presidential election. and that is terrifying. damaging testimony against former president donald trump as officials inside the justice department detail how he tried to weaponize the department to steal the election. plus positive news for ukraine as the european council finally says okay to them becoming an official to join the eu. we re live this hour in brussels. and growing doubt over boris johnson s future as his party loses two high elections. live from london, this is cnn newsroom with isa soares. welcome to the show, everyone. it is friday, june 24th. 9:00 a.m. here in london, 4:00 a.m. in washington. the january 6 committee has held its last public hearing before the july 4th holiday break and there were plenty of fireworks. top officials in donald trump s justice department testified the former president was relentless in pushing election conspiracies and wanted them to overturn the 2020 vote. the witnesses said every time there were bogus fraud claims,
president who wanted the extra near oig legitimacy from doj to back his bogus claims and overturn the election and stay in power. even some trump allies now privately acknowledging to cnn that some of the testimony from yesterday was, quote, damaging. this is the room where it happened. a dramatic high stakes meeting in the oval office just three days before the capitol riot in january of 2021. the witnesses testified that trump leaned on them to publicly call the election fraudulent and corrupt, something that they wouldn t do. and that when the acting attorney general jeffrey rosen there refused, trump threatened to replace him with this little known environmental lawyer from the civil division jeffrey clark. the justice department officials in the room all pushed back threatening to resign. he said so suppose i do this, suppose i replace him, jeff rosen, with him, jeff clark. what would you do? and i said, mr. president, i would resign immediately. i m not working one mi
good morning to our viewers here in the united states and all around the world, it is friday, june 24th. i m john berman with brianna keilar. just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and republican congressmen. a sentence that rang across the halls of the capitol and this morning might very well be ringing into the courtroom. after a day of sworn testimony about how former president trump tried to weaponize the justice department to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, even some former trump administration officials and allies are acknowledging to cnn that the revelations were damaging. the most damaging yet. even bleak. so why, why so damaging? and what now? that is the focus this morning. testimony about a relentless almost daily effort to push officials to say things that were not true and do things that arguably were not legal. a scheme that seemed minutes from success to install a man named jeffrey clark, an environmental lawyer, an election lie prom
something, tucker, i have never seen before or heard of, an electronic sniffing dog and they took all of the electronics from my house. new fallout this morning from revelation that is six republican lawmakers sought preemptive pardons from former president trump before and after the attack on the capitol. that is according to emails and testimony revealed by the january 6th committee. was representative gaetz requesting a pardon? i believe so. a pardon that he was discussing, requesting, was as broad as you could describe. mr. biggs did, mr. jordan talked about congressional pardons but he never asked me for one. mr. gohmert asked for one as well. mr. perry asked for a pardon, too. did marjory taylor green contact you? no, she didn t contact me about t i heard that she had asked white house office counsel for a pardon. so what were the roles of the pardon seekers in january 6? let s bring in tom foreman to walk us through that. tom? if you look at all sifolks
less overthrow the election, pressured them almost every day, asking officials to say things that were not true, that they told him were not true, and trying to get them to do things without precedence and that were arguably not legal. watch. let s take a look at another one of your notes. you also noted that mr. rosen said to mr. trump, quote, doj can t and won t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election. how did the president respond to that, sir? he responded very quickly and said, essentially, that s not what i m asking you to do. what i m asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen. i made the point that jeff clark is not even competent to serve as the attorney general. he s never been a criminal attorney. he s never conducted a criminal investigation in his life. he s never been in front of a trial jury. and he kind of retorted by saying, well, i ve done a lot of very complicated appeals and civ