excessive climate change. good afternoon, i m jim sciutto in for erin burnett, and outfront tonight, preparing for battle. cnn has learned that investigators want to force former trump officials to testify in court, and will use the court to do so. they want to know the actions of former president trump around january 6th, and this is the clearest sign yet that they are zeroing in on trump s actions as he tried to cling to power. this development is coming as the january 6th select committee is speaking to former acting chief of staff mick mulvaney, and former secretary state steve mnuchin, and a key witness, mnuchin had conversations with trump cabinet members hours after the cabinet, and he had a conversation about trying to remove trump by evoking the 25th amendment, and a number of people that he spoke to included secretary of state pompeo, and tonight, pompeo also appears closer to sitting down with the committee. we have had discussions with them about potential a
rallying around former president trump, without knowing what evidence the special counsel might have. they have largely avoided talking about trump s behavior on january 6th and are focusing on the optics of doj going after one of joe biden s top political opponents. i m told that speaker mccarthy and house conference chair alisa both spoke to trump yesterday on the phone to talk about ways they can help defend him and go on offense against these potential charges. she serves on a committee focus on the so-called weaponization of the federal government and she confirmed she did have a conversation with trump yesterday, take a listen. i have spoken with president trump. i spoke with him yesterday, i speak with him on a weekly basis , give or take, and this is yet another example of the illegal weaponization of the department of justice to go after joe biden s top political opponent. we will continue to work out the rot in these agencies.
pointing out, this is a beginning, and we expect they will be coming back, and able to come back to them, and try to, you know, get through the presidential privilege issue to try to get additional information from the witnesses. john, we learned that the january 6th committee spoke with secretary mnuchin, and one of the things that they asked about is this effort by john carl tovs own cabinet member, and why would the committee focus in on that? would bit be the state of mind, and what the president was capable of then? it is certainly showing the feeling of those around him about the president s state of mind. it is not a good process to invoke the constitution to place him on a disabled list. it is really awkward. i happened to work on that amendment when i was with the house judiciary committee, and
not out of tiny fraud. i want zero to listen tomorrow what just rely on reporting that first appeared in your book. the president watching television in what chairman bennie thompson of the january six committee focus in on as those 187 minutes when donald trump did nothing about the attack on the capitol. let s listen to what the president put out today. we didn t see a former president who had just rallied the mauve to attack. sitting in a private dining room off the oval office in the white house watching it all on television. and doing nothing. nothing for hours. as police were assaulted, lives were at risk, the nation s capital was under siege. and robert costa, we now have liz cheney tonight saying that those 187 minutes of doing