good morning to viewers here in the u.s. and around the world, it s thursday, july 14th and i m brianna keilar with john berman. this morning new clues surrounding the pending january 6th witness who donald trump tried to contact. it s an allegation that has been referred to the justice department, not formally, but it s been sent up the chain there. first on cnn, sources say trump tried to call a member of the white house support staff who was in talks with the january 6th committee. that is new. the exact identity still unknown at this point. the witness, though, did not pick up when trump called. this was not someone that trump would routinely communicate with. and this came after cassidy hutchinson s explosive testimony. the alarmed witness contacted an attorney. this is january 6th committee member elaine luria the congresswoman speaking to cnn. we take seriously the safety of any witnesses, anyone who comes forward to the committee and like weiise their privacy. in
to the region and quite frankly the whole world. the israeli leader also talked about the president s visit to the saudi kingdom. giving him a message to pass on to the leaders he will be meeting there in his trip. mr. president, you will meet with the leaders of saudi arabia, qatar, kuwait and oman and iraq. i would like you to pass them all a message from us. our hands are outstretched for peace. with that talk more about this nbc news chief white house correspondent peter alexander and jane harmon and president emeritus of the wilson center and author of insanity defense while why the failure makes us less safe. so peter, what more do we know about what president biden s expected to do and talk about when he is in saudi arabia? it s quite an accomplishment, a president of the united states going from israel to saudi arabia. reporter: yeah, that really says as much about the changing landscape here in the middle east as it does about anything else. the first u.s
so let s walk through what happened. three days ago, july 13th, the dhs, the inspector general which was looking into the secret service handling of january 6, they notified capitol hill to say that there were text messages that were erased as part of a data migration process that dhs was doing and that present there were missing text messages from secret service phones on january 5th and 6th. the dhs inspector general was clearly very frustrated with this and felt like they weren t getting the information they wanted out of the secret service for their investigation. told capitol hill then that watch dog, the chief there, did brief all nine members of house select committee about this yesterday for several hours. the committee members emerged from that meeting very concerned. here is what congresswoman zoe lofgren said afterwards. here she is. i will say that the explanation that you have to factory re-set and eliminate your data without backing up your data just seems i
january 5th and 6th, until 72 hours ago, when the inspector general over that agency announced in a letter to capitol hill that they had learned the texts were missing, that there was a data migration in process at dhs at the secret service to caused the erasure of some text messages from secret service phones. the inspector general announced that to capitol hill. the january 6th committee received a briefing from that watchdog agent on friday. all nine members sat for several hours, trying to figure out what happened here with the secret service, what was going on in this other investigation. and the committee members emerged from that briefing quite concerned. here is representative zoe lofgren yesterday after that briefing. i will say that the explanation that you have to factory reset and eliminate your data without backing up your data just seems i m skeptical. i mean, i wouldn t do that. the argument about when the request was made is largely irrelevant. the secret
there has been so much angst in the white house about how he should behave, whether he should smile. you know, jose, it is more than updates. to put it mildly, he is walking into a minefield. there are so many ways in which this region simply doesn t agree with the perspective in the u.s. we saw a little bit in israel with the prime minister openly disagreeing with the president over the question of iran and the nuclear deal. they don t agree on russia. they don t agree on china. they see china as a crucial economic partner. they don t seem to agree on oil production. there won t be a big announcement of more oil production from here because of the president s visit, although that might come later. not clear. do they agree on human rights? clearly there are many saudis who would like to see human rights and more democracy even and would like to see some of those people who have spoken out released from prison or allowed to travel freely, but there are others here who say actu