that there is concern among trump s lawyers that he could be indicted. they are working on defense strategies right now. but trump being trump, he s skeptical. brianna, we have heard he s still keeping ties with people who may become central in this probe, even though his advisers tell him that may not be the best idea. back to you. yeah, indeed. katelyn polantz, thank you so much. joining us now danya perry and ellie honing, cnn s seen legal analyst. ellie, what does it tell us that his lawyers are in direct contact with the doj and what doesn t it tell us? it tells us that donald trump is taking this seriously or at least his lawyers are taking this seriously. it is not unusual, i should say, for lawyers tore somebody who has not yet been indicted to be in contact with prosecutors. it may found like that s shocking but it is quite common because as a defense lawyer if you can establish contact with prosecutors you can get perhaps information out of them. they re not going to te
objected to turning over the tapes to the justice department and the supreme court said, yes, executive privilege is a thing, yes, it could apply here but when we look at the conversation it does not because it s meant to protect confidential communications between the president and his advisers as to legitimate policy and strategy discussions, but not as to potentially criminal discussions, not to just shield any manner of embarrassment or wrongdoing conversations. so we could be setting up for a legal battle here. all right. we will be looking to see how that plays out and how long that takes. ellie, thank you so much. thanks, buddy. be well. ahead we re going to speak with congressman adam kinzinger, of course, he is one of two republicans on the january 6th committee. so what is he going to say about the primaries? what is he going to say about cipollone being subpoenaed by a grand jury? we will be getting that. first on cnn, the defense department reportedly deleted a pote
thing for us all to realize. great to see you. so this morning the justice department investigation into the plot to overturn the 2020 election is taking a major step and it s reaching deeper into the trump white house. cnn has learned that a federal grand jury has subpoenaed pat cipollone, the former trump white house counsel has already testified before the house select committee on january 6th. cipollone said that there was no election fraud and that trump should have conceded. joining us now is cnn s senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor ellie honing. how significant, ellie, is this subpoena and what does it tell us about the direction and the pace of doj s investigation? well, it tells me that doj wants answers from donald trump s inner inner circle. you really cannot tell the full story of january 6 and the lead up without pat cipollone because so many times he was in the rooms where the key conversations were happening. when donald trump was contemplating seiz
drawing prosecutors to the ftan is it s tangible, there are documents that people submitted saying we are the electors. as a prosecutor you are looking and thinking fraud or potentially fraud, but the question is going to be was this fraud in the sense that they were trying to trick somebody? the archives, the american public into thinking we are the duly elected electors, or will their defense be, to quote that email that was referenced in the piece, these were alternate slates of electors. keep in mind two of the seven documents submitted say, hey i m paraphrasing here, but this is just in case we win in court, we are going to be the people who take over. so it s not necessarily a slam dunk case of fraud, those are the issues i think prosecutors are looking at. yeah, but it will be easy to get to the bottom of it in part because people have written emails saying these are fake electors, let s wait until the last minute. it starts to track with what the statute prohibits around fr
much better the second time. reporter: and while trump continues that baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a new cnn poll finds that 45% of americans feel that trump s actions after the 2020 election were illegal and 80% believe that he acted unethically. john and brianna. all right. sunlen serfaty live for us on the hill. thank you. all right. joining us now cnn political commentator and new york magazine columnist errol louis and former federal prosecutor ellie honing. i want to talk to you both about this news first reported in the washington post, the federal prosecutors are asking about the actions of donald trump when he was president. when we learned that marc short and greg jacob received subpoenas and testified, we knew that this investigation had reached the inner workings of the trump white house by these questions we know the investigation has reached into the trump oval office, ellie. first things first, this is a big darn deal. there is no