insurrection. then we learned in great detail how trump himself caused it, all of it. tomorrow we ll watch the season finale when we will get the inside story of the 187 minutes donald trump spent reveling in the violence that he caused while doing nothing to stop it. that is what we begin tonight. over the last six weeks of these public hearings the january 6th committee has put forth an exhaustive record of not just just what happened on the day of the insurrection but everything leading up to it, spelling out the former president s scheme to sell the big lie, summon the mob and light the match of violence. they have accomplished that using live testimony from more than a dozen witnesses and recorded depositions from people who would know, republican former white house officials and members of the president s inner circle. his own legal team both in the white house and on the fringe all of whom paint a damning portrait of what the twice-impeached disgraced former president
to open a criminal probe. if the soak seek did nothing wrong, then they should welcome an fbi investigation into something that really looks nefarious? you know, hugo, you know, the the director of the secret service, his names is james murray, a political appointee of donald trump, a career man, secret service map, but he already did something really unusual, and that is to allow tony ornato from going to be a secret service agent on detail to having a rather senior white house job. that does not happen. that is not normal, so there were already abnormal things going on in terms of the merger of secret service and politics which is supposed to be forbidden. they defend and protect any president from either party so there s already enough unusualness here that i wonder if the committee might be digging further into this as an avenue of inquiry. for hugo.
read the details of this so i can t answer that question. i can tell you the anxiety in washington. and in and among court watchers, which is that there is very little legal ground to stand on, to hold back any of these records. the rules, the statutes, the laws, they all err on the side of president biden, the current president, making this decision. and as this goes to the supreme court, there is great anxiety in washington that some of the supreme court justices may come up with a reasoning for why these records can t be turned over to the committee, and that that will lay bare an ideological and political element or at least give the strong, strong impression that some of the justices are really on a political side. i would like to also just, if i may, revert for a second back to the earlier topic about letitia james and the unusualness of what she s done.
not only, as daniel and john mentioned, the unusualness of the order of things, civil versus criminal, i can t think we can understate how dramatic it is for a civil proceeding to claim basically that donald trump defrauded the irs. the irs, as far as we know, has not begun or has not shown any signs, i should say, of its investigation. but those are serious federal crimes, evading taxes and evading and misleading intentionally the irs. another thing i think we should keep in mind about letitia james is, all of this work began in 2012 when forgive me, 2019, when michael cohen basically testified to the world that donald trump had inflated and deflated values depending on how it would make him money, whether with reducing his taxes, getting loans, getting insurance.
to craft this message a little bit more for a voter base and a preview perhaps for the 2022 mid-terms when he goes to new jersey on monday and virginia on tuesday in those key gubernatorial elections. i think the way he pitches the plan there in that manner is going to be important there as well. and we ll know if they re close if he comes to visit us on capitol hill. right before we came on the air jen psaki was asked about the president s filibuster comments last night. and when she expressed for him at least unusualness to making changes, they re talking about possible changes in the coming weeks potentially to the filibuster or at least changes to the president s position. how realistic is that? the president can say whatever he wants about the filibuster. ee doesn t get a vote on it. i mean, you know, look,