potentially claim executive privilege, not be willing to share necessarily exactly what donald trump was saying to him. but we also know the justice department is gearing up for a potential court fight so they can figure out what was said by donald trump himself, what was happening in those key moments on january 6th. so that s the justice department investigation. we also know that this pursuit of information from top people in the trump administration, that s important to the house select committee, too, in their own investigation of january 6th which is still ongoing. and at this time, we are learning that they cannot get text messages from the top leadership at the department of defense or at the department of homeland security because when the trump administration officials left their posts, they turned in their phones, and those phones, the data was wiped from them. that came just a few weeks after the house select committee also learned that secret service agent text messages ar
reported on cnn court filings show the defense department wiped the phones of top pentagon officials in the trump administration, deleting a potential trove of text messages related to the insurrection. cnn has more live from washington, tracking all of this this hour. what does all this mean? reporter: there is a lot of investigative activity going on right now. that s what this means to begin with. let s start with the justice department probe, this criminal investigation into january 6th. a very serious thing being conducted by a grand jury in washington. we do now know that that grand jury has subpoenaed pat cipollone, the former white house counsel at the end of the trump administration. now he s the highest ranking official in the white house that we know of at this time to have received this sort of inquiry in this criminal investigation. and he really is at the top of a pyramid of people that the justice department is seeking information from to try not just to re-create what
january 6th were lost, as well, in a data migration. here s how representative adam kinzinger from the house select committee put it together on new day. almost more interested in why we didn t know then even why these messages were deleted, although of course we re quite interested in that. is you know, we ve made it clear what we were interested in reading. particularly with the secret service. we knew there were texts we needed to see. you know, we find out the inspector general knew months prior to even when he told us he knew about missing texts. i don t necessarily know if this is some massive cover-up. it certainly stinks to high heaven. so clearly this is an avenue for further investigation for the house select committee to pursue. but when we also know that democrats in congress as well as others are calling for the justice department to look into these missing text messages, as well. kate? thank you. joining me for more is cnn senior legal analyst and former
of sort of the shrug of the shoulders and the oh, well, what are you going to do, we wiped our phones, deleted things, oops, our bad, i not those are starting to hold less and less water. i worked in the department of justice. i understand sometimes there are technological snafus, but you re talking about two of the most technologically advanced agencies here, the department of defense and department of the homeland security, who knew who had to know this is the point representative kinzinger was making, of course these texts were going to be crucial, they related to january 6th. and yet the excuse the explanations that we re getting so far is, well, we got better phones, the old ones we tossed and didn t save anything. that would have gotten me in trouble back in my justice department days with the department and potentially with a judge, as well. so i think congress has done a good job of identifying these problems. they need to dig in. it could well be time for doj to start as
elections, violence around elections like you witnessed yourself on january 6th. no bet toward than it was prior to january 6th. i wonder for folks watching at home now, should they be concerned that the midterms coming up might be marred by violence? we all should be concerned about the midterms being harmed and all public officials should be concerned about their own safety. jonathan martin, our friend who wrote this shall not pass makes it clear in his book this is something that is a continuing part of american government and american politics, the big lie continues, the fealty to trump continues and the encouragement to the white supremists and the terrorists to be involved continues. i have no doubt on january 6th, i felt my life was in danger, i was in the gallery, and when i was there, i hollered down to the floor and said call trump, and ask him to call off his revolutionary guard. it was clear to me what had occurred that day, and it is