good friday evening to you. jim sciutto here sitting in for anderson. tonight making sense of the unprecedented look we ve just gotten into what until now was almost unimaginable, the criminal investigation of a former president. it follows the equally unprecedented court-approved search of a former president s home. today under orders from the same federal judge who approved that search warrant, the justice department released the affidavit backing the warrant. the document laying out the government s case that a search could yield evidence of a crime or even multiple crimes. it is heavily redacted to protect sources, potential witnesses, as well as the ongoing investigation of not just the president but also, quoting the document now, all potential criminal confederates. that said, there is much it does reveal, starting with what investigators believe they would find beyond the 15 boxes that were returned to the government in january. quoting again, there is probable cause
also new this morning, surrounding new details surrounding former president trump s efforts to overturn the election, a georgia district attorney tells 16 so-called fake electors they are now targets of this ongoing criminal investigation in fulton county, georgia. it is a notable escalation. we ll explain why. and it comes as another election denier just secured the republican primary for governor in maryland. trump-backed candidate dan cox known for encouraging former president trump to seize voting machines will face off against the democratic nominee there in november. let s begin with the single text exchange that the secret service has provided to the january 6th committee, our justice correspondent jessica schneider is with us. just one back and forth, that s it? that s it. the committee members here continue to be dissatisfied with the secret service response. what we learned from this letter overnight, obtained by jamie gangel, the inspector general requested a m
from the secret service. the secret service reportedly handed over one single text to the committee, despite a request for all of the text messages from two dozen secret service personnel concerning the four-week period around the capitol attack. and steve bannon is back in court for day three of his criminal contempt trial, and we ll tell you what witnesses are saying. we have all these angles covered. we begin in washington, a single text, that s all the secret service provided to the dhs inspector general. what happened here? reporter: well, that s what they re working to figure out. so what the secret service says now is that they are still going back through just to make sure that nothing was the collateral damage of a very we know now was an ill-timed data migration that wiped phones for several members of the secret service. so what we know is that they have already handed over to the house select committee per subpoena more than 10,000 documents. the secret serv
we still don t know. however, tonight we do know more about when the agency s top watchdog knew the messages were missing. tonight multiple sources familiar with the matter tell cnn that the inspector general for the department of homeland security which oversees the secret service first learned of the missing messages in may of 2021. now, that s significant because that s not what secret service officials told congress. they told congress that the inspector general joseph kafari knew in december of 2021, and if he knew in may of 2021, that means it was more than a year before he told the house select committee that potentially crucial information might have been erased. now, the secret service as you know says the messages were lost during a scheduled data migration that began on january 27th, three weeks after the capitol attack. it s also a week after several house committees directed dhs to produce all documents or materials relevant to it so they knew congress wanted to
hallway, doing nothing pretty could hear the sounds of the teachers and students being shot. so in the most powerful telescope ever made showing the distant galaxies. we will show you the picture of a real star being born. that s all coming up. good evening, i am erin burnett. accusations of potential witness tampering. congresswomen, liz cheney, accusing president donald trump of trying to contact an unidentified january 6th committee witness in recent days. after our last hearing, president trump tried to call a witness in our investigation. a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. that person declined to answer or respond to president trump s call. instead, alerted their lawyer to the call. their lawyer alerted us. this committee has supplied the information to the department of justice. that is a serious point to make. obviously, she s making a serious obligation. the justice department does have the power to prosecute if they see the former president tamp