Tonight on 360, first a canceled Press Conference, now, apparently a debate noshow, behind the former president s sudden attack. That, and news on when he will surrendering georgia. Also tonight, a cnn trump advisor who took the fifth, when he was asked what he was doing january 6th. Tonight we know what he was doing and with whom. Later, when Hurricane Hillary could have in store for southern california, bracing for its first storm of this magnitude since 1939. Good evening, thanks f joining us. The form president is expected to himself in at the atlanta county judge. Fray is t 19 defendants. Trump, his former chief of staff, lawyers, a Top Justice Department official, and others all been booked, finger printed and, with the exception of the president , and former president , photograph. In the last two days, the former president has backed out of opportunities to be seen by millions of television viewers. Yesterday cancel that Press Conference and announced monday to repeat lies abou
by pushing mike pence to decertify the election, even this attempt to put forward these false electors, they were all attempts to undermine the country and the constitution, so, again, even that part of the scheme was known at the time to be to be what it was. and, you know, it highlights that the january 6th committee s work isn t just about the violence on january 6th. it is also about this scheme that was anti-democratic in nature, that is still present in the republican party s politics today. let s talk about the january 6th committee, because miss maggie haberman is part of an article in the new york times this morning that talks about steven miller testifying to the committee yesterday for hours and hours. and the committee, according to the reporting, kept on asking about the speech that the former president gave on january 6th and the language he used, kept on saying, we, we, we. let me play you a little bit about that speech.
and on december 31st, chip roy writes, the president should call everyone off. joining me now to discuss cnn senior political correspondent abby phillip, anchor of inside politics on the weekend and maggie hagberman. both chip roy and mike lee did not go along with the certification on january 6th itself. what does the evolution tell you here? they questioned their colleagues who did go forward with it. i think the evolution tells you what we already knew, that there was no evidence and that people knew it at the time. there was a long period of time from the days after the election in which many republicans thought let s give it some time to see if evidence emerges, but clearly based on these text messages, before the start of the new year, many republicans in washington and elsewhere around the country knew there
was no there there. there was no evidence, long before january 6th, and yet, many of their colleagues continued forward. and it just tells you that all of this is a farce. there are a lot of people out here claiming that it is partisanship to say that these election claims are false, when in fact people on both sides of the aisles knew this then. maggie, roy and lee saying help me help you, and they clearly never got the help they thought they needed. no, that s right. i think abby has it exactly right, john. you had a bunch of people right after election day who thought there is a window here, it is not unheard of shortly after an election to look at, you know, ballot counting, to-l look at various options in various states, never seen on this scale. there were people who were aware that there was nothing
materializing, not just in terms of the baseless claims of widespread fraud, but also that we re going to undo this, we have this path and this path and this path. by the time you get to the beginning of january in 2021, you are days away from the electoral college vote being certified in favor of joe biden and you have a vice president, mike pence, making clear he does not have the legal authority that trump s allies were claiming he did, and those texts lay out clearly there are others, looking at that landscape and saying this is just not real. not real, and potentially dangerous, because roy and mike lee, leading up to january 6th, telling mark meadows repeatedly, this is a really bad idea. this is really bad for the country. mark meadows can t argue that no one warned him. yeah, i mean, i was struck by that too. it is not just that they knew there wasn t any evidence, but that they feared that this would pose a threat to american democracy itself. they understood that by pushi