they determined that they were going to be criticized no matter what they did. and they have employed their powers in incredibly aggressive ways. ways that we had sneempb before in theceps of going out and getting subpoenas that have swept up individual s personal phone data, records and such, using tools like link analysis, something that the fbi uses to identify terrorist networks and how people are communicating with each other, and also working several runs out from the bottom of the trump organization, not trump the actual organization, but the trump world, in the sense that there s a group of people around donald trump who are refusing to cooperate. but if you move a few rungs down the ladder, you find younger aides who have less loyalty to trump, less ability to higher
that has been publicly reported. so i don t know that he ll utilize respond to pressure, but i think he is responding to what appears to be strong predication for a criminal investigation here. and so the same techniques that are being used kind of in the open with the january 6th committee i suspect is going on more covertly within the justice department. frank, i just can t get over the fact that they re using tactics that they ordinarily reserve for terrorists and mobsters, applying it to a case that involves a former president of the united states. another part of this reporting from the times reads, armed with reams of telephone records and metadata the committee has used link analysis, a data mapping technique that former fbi agents say was key to identifying terrorist networks in the years after the 9/11 attacks. what does it tell you, frank, about the sophistication of this investigation? i m encouraged to hear this. it s really what we used to call the enterprise the
they have 12 former federal prosecutors. they ve issued more than 100 subpoenas. they re using link analysis. they re bringing in low level people to talk about their boss s activities, and building out sort of charts of information of who s connected to whom in this whole scheme. and so, what we re seeing are, i think, very serious tactics for a very serious situation. yes, of course, lawyers for some of the witnesses believe the committee is being too aggressive, but in the members of the committees view, who i talk to frequently, they view this committee as rising to meet the moment and to meet a tremendous threat to american democracy. let me read, luke, a little bit more from your reporting. when mr. meadows, the former white house chief of staff refused to testify, the panel turned to his top aide, ben williamson, who complied with a subpoena and sat for hours of questioning. after mr. clark, the justice department lawyer refused to cooperate, a former senior
has not changed his behavior, and continues to push, push his brand of trump imp down into the country, in ways that really concerns democrats and anti-trump republicans. so they re taking the most aggressive stance that we have seen in any recent congressional investigation, and going out and getting phone records, sweeping up personal data of a lot of different people. and they re using link analysis, a tool that the fbi used in the years after the september 11th attacks to identify terrorist networks, to see who is talking to who. they have looked at the org chart of the white house. and of who was around the president. and they said, okay, if mark meadows isn t going to talk to us, and if this, this other senior official isn t going to talk to us, who were the aides that were right underneath them. and who were the aides underneath them? and what did they know? because they noticed when they went down the ladder, in the same way that you go down the
are in panic mode. and they re actually right to be. in fact, the january six committee just secured white house records that detail calls donald trump made on the day of the capitol attack. one of those calls was to republican congressman, jim jordan, who had a pretty lengthy chat with trump that morning. and that is not breaking news in fact. jordan already admitted that he was in contact with the president that day. it is noteworthy how, are the insights that we have gained into how strategically and aggressive they committees investigating those investigations. with telephone records and metadata, house employing link analysis. and then mapping technique used to study terrorist networks. in order to find out the truth. joining us to discuss this, california congresswoman barbara ali. thank you for joining us. what is your reaction to what is being described as this aggressive tactics by the