never-before-seen video. plus, attorney general merrick garland is pressed about the justice department s response to the attack on the capitol. we ll show you his response to a question about prosecuting former president trump. and concerns about the next election have the senate taking rare, bipartisan action. there is promising progress on a bill to prevent future coup attempts. good morning. welcome to morning joe. it is thursday, july 21st. big night tonight. with joe and me, we have the host of way too early and white house bureau chief at politico, jonathan lemire. former chairman of the republican national committee, michael steele. good to have you both. we begin with a new development surrounding those deleted texts from the secret service from the day before and the day of the january 6th attack on the capitol. a senior secret service official tells nbc news that employees received at least three emails, including one before the insurrection wow.
whom, of course, tony ranaudo, became a top adviser to the president inside the west wing. there is an extraordinary amount of frustration from the january 6th committee, law enforcement, other agencies and democrats on capitol hill and the white house about how the service conducted itself during those trying days. jonathan lemire, i i hesitate because this seems so obvious, but i think it is worth stating, january 6th was a very important day. it was a day, if you were a member of the secret service, you would have to be under a rock to not know what happened on january 6th. and in the days leading up, you might have heard a thing or two about what might happen. to get the emails and say maybe you missed them or how could you miss a throng of people, a mob of criminals storming the capitol, wanting to hang mike pence and kill members of
investigating the attack on the capitol. the hearing will convene at 8:00 p.m. eastern time and is expected to last around two hours. committee chair bennie thompson will lead the hearing remotely after testing positive for covid on tuesday. the committee will present evidence of what it calls former president trump s dereliction of duty, with a minute-by-minute account of what happened inside the white house between trump s rally at the ellipse and his tweet, telling the capitol rioters to go home. the washington post reports the public could see outtakes from trump s january 7th recorded address, in which he attempted to condemn the rioters. former aide to chief of staff mark meadows, cassidy hutchinson, testified to the committee that trump had to be convinced to make those remarks, and that there were, quote, several lines that didn t make it in there about prosecuting the rioters or calling them
oath, man. the president takes an oath not just to protect the constitution but to faithfully execute the laws of the united states. so was he doing that in those 187 minutes when he was watching tv, refusing to calm, when mayors are calling him, party members and his own family and staff are asking him to do it. as we found out in our security hearing over in the senate, that blunt and portland and peters and i did, the national guard is sitting there on a bus. they arrive while all of this is going on. people have already died, and they finally get to the capitol at about 5:20. hours and hours and hours after the insurrection started. it is hard to believe a president couldn t have changed that. all right. senator amy klobuchar, thank you very much. never stops working. good to see you. thank you. still ahead, ukraine s first lady takes an urgent message
what was happening at the capitol and what was not happening there. they ll do it through witnesses. people who served, in the case of matt pottinger, all four years of this administration, and ultimately found their breaking point with what they saw happen on january 6th, and the role of the former president in that day. but there s also questions at this point about what comes next. because the way i ve been talking about this hearing is that it is more the season finale than the series finale for the committee. they expect when they release their final reports, for example, they ll be doing final hearings around that. there s also open questions because it is an active investigation. who else might they call? they are still in active deliberations around the former vice president or even the former president. but in talking with congresswoman luria, was question was, how do you not know if you need these people yet? in the case of pence, what she told me was interesting. does it m