the 2020 election. alex holder joined me after his meeting today with the january 6th committee. he has turned over more than 11 hours of footage, but donald trump and his footage before the election. we have an exclusive clip from his trump documentary series. first, the explosive fifth january 6th committee hearing, and trumps explosive plot trying to strong-arm justice department leadership into keeping him in power. attempting to strong-arm officials to legitimize his election lies. namely, jeffrey clark and his attempt to take over the entire justice department to advance a two on the president s behalf. today, we learned more about a january 3rd meeting, where clark made a case to the president, to fire then acting attorney general jeffrey rosen and to appoint him as attorney general. here, in the words of justice department officials, they all threatened to resign if the scheme went ahead and warned of even worse. i said, mr. president, within 24, 48, 72 hours, you w
this when asked about his fake fraud claims letter. did you discuss this draft letter, with the president of the united states? executive privilege, restated for the abundance of caution. i am joined now by martha o donnell, host on msnbc and my wonderful copilot here for this early reaction to what we heard today. i was struck by the relentlessness of jeffrey clark, coming back and back and trying to get a hold of the department of justice to use it for his ends, but also mr. perry. jeffrey clark was the character of the center of this whole story, today. i think the whole plot, the jeffrey clark plot failed, because of jeffrey clark himself, because of who donald trump saw in that room, on january 3rd, when the real people from the justice department showed up, and jeffrey clark had to take his
others, a truck driver who claims to have moved an entire truck to trick tractor-trailer of balance are new york and pennsylvania, he wanted to talk a great deal about georgia, the states arena video, which he believes, for various reasons was, as he said it, fraud staring you in the face. were any of the allegations he brought up credible? no. congress in schiff, donald trump s best defense here is that he genuinely believes that he had won the election, and that it had been stolen and there was massive fraud. are you convinced, after listening to mr. donahue, and others, describe how they walked him through it, and how william barth walked into him and every critical credible person told him it wasn t real, are you convinced that donald trump genuinely believed that he had lost the election? yes. i think he understood that he had lost the election, and you know, when we see the same pattern today that we saw with
the justice department, you know, with state legislatures, and with others, where they go through these different allegations of fraud, saying there is no there there, that is false, that is false, that is absurd. at the end of the conversation it retreats to saying, just let me say there is fraud and i will take care of the rest. that is basically the message. you could hear for example, on the call with secretary of state from georgia, brad roethlisberger, he goes through all the same drill about this allegation and that allegation. all of them were shot down. at the very end it is like,, fellows. he knows exactly what he is doing but he is trying to browbeat people into doing what he wants. he finds the one guy at the justice department, this environmental lawyer, who apparently has no scruples and will do whatever he needs to do to get that job, and i think as you were pointing out, lawrence, he looks at the rest of the
becoming a special counsel. that was offered to her, according to her testimony. just from having been inside the doj yourself, what did you make it what you heard today and all the scary prospect that were avoided? i think it was the worst assault on the doj s independence in the country s history. worse than anything nixon did during watergate, worse than multiple politicization scandals during the bush administration. i think something so appalling and shocking about it is how relentless trump was. he kept coming back with different ideas. he wants the department to appoint a special counsel and he has an idea of who he ought to use, a complete loon as you mentioned. he wants the department to file a brief in the supreme court. he wants the department to hold a press conference to declare that corruption happened but he kept coming again and again with ideas and claims of fraud that we know are false that he wanted them to investigate. this ultimately only failed, not because trum