election. once again in the spotlight, no one other than wisconsin s senator ron johnson. after the committee revealed on tuesday that one of his top staffers messaged an aide to vice president mike pence about johnson passing fake slates of trump electors for wisconsin and michigan to vice president mike pence by hand on january 6th. a pence aide promptly shut it down texting the johnson staffer this, quote. do not give that to him, end quote, but that attempted handoff still begs many questions like what did ron johnson know about the scheme to set up false electors which is under criminal investigation by the justice department. here s johnson on capitol hill dodging questions from reporters. how much did you know about what your chief of staff was doing with the alternate slates of electors? no, you re not. i can see your phone. i can see your screen. did you know what your chief of staff was doing? does your chief of staff still work for you, sir? can you expla
more evidence is pouring out every day. more witnesses are coming forward. it s almost like a national catharsis as people who have information are deciding to turn it over to the january 6th select committee. i had hoped we would be done with the hearing process by the end of june. it may be that the incorporation of all the new evidence coming in requires us to go a little further into the summer. that was member of the january 6th committee congressman jamie raskin putting voice to this mammoth amount of ed, constantly evolving mission that they have before them as they try to present a case with new evidence coming in every single day. earlier today select committee chairman benny thompson said
enough evidence of criminal conduct either by former president trump or others to make what is known as a criminal referral to the department of justice. i want you to listen to a member of the january 6th committee congressman adam kinzinger, what he said about the possibility of criminal charges against former president trump. i don t want to go there yet to say do i believe that he has. i think that s obviously a pretty big thing to say. we want to know though, and i think by the end of our investigation and by the time our report is out we ll have a pretty good idea. we ll be able to have on the public record anything that the justice department needs maybe in pursuit of that. so i thought that was interesting. can you walk to a criminal deferral on how that work. . it s not formally technically legally binding. it s up to prosecutors and doj, not congress whether they want
in his favor in court. that said, he has won even while he s losing simply by dragging things out. so congress has to be ready to act quickly. they seem like they are. the courts, our judges can t let these cases sit for years or months. they can get these things done in a matter of a month or two. and doj, again, merrick garland, there s a lot of pressure on merrick garland. joe biden has said he thinks this case should be charged. so all three of those actors need to stiffen up and show some spine here. we saw the justice department say that they ll be making the decision, not the president. the chair of the january 6th committee congressman bennie thompson told cnn earlier this week that the committee has not ruled out subpoenaing the former president donald trump in that, quote, nobody is off limits. adam kinzinger was asked about this earlier this morning. here s what he said. if we subpoena all of a sudden the former president, we know that s going to become kind of a circus