>> dickerson: welcome back to "face the nation." we're joined now by "washington post" associate editor bob woodward, and cbs chief election and campaign correspondent, robert costa, the reporters responsible for the scoop by clarence thomas' wife's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. glad to have you both here. bob woodward, i'll start with you. adam kinzinger was not forthcoming. why are these texts so important? >> well, because they come ater the election is over

and the general rule in things like the constitution and the law, say that there is going to be one thing that happens after the election is over, and that is the certification before congress, when the vice president, the president of the senate presides. so this is -- i'm sorry to go back to this. we were talking earlier about watergate, but watergate was about tampering with the electoral process at the front. nixon and his underlings mounted a massive sabotage and espionage campaign against the democrats. but tis is after the election. and people who believe in the constitution and the law would say, okay, it's over. you can go to court, but read -- rober robert and i were

reading these texts, and i was almost unbelievable that you would have somebody in ginny thomas' position quote others saying in war there is no rule, that this is warfare. well, it shouldn't be. >> dickerson: bob costa, this brings in another branch: she is married to a supreme court justice. that is the other element as well. >> what bob woodward and i have found is this campaign spearheaded by president trump that played out across all three branches of government in tangentiíal ways. you had the president pressuring state lawmakers. you had the spouse of a

supreme court justice communicating with the white house chief-of-staff, and you had the kimberly hunt you had the executive branch maybe having a legal challenge as trump said would go to the supreme court. this is trump pulling every lever of power. one of those levers appears to be his own chief-of-staff communicating on a legal strategy with the spouse of a justice. >> dickerson: i want to stay on the supreme court issue, bob. chief justice john roberts is very concerned about judicial independence. he wrote: the judiciary's power to manager its internal affairs is crucial to preserving public trust." the idea that if the court is seen as political, the rulings won't have the weight that it should. >> he has political

grounds for worry. justice amy coney barrett, six months ago, went to the mcconnell center in kentucky, which is mitch mcconnell's setup, and she made a remarkable speech. she said, i want to prove to you that we are not a bunch of partisan hacks in the supreme court. and she said justices -- all justices must be hyper vigilant to make sure they're not letting personal biases creep into their decision. since justices and judges are people, too. so she made it very clear that this hypervigilance should be the condition in which justices operate. we now have a situation where the wife of a

justice has gone on a crusade and has said this is warfare. do not concede. the white house chief-of-staff, mark meadows, himself said this is a fight of good versus evil. >> dickerson: you have an instance where the supreme court justice was oversee cases and didn't recuse himself. bob costa, these texts, do they give us a flavor for the types of things the committee has, in terms of putting together this picture of what president trump was doing and what those acting in his name were trying to do to overturn the election? >> your interview with adam kinzinger referenced they have mark meadows' texts to a point. they do end in late november, and where are the text messages, if any,

from december, or around january 6? at the same time, it is important to note that based on our reporting that the meadows' text messages do provide, to a point, a roadmap of sorts of some of the things that were being done by the white house chief-of-staff, and then president trump doing this post-lacks foundation during this post-electionpoint. but they still feel they do not have enough. steven bannon has refused to cooperate. mark meadows has refused to cooperate. the question is: where is the john dean who will put this outline out. >> dickerson: do you think there is any john dean around, bob? >> there are always surprises. remember the january 6 committee, in a filing in california, has said they

have a good-faith conclusion that trump and people around him engaged in a full-fledged criminal conspiracy to overturn the election. they rule this as criminal. and if you go back a hundred years to the supreme court, it was cief justice taft, of all people, saying this -- we're not going to let people meddle with things like the certification on january 6, which is in the law. so much is hinging on the committee's efforts. i think robert and i found that they're really working hard. they're talking to people that there is an aggressiveness and a sense of expanding the universe of likely witnesses. >> dickerson: we only have 30 seconds left. > the question will be: will they ask ginny thomas

to appear first voluntarily. if not, are they going to the full extent to find the truth. will they issue a subpoena? things go in different directions. will you pursue all leads or not? >> dickerson: and ginny thomas may not just be about what she said, but what she is on the listening end of. she can provide material about what mark meadows was saying. >> we don't have the full picture -- >> dickerson: we have a little more of the picture thanks to the both of you. thanks to both of you for being here. we'll be back in a moment. outside the band, man. you gn digital tools so impressive, you just can't stop. what would you like the power to do? she's feeling the power of listerine. he's feeling it. yep, them too. it's an invigorating rush... ...zapping millions of germs in seconds. for that one-of-a-kind

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>> dickerson: we're joined now by will hurd. he is a former republican congressman from texas, a former c.i.a. officer, and now the author of "american reboot." the book begins with a

very exciting mod moment in your c.i.a. career. what does your intelligence background tell you about what is happening in ukraine right now? >> right now it tells me something i learned in that almost decade where i was an undercover officer, where i was responsible for secrets. when it comes to our foreign policy, we want our friends to love us and our adversaries to fear us. and when you use that as a metric on looking at what is happening in ukraine, o allies, president zelenskyy, is asking us to do more. our adversaries, our enemies, vladimir putin, is launching cruise missiles into the western part of the ukraine because he is not afraid we are going to respond. we need to be doing more. because we can help prevent an incredible loss of life. >> dickerson: quickly, doing more meaning what? >> giving them as much weaponry as we can. is 20 migs going to be enough to do anything? everybody underestimated the ukrainians before this

happened. who knows what they're going to be able to do with those kinds of tools. and we have to be prepared to help them prevent significant loss of life. >> dickerson: and the other piece of your cyber. you write about it in the book. president biden said this week to american business leaders, be careful, harden your targets more than you already have been. what can the russians do? >> the russians can do a lot of things. they could impact water treatment plants. we've already seen that happen in the united states last summer. they could try to impact our grid. we saw in my home state of texas, the grid -- the grid almost went down because of weather issues, but you can mimic that similar kind of attack through a digital attack. so the world is incredibly interconnected in increasing things, like artificial intelligence, which will be the future of cyber security. you will have bad a.i. versus good a.i.

>> dickerson: why hasn't the russian cyber attack happened the way people were thinking? >> i think the russians are not 10 feet tall. i think that is one of the things we've learned from this. they thought this campaign and this invasion of ukraine would be going differently. the fact that the s.f.b., which is possible for a lot of their cyber activities, they're rounding some of them up and using them as scapegoats, which is why the attacks are going so poorly. >> dickerson: let's turn the wheel and talk about your book. one of the arguments you make in your book is the republican party have to reach out to the electorate that haven't traditionally been republican. with that in mind, as you watched the confirmation hearings of judge jackson, how do you think the republican party fared in its questioning of her? >> i think what is crazier is this is a seminal moment. yes, i disagree with the judge's judicial

philosophy, but she is obviously qualified. the fact she is, i think, the second most popular justice nominated to the bench, that should be the story when it comes to this. of course a handful of senators acted like jokers in their testimony in their asking questions. similar to other senators have done in otherhe is that ublican rtrt looking like america because we have a real opportunity. the republicans are going to take back the hou 2, and we'y going to take back the house because of the incompetence of the democratic party. imagine that they're voting for us because they believe in our ideas. you're going to see that happen in my home state of texas, where you're going to see latinos vote in record numbers. >> dickerson: you're argument is the republican party has to catch up with where america is going, a

constituency different than the one you report. you report about the republican accuracy after the 2020 loss. you say they have to stop sending the message that we only care essentially about white voters. donald trump heard that and said, nuts. i'm going to run the opposite and he run. and the republicans who are perhaps ready to take over the house and the senate, that seems like a very strong argument -- >> donald trump did win, but he also lost. he lost the house. he lost the senate. and then if we look at 2020, joe biden won and he had absolutely no coat tails because the public said, hey, we don't like some of these things the democratic party is going through. yes, a good chunk of the republican party is still blindly loyal to president trump, but it is not the super majority. and this is the opportunity that we have. and this is where we need

to be thinking about this in 2022, and the opportunities we were in order to grow. >> dickerson: there is a question about the power donald trump has in the power. you say the first thing that republicans have to do is admit that the 2020 election was legitimately decided in favor of joe biden. that is not the majority position with regard to polls with republicans. >> sure. but when i cross the country promoting the book, some of the things people say is let's get beyond that. let's move on. joe biden is the president. let's start talking about the next thing. so for me, look, i'm talking about where we should be going. we are at a moment where 72% of americans think the country is on the wrong track. and this is not new. this has been going on for some time. what i'm trying to say is we don't have to accept the current trajectory. there are different ways of doing things.

i tried to use my time when i was in the c.i.a., in business, and in congress, to outline a different strategy. >> dickerson: all right. congressman hurd, thank you for being with us. and we'll be right back.

>> dickerson: we want to turn back now to the war in ukraine and welcome the former u.s. ambassador to that country, marie yovanovitch. she is the author of a new memoir: "lessons from the edge." good morning. >> good morning. >> dickerson: president biden three days in europe, brussels, and then went to poland. what did you make of that visit? >> i thought it was a hugely important trip, where the president was able to demonstrate not only american leadership nfedly important challenge onkraine broadly on the west. >> dickerson: he talked about unity. how fragile is that unity because it seems like everybody is saying all of the right things? is it so fragile that the president must go and make a visit to keep it together? >> i think one month in, there was a symbolic effect, but there was also a lot of accomplishments that were cited during the

various summits, with nato and the european union, the g-7, and then obviously the trto poland where he met with president dudea, wa as well as the 82nd airborne. so i think a lot was accomplished there and a lot of announcements were made: more humanitarian assistance, more military groups going on to europe, and the list goes on. >> dickerson: the 100,000 refugees that biden said that american could take -- poland is taking the brunt of the refugees -- how important is that in terms of showing that america is shouldering its weight? >> i think it is important, but, honestly, my own opinion is it is just a start.

because when you've got up to 10 million displaced people out of ukraine, about 3.5 million in europe, 100,000 doesn't begin to really start to approach the kind of figures that we're probably going to need to show. that said, though, many ukrainian people aren't looking to come to the u.s. or even to western europe. they want to stay close because they want to go back and rebuild. it is really inspiring. >> dickerson: you have contacts there, you lived there. tell me what you're hearing from within ukraine. >> well, they're -- they're kind of encouraging me when i express concerns and worry. they're saying, don't worry, we've got this. we're going to keep on fighting. and they are. and they're asking for our help. so just recently i got an e-mail from one of my former bodyguards, and he said, madam ambassador, you know i would never ask

for myself, but i need equipment for my team. i need medical kits. i need body armor. i need boots. so i tried to hook him up with some people who could provide that. >> dickerson: how do they read statements by president biden and other leaders saying that we're with you, we're with you, except to the border? >> yeah. well, you can imagine on the one hand, at a very high level they understand we have article 5 responsibilities under the nato treaty. but on the other hand, thy wish we would do more. i think we're doing a lot, but i think we need to keep on back-filling when it comes to security assistance because the ukrainians are using everything that we and other countries are providing, but we need to keep on backfilling it because it is being used. >> dickerson: as a career diplomat -- and your expertise is not jus ukraine but russia as well, how do you read the

public statement they're going to focus on donbas. could some countries say, okay, it is not pretty, but we'll give them donbas just so we can be done with this war? >> i think perhaps, but i think what we've learned over the last month and a half, or several months, if not the last 20 years, is that we can't always trust what the russians are saying. so they made that statement, and a day or so later they attacked lviv, very far away from donbas. so i think we need to wait and see. >> dickerson: there is an incredibly precious moment in your book when you talk about the u.s. not really reading vladimir putin right, and you predict, before any of this happen, quote, "we will some day, maybe soon, we'll find ourselves in a serious confrontation, not of our choosing and possibly not to our advantage." building on that platform, how is the west's

interpretation of putin -- are we getting him right at this moment? >> that is the question at the moment, isn't it? i think it is hard to know. it was always hard to know. but especially now, after covid and the isolation that he finds himself in, with just a very small group of advisors, people who have been with him in k.g.b. and sa saint petersburg. but i do think that putin is man who only understands strength. so when -- so right now the biden administration is trying to navigate this very narrow lane of supporting ukraine on the one hand, standing up for our values and our interests, but also doing the utmost not to expand the war. and when we look at that as a positive thing, that this is restrained and positive, i think sometimes perhaps vladimir

putin looks at it as a sign of weakness. and so, again, this is a very difficult lane to navigate, and right now i think the biden administration is doing a pretty good job of it, but obviously it requires constant calibration and re-calibration in terms of what is going on on the ground. >> dickerson: you talked about s chaufanism at the state department. this week madeleine albright died. tell us about that. >> she was a role model, i think, for many of us. i was very junior when she was secretary of state, but she was a pioneer as the first woman secretary of state. she was -- as an immigrant to this country, in fact, i think a refugee, from

war-torn eastern europe, and she was a strong voice for democracy and human rights and for ukraine. i got to know her for a little bit, when she visited ukraine as an ambassador. she took time out to speak with me and to give me encouragement. >> dickerson: ambassador yovanovitch, thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> dickerson: and we'll be right back merrill advisor his to see if he's on track to do this again... and again. did i mention she made the guest list? digital tools so impressive, you just can't stop. what would you like the power to do? these are the camper scouts. earning their eco badge. they're sharing this fedex electric vehicle and frank's sustainable camping store with their global scout community.

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>> dickerson: and that's it for us today. thanks for watching. margaret brennan returns next week on "face the nation." ♪♪ captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.or (dr. david jeremiah) there may have never been another time in history when end times prophecy has been more aligned with the culture

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i'm elise preston, cbs news, new york. >> this is the cbs "overnight news." good evening on this sunday. thanks for joining us. joe biden's strong words for vladamir putin are reverberating around the world. that includes warnings from some allies about reckless rhetoric following russia's unprovoked invasion of ukraine. on saturday, the president called putin a dictator who cannot remain in power. today, the united nations estimates at least 1100 civilians have died and more than 10 million have been displaced in a war that's gone on far longer than the kremlin expected. this weekend, ukraine's president volodymyr zelenskyy accused the west of cowardice

for its failur p