laying it all out. i want to go back and remind everybody all that we ve seen so far, which is that donald trump was told over and over again that he lost the election by everybody in his orbit who had any authority, anybody who was in a position to know, bill barr, you lost the election, pat cipollone you lost the election, ivanka, i believe bill barr, you lost the election. everybody in and around him was telling him the same thing. you can t go after mike pence, he doesn t have the authority. you can t go after the state representatives because they ve done the recounts, and the recounts show you don t have the votes. you can t do it. you can t pressure the doj, if you install jeffrey clark, we re all going to resign. you can t do this. sidney powell comes in and says we re going to do an executive order, he decides not to do that i guess. doesn t totally follow through with it, and then he moves on to the next thing, which is i m going to look at january 6th. and january 6th is the
they re waiting to see how this is actually playing out before the electorate or whether any opinions let alone potential votes or legislation might actually change. we ve also been waiting for what the person who obviously seems to be at the center, former president donald trump, what he has to say about all the committee s assertions, and there are a lot of them like that he was told his scheme was to overturn the election was in fact illegal, but he pressured his vice president to go along with it anyway. things like he knew that mike pence s life was in arj at the capitol but kept publicly lashing out at him during the attack anyway. well, the wait seems to be over. in his first public appearance since the hearing he didn t deny any of that exactly. instead he admitted he did pressure pence to try and keep
this would play out before the electorate and whether any opinions or any votes or legislation might change. we ve also been waiting for what the person who obviously seems to be at the center of the committee s attention, former president donald j. trump, wondering what he has to say about all the committee s assertions, and there are a lot of them. like that he was told his scheme was to told overturn the election was in fact illegal, but he pressured his vice president to go along with it anyway. things like he knew that mike pence s life was in danger at the capitol but kept publicly lashing out at him during the attack anyway. well, the wayit seems to be ove because today in his first public appearance since the hearing, he didn t really deny any of that exactly. instead, he admitted he did pressure pence to try to keep him in power. but he did deny one thing. never called mike pence a
point to do so and they didn t. it is pretty striking to hear from the people at the top during the course of the hearings. you know that they didn t necessarily believe that they had a legal case. i ve just come back from around the country ant talking to people who now do believe that the election was stolen. genuinely believed it and there is a cynicism at the of strategy but think passed that message on to people. hugo, as we look the hearings to come and the issues of intent and knowledge and action, what else are you looking for out of future hearings? well i think everything that you mentioned about intent and that state of mind is right on the money. because the theme of these hearings so far has been everyone around the president including the president himself knew that all of these plans to pressure pence, to have fake electors sent, to back to the original claims of election fraud were all nonsense.
president would be successful. you require a unanimous jury proof beyond beyond all reasonable doubt. that s a very high bar. and i think it s quite likely that there will be at least one juror on any jury that would see the evidence the president s way. that having been said, i also think that the committee has done a masterful job of pulling together the evidence in a structured way, and making the case much stronger. painting a picture not just of a riot on january 6th, but instead of an entire course of conduct from the immediately after the election to january 6th, that ties together firings at the doj, the efforts to pressure pence, and then the riots themselves. so while i m still guardedly skeptical, i will say that the committee is doing an excellent job of trying to persuade and change people s minds. can i ask you about this new development involving clarence thomas s wife, justice clarence thomas s wife, jenny thomas, now