versed in handling classified information so he would have known better to take this information but we have to wait and see and to charge the president with a crime the department will have to make a showing there s a knowing violation here. i ask the question, attorney general, because over the many months the president had ample opportunity to return the documents to the government. they doan come more classified and let them go back to highly secured areas where they need to be protected. there s no question about that. assuming that someone made him aware did he have actual knowledge that the documents were there? i don t know. clearly the department has and the national archives has asked for all this information
district attorney willis holding her own investigation and then you also have the justice department also conducting tir separate investigation. now the justice department has asked the january 6 committee to hand over their witness transcripts in order for them to get a better sense of the information that they have. but it is the timing of what they will do and how justice department will carry out their investigation or when a decision will come down is still up in the air right now. the justice department has said they will be monitoring the january 6 hearings very closely. but they are also ramping up their own investigation. and you know, you interviewed a democratic strategist for your new article who said if democrats overplay their hand, it could backfire in november. and this is really significant because november is a few months away. and people have a very short-term memory. so what some people may be very passionate about or angry about right now, may not ring true in
change of heart where he s saying he will testify. so it s just really interesting because you have these different avenues where lots of different people are trying to pursue information. civil lawsuits, the justice department, the house, in some aspects the georgia county grand jury and different people are being willing to share information. at some point all of that information will have to be replicated, right? what mo brooks says publicly to the house the justice department will also see if that is an avenue they want to look at. the justice department has said they re watching these hearings very closely and so are the january 6 prosecutors. of course, mo brooks had trump s endorsement, he lost it which trump said was because he talked about moving on from the 2020 election. i wonder what you make of what mo brooks could potentially provide if he does testify publicly. theories are great, narratives are great, but nothing beats hearing from people that were on the ground and
can see more than enough in the ruling, in what s on the public record, in what the work the committee has done to figure this out. and if we go ahead and make that referral, what we ll be doing is we will be putting another political layer on an already gnarly political question. so, why is it that we need to go forward and do that when a federal judge has already done that for us? joyce, i want to show you, if it s any sort of curtain raiser to how liz cheney views this chapter that mike and jon are reported on extensively, here she is talking about the twice impeached ex-president s reaction to the chants to hang mike pence. aware of the rioters chants to hang mike pence, the president responded with this sentiment. maybe our supporters have the right idea. mike pence deserves it.
gotten paid, a really interesting new detail. mike, you both sort of have this body of reporting that sits at the potential for the doj investigation to at some point maybe intersect with the committee and i want to ask you about a bit of reporting in this pence story that caught our attention, mike. you guys write this. in plea negotiations, federal prosecutors recently began asking defense lawyers for some of those charged in january 6th cases whether their clients would admit in sworn statements that they stormed the capitol, believing that trump wanted them to stop pence from certifying the election. in theory, such statements could help connect the violence at the capitol directly to trump s demands that pence help stave off his defeat. what does that sort of line of reporting lead to, or what does that point to, or what more questions do you have about that, mike? so, given the fact that the justice department has said so little in terms of, you know, outside of court, about