something that is doable. it s better to act on, not 100% of the evidence, i have plenty, there s a lot that has already shown crimes, so this was a good compromise. that s the, speaking of people not cooperating last week. rudy giuliani backed out of an interview. what could be the committee s next steps for, let s call them these no shows. ? in the case of the lawmakers, the next step would be issuing subpoenas, and thus far the committee has been loathe to do that. i would be surprised if they went ahead and subpoenaed other members in the house of representatives, but i ve been surprised before at the comfort level this committee has taking aggressive steps. in the case of giuliani, the next up is simple. that is, either try to work out some sort of deal with the guy who backed out of a deal at the very last moment. or to make a contempt referral. giuliani seems to be inviting a
rolls and that larger picture of irony that he is one of those key members, not just someone the january 6th committee wants to talk to who is currently in the midst of the doj deciding whether or not they ll move forward with the contempt referral, but at the same time one of those purveyors of the big lie which this is the news we re getting today. ali vitali with that reporting. thank you. speaking of former president trump, two of his key former white house lawyers are talking with the january 6th committee. pat cipollone on the lef also noting both of these attorneys pushed back on the former president during his final days in office making it clear that people would resign if he pushed through an acting attorney general just three days before the january 6th insurrection. joining us is betsy woodruff swan who is scooping this story for politico and joining us here on msnbc. betsy, viewers might recognize these two former white house
group to initially make this referral. so these two trump aides are peter navorro, who s trump s one-time trade adviser and dan s scavino who was trump s former chief of staff and they re being held in contempt. peter navorro has talked publicly about his efforts to try to subvert the 2020 election and working with trump to do so but he has claimed executive privilege when the committee has tried to ask him to answer the same questions that he s talked about publicly. dan scavino has used a number of delay tactics to try to evade the committee s investigation. he is a long-time trump aide who was in the white house on january 6th to provide key testimony. now the house is going to be voting on a contempt referral to the doj for a third time today. they ve done it twice pre
the threat of subpoena, for the threat of a contempt referral and perhaps prosecution to work, doj has to do their part of it, and these democrats, many of them are starting to argue quite publicly for that, which has been a change in strategy from the beginning of this. but they know they need the department of justice to back them up and they know they can t wait any longer. that s the bottom line. the timeline gets more condensed by the day. and if they re going to have any hope of generating turning some of these more recalcitrant people into witnesses they need pressure now. by the way, garrett, even if this doj process does play out fully to the it doesn t force any of these people to then go back and give the information that the january 6 committee wants and tell them no, it doesn t. that s exactly right. they can be punished for being held in contempt, but they cannot be compelled to testify. garrett, thank you. pete, let me go to you on this other january 6th-rela
correspondent pete williams. garrett, let me start with you and then pete, i ll get to you on this other breaking news. we are now starting to see this process play out in public on the full house floor. what we expect to see, right? is the passage of these criminal contempt of congress referrals to the doj. the question is now, right? democrats amping up the pressure on the doj to speed things up on that end, it seems. well, and there s only so much pressure they can put on the department of justice, especially when they re also trying to argue as they have argued for the entire trump years that they wanted an independent department of justice. but this is the central chang for the january 6 committee. they need doj to back up their contempt referrals. otherwise, the contempt referral is a document, is a piece of paper. maybe they get a certificate. there s nothing to it if you don t care that congress has held you in contempt without the criminal element. they got that with steve b