stolen, and a live stream captured the crime going down. welcome to the lead. i m kasie hunt in for jake tapper. we start with our politics lead and the january 6th committee releasing new evidence in its case against donald trump as it narrows its focus for the coming weeks. on the agenda, trying to compel testimony from ginni thomas, a conservative activist and wife of supreme court justice clarence thomas, over her role in advocating to overturn the 2020 election. committee vice chair congresswoman liz cheney telling cnn they will consider a subpoena if thomas doesn t cooperate. we certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily, but the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not. committee is also pushing to get more documents from the u.s. secret service and answers about the agency s potentially missing text messages from on and around january 6th. one of the committee members, congresswoman elaine luria, released previously
cannot question a republican state senator who was one of the fake trump electors. let s bring in cnn s kara scannell. why did the skruj decide to do this? well, in this situation, the issue here was the judge found there was a conflict of interest that the district attorney, fani willis, had. the back story is that this fake elector, he s a georgia state senator, burt jones, he was also a target of the investigation, but he s also returning for lieutenant governor in the state. and here s the rub. so fani willis, the district attorney, had a campaign fund-raiser and had donated money to his rival, his political opponent, in that race. the judge saying this is untenable conflict, saying she cannot question him, that she cannot include him in whatever report the special grand jury produces. but he said that she can continue to ask questions about him and any of that material can be turned over to an independent prosecutor and different district attorney to look into that issue. otherw
his sentence if he cooperates but it won t be spelled out. they have an agreement but it s not in writing. what does that mean? allocution is the term you use to say you re going to tell the skruj what you d like the sentence to be. you ll recommend certain things. it s the judge s prerogative to decide what they want to hand down. you wouldn t put it in writing. there may be an open ended need to say, if your information pans out, if you remain cooperative, if you continue to help the investigation, maybe at the end of that road we ll spell out the terms. but right now what would be the incentive of mueller s team? it s almost a gift if anything to gates to have him be able to plea without adding to the full charges. mueller is still in position of power over gates and he can t dictate the terms even in the spelling out of everything he will get in return but ultimately, john, it s the judge s call regardless. laura coats for us, thank you very much, very much. here now molly ba