i m yasmin vossoughian in for another busy hour. this morning we re tracking major developments in each of the three yes three separate investigations related to the 2020 election and the big lie spread by the former president and his allies. first in the justice department investigation. a source telling nbc news mark short, former chief of staff to mike pence appeared before a federal grand jury on friday to discuss what? we ll get into that. second n the house january 6th committee investigation, the panel revealing in crucial deposition clips how the former president was reluctant to condemn the capitol rioters the day after the attack. third, the investigation in fulton county, georgia and the setback for the da probing the former president and his allies attempts to overturn the 2020 election. we want to bring in nbc knew capitol hill correspondent ali vitali is joining us, michael schmidt, msnbc contributor, and glenn kirschner, msnbc legal analyst. glenn, let me
that the department is investigating and has pierced the level closer to the president and is talking to senior white house officials and people that were literally in the room for this pressure campaign. i want to read, michael, a part of your latest piece for the new york times kind of contrasting these three separate investigations. you put it brilliantly here and i want folks to hear it. you say the contrast between if public urgency and aggressiveness of the investigations being carried out by the georgia prosecutors and the congressional committee on the one hand and the quiet and apparently plotting and methodical approach being taken by the justice department on the other is so striking that it has become an issue for mr. garland, even as federal prosecutors quietly grind forward on the case. can you talk more about this, michael, and also how it s become an issue for the attorney general? so what s happened through
michael brings up entering points talking about this doj investigation and members of the panel, of the committee, have been talking more and more about this. it seems like they re kind of trying to draw it out, right, to coax them further into this investigation. talk to us more about what they are saying and the real strategy that you re learning from your own reporting behind it. yeah, this committee has continuously put forward their information into the court of public opinion and then turned around and kept the pressure on the department of justice in trying to make sure that that investigation is functioning along the same lines and focusing on the same things. of course, they are separate entities as all of us have teased out. the fact these are happening on parallel tracks cannot be ignored. especially since chairman bennie thompson was talking to me about where they are in terms of sharing the transcripts and testimonies that the jilgt committee has gotten with the
i think that is some of what we re seeing here, where the department is much more plotting. it has far different restrictions on it than the committee does. it can t just throw evidence out there. it can t openly talk about an ongoing investigation. it s discouraged from doing so. the committee can put hearsay in their hearings. they can put it out, release whatever information they want. they just put more evidence out yesterday to tell the narrative that they re trying to tell. obviously in a courtroom the ability to present evidence like that is far more challenging. there are far more hurdles that a prosecutor would have to overcome. so there s a disconnect between the public s expectations about, well, what s really going on here. the committee has painted this picture, what is the justice department doing, and garland was forced to con front those questions last week. it s interesting, ali vitali,
department of justice who wants to take a look at those. thompson was saying he wanted to finish public hearings before opening those books to the doj. they are very much still, as of a week ago, in conversations about how they re going to look at how the committee has been able to gather. it has felt at several points throughout this like the committee is further ahead of the department of justice. the committee works publicly while the doj works quietly behind closed doors. nevertheless, what the committee is teasing out, in addition to looking over at doj and making sure they re on the case, so to speak, the committee is trying to tease ahead to what we could end up seeing in september. congresswoman elaine luria making clear that while we ve already seen a lot, there s still more to see. there s so much more that we ve heard from witnesses, so much more of the story to tell.