what was it? [ sighs ] i can t remember. top of the hour on cnn newsroom. good to have you along. i m victor blackwell. we re starting this hour with the questions of potential legal jeopardy for former president donald trump and his attorney john eastman. the january 6th committee made its most forceful case yet that trump was responsible for the capitol insurrection. this was their third hearing and the committee revealed evidence that trump and eastman knew that their plot to push then vice president mike pence to delay the certification of the election results was not legal but kept unrelenting pressure on pence anyway, with trump berating and cursing at him on the phone. listen to former trump white house lawyer eric herschmann on his conversation with john eastman. i said are you out of your effing mind, and that was pretty blunt. i said, you re completely crazy. you re going to cause riots in the streets. and he said words to the effect of there s been violence in
next hearing is on tuesday. this delay that is described by the justice department that way, the delay of transferring the transcripts from the committee from the testimony, what do we know about the requests, why the panel is not handing them over now? well, so far, you know, as manu just mentioned, the members of the committee have said, look, they re going to have to wait. we are doing our own separate thing, but this has real consequences for the justice department. already according to a court filing, they have had to delay the trial of a few members of the proud boys. this is the right wing extremist group that was a key part of breaching the capitol. according to prosecutors, they need to see these transcripts, including, you know, people who the committee has interviewed who are cooperating witnesses because they need to turn them over to the defense. of course, you know, before you go on trial, the defense has a right to see everything in the
eventually cooperate with the justice department s own probe, and the justice department is raising concerns saying it could delay their own investigation. manu raju with the latest for us. thank you. the 1/6 committee is a few days out from the next hearing, the panel is still trying to nail down a witness list. sources tell cnn the hearing is to focus on trump s effort to use the justice department to support election lies. cnn justice correspondent evan perez joins us now. so what are you learning about the next hearing? well, victor, some of the most powerful testimony has come from some of these very very high ranking aides, like greg jacobs, who you saw very powerfully talk about what he saw that day. the committee was hoping to get pat cipollone, who was the former white house counsel and who everyone says laplayed an important role in trying to stop the former president in doing things he was going to do.
where evan left off here, the delay from the committee in handing over these transcripts. you were part of the, as i said, second impeachment trial. if these are, according to the doj, jeopardizing some of those other criminal cases, should the committee hand these transcripts over. well, i think chairman thompson has indicated on several occasions that the committee intends to furnish the department of justice with the information they have received and collected during the course of the january 6th investigation. i think that the committee is obviously interested in moving forward carefully, and being certain that it s clear to everyone that they re responsibility as a legislative committee is different than the ongoing criminal investigation of the department of justice. i don t have any doubt that the department of justice will get all of the evidence collected by the january 6th committee, and they ll get it as soon as the committee thinks it s appropriate to get it to them.
possession of the government, and that includes, victor, includes the transcripts of interviews that have been done by this committee. so it appears that, you know, there s still these conversations being had. we know that it led, already one of the trials is being delayed, the fear i think from the prosecutors as they laid out in a letter to the committee is that this is going to delay not only this trial but additional trials and additional prosecutions, which of course is the goal of all of this, to make sure people are being held accountable for what happened on january 6th, victor. evan perez in washington, thank you very much. congressman, a democrat from rhode island, a former member of the house. he is a member of the house judiciary committee, and served as an impeachment manager for donald trump s second trial. didn t want to retire there, congressman. thank you for your time. thank you, i appreciate that. i know you do. let me start here. i want to get to the broader q