wolf. that suggestion that was made at the end, that s frankly probably the easiest crime to prove of the ones that we talked about. we talk about sedition and so on. and there may well be a serious allegation of witness tampering here. it just depends on what further information comes out. there s certainly a lot more we need to discuss here in the situation room including, as elliot just said, that bombshell from congresswoman liz cheney at the very end of the hearing on potential witness tampering by donald trump. our live coverage
what he could possibly have been thinking. but it does give the committee a solid lead to follow up on if they have the investigative will to do so or to refer to the department of justice. well, they did notify the department of justice of potentially what could be a crime, witness tampering. cheney says, jamie, that trump is an adult, not an impr impressionable child, and needs to be held responsible. it was a dramatic statement on her part. she might as well be speaking, though, directly to the attorney general of the united states, right? there s no question about it, that the committee has been keeping the pressure up on the justice department. but i think what s critical here, wolf, is that the committee is doing its job for history, to lay out the case. and as we all know, you hear about prosecutors, it s not
that person declined to answer or respond to president trump s call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. their lawyer alerted us. and this committee has supplied that information to the department of justice. let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously. our chief white house correspondent kaitlan collins is with me right now. kaitlan, this was really important and a very significant moment we just heard from the committee vice chair about this potential witness tampering. what are you hearing about this? yeah, liz cheney really dangled that out there at the end. she said we ve got this preview of what s going to happen in the next hearing and also here s one more thing that has happened since this last hearing. of course immediately some people in the former president s orbit scrambling to try to figure out who this witness could potentially be, who is it that he tried to call. it s not immediately obviously, wolf.