why did he want to take out the existing leadership and instead put this guy in there? well, we have newly-learned from this new disclosure is that one of the things that jeff clark thought the justice department should do, when he thought they could do, is that the justice department should issue a legal memo, a legal opinion, stating that actually the fake electors plan was legal. and mike pence has every opportunity and every legal rights to only count electors he wanted and to send others back to the states. or indeed, to consider the illegal say if the justice department issued a legal memorandum stating that that was all kosher, presumably, trump thought that would solve the problem and that is why trump tried to install jeffrey clark as the new attorney general so that the justice department can do stuff like that to declare the coup to be legal. we also learned from his new disclosure that multiple members of congress participated in a call with the
on the positive side, as with so many of these witnesses, we are learning a lot about their interactions with the president, with the white house, notwithstanding their noncooperation. we are getting the facts and i know that at the end of the day, that is the most important thing. we can put that information out to the public and we can aside from the prospect of a referral for criminal contempt prosecution, do you feel like what we have learned thus far might suggest criminal behavior by members of congress? i m thinking about these revelations today in this reporting from cnn that would indicate, in the words of one republican member of congress, marjorie taylor greene, that multiple members of congress believed that trump should declare martial law just ahead of the inauguration in order to stay in power and she took it
how they tried to pro the election results to keep trump in power after he lost reelection. that filing from late on friday night, two or 300 page long filing, that is been bolstered today by a trove of 2000 next adjusts text messages. they were obtained by cnn and published by cnn in part today. taken together, that falling on friday night from the january 6th investigators and these text messages disclosed today in the text those two disclosures paint a sort of new and unnerving picture of how involved members of congress and members of the administration were in trying to use not only perceived legal tools, legal maneuvers, political tactics, but also the threat of mob violence, to keep trump in power. first, for example, we learned from testimony to the investigation, by a mark meadows, that meadows was
taylor greene, saying that her butt saying that she should not but he might declare martial law as a way of staying in power. today, we learned in fact that she did suggest that to the white house chief of staff, mark meadows, and she did it in writing in a text message. and as funny inside as it is to see her misspell martial law as look at that store you somehow confuse with a t.j. max. as ridiculous as this all is, it is chilling to look at the date on that text message. she was not suggesting that trump declare martial law in the heat of the election results coming in and it looking like he might not win. it wasn t even in the lead up to the january 6th counting of the electoral votes before we knew that there was going to be a physical attack on a congress. we now know republican members of congress were scheming with
seem to have been an active effort, a planned effort, not a spontaneous surprise, that it wasn t a spontaneous surprise, that the crowd that trump had rallied at the ellipse moved to the u.s. capitol? obviously, we heard trump call for that during his speech. that was portrayed as an ad libbed a moment, as a surprise, including by mark meadows when he wrote his memoir about that. we are now seeing evidence that it was not a surprise. it wasn t ad libbed. and there was at least some planning, both involving the white house and newest members of congress, about the desirability of getting the crowd to converge on the capitol building that day. is that important? it s not just logistics or s that important in terms of the overall issue of culpability here? i think it is very important, to the degree that members of congress or the white house or