days before republicans assume the majority in the house and likely dissolve the january 6th committee, members released a new batch of testimony involving efforts of those closest to the former president and their attempts to overturn the election. i m pamela brown in for anderson tonight. and included in the new transcripts is testimony by donald trump jr. and remarks about what he believed was a, quote, sophisticated legal rationale to overturn the election, as in overturn the will of the people. one nearly identical to what his fathers allies would soon attempt. and there is also some rather unflattering testimony involving first lady melania trump s opinion of trump jr. and others in her husband s inner circle. also tonight, new details of a purported conversation involving senator lindsey graham who said he would become a champion of these baseless election fraud claims if the president s allies could, quote, just give me five dead voters. it is a lot to unpack. let s s
testimony from stephanie grisham, who was a top aide to melania trump while they were in the white house. and she was recounting that, you know, melania trump really sort of began to distrust advice that her husband was getting from donald trump jr., his son, kimberly guilfoyle, junior s fiancee, sidney powell, rudy giuliani. she just felt like her husband was not getting good advise. according to the stephanie grisham testimony, she was also getting a little peeved. people kept showing up in the residence at all hours. melania is up in the residence trying to live her life. at one point she might be in a robe and all of the sudden one of trump s advisers would show up totally unannounced. you could see why perhaps that would be a little bit annoying. can understand that. so john, when you put the latest piece of the puzzle in place along with other pieces we learned this week, like chief of staff mark meadows telling the white house staff to keep a, close hold on oval office meeting
his interview with the committee that he thought this was a copy and paste job. he was not the one who wrote it. and that s what his attorney had told cnn originally when we reported on the mark meadows text. you re also learning about senator lindsey graham s offer to support then president trumps election fraud claims. we know the south carolina senator, a republican has been a close ally of the former president. this really gives us an indication of how much he wanted to be out there supporting donald trump as he was trying to challenge the election. this is from a transcript with an interview with christina bobb who is a member of trump s legal time at the time. she is recounting a conversation she had with the senator. and the senator says just give me five dead votes. give me, you know, an example of illegals voting. just give me a very small snapshot that i can take and champion. and this of course interesting because you didn t need five dead votes to overturn the election.
dead voters. it is a lot to unpack. let s start with sara murray, who has been digging through these transcripts all week for us. sara, what more can you tell us about the new details from donald trump jr. s testimony to the committee? pam, this is interesting because we have of course previously reported on the mark meadows text, the former trump white house chief of staff who was so important to this investigation. and donald trump s testimony really digs into those. we previously reported that donald trump jr. had sent a text to mark meadows essentially laying out a way to keep donald trump in power, keep him in the white house. it was very similar to the strategy that his allies actually put forward, as you said. so the committee is asking donald trump jr. essentially why did you send this text. this is what he says. he says perhaps in reading it, it was the most sophisticated and detailed again about things i don t necessarily know too much about. but it sounded plausible. and i
gram interview because he wasn t particularly cooperative, and this wasn t really a session. this is hearsay that we re dealing with. somebody that was called to give much more detailed testimony. that s why we re emphasizing this was testimony given by someone else. but i will say it also corroborates what i m told by sources that many republicans on both sides on the house and in the senate, they were trying to they were asking trump s team, look, give us something to verify the claims that you re making publicly. now, their motivations for doing so, they could have scattered. but that was certainly in line with what was going on behind the scenes. we also learned former first lady melania trump didn t trust the people in her husband s circle and what more can you tell us about that? this is interesting. again, it s not testimony from melania trump, but it is