They did and did not talk about. caitlyn joins me live from washington this morning. caitlyn, what was off limits for these two witnesses? reporter: good morning, laura. these are two crucial witnesses. mark short, the chief of staff to mike pence as vice president and greg jacob, the chief d counsel to pence. they would not discuss their direct conversations with president donald trump or other conversations they knew of that were direct conversations with trump. that s because trump s team came to them and instructed them not to talk about what s called presidential communications. those were off limits and more importantly, the vice president s office, their team, decided that they were willing to oblige with this request from the trump team. so the thing is here though, i mean, it s important the parameters that are being set but the thing is they were willing to talk about a lot of things. this was a very small amount of questions in the interviews.
And minimize civilian casualties and at the same time the secretary of defense, christine, saying that given the complexity of this mission, we will take a look at the possibility of our action may have also basically led may have possibly led to harm to innocent people. so everyone is going to be waiting to see what the conclusion, what the outcome of this review is going to be. this is coming at a time when the u.s. military is under a lot of scrutiny for civilian casualties in afghanistan and also in syria where civilian casualties in airstrikes, something that has only come to light in recent months, christine. jomana, thank you so much for that. laura? also this morning, we are learning more about the tense moments inside the situation room as president biden and his team watched the raid that killed the isis leader in real time. let s go live to washington and bring in cnn s jasmine wright. good morning. the reporting here is pretty
Blow to isis. jomana has more. we know u.s. intelligence gathering gave momentum this fall. we know the president was briefed just before christmas. reporter: well, you know, christine, this is one of the most it is the most significant operation carried out by u.s. special forces in syria since 2019, since the killing of isis s former leader. as you mentioned, we understand that the u.s. military intelligence had been watching this location in northwestern syria for months waiting for that right opportunity for them to carry out this raid. the opportunity presented itself on wednesday when this happened. now one major issue that everyone is looking at right now is this discrepancy we re getting into the count of civilian casualties. the u.s. forces are saying as they approached the three story building, the house where the
Incredible from the white house team. it also has shades of the raid that killed osama bin laden. reporter: yeah, stunning amount of detail from officials who over the last 24 hours have given more and more detail about some of those really tense moments in the situation room as the president monitored this raid in real time. he was joined by his vice president and other national security officials. they described moments filled with anxiety when they watched the helicopter on the ground malfunctioning. we learned that was destroyed by u.s. special forces to moments of levity when they saw children coming from coming safely outside from the first floor of the building. remember, the u.s. the isis target lived on the third floor above families and so that was the reason why as we heard jomana say, the president opted for a special forces mission.
To expel congresswoman liz cheney and congressman adam kinsinger from the house gop conference would make it and set precedent for the rnc to continue doing something like this in the future if there were any republicans that went against or were criticizing the party but, look, this censure was voted out of the resolutions committee yesterday. now the whole 168 member rnc is going to vote on this later today. but i want to emphasize that these two lawmakers, congresswoman liz cheney and congressman adam kin singer, both of these members who sit on the house select committee investigating the january 6th insurrection, they shrugged this off. they are not concerned about this resolution at all and in different statements they both said they stand by their decision to be part of this panel to investigate what happened on january 6th and to continue to call out that big lie that republicans keep pushing that the election was stolen from former president