you will have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire justice department because of your actions. what s that going to say about you? that s a pretty vivid picture. it is. it is. right? and to me the clearest takeaway of the hearings, this one, we heard the pressure campaign on the doj, was that even covering this covering the fallout of the election, i think the january 6th hearings have really painted a very clear narrative of how close donald trump was, and the lengths to which he was willing to go. i don t think any of us in the moment fully understood what was transpiring. they have really painted a very clear and concise narrative. they re talking here in this hearing, the undercurrent of this hearing was criminality. and what was happening that was illegal. now, you had a couple of the witnesses suggesting that people like john eastman were committing crimes. a criminal defense lawyer.
certifying the win. so president trump ultimately wanted the department of justice to say the election was, quote, corrupt, and, quote, leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen. they refused. cnn s legal analyst carrie cordero is joining our conversation. this week, there has been a lot of news, but there was a lot of news out of the january 6th committee. two really blockbuster hearings. but this second hearing about the political coup is pretty significant. because the argument that they were making was basically that this was plan a, plan a was to basically use the government to overthrow the democratic transfer of power in this country. yeah, and to push out the officials who were standing up to donald trump and saying that this was there was no basis at all for fraud, and to install
the president of the united states target you? i don t want anyone knowing my name. i don t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over of the grocery aisle. i don t go to the grocery store at all. i haven t been anywhere at all. these women were terrorized by this lie. it really has a chilling effect and has had a chilling effect on election workers. shaye moss said none of the people who worked with her in georgia are no longer in their jobs because of how dangerous it is to be an election worker in this country. not only that, within 12 hours of that hearing my colleagues at the washington post reported that the members of the january 6th select committee now all have to have security because of an increase of threats after that hearing. so, there was a hearing almost entirely devoted on how people s
people like jeffrey clark needed a criminal defense lawyer. how far do the potential crimes here go? well, so i think the hearings this week, the hearings with the georgia officials and the hearings with the department of justice officials, really did shift things forward. one thing they showed was that multiple people involved really did know at the time that what was going on was potentially illegal and unconstitutional. i think they moved things forward. what they showed in the justice department hearing was that the president himself was informed that what was going on was illegal and he engaged in specific acts. so what i think we saw that was different was the definition of overact. things he did, asking for a suit to be filed, asking for a letter to be sent to georgia, asking for a public statement, remnants of the ukrainian pressure he applied that was the subject of the first impeachment hearing, asking for an announcement to be
a trump loyalist to essentially do trump s bidding. this was the hearing on thursday, again, demonstrated, just how relentless this pressure campaign was to essentially get the government to do to go as far as what donald trump was suggesting here, suggesting how close they came, once again to succeeding in this plan. we talk about comparisons with watergate, and, you know, potential, like, friday night massacre, this is richard donoghue, doj attorney, basically describing them in the oval office threatening exactly that to former president trump. early on the president said what do i have to lose? and it was actually a good opening, because i said, mr. president, you have a great deal to lose. you re going to lose your entire department leadership. every ag will walk out on you.