sure that employers are giving their workers paid time off to get their kids vaccinated. so we don't see the same breakdown in terms of the hazard of hasn't has not, when it comes to kids vaccines. third people in the world, don't have any sick sleep, or personal leave. your kid vaccinated. we don't want people to have to make that choice. >> dr. besser, as always, great talk to you. thank you very much. that is all. the rachel ma dugh show starts right now. good evening, rachel. i'm going to give you credit right off the top. i hate to come in on your show, but that was the most compelling, trance fixing television i have seen about moles and mole removal in my life by far. i was watching it thinking, this woman is genuinely a genius. i can't take my eyes off this story. this is incredible. excellent job.

>> you know, i feel like if -- we could invent awards. most compelling television ever about moles. most compelling about -- >> for sure. >> -- grub worms, i can also do a great thing. slip knots i'm very good at. you are very kind. thank you very much. >> all right. thanks to you at home for joining us. happy to be back. this is just released today. the interview with the investigators went long. it was like a 3 1/2-hour interview in the end. the first swearing, however, did not happen until about halfway through this 3 1/2-hour-long interview. this is how the swearing erupts. you ready? here we go. there was no plan. that testimony unsealed today him. do you know what prompted mr.

clark to give your cellphone number? i do not. do you know anything about mr. clark reaching out to you in any way? yes. he called me and was very frustrated bus president trump was solely focused on georgia and he commented that nothing would dissuede president trump from believing the election was, in fact, stolen from him. he would not believe that he lost georgia. i don't know why. he didn't explain why. and i reiterated to him, and we looked into several allegations. we concluded there was nothing there and this was kind of disturbing because in substance this means his own people looked into it and reported back up. mr. donoghue then asks me if i

knew about mr. jeffrey clark. did not. who's he? he was at the time acting chief of the civil division. he said jeff clark had, quote, the president's ear. i asked him what he meant by that, that jeff clark is suggesting that the justice department sign onto some letter suggesting that the state legislature in georgia should call a special session and they should refuse to certify the electoral college votes and he wanted mr. clark to intervene or join in, i can't remember exactly, the trump campaign. that's crazy. that's just highly crazy. i think i used the words bat bleep crazy.

that u.s. attorney was ultimately fired as u.s. attorney. his firing came down from the white house. i told him he could call any time. we're not going to join any lawsuits not substantiated by any evidence. at the time rich told me i wouldn't be surprised if the president called me correctly. i said, the president can call me all he wants. the answer's not going to change, and that was the end of the conversation. question, you indicated that rich donaghue thought that the plan that jeff clark was interested in pushing forward was bat bleep crazy, but did it strike you as unusual that the acting head of the civil justice department would want to reach out to you to discuss voting or election matters. answer, i thought that was strange and highly irregular. question, and you said that rich donaghue indicated that the president might try to call you himself directly. have you ever had any situation

where someone at main justice told you the president might contact you directly for an issue? answer, i have not. question, in your experience, would that be unusual for any attorney to hear the president might contact them directly? answer, that would be highly irregular given the fact that it's highly regulated through the office of legal affairs and the front office and the deputy attorney general. question, and in the course of this discussion with rich donoghue, did the two of you develop some plan to deal with mow you would reach out from jeff clark or president trump. answer, no, there was no plan. that plan unsealed today from a man named b.j. pak.

his shock resignation as the top federal prosecutor, u.s. attorney in georgia. forgive me, it stunk to high heaven when it happened, without explanation, in early january right in the middle of trump trying to stay in office despite the fact he lost the presidential election. we had just learned at the time, 24 hours earlier, about trump's efforts to pressure georgia state officials into changing the vote count in georgia, into finding him just enough votes so the election results could be overturned. the same day that pak resigned was when he learned about that call pressuring georgia officials. never had any explanation. now we get the explanation. we learn among other things that pack, when he was the u.s. attorney in georgia, when this was coming down from the white house about them trying to say trump didn't really lose georgia and that it was some sort of stolen election and the justice department should fix it, at the time mr. pack seems to have been quite unnerved by the fact that white house chief of staff mark

meadows turned up in person in georgia at an election site in the middle of all of this. we covered this at the time. what is the white house chief of staff doing in georgia at cobb county at a place where they're reviewing ballots and election materials. what's the white house chief of staff doing there? we get this unsealed today. question, on december 22nd, 2020, president trump's chief of staff mark meadows personally was there. he did meet with georgia's deputy secretary of state to discuss the audit process that was under way. my question to you, mr. pack,

were you aware of this white house chief of staff visit by mark meadows? answer. i found out through the press. okay. when did you learn about it. i think it was the day, immediately day of or right after. question, did you learn anything about it? answer, i thought it was highly unusual. question, why did you think it was unusual. answer, in the middle of the process t white house chief of staff would come visit, have a meeting with the secretary of state? i don't raug that ever happening in the history of the united states. what the president was going 'zo in mr. pak's words, bat bleep crazy. he was ultimately fired as u.s. attorney. his firing came down from the

white house. he was told to resign after he told senior justice officials how mad he was that none of the claims he made were being backed up by b.j. pak's office. he wanted them in places like georgia to say that there was massive centimeter election fraud that was under incrimination and they were somehow potentially criminal. b.j. wouldn't say that, so he had to go. now we know. the senate released what they are calling an interim report, a staff report about 50 pages long. they released that alongside 900 pages of documents and transcripts that have turned up in their investigation so far into the justice department getting involved in efforts by former president trump to try to overturn the results of the presidential election to stay in power, despite his losing that election. that's what the judiciary

committee is investigating. this preliminary report tells us a lot of alarming things we did not know before about how the justice department ended up right in the middle of all of this stuff. some ways unwitting and some ways witting. some of what emerges really is just remarkable. this guy jeff clark, who was given b.j. pak's cellphone number and he was saying who's going to call me? why is he going to call me? jeffrey clark, unknown justice department official. he was the head of the environmental division. they made him acting head of the civil division for a short time. we now know in detail that he does appear to have launched a plot with trump in which they were going to have the justice department assert that there were ongoing serious investigations into serious allegations, serious and credible allegations of election

fraud in georgia and in other states that biden won. the plan was that the justice -- the united states justice department would send a scary letter to republican-led state legislatures in each of the states that biden won. the letter would tell the legislatures that there were serious matters under investigation by the justice department and it would tell the legislatures they should come back into session, into special or emergency session, and they should appoint new electors in each state. even though biden won each of the states. the biden electors were about to be seated. think about that. the justice department, the u.s. justice department would effectively tell republican legislatures in those states that the biden victory appeared to be a sham, a crime. the justice department was on the case. those republican-led legislatures should consider just disregarding the purported election results and do what they needed to do to declare trump the winner.

or at least to not declare biden the winner. do what you need to do. justice department will back you up. now, that's bat bleep crazy, right? as b.j. pak said. you can imagine how it would work. if they sent that letter to even one state and the republican legislature acted on it, it would spread to others. all the republican legislatures where biden won, they would all do the same. even if it didn't work in multiple states, just having this kind of assertion from the justice department related to multiple states that biden won, that presumably would have been enough to give vice president mike pence a pretext, a justfication for not accepting or delaying the acceptance of the results from those states, which is something we know mike pence and his counsel looked into ahead of january 6th and the certification of the

election. that letter to georgia, which was first drafted to georgia but they intended to send it to multiple states, that was not theoretical. it was drafted. here is jeff clark, head of the environmental division, the civil division, jeff clark is saying, let's send out this letter to georgia. it should be signed by the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. let's get this out there. let's do it fast. this was a scheme with trump. in today's report from the senate judiciary committee, we learn that the attorney general at the time was told by jeff clark that if he did sign on to that crazy letter to georgia, then he could stay on as attorney general. he was told if he didn't sign on to it, he would be taken out. he would be replaced as attorney general by jeff clark. by the guy who wrote the georgia letter, the guy who concocted and was pursuing this whole

scheme with trump. hey, jeffrey rosen, you sign on to this letter, and we're going to send it to the republican controlled legislatures to overturn the results. if you don't sign on, you will be fired and replaced with a guy who will do it instead of you. that's what jeffrey rosen was told. he was acting attorney general. the deputy attorney general was rich donaghue. in his interview with the investigation and the senate judiciary committee, his interview also unsealed today, he explains what it was like to talk to trump about this scheme, about this plot at the white house on january 3rd, three days before the january attack. he said, when i came in in, the president in the oval office has a guy sitting in front of him, jeff clark, who is willing

to do it. he said it was a wide-ranging discussion about the justice department. the question was whether he should remove jeffrey rosen and put in jeff clark. there was some discussion about the letter to georgia. at that point it was difficult to separate the issue of the letter, and jeff clark being in the leadership position because it was very clear. he stated it repeatedly that if president trump made jeff clark the acting attorney general, jeff clark would send that letter on behalf of the justice department. so it wasn't a third option where he would become the attorney general and the letter would not go. they were sort of one in the same at that point. he said, quote, essentially everyone in the room, jeff clark was advocating for jeff clark to become attorney general. everyone else was adamantly

opposed to the president taking that step. he said, we went around the room telling the president why he wii thought it was a terrible idea. the president said, what do i have to lose? what do i lose if i put jeff clark in at this point. i said, sir, you stand to lose a great amount. there was discussion whether jeff clark was qualified to serve as attorney general. we told president trump there would be mass resignations if he did that. he said, suppose i do, that take him out and put him in? if you do, i'd resign immediately. he turned to engel and said, steve, you wouldn't resign, would you. he said, absolutely, i would, mr. president trump, you would leave me no choice. >> everyone is going to resign. these are your people. they're not bureaucrats left over from another

administration. these are your hand-picked people. these are the people you sent to the senate. they all confirmed. they're all going to wauc away from you all at once. what does that say about you as a leader and the department and what's going on. you shouldn't think it's going to end there. i have no idea what the u.s. attorneys will do. they may resign en masse. you may have other department personnel resign. you may have a situation in 24 hours where you have hundreds of people resigning from the justice department. is that good for anyone, for the department, for the country, for you? it's not. meaning it's not good for you, mr. president. this is dramatic stuff. right? the president in the oval office has a guy sitting in front of him, jeff clark, who is willing to do it. hatched the scheme with president trump to do it. he drafted the letter. he has asked for the other official signatures on it and threatened the attorney general.

if you don't sign it, you here not going to be the attorney general. i'll sign it. they're going to tell republicans in the state legislatures where biden won that the justice department is treating the election as a crime scene. they're willing to do it and trump is very willing to put him in the skrus it is department so he can carry out that plot. everyone else says they'll quit, make a stink. it will look bad. that's what stops it. dramatic stuff. it's dramatic stuff. these justice department officials -- we know apparently white house council and his deputy all threatening to resign in this circumstance -- makes them the stars of their own movies here. makes them seem like they really saved us. here is the problem. here's the problem not just for them being, you know, cast as heroes in their own telling of the movie. here's the problem for the u.s.

justice department on its own terms and today. here's the problem that has just landed in attorney general merrick garland's lap. the problem is that before, in the end, they finally all offered to quit to stop this plot, before they did that, a bunch of them helped in the plot. they didn't just passively observe that this is what trump wanted and this is what trump was pursuing and this is how trump wanted to use the u.s. justice department. they helped him use the justice department to advance this plot up to a point. richard donoghue, the deputy attorney general telling trump, it'll will be bad for you, bad for the country, we will all quit. he looks like a great star. before that, we know he took trump's bat bleep theories about voter fraud, stealing the election from him in multiple states and he sent those trump

banana-grams to the u.s. attorneys in michigan and pennsylvania. he as the deputy attorney general of the united states justice department told u.s. attorneys in michigan and pennsylvania that they should use justice department resources to go check that out. to try to substantiate these nonsense claims that were coming from the white house. now, to be clear, these claims about voter fraud in michigan and pennsylvania, these didn't like bubble up from local law enforcement efforts in michigan and pennsylvania and that's how they got to the u.s. attorney's office there. no. these u.s. attorneys got calls from main justice in d.c., the number two official in the united states department of justice, the trump-appointed deputy attorney general in his official capacity telling u.s. attorneys in those states to pursue these made-up claims that president trump was using to cast doubt on the election. and, yes, in the end, he threatened to quit if trump went ahead with this one crazy scheme with the letter from clark to georgia. but leading up to that, he helped trump use the justice department and federal

prosecutors to pursue these claims. it wasn't just him. today, we have learned that former attorney general william barr, who received all this positive attention for his public assertions that there wasn't any significant fraud in the election -- glad you said it. what did he actually do when he was in office as attorney general? he personally weighed in and told at least one u.s. attorney that he needed to investigate. that attorney general william barr had information that he needed to investigate. he got it from rudy giuliani. that that u.s. attorney should make it a top priority to go investigate rudy giuliani's made-up banana-grams, bat bleep claims about voter fraud. the same claims that trump was using at that moment to try to get the election overthrown. barr did it too. this is from b.j. pak's testimony just unsealed today.

i don't recall the name of the committee they had, but it made news. they showed a video that they described as a suitcase full of ballots being run. they called it a smoking gun of the election fraud. the morning after i had a conversation with the attorney general at the time, attorney general bill barr. attorney general bill barr had asked me if i had seen the news about this allegation of this suitcase full of blots and he said, i did hear about that. he said, hi had an upcoming meeting with the white house, meaning bill barr, given the fact that he had given a statement the day before. he thought this videotape from georgia might come up during the discussion at the white house, so he asked me to make it a priority to find out more details about the allegations made by mr. giuliani.

i told him i could do that. he asked me to make it a top priority and i told him i'd be certain to do that. question, outside of the election fraud context and i guess prior to the 2020 election season, would you say the officials from main justice often alerted your office of allegations of crimes of any kind that should be investigated? answer, it's not often. it's not every day when the attorney general will call. in terms of the actual allegations coming down from the attorney general's office, no, that's rare. question, okay. and you were the u.s. attorney for the northern district of georgia during the state's previous election, 2018, correct? that's correct. were you aware of election fraud that should be investigated? answer, no. no. it's not normal for the attorney general of the united states to call a random federal prosecutor to tell him personally and directly here's what you're going to investigate, make it

your top priority. i'm giving you these allegations that i want to become your first priority as an investigator. you're the federal prosecutor. do this for me. that's what bill barr did to b.j. pak with rudy giuliani's allegations about voter fraud in georgia, and pak said, yes, sir, you're the attorney general. do you want me to make it my priority? of course, i will. he uses his office and resources to go start investigating things. pak goes on to say as far as he knew, the division that handles crimes thought that this giuliani stuff in georgia was not a substantive matter and, therefore, should not be investigated by the justice department, but bill barr apparently overruled that main justice and said, no, i'm telling you personally do it anyway, directly, penally on the phone, that you need to look into this as a top priority, and then i'm going to go to the white house with it.

one of the surprise revelations in this report just released today by the senate judiciary committee -- what they are investigating is what was the justice department's role in trump trying to seize power, trying to stay in power even though he lost the election? one of the surprise revelations is that the committee, based on what it's found already, they've asked the d.c. bar to open a disciplinary investigation into the behavior of jeff clark, give whan he did as lawyer, given what he did with his justice department role in that scheme with trump. there's an interesting question i think as to whether or not what jeff clark did might be criminally prosecutable. his law license may be on the line. whether or not there's a potential crime, something for which he could be prosecuted, the committee said it's not willing to pronounce judgment on criminal matters. but i feel like the thing that's

missing from the analysis of this today and all of the revelations here is the disturbing facts, the now disturbing time line we've got about other senior justice department officials including attorney general william barr using the powers of the justice department in an irregular, out of chain of command kind of way, to get the justice department to bolster trump's made-up claims about fraud, these made-up claims he was trying to use to stay in office. all the attention is on the fact that at the end of the day, senior justice department officials said, we're not going that far. you will have to fire us en masse or we will resign if you go that far. along the way, all of this stuff fed from rudy giuliani and from the qanon groups or whatever else they are, wherever else they got this stuff, it flowed into the trump white house, it flowed from the trump white house to the justice department and then senior justice department officials told federal prosecutors around the country, use the resources of

your office to go chase this down. it's not the way the u.s. justice department is supposed to work. so now, now that we know the justice department did work that way under trump, what's the justice department going to do about it? what does the justice department do with this new knowledge that its senior officials up to the very highest levels of the department, attorney general, deputy attorney general, they tried to use the department to kind of do those favors for trump to try to avert it at a senior level, use the powers of that department for that purpose. it can't be that you just get to leave and move on and the next person who holds that job gets

to then try it again. what is the justice department going to do here? how does the justice department clean up after this mess? i don't know what will happen to trump. i don't know what will happen to jeff clark here. what's the justice department going to do about the way it was used? joining us is rhode island senator sheldon whitehouse. he sat in on some of the testimony. he is also a former prosecutor. he was u.s. attorney in rhode island. he was the state's attorney general. qualified to comment on these matters. it's a pleasure to see you tonight. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me on. >> this is a lot of material. it's about a 50-page staff report. it's several hundred pages of transcripts. several hundred pages of exhibits. what do you think the public should understand is the most important thing you and your colleagues have found? >> i think there are three really key takeaways from this. the first is a simple one. that's how deeply personally involved president trump was in all of this. meetings and phone calls and contacts, oval office. he was neck deep in this personally. that would be point one. point two would be how much of this scheme focused on georgia. the letter was about georgia.

the schemes to maneuver u.s. attorney pak out of georgia were obviously about georgia. it supplements whatever investigative materials the fulton county d.a. is pulling together to look at trump's efforts to subvert the election in georgia. it ties together into what could be a very interesting case in the fulton county d.a.'s office. the last is, it's apparent in the transcript and more evident if you were in the room with attorney general -- acting attorney general rosen, these guys did not have much respect for jeffrey clark. this guy was kind of a nobody. he had been put into run the environment division for trump, which meant he was supposed to do nothing.

because of vacancies at the end of the term, he was only acting civil division chief. and it's a little hard to imagine that he cooked this up on his own or that he would tangle with rosen and donoghue like this on his own, and he landed mighty quickly at a dark money shop called the new civil liberties alliance. i don't know who is paying him to be there. i think there's a bigger story about what's behind this scheme. one school of thought is that this is an ambitious nobody who saw his moment and took a shot at it and got shot down by his peers. equally plausible scenario is that this guy was put up to it, somebody drafted that complex letter involving areas of law in which he had no expertise for him to produce rosen and donoghue, and looking behind what took place at the department of justice, i think, is why this is only an interim report.

we need to keep looking at those other elements. >> am i right, senator, that mr. clark has refused requests to be interviewed thus far? obviously, no transcript of an interview released today. the committee is seeking his cooperation, his testimony as well as all the white house documents you were not able to get from the national archives? >> i don't know what i'm allowed to say about that under the committee rules right now. i should probably pass on that question. sorry. >> that's all right. >> obviously, he is a person of interest. he is the central person in this saga. at some point in the committee before a grand jury, his testimony is going to be obtained. >> let me ask you, senator, there's a lot of focus on mr. clark and what he did. it was sort of shocking revelation when the materials came out that there has been a referral by the committee to the d.c. bar to look into mr. clark and whether he should be disciplined as a lawyer for what

he did here. i as i explained in the intro am struck by the fact that there were other senior justice department officials who were very willing to use the resources of the department to jump down the rabbit holes on trump's behalf, up to and including deputy attorney general mr. donoghue and the attorney general mr. barr, all of whom told u.s. attorneys to chase this stuff down. is that a problem for the justice department in an ongoing way? is that a matter for the inspector general? is that potentially a matter for referral to bar associations? >> possibly. not all that clear. to the extent that what they were doing was running down allegations of violations of federal law, then that's what the department of justice is there for. to the extent it would be obvious to any person that these were cockamamy allegations to pursue them to the point where

they were credible begins to take you outside the scope of the protection of doing lechlk legitimate law enforcement investigations. in any event, there are a lot of dealt of justice policies about what you do when, when you are closing in on an investigation, when you are in that sensitive period around the elections and around the count. i suspect they were sloppy about this. last of all, there's the longstanding rules we have talked about before about contacts between the department of justice and the white house. it appears that a lot of this mischief may well have been done outside of the rules that allow contact between the white house and the department of justice. there's plenty of fodder for the ig and office of professional responsibility to look at. even if the people have moved on, they can still do a report to see what preventative measures should be put into the department's procedures so this kind of stuff can't happen again. >> yeah. that's exactly right. the u.s. justice department can never be used in this way again.

the question is how we ensure accountability now and clarity now about what happened to make sure -- >> this was a mini attempted coup d'etat within the department of justice against the attorney general, and it seems unlikely that attorney jeffrey clark came up with this on his own. >> fascinating. thanks for being with us tonight. >> my pleasure. we have more to get to tonight. stay with us.

i'm searching for info on options trading, and look, it feels like i'm just wasting time. that's why td ameritrade designed a first-of-its-kind, personalized education center. oh. their award-winning content is tailored to fit your investing goals and interests. and it learns with you, so as you become smarter, so do its recommendations. so it's like my streaming service. well except now you're binge learning. see how you can become a smarter investor with a personalized education from td ameritrade. visit tdameritrade.com/learn ♪

i'm searching for info on options trading, and look, it feels like i'm just wasting time. that's why td ameritrade designed a first-of-its-kind, personalized education center. oh. their award-winning content is tailored to fit your investing goals and interests. and it learns with you, so as you become smarter, so do its recommendations. so it's like my streaming service. well except now you're binge learning. see how you can become a smarter investor with a personalized education from td ameritrade. visit tdameritrade.com/learn ♪ 2020 election results and his efforts to use the justice department as a tool for doing so. that investigation produced today's jaw-dropping report and hundreds of pages of supporting material. the report found that the skrus it is department was both used as a tool in trump's attempted coup and was ultimately also a force to stop it.

the news of that report was broken late last night by katie benner who has been crushing this story since before day one. thank you, again, for making time to be here and understanding this reporting. it remains one of the most amazing stories of our time. >> thanks for having me. >> in terms of this interim report by the judiciary committee, how far along should we see what they're trying to figure out, what materials they want access to, and what they still want to get? >> from what i know about baseball, i would say we're in the third or fourth inning. they want to speak with jeff clark, for example, who is somebody who has not responded to any of their requests. as you can see from this report, we have a really full picture of what the experience was like on the justice department side, how they felt getting these requests from the white house to help upend the results of the election. what their testimony, their notes, their extensive

handwritten notes, emails, and other documents show is that they were never sure what was going on at the white house. they were never sure who was coming up with what felt to them like scheme after scheme and plot after plot to upend the election. they had a sense it might include scott perry of pennsylvania. they had a sense he asked jeff clark to come to the white house to help with legal issues and to be a voice for the justice department. they were never really sure exactly what was going on. i think the committee will have to start interviewing other witnesses, including witnesses from the white house side, to get a complete picture. >> we just spoke with sheldon whitehouse, who is on the committee. he raised the provocative prospect that jeff clark, who is so in the bull's-eye of this report and who has been referred for potential discipline to the d.c. bar because of what the committee diskroved about him so far, senator whitehouse said mr. clrk might not have been sort oe

task he was trying to pull off here. he might have been put up to it. this was an area of law he didn't know anything about. he may have been essentially a vessel for other people who were trying to use him and his position to get this done. does that resonate at all with what you have reported thus far in this story? >> you certainly get that sense if you read the transcripts from former acting attorney jeff rosen and his deputy. you get the sense they were always wondering, is there somebody behind jeff clark. they would have these conversations with him and then come back wondering, who is helping him in these efforts? where are these legal theories coming from? that's a sense you get. >> wow. in terms of what is likely to happen next here, i'm struck by the fact that there seems to be good documentation of how senior officials tried to help trump. beyond clark there was william barr, for example, not only

personally telling u.s. attorneys to make it their first priority to investigate some of these outlandish claims, but like telling the fbi to interview specific witnesses. the attorney general, the deputy attorney general getting involved personally to try to push this out. is that going to be seen as a problem in the justice department going forward? >> i think that there are calls by former justice department employees and current employees that one of the reasons to do a full review of what happened in the justice department during the trump era is to figure out how to stop this from happening again. so far, merrick garland has rejected that idea. he does not seem on board with that kind of review. what we did see is there was certainly this sense of seeing the frog slowly being boiled alive. i'm only reporting on legal matters and the facts. from these interviews, you can sort of see a situation where employees and top officials at the justice department were thinking to themselves, i will

do this one more thing, i will just comply with this president's request for an investigation just so i can say we did it and check the bach and get him off my back, without really understanding how that would encourage him and abet him. it would create this psychological roadmap by which he continues to believe he can push the justice department and to publically announce them in a way that would undermine the results of the investigation, the credibility of the election and as the witnesses said, impair democracy. you get to a point where only the most extreme things can force officials to act. >> katie benner, has led the country from before day one in terms of breaking this story. thank you for your time tonight. third or fourth inning and a long way to go. this is a fascinating day, katie. thank you.

>> thanks for having me. we have more to come tonight. stay with us.

any day now we are expecting the facebook whistle-blower, the former senior facebook employee who came forward this week, we are expecting her to meet with the committee investigating the january 6 attack on the u.s. capitol. this was first reported by cnn. what's relevant here is that part of what frances haugen testified about this week was that facebook has pretty effective technical ways to limit the use of facebook for incitement to violence and deliberate misinformation. she testified facebook used those limits, they put those in place in the lead-up to the 2020 election. according to her testimony and documents she took with her when she left the company, she says facebook decided soon after the election that it no longer wanted to keep those safety rules in place. it was costing them too much money. they stopped those security measures just after the election.

she says that decision, she says it contributed to the planning and organization of the mob violence that took place at the u.s. capitol on january 6. facebook has denied her allegations. they pushed back against her, even though she has been able to produce internal company documents bolstering her claims, but, again, very interesting development. she's expected to meet soon with the investigators from the january 6th committee. they said they're looking into how the organizing of the january 6th attack came together hourks the money flowed behind it. so that's a very provocative set of questions there.

on that committee, today is the deadline for four senior members of the trump administration to hand over documents to that committee by midnight tonight. the january 6 committee sent subpoenas to trump's chief strategist steve bannon and mark meadows and dan scavino and kash patel making scary googly eyes on the lower corner of the picture here. he is the loyalist guy that president trump randomly installed at a top pentagon post. these four have until mounty to comply with the subpoenas. it doesn't appear they're going to. politico reports trump sent letters to all four of these guys not to comply with the subpoenas and not sit for depositions next week. bennie thompson has said they're going to get criminal prosecution if they don't comply. watch this space. t comply watch this space

air tonight the u.s. senate voted to allow democrats to raise the debt ceiling for a few more weeks, whereupon, i guess, we'll get to do this all over again. 11 republicans joined with democrats to allow the vote to happen. but then when the vote actually happened, no republicans voted with democrats to do it. so there's a 60-vote threshold to allow the democrats to vote for it. republicans did allow that with 11 republican senators joining with the democrats, and then when it came time to actually take the vote and raise the debt ceiling, it was democrats only. why are we doing this? you might remember that a few weeks ago republicans were threatening not one but two completely unnecessary self-inflicted crises, hitting the debt ceiling and also forcing the u.s. government into a government shutdown. well, those things have been averted for now. last week democrats reached a deal with the republicans to

delay the government shutdown until december 3rd. now tonight they've reached a deal to delay the debt ceiling crash until also early december, which means december is going to be a nightmare on purpose. it also means that democrats are going to figure out a way to pass joe biden's agenda, his big reconciliation bill. they've got about eight weeks until both of those self-inflicted republican crises come crashing down at the same time, stopping everything. such a stupid way to govern. watch this space. govern. watch this space (continued vehicle calamity) just think, he'll be driving for real soon. every new chevy equinox comes standard with chevy safety assist, including automatic emergency braking. find new peace of mind. find new roads. chevrolet.

in business, setbacks change everything. so get comcast business internet and add securityedge. it helps keep your network safe by scanning for threats every 10 minutes. and unlike some cybersecurity options, this helps protect every connected device. yours, your employees' and even your customers'. so you can stay ahead. get started with a great offer and ask how you can add comcast business securityedge. plus for a limited time, ask how to get a $500 prepaid card when you upgrade. call today.

all right. that is going to do it for us tonight on this fine friday eve. it doesn't mean that today is friday evening. it means it's the eve of friday. we'll see you tomorrow. "way too early" is up next. ♪♪ after a tense showdown on capitol hill, congress narrowly avoids plunging the american economy into crisis. with the raise temporarily, the question is are we really going to do this all over again in december? plus, they la out striking details in trump's attempt to overturn the election. but with his refusal to testify, the question is will anyone be held accountable? plus, it wouldn't be friday without space news. nasa wants to crash an asteroid to change its direction. the question is, didn't we