committee dropping a brand-new batch of key testimony and for the first time we are now seeing interview transcripts from 19 additional witnesses and they include some of the closest people inside former president trump s inner circle. his son, donald trump jr., former fox news anchor kirsten gillibrand as w kimberly guile so let s get right to cnn s sara murray looking through all of these documents. sara, thousands of pages of transcripts. some we ve seen through the january 6th committee hearings and you ve been reading through donald trump jr. s transcripts. what are you finding in there? reporter: you know, this is obviously interesting because he s the former president s son, proximity to the former president and asking him about what was happening as the riot unfolded on january 6th and they re reading back text messages he exchanged with mark meadows. at one point don junior tells mark meadows, the former president trump, his dad has got to condemn this then says a
the hub, i think, or the funnel for so much of this including the efforts to communicate with him, the president, on that day. can i focus, abby, on another following up on another aspect of the trump jr. deposition that i think is really critical because as you know, i mean, i don t know, i don t recall, i don t remember, if you take those words out you might reduce it from 105 pages to 5. but there is one critical thing, there is one critical thing that he acknowledges and, you know, in the report the first mention of the idea of having state republican control state legislators throw out the vote in their state and simply substitute donald trump electors is from donald trump jr. to mark meadows two days after the election. it s somewhere around page 260 of the report. and in this deposition, he s asked, where did he get that idea? and he acknowledges that it was, quote, a cut and paste from someone else, that he did not develop this himself, but he
races have now taken on additional significance, and initial importance? considering these governors races the new frontline, right? yes, what matters in congress is important. but when you take republican control state legislators putting for this buffet of bans against abortion, even before this draft leaked, that s what s being set up for governors to be in control, to sign an act into law, or reject. and so, i m looking at states like texas, where six points of abbott and he s mobilizing voters. or stacey abrams, who s the present democratic nominee down in georgia, we directing her supporters to reproductive rights groups over when this news broke. or even nan whaley up in ohio, calling out a republican opponent, that s the energy that democrats need to keep putting forward because that is what is at stake. as i mentioned, alicia, at 36 glittery races are happening
legislatures have the power. but the vp has power to. and quote. the power to do what? we can get the power to overturn the election results. the power to reject the will of the voters. and days later, a violent mob tried to get vice president pence to do that. we d like to ask mr. meadows about that. congressman pete aguilar from the january six investigation they re citing text messages between trump s white house chief of staff, mark meadows and a member of congress. messages that appeared to be about how to throw out the election results. state legislatures and the vice president, that is how will do it, right? that was the plot. that was the scheme. by which they tried to do. it congressman jamie raffensperger also said that to the white house chief of staff, by a member of congress. have republican control state
working on, is they re trying to avoid any accountability for the stuff they re doing. but there is one little sliver of what i guess you d call, accountability, that seems to have punctured the haze tonight. just as we were getting on the air, that i wanna tell you about. i mentioned jeff clark, justice department official who appears to have, cooked up this scheme with trump. where in the u.s. justice department would declare publicly that the election was corrupt. that serious voter fraud was being investigated by the justice department. when in fact, the election wasn t corrupt and they weren t investigating serious incidents of voter fraud. but he was gonna make those public claims anyway. in clark s apparent plan was to make that false assertion about the justice department, and then use that assertion as pretext to tell republican control state legislators that the results shouldn t be certified. now, we shall see if jeff clark is disciplined or you know,