hearing number five into january 6th focused on donald trump's efforts to get the justice department to legitimatize his bogus claims of voter fraud. that includes his relentless pursuit of an attorney general, who would go along with his election conspiracies. the pressure top leaders face when they refuse to do so, and how those leaders banded together and ultimately prevailed. the committee also revealed the republican lawmakers who sought pardons from trump after the capitol attack for their roles in the election scheme, we will have all the key and extremely dramatic moments just ahead. plus, major developments on the debate over gun safety. last night, the senate passed a bipartisan gun reform bill, its most sweeping gun bill in decades. it came on the same day the supreme court issued its first major decision on guns in a decade. we'll go through it all. but, wow, yesterday, a fire hose

of big news, joe, on capitol hill. >> what a significant day. and i will tell you, i was away from the tv for a good part of the day, and started getting breaking news alerts about the hearings, started following some -- i had to come back, rewatch the entire hearing all over again. it really, yesterday, about as compelling of any hearing we've seen on capitol hill since the days of watergate. i was young when the watergate hearings were on. i was upset because we had only had four channels then, and i wanted to see the flintstones and mr. ed, but my parents were sitting front, watching watergate. >> like everybody. >> and it was so compelling. and you see those clips, and it's history and you don't think you're ever going to see anything like that again. >> like a movie. >> but actually, willie, we did see something -- and we keep

seeing, every one of these january 6th hearings. you're looking at history, you understand it, because, again, it drives home the point that maybe we've just gotten a little numb to all of us as a nation. that there was a president that who tried to steal an election, tried to shred the constitution, was encouraging a mop to kill his vice president, and was trying to take over the justice department. and my god, there were lines straight out of a movie yesterday from these justice department officials who stood up to the president of the united states and said, we are going to walk out and leave you without a functioning justice department. it was extraordinary testimony. >> it was. it was a stunning day. i had the exact same thought, where we've got. so accustomed to everything that comes with donald trump and all the corruption around him, but when you stop and actually

listen to this story from the mouths of the men who stood in the doorway and protected the government and maybe saved the democracy, it was truly staggering. the president of the united states floating every conspiracy theory he could find on the internet and saying that explicitly, maybe you haven't been watching the internet as closely as i have. joe, we joke about the italian satellites. no, that was an idea from the president of the united states, pushed all the way up the chain of the command. go look into the italian satellite. it was -- you know, no one in good faith, republican, trump supporter, die-hard trump supporter could watch it. and i know a lot of people don't watch it, because they don't want to confront the truth, no one in good faith could watch that hearing yesterday and not say that the president of the united states was leading a coup against his own government, against the united states government, who was not attempting to do everything he could to overturn the election, and if he had the right people in place, he could have done it. but thanks to people like

jeffrey clarke and richard donohue, it didn't happen -- jeffrey rosen, excuse me. >> jeffrey rosen. you know, people close to the president yesterday were admitting, admitting that this was a bad day. a very bad day for donald trump. but you're right about the italian -- the italian satellites. the fact that donald trump had somebody in his government reach out to the italians and check this crazy pizzagate-style conspiracy theory. it just made me think, my god, we're fortunate -- madisonian democracy is fortunate, the first time a fascist was running the white house, it was a fascist out of hogan's heroes. just complete jokes, what he was doing. but also, at the same time, it's this bipolar world of donald trump. yes, part of it is sheer idiocy, and then there's another part of it that is sheer terror, because, well, because american

democracy was hanging in the balance, but for the men and the women that stepped up, donald trump supporters, through and through, but stepped up on january 6th and the days before and after and said, no, we're, we won't go there. you've got to leave the white house. you can't destroy american democracy. willie, two other really big stories yesterday, of course, the supreme court decision that, in fact, takes, in effect, takes heller and moves it out of the home. we'll be talking to the mayor of new york city. he's not happy. my certainly understand why he's not happy because of guns on the street. it will change laws in seven states. i read the decision yesterday in full. it's not as sweeping as many feared. and chances are good, if you want the ar-15 to be constitutionally protected, and

you're an extremist on that end of the spectrum, you're not going to like this. and of course, obviously, those who wanted to keep the constitutional right to have a handgun inside the home, and wanted the second amendment limited to that constitutional guarantee, they won't like that, as well. so we have that to talk about. we have bipartisan legislation in the senate to talk about, first gun legislation in about 30 years. and willie, of course, i'm so excited, the team, the red sox are going to beat in the playoffs. come back, four runs in the ninth inning, the yankees beat the astros. yankees beat the astros. >> four-game series, big series in the bronx. yankees down 6-3 in the ninth inning, come all the way back, with aaron judge hits the walk off single and guess what today is for him, arbitration day when a judge decides what his salary should be. that's a pretty nice argument

going into arbitration day. that's the tying home run from hicks and the yankees won the game. that's one of the best starts in major league history. i'm not going to be richard haas here. i'm not going to jinx things or show hubris, but, man, they are a fun team to watch this year. they're pitching and hitting at the same time, which is a rare combination. >> i keep reminding lemire of the 2001 mariners -- >> yes. >> of the 154 indians. and yes, of course, willie, of the 1906 chicago cubs. that's all i've got. but it is -- it's been an extraordinary year. you know, the yankees, i thought at the beginning of the year, thought -- and of course, we're looking right there at the playoffs. you have the red sox who are going to beat the yankees as a wild card team. 13 -- 13 games back. but i was thinking really quickly, because we have so much news to get to. >> yes, we really do.

>> but the yankees, they lowballed aaron judge at the beginning of the year. it made sense at the beginning of the year. we all said that at the beginning year. they're going to pay now. >> they're going to pay today, as a matter of fact, and then they're going to really pay when he he wants his deal. mika, i'll stop and we'll get to the news but we'll get back to this later. >> thank you. thank you. back to the january 6th hearings, what we'll be looking for as we really lay it all out for you is this direct line to trump, whether or not it's there. experts are pointing to one piece of testimony yesterday that was really a smoking gun. and we're going to play these exchanges in long form, because it's really, it's really gripping to see how close we came. much of yesterday's house select committee hearing focused on jeffrey clark, a former justice department official, who was central to trump's pressure campaign. during his final days in office, trump even weighed whether to

install him as attorney general. here's how the committee explained how clark fit into the president's plan to overturn the election. >> president trump did find one candidate at justice who seemed willing to do anything to help him stay in power. let's hear what president trump's own lawyer, eric herschmann had to say about jeff clark's plan to overturn the election. i would like to advise viewers, this video contains some strong language. >> and when he finished discussing on what he planned on doing, i said, good [ bleep ] -- excuse me, sorry, f'ing a-hole, congratulations, you first committed your first step as attorney general would be committing a felony. you're clearly the right candidate for this job. >> jeff clark, an environmental lawyer with no experience relevant to leading the entire department of justice, what was his only qualification? that he would do whatever the

president wanted him to do. including overthrowing a free and a fair democratic election. president trump's campaign to bend the justice department to his political will culminated in a showdown on january 3rd. today, we will take you inside that early evening oval office meeting, where top justice department officials met with the president. at stake, the leadership and integrity of the department of justice. >> the meeting took about another two and a half hours from the time i entered. it was entirely focused on whether there should be a doj leadership change. i was sitting directly in front of the house. jeff rosen was to my right, jeff clark was to my left. >> he looked at me and he underscored, well, all we know is you're not going to do anything, you don't even agree that the concerns that are being

presented are valid. and here's someone who has a different view, so why shouldn't i do that? you know, that's how the discussion then proceeded. >> jeff clark was proposing that jeff rosen be replaced by jeff clark. and i thought the proposal was asinine. >> what were clark's purported bases for why it was in the president's interest for him to step in? what would he do? how would things change, according to mr. clark in the meeting? >> he repeatedly said to the president that if he was put in the seat, he would conduct real investigations that would, in his view, uncover widespread fraud. he would send out the letter that he had drafted. and that this was a last

opportunity to sort of set things straight with this defective election. and that he could do it and he had the intelligence and the will and the desire to pursue these matters in the way that the president thought most appropriate. >> and he was making a pitch and every time he would get clobbered over the head, he would, like, say, like, you know, well, call to order, it's the president's decision, you get the chance to make this decision, and you've heard everybody and you can make your determination. and we jump back in and, you know, really clobber him. >> i made the point that jeff clark is not even competent to serve as the attorney general. he's never been a criminal attorney, he's never conducted a criminal investigation in his life, he's never been in front of a grand jury, much less a trial jury. and he kind of retorted by saying, well, i've done a lot of

very complicated appeals and civil litigation, environmental litigation, and things like that. and i said, that's right, you're an environmental lawyer. how about you go back to your office and we'll call you when there's an oil spill. and pat cipollone weighed in at one point, saying, you know, that letter that this guy wants to send, that letter is a murder/suicide pact. it's going to damage everyone who touches it and we should have nothing to do with that letter. i don't ever want to see that letter again. so we went along those lines. >> i thought jeff's proposal, clark's proposal, was nuts. this is a guy at certain point who said, listen, the best i can tell is the only thing you know about environmental and election challenges is they both start with "e" and based on your answers, i'm not even sure you know that. >> the president said, suppose i do this, suppose i replace him, jeff rosen, with him, jeff clark. what do you do? >> it's just extraordinary. >> wow. >> you know, willie, there are

moments in which the future of countries turn and you listen to this hearing, you get the setting of this meeting, and this was one of those momentums, this was one of those historical hinges, where history actually turned. if you had had different men, different women, inside of that room -- >> weaker people. >> as george conway said yesterday, for whatever problems, we all may have, anybody may have with people that were trump's lawyers over four years, this country is -- should be very grateful that there were more donohues than there were giulianis. that there were more hirschmans than there were clarks. and i must say, again, it's not

being melodramatic, you had a president who tried to encourage a mob to kill his vice president, this was a moment where you had americans stand up and put the future, patriotic americans, put the future of the country over their political party. and that, as robert frost once wrote, has made all the difference. >> yeah, and remember, jeffrey rosen was the pick after bill barr. in other words, donald trump thought that he was installing one of his guys with jeffrey rosen and richard donohue would help him along as he pursued these conspiracy theories and an election that had been stolen by him, none of which were true as both donohue and rosen played out in great detail yesterday, and we'll someplace some of that, as they shot down every theory that donald trump had about this. but you're right, those were guys donald trump thought he could count on to help pull off

this coup against the united states government and they wouldn't do it. and that's why jeffrey clark comes on to the scene, because donald trump says, let me take this guy, this nobody, this environmental lawyer who's willing to play my game and i'll put him in power. thank god he didn't do it. let's bring into the conversation former u.s. attorney and former fbi agent and charlie sykes. chuck, i'll start with you, your impressions of what you've heard. we knew a lot of this from media reporting. we've seen some of the depositions. we sort of knew what was coming, but to hear it chapter and verse from the mouths of jeffrey clark and richard donohue was extraordinary. >> you're right, willie. we did know a lot of it. and again, seeing it and hearing it makes it more palpable. that said, i grew up in the department of justice, so i have some views on what happened. like you, i'm glad that richard donohue and steve engle and jeffrey rosen were there. but in the justice department, and this may sound corny, but i

believe it, so here it goes, your job is to do the right thing in the right way for the right reason. so that means doing the right thing, even when it's hard. even when it means standing up to a president of the united states. like you, i'm really glad those guys were in that room at that moment, but that's what you're supposed to do. that's the job. and sometimes the job is saying "no" in a sea of "yes." they were the right people at the right moment, but i would like to think a lot of justice department people would do exactly what they did. maybe i'm wrong about that. they deserve credit for being there, but the job is to say "no" when you have to. so i actually think, willie, they would agree with me. i don't think they would think of themselves as heroes, but they would think of themselves as doing what justice department lawyers are trained to do. >> you know, one trip i took, when i was in congress, was down to peru, to see an american, laurie berenson, to see her be tried.

and after about three minutes, i was horrified by the proceedings. where you had one guy that seemed to be playing judge, jury, and executioner. and i came back with such an understanding of america's third branch, how extraordinarily important it was, and how it separated our country from all the others. and charlie sykes, this is something you and i talked about, about two months after donald trump got into office, and you know, charlie and i -- we were, it's very weird, but there are like 30 different factions in the conservative movement, but we were talking and i remember you telling me, you telling me, yeah, you were very distressed about what was going on, but you said, the federal judiciary will hold the line. and i said, are you sure about that?

you said, i'm sure about that, whether they're the most progressive federal judges or whether they're the most conservative federalist society employees, they will all uphold the constitution. and i don't know whether you believed it or not, but you made mental it. and that's what we saw with the federal courts. that's what we saw with justice. and it just makes me proud to be an attorney, first of all, but also, just makes me so proud to be an american, because they held. the line held. >> yes, but it's a thin line. >> st a thin line, yeah. >> and as i listened yesterday, i kept thinking, this was such a close-run thing. if you had different people in that room, would it have been different? i hope that chuck is right about this. but i look at jeffrey clark, and i'm thinking, you know, jeffrey clark is what trump 2.0 will look like. you know, one of these immediate

mediocrities that's willing to pursue these bizarre fascism. and what you saw yesterday was this play out of the president of the united states pushing these bizarre, insane conspiracy theories, these fantasies. but pushing every single lever to use and corrupt the department of justice. i mean, thank god that we had these individuals here. but keep in mind also, this was 17 days before the term was over. in trump 2.0, you will have more jeffrey clarks in that room, you will be able to find people, i think, people who will be willing to do what the president wants. and now, of course, the president has figured out, you know, what he can do and what he can get away with. but it was an extraordinary moment. and i was thinking about, as you opened the show, you actually did have, i think, a smoking gun with the president basically saying, i don't care what's true, you just say it and leave

it to me. you had this happen the same day that jeffrey clark's home is raided. we have a criminal investigation by the department of justice, which will directly connect donald trump to this conspiracy. and you have, and i agree with eric holder there, and then you also have all of these congressmen, who are asking for pardons, which would suggest that they also understood that they had criminal liability. so, joe, this was an extraordinary moment, and it is a flash back to watergate. this was a pivotal moment. it was cinematic. i can't wait for the movie, where they recreate that scene in the oval office. because the drama was so high and the stakes were so high. and i'm sorry, i keep thinking, what if it had gone the other way. what if jeffrey clark had become the act attorney general. what would have happen if that letter had been sent?

what would we be talking about today? and i think we need to constantly remember that this line held, but it's a thin line. >> it is a thin line. >> i agree. >> it did hold. this was a stress test. this was a constitutional stress test, the likes of which we haven't had since 1861. it held this time, but you're so right, charlie. we don't know what happens next. jack, let me ask you really quickly before we get to dr. fine's son, who, by the way, i think is hoarding jewels based on what i heard on "way too early," but i had -- dave aaronberg told me yesterday, is jeffrey clark in trouble? and he said, well, he shouldn't buy any green bananas. i don't get that, because i don't buy bananas, but i asked my wife, and she said, yeah, that means he's in trouble.

i'm curious, how can somebody who tried to subvert the constitution of the united states put together a conspiracy that seems to define sedition. how could a person like that not be in legal trouble >> you're a good lawyer, joe, because it's a good leading question. authorities executed a search warrant at his house, right? so that means that an agent went to a federal judge, with an affidavit, and the judge agreed that there was probable cause to believe that he committed a crime and that they would find evidence of the crime at his home. so however you want to characterize it, joe, it's not a good day when the fbi comes through your front door with a search warrant. all of that said, i've seen cases as a federal prosecutor where we statuted a search warrant and ultimately did not charge the person whose home we searched, but i've seen many, many more cases where we did. it takes time.

they have to work through the evidence. if news reporting is right, they seized a lot of his electronic media. it takes time. we'll see what happens. but remember, a federal judge made a finding that there's probable cause to believe that they're going to find evidence of a crime at his house. not a good day for jeffrey clark. >> so witnesses testified yesterday that trump became increasingly agitated as january 6th approached, leading to a new year's eve meeting, where the former president made a startling request to the acting attorney general. >> mr. rosen, the president asked you to seize voting machines from state governments. what was your response to that request? >> that we had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines. and i told them that the real experts at that had been at dhs and they had briefed us that they had looked at it. and that there was nothing wrong with the voting machines. and so, that was not something that was appropriate to do.

>> mr. donohue, can you explain what the president did he was a told that the justice department would not seize voting machines? >> the president was very agitated by the acting attorney general's response. since dhs had been mentioned, the president yelled out to his secretary, get ken cuccinelli on the phone. and she did, in very short order. mr. cuccinelli was on the phone, he was the number two at dhs at the time. it was on the speakerphone. and the president essentially said, ken, i'm sitting here with the acting attorney general. he just told me it's your job to seize machines and you're not doing your job. and mr. cuccinelli responded. >> mr. rosen, did you ever tell the president that the department of homeland security could seize voting machines? >> no, certainly not. >> so, sam stein, just remarkable. the president's tried everything at that time. nothing's working and now he's ordering ken cuccinelli at dhs

to seize voting machines. gep, talk about criminal intent. it just seems to be laying out there. >> yeah, i mean, the whole thing had this kind of absurdist feeling to it. and it would have been sort of more darkly humorous if it wasn't exceptionally serious, right? like, imagine you're the attache in rome and you get a phone call from the acting dod secretary saying, hey, can you run down this rumor of italian satellites changing votes from biden to trump. he must have been completely confused at what the heck was going on at that moment and it was absurd. was to charlie's point, this was is not absurd. this was deadly serious. and it wasn't a stress test. it was dozens of stress tests. some of them were totally benign and ridiculous, like the attache in rome, but a lot of them were extremely serious. and it's remarkable that we

didn't have a break. we're extremely lucky, i think, that we didn't have a break, that sidney powell didn't get appointed special counsel, that jeffrey clark didn't get the job of acting attorney general. because if any one of those things happens, we're in a real constitutional crisis. the only other thing that i would add that i think kind of gets lost in this, maybe it's not materially important, but to me at least it is, is that here we have essentially the main powers of government, the department of homeland security, the department of defense, department of justice, the presidency. all the top of those people completely consumed, whether by choice or directive on this idea of what happened with the vote. this is all happening, all of our government is focused on this absurd conspiracy theory. and you're in the middle of a pandemic, right? like, the government had a job to play at that moment in time. that job. it said, we're not going to focus on this stuff because we'll have to prevent the

president of the united states from executing on what is essentially an attempted coup. and so this wasn't just costly in the sense that it could have damaged our democracy forever, there was real-life cost in realtime that was happening. >> yeah, and again, everybody you see had to be focused on stopping the president of the united states from leading a coup against a duly elected president. trying to throw away 80 million votes by american citizens. it's crazy. and you know, just to underline that it wasn't just these three men or others who held the line, charlie sykes, ken cuccinelli, you know, he's a fire-breathe ing conservative. you know, became trumpy when it was time to be trumpy. they called cuccinelli, cuccinelli told the white house, we don't have legal authority to do that. >> no, you can't overemphasize

yesterday that what you were looking at yesterday were trump loyalists. these were people who had been with donald trump in his department of justice thick and thin. engle's point when he turned to him and said, you wouldn't resign, too. he said, i've been with you through four attorney generals. think what they went through, what they were willing to put up with. this is his inner circle, and this is one of the most extraordinary something, i think, about the whole hearings. this is not coming from the democrats, this is not resistance twitter, this is coming from inside the house. these were people that donald trump had put in these positions. and that's got to have a little bit of traction, to understand that these were people who voted for donald trump, probably twice, wanted him to be president again, were willing to go along with him, you know, for al of different things, including, you know, his involvement with the mueller investigation and the comments he made. and yet, at this moment, they said, look, we cannot do this.

i mean, ken cuccinelli was willing to do just about anything. bill barr was willing to do just about anything. but, no, they finally, you know, crossed the red line. and again, this is what is extraordinary. virtually every single person who has testified in front of this committee has been a republican, and the overwhelming number of them have been trump appointees. >> and that's amazing how this committee has insulated itself from criticism that it's a partisan witch hunt or whatever donald trump is calling it. these are all republicans, these are all loyalists. but what you had in jeffrey rosen and richard donohue were a couple of adults standing up to a child having a tantrum in the president of the united states, and they told him "no," as a good parent will do when a kid is having a tantrum, but there were a group of republicans, congressmen, mostly, who were pushing all of these lies and trying to help this coup along. they were feeding the italian satellite story to mark meadows, who pushed it on to dhs and doj and said, you have to look into

this. there is a group in there that were not the adults in the room, that were happy to go along with this. and many of them reportedly asked for pardons, because they knew that they had committed crimes. >> they sure did. we'll get to that. there are so many incredible angles to this. up next, we'll play for you that moment from the hearing about trump's demand to investigate italian satellites. >> what a dummy. >> plus, as willie mentioned, the republican lawmakers now on the defense after the panel revealed that they asked for wide-ranging presidential pardons in the wake of the january 6th attack. and we'll be joined by the documentary filmmaker, who had extensive access to trump and his family ahead of the 2020 election. he met with the house select committee just hours before yesterday's hearing. also this morning, the senate passes the first major gun safety legislation in decades. we'll talk about what to expect when the bill heads over to the

house for a vote this morning. beto o'rourke tweeted yesterday that democrats and republicans are coming together to save lives with this new legislation and he says texas needs a governor who will do the same. he'll be our guest this morning. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. morning. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. wow! it's been 38 years since we were here. back then we could barely afford a hostel. i'm glad we invested for the long term with vanguard. and now, we're back here again... no jobs, no kids, just us. and our advisor is preparing us for what lies ahead. only at vanguard, you're more than just an investor

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7:36 on a friday morning at the united states capitol. the select committee's investigation found what it called a wild baseless conspiracy theory about the election made it from the darkest corners of the internet to the highest reaches of our government. the committee says pennsylvania

republican congressman scott perry texted a youtube link to former president trump's chief of staff mark meadows with the question, why can't we work with the italian government? again, that's from a sitting united states congressman to the chief of staff of the united states. the man in that video made an outrageous claim that italian satellites were used to switch votes from trump to biden. >> what's being sent out of rome, out of italy, is that this was done in the u.s. embassy. that there was a certain state department guy, whose name i don't know yet. i guess this is probably going to come out in italy at some point, and he was the mastermind, not the mastermind, but the -- anyway, the guy running the operation of changing the votes. and that he was not doing this in conjunction with some support from mi6, the cia, and this

leonardo group. >> mr. donohue, what was your reaction when you watched that entire 20-minute video. >> i e-mailed the acting attorney general and i said, pure insanity, which was my impression of the video, which was patently absurd. >> you called the video absurd, and despite the absurdity of that conspiracy theory, we learned that mr. meadows discussed it frequently in the white house. and mr. meadows didn't let the matter go. the request went from the department of justice to the secretary of defense, christopher miller. as you'll hear, secretary miller actually reached out to a high-ranking official based in italy to follow up on this claim. >> can you call the defense attache in rome and figure out what's going on because i'm getting all of these crazy reports. >> the select committee confirmed that a call was

actually placed by secretary miller to the attache in italy to investigate the claim that italian satellites were switching votes from trump to biden. this is one of the best examples of the lengths to which the president -- president trump would go to stay in power. scouring the internet to support his conspiracy theories shown here, as he told mr. donohue in that december 27th call, quote, you guys may not be following the internet the way i do. >> how embarrassing. i mean, joe, how embarrassing. that the acting secretary of defense actually reached out to one of our allies in italy and had them chase down a story, a conspiracy theory on a youtube video. you and i have joked about that story for a year and a half. it's the kind of theory that people would mutter to you, and

now that crazy conspiracy theory, it turns out, made it all the way to the oval office and then to the department of defense, whose acting secretary asked the italian government to dig into it on behalf of a president who was desperately looking to overturn the election. >> i mean, think about it, willie. the things that we have been talking to each other about for the past year that have distressed us about our friends, asking about conspiracy theories about some italian dude with a satellite dish that's still -- switching votes, or the whack-a-mole. i've been talking about how with my friends, it's sort of a whack-a-mole thing, where they will throw this outrageous conspiracy theory at you, you prove it wrong, and they go, okay, what about this? then you prove that wrong. and then you just keep going through the whole thing. and show that they're just preposterous.

now we find out, mika, it started at the top. >> the very top. >> it started with donald trump. the idiocy. i mean, talking to justice department lawyers and saying, i guess you guys don't follow the internet conspiracies as much as i do. >> oh, my god. such a headache. >> like pizzagate. this is pizzagate wrapped around an election. and instead of one guy showing up outside of a pizza joint in washington, d.c., looking for kids that hillary clinton is selling into slavery or whatever that stupid conspiracy was, donald trump did this around his election and he had thousands of people show up on january 6th and tried to take down the united states government. >> it's the most -- yesterday was as close as we could get to

a lot of people will argue that something that the president was quoted as saying is really the direct line to him, the smoking gun. but even more so, it explains a lot about the behavior of many of his followers and you just have to wonder, not to get sidetracked here, you have to wonder how kevin mccarthy and other republicans in congress right now, how they can still bow to this man. >> they just can, because they are without shame. sam stein, kevin mccarthy was the one on the phone on january 6th screaming at donald trump, swearing at donald trump, saying, i'm done with this guy, he has to be brought to justice. and then kevin mccarthy runs down, gets a picture with trump at mar-a-lago, because he's afraid that two or three of his followers may not like him. >> i mean, yeah. and this is not -- this is just -- there are so few people

who, on the republican side of the ledger, have viewed this and openly said, i can no longer support this guy. even rusty bowers, whose testimony -- the speaker in arizona, whose testimony was riveting. who talked about the toll it took personally on his family. and how hurt he was that someone who he himself revered the constitution was being told to trample on it, he later said he would vote for trump if he was running against biden. >> it's unbelievable. >> it's unbelievable. and i guess to a degree, this is just modern politics where it's tribal. where these things take a backseat, i suppose, to the price of gasoline. but i do think that trump has a grip. i don't think it's as strong as it was. i think these hearings have really damaged him. i do actually think that. i think a lot of republicans just don't want to deal with this stuff anymore. i think they're tired of it. at the same time, they are not

ready to take that leap that i think is, you know, critical probably, of going public and saying that they don't want him to run or they are tired of it. in fact, they're probably still scared of him coming down on him and that's just where we are politically. >> let's get to more of what happened yesterday. enough of us. the select committee also demonstrated how former president trump had help. amplifying the big lie from several republican congressmen. the committee played a compilation of gop lawmakers pushing false claims of a stolen election to the public. >> so there's widespread evidence of fraud, because people haven't done their jobs. durham and barr will deserve a big notation in history when it's written of the rise and fall of the united states, if they don't cleanup this mess,

clean up the fraud, do your job and save this little experiment in self-government. >> again, i join my colleagues in calling on attorney general barr to immediately let us know what he's doing. >> we're already working on challenging the certified electors. and a little bit about the courts. how pathetic are the courts? >> january 6th, i'm joining with the fighters in the congress and we are going to object to electors from states that didn't run clean elections! democracy is left undefended if we accept the results of a stolen election without fighting with every bit of vigor we can muster. >> the ultimate date of significance is january 6th. this is how the process works. the ultimately arbitrator here

is january 6th. and we have a duty to step forward and have this debate and have this vote on the 6th of january. >> today is the day american patriots start taking down names and kicking ass! >> wow. and perhaps that's why many of those republican lawmakers sought presidential pardons in the aftermath of the january 6th attack. here's what the house select committee revealed in yesterday's hearing. >> five days after the attack on the capitol, representative mo brooks sent the email on the screen now. as you see, he e-mailed the white house, quote, pursuant to a request from matt gaetz, requesting a pardon for representative gaetz himself and unnamed others. witnesses told the select committee that the president considered offering pardons to a wide range of individuals connected to the president. let's listen to some of that

testimony. >> and was representative gaetz requesting a pardon? >> believe so. the general tone was, we may get prosecuted, because we were defensive of, you know, the president's decisions on these things. the pardon that he was discussing, requesting, was as broad as you could describe, from the beginning of time up until today, for any and all things. he mentioned nixon, and i said, nixon's pardon was never nearly that broad. >> and are you aware of any members of congress seeking pardons? >> i guess mr. gaetz and mr. brooks, i know both advocated for there to be a blanket pardon for members involved in that meeting and handful of other

members that weren't at the december 21st meeting, as the preemptive pardons. mr. gaetz was personally pushing for a pardon and he was doing so since early december. i'm not sure why. mr. geas had reached out to me to ask if he could have a meeting with mr. meadows about receiving a presidential pardon. >> did they all contact you? >> not all of them, but several of them did. >> so you mentioned mr. gaetz, mr. brooks. >> mr. biggs did. mr. duran talked about congressional pardons, but he never asked me for one. it was more for an update on whether the white house was going to pardon members of congress. mr. gohmert asked were one as well. mr. perry asked for a pardon, too, i'm sorry. >> mr. perry. did he reach out to you directly? >> yes, he did.

>> did marjorie taylor greene ever contact you? >> no, she didn't contact me about it, i had heard she had asked white house counsel for a pardon from mr. philbin, but i didn't frequently communicate with ms. green. >> are you aware of any conversations or communications regarding the possibility of giving congressman matt gaetz a pardon? >> i know he had asked for it, but i don't know if he ever received one or what happened with it. >> how do you know that congressman gaetz asked for a pardon? >> he told me. >> tell us about that. >> he told me he'd asked meadows for a pardon. >> were you involved in or did you witness any conversations about the possibility of a blanket pardon for everyone involved in january 6th? >> i had heard that mentioned, yeah. >> do you know whether the president had any conversations about potentially pardoning any

family members? >> i know he had hinted at a blanket pardon for the january 6th thing for anybody, but i think he had for all the staff and everyone involved, not with january 6th, but involved, not with january 6th, but just before he left office i know he had talked about that. >> the only reason i know to ask for a pardon is because you think you've committed a crime. >> i'm just curious really quickly, a quick whip around here, have you ever asked for a pardon. >> no. >> willie, what about you? >> not yet, but i retain the right to do so in the future. >> i know sam stein has not asked for a pardon yet. >> i have. >> the illegal hoarding of jewell, whatever they are, i'm suspecting he may be asking for a pardon. no, mika, the point of course is why in the world do you

preemptively ask for a pardon. >> and a lot of those guys -- >> unless you think you're going to be -- i must say really quickly. i loved the smirk on meadows chief of staff when she was asked if she ever communicated with mo green. >> marjorie taylor greene. and she goes, no. i have not talked to ms. greene. chuck rosenberg, let's get serious here. a lot of these lawmakers denied ever asking for a pardon. what does this mean? all of these people asking for these broad pardons? >> yeah, so great question, mee -- mika, what it doesn't mean. seek ago pardon is not a confession to a crime. put that aside for a minute. what it does mean. and this is what congressman

kinzinger is getting at, is shows, proves, consciousness of guilt. that's something we prosecutors look for. right. what do you do, what do you say, that evinces, demonstrates that you did something wrong. in any case, in any crime, we have to prove intent, we look for consciousness of guilt. i have never asked for a pardon either. like willie, i reserve the right to do so. i don't imagine actually needing one. if i were to ask for a pardon of a president it would be because i think i needed one. and that's the problem that you're seeing here. by the way, they're also ostensibly lying about asking for pardons, so they know at some level of the subconscious that even asking for one is consciousness of guilt. so lying about lying, essentially. it's not dispositive. like i said, it's not a

confession, it's pretty damming evidence when you're trying to improve intent. >> charlie, donald trump and maga world has adopted the world patriot. patriots at the capitol on january 6th. and i couldn't help but watch the congressmen and women spout all the lies and work with president trump to overturn the election that it's the opposite of patriotism. when push came to shove, they were happy to overturn an election they know weren't stolen but to be close to power, to be close to donald trump, they were happy to be along with it. those are no patriots. >> they are seditionist liars. as i was watching the sound bites from the various congressmen, the thought that kept coming to me, how is it that they are not the pariahs in american politics right now. how is it that they are not, you

know, excommunicated, that polite society does not want to deal with them. the contrast, when you realize that the pariahs in the republican party are adam kinzinger and liz cheney, not the folks that you saw spouting the lies and the conspiracy theories, and going along with the president's farcical attempts to overturn the election, the conspiracy theories, these are the guys pushing the italian satellites, pushing up the crowd on january 6th, and they are members of the republican party in good standing, whereas, you know, all of the energy of this party, including kevin mccarthy is being directed to driving liz cheney out of office. that tells you something about it. yesterday was a profoundly embarrassing day, and you know, you mentioned this earlier. how can republican leaders in good faith f they're paying any

attention to this whatsoever, how can they continue to justify this, and carry water, and contemplate the possibility of putting folks back into power. again, you have the problem of collective action. they understand they need to move on, and yet nobody is willing to stand up and say, okay, people, we really need to turn the page. there's no way to justify this. but this is what you get for following donald trump down these various rabbit holes. this has been five, six years in the making. you know, you put a liar in the oval office, a conspiracy theorist in the oval office. this is what you get, and then you have a political party that has to find a way to either ignore it, rationalize it, enable it or support it. >> there are moments. we talked about where history hinges and we certainly saw clips of that yesterday, but charlie just brings up, i think, an extraordinary point.

when his story ends 50 years from now, i want to talk about the complete corruption of the republican party, the beginning of the republican party's collapse. perhaps it takes five years, perhaps it takes 25 years. this scene, this hearing, where you have the two people who were trying to protect and defend the constitution of the united states who were calling out these bizarre conspiracy theories, who are calling out those who are conspireing to commit sedition against the united states when it is liz cheney, and it is adam kinzinger who is rejected by the republican party instead of the members of congress who were actually pushing the lies, pushing the conspiracies, trying to commit sedition against the united states government, and trying to undermine jeffersonian

democracy, they'll go, wait, the republicans were on this side, instead of the side of getting to the bottom of the truth. it really is. it is, you know, history doesn't repeat itself as mark twain said, but it sometimes it does rhyme. a lot of rhyming here, not only with watergate but going back to the mccarthy hearings, and at some point, the fever does break, and when it does break, those trying to undermine the constitution will be judged harshly by history, and some of them may be judged harshly actually by federal courts even sooner. >> there is much more ahead. charlie sykes, sam stein, chuck rosenberg, thank you all very much for coming on this morning. coming up, the impact of the supreme court's ruling on gun

ownership. mayor eric adams is our guest next hour, and our coverage of the january 6th hearings continues as well. "morning joe" is coming right back. ings continues as well. "morning joe" is coming right "morning joe" is coming right back ♪ ♪ it was time for a nunormal with nucala. nucala reduces asthma attacks it's a once-monthly add-on treatment for severe eosinophilic asthma. not for sudden thing problems. allergic reactions can occur. get help right away for swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or trouble breathing. infections that can cause shingles have occured. don't stop steroids unless told by your doctor. tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. may cause headache, injection site reactions, back pain, and fatigue. ask your asthma specialist about a nunormal with nucala.

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the president wanted the department to sow doubt in the legitimacy of the election, to empower his followers and members of congress to take action. if the department could just lend its credibility to the conspiracies people would have the justification they needed to spread the big lie. you also noted that mr. rosen said to mr. trump, quote, doj can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election. how did the president respond to that, sir? >> he responded very quickly, and said, essentially, that's not what i'm asking you to do. what i'm just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and

leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen. >> all right. testimony from yesterday's january 6th committee. detailing donald trump's effort to get the justice department to ail firm his false election claims. welcome back to "morning joe." it is friday, june 24th, and with us, we have host and executive producer of the circus on show time, msnbc national affairs analyst john heilemann, and political columnist at the conservative web site, the bulwark, amanda carpenter joins us this morning. good to have you both with us . >> as we said at the top of the last hour, really extraordinary compelling evidence yesterday. i'm not exactly sure what i was expecting from the january 6th committee or what most americans were expecting from the january 6th committee. i guess just another run of the mill congressional hearing where members of congress would yap. this is far different.

again, yesterday's hearing, and i don't know how every hearing becomes even more compelling. yesterday's certainly matched up with those smoking gun moments that we heard from the watergate hearings back in '73, '74. >> and they put us in the room, jeffrey clark, the acting attorney general, richard donahue in the room with the president of the united states, on the phone with the president of the united states, it's a good point to stop and assess because we've been through two weeks now, five hearings. they're going to take a break for a few weeks after the fourth of july holiday. the committee will come back with more hearings, more evidence, more testimony. i think you're right, joe, to a lot of people it has exceed the expectations of how clear cut a case this committee has made that the president of the united states led an attempted coup against the united states government. it's that simple. and the fact that it's coming from all the mouths of his supporters, aides, loyalists

were willing to sit and testify about what exactly he tried to do to overturn this election. >> it was his lawyers, mika, outside of government. it was members of congress, republican members of congress who then after it blew up in their faces went scurrying, looking for pardons. it was members of his family. again, it was a group of people, and there in the middle, donald trump on this rabid incessant surge, to find somebody at justice who would support these bizarre claims. >> yeah, i mean, the bottom line is it's green bananas for a lot of people that were mentioned here. you know what i'm talking about, joe. dave aaronberg said a couple of these folks shouldn't buy green bananas because there are legal ramifications potentially coming. let's look at what happened when attorney general bill barr resigned after telling the

president his claims had no merit. trump turned to acting attorney general jeffrey rosen. when rosen also refused to go along with the false claims, trump tried but ultimately failed to install an attorney general who would. if trump had succeeded in appointing environmental lawyer jeffrey clark, he would have been the third attorney general in about two weeks. >> white house call logs obtained by the committee show that by 4:19 p.m. on january 3rd, the white house had already begun referring to mr. clark as the acting attorney general. as far as the white house was concerned, mr. clark was already at the top of the justice department. >> so we've reported on the tense oval office meeting three days before the capitol attack. requested by acting attorney general jeffrey rosen after being told by clark that he was being replaced. here is testimony on how that

meeting came about. >> did he tell you that the president had offered him the job of acting attorney general? >> that was a day later. on the 2nd he said that the president had asked him to let him know if he'd be willing to take it. subsequently he told me, on sun the 3rd, he told me that the time line had moved up and that the president had offered him the job and that he was accepting it. >> what was your reaction to that? >> well, you know, on the one hand i wasn't going to accept being fired by my subordinate. >> when the president turned to me and said, steve, you wouldn't leave, would you, i said mr. president, i have been with you through four attorney generals, and i couldn't be part of this. the other thing i said was that,

look, all anyone is going to sort of think about when they see this, no one is going to read this letter. all anyone is going to think is that you went through two attorneys general in two weeks until you found the environmental guy to sign this thing. and so the story is not going to be that the department of justice has found massive corruption that would have changed the results of the election. it's going to be the disaster of jeff clark. >> so former acting deputy attorney general richard donahue testified that he told then president trump during the oval office meeting on january 3rd, if trump appointed jeffrey clark as the acting attorney general there would be mass resignations at the department of justice. >> yes, so this was in line with the president saying we'll have to lose and along those lines,

he said, suppose i do this, replace jeff rosen with jeff clark, what would you do. mr. president, i would resign immediately, i'm not working for one minute for this guy who i just declared was completely incompetent, so the president immediately turned to mr. engel and said steve, you wouldn't resign, would you, and he said absolutely, i would, mr. president, you leave me no choice, and i said we're not the only ones. no one cares if we resign. steve and i go, that's fine. it doesn't matter. you're going to lose your entire department leadership, every single aid will walk out of here. your entire department of leadership will walk out within hours, and i said mr. president, within 24, 48, 72 hours, you could have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire justice department because of your actions. what's that going to say about you. steve pointed out that jeff clark would be left leading a

graveyard and that comment clearly had an impact on the president. the leadership will be gone. jeff clark will be leading a graveyard. >> we heard testimony that pat cipollone mentioned of the letter said when the president asked him about the letter, i don't want to touch the letter. anybody that touches the letter is dead. i don't want to ever see that letter again. john heilemann, to say high drama, there was high drama yesterday would be an extraordinary understatement. this thing played like a movie because the stakes were so dam high. what were your take aways? >> man, joe, every hearing i feel like we sit down after and say, wow, you know, that was the one. tuesday or wednesday saying the hearing the day before was the most compelling, and this one took the title immediately.

watching this yesterday, it was alternative history of the saturday night massacre, those clips you just played just now where you have this, you know, who would have thought, back at the time when we were watching this in realtime, you could see from the outside something weird was going on in the justice department. there was reporting contemporaneous that trump was trying to make another change. there had been one change of leadership that you could see was totally political, and nobody knew what was going on behind closed doors. what we didn't know was the scene that played out, the extraordinary, attempt by all of these lawyers, many of whom people were skeptical of at the time, who thought they were trump stooges to begin with, as it turned out, whatever you think about their past performance or other things they did in the course of the trump administration. at the moment of truth, they decided that the rule of law and constitution, and reputations and legal standing were more important, and they formed this kind of, you know, pinstripe wall of resistance to trump, and

you know, as he's going down the line asking people, what would you do if i did this, of course i would resign, sir, the whole department would resign. that's why i say it's an alternative version of the saturday night massacre where the president couldn't find anybody who would do the dirty work that he wanted to do, and who would have thought somehow at this moment, with a heavily politicized justice department, late days in the trump administration that these people in the end stood up and did the right thing. thank god they did. you said earlier i think at the beginning of the 6th hour, this is a hinge of history moment. if these folks had behaved the way a lot of trump critics would have expected them to behave, they would do whatever trump said, consequences begin, we would be in a different world right now. maybe not in the same country we currently live in. at that moment, you know, they

held down the fort. >> they certainly did. they stood in the gap. amanda when i'm watching this, historically, just in complete awe of how the committee is doing, and what these people who were testifying who stood up and did the right thing, but also as a former republican, as a conservative, i'm just -- i remain just absolutely shocked at how -- how just corrupt the party has gotten. i read an op-ed last night that s.e. cupp wrote about why she was a conservative, why she became a republican, and how long it's been since the party was the party she thought she joined. >> yeah, well here's what changed in that hearing

yesterday i think for trump supporters. because a lot of people have been giving credence to the idea that trump was poorly advised in his post election schemes. that idea was laid to waste by the january 6th committee. that money quote from the acting deputy attorney general richard donoghue, just declare the election corrupt. that shows that trump was leading these schemes, directing them from the oval office, and not only just pressuring justice department officials. what we saw in the hearing was that it was tied to congress, the branch of congress and the department of justice working together potentially by trump's hand to overturn the election. what justice department officials testified to again and again was trump was relentless

in pressuring them to manufacture a false pretense to give those republican members of congress a reason to overthrow the election. we can talk about all the different conspiracies, which i think are hard for people to follow, right. because even trump supporters will say, trump wasn't that deliberate. he was just throwing things at the wall, no, no, no, he had a clear plan in mind. he asked these justice department officials again and again, manufacture a pretense, let me and the republican congressmen take it from here, and lo and behold, those republican congressmen had some awareness that that plan carried criminal risks. that was revealed yesterday in the fact that they were seeking pardons, and isn't it funny that the one person at the department of justice willing to act on trump's schemes had his house raided yesterday, and all of his electronic devices seized, and even jeffrey clark knew it carried risk because all the white house lawyers were telling him so.

you had that colorful quote from eric hirschmann, your first act as attorney general would be a felony, that's not the only f word he used. everyone knew it carried criminal risk, and they pressed on anyway, and it was all personally directed by trump. >> let's hear exactly what amanda's talking about. yesterday in the hearing from former acting attorney general rosen and deputy acting attorney general donoghue, here's what they said. >> so between december 23rd and january 3rd, the president either called me or met with me virtually every day with one or two exceptions like christmas day. so the common element of all of this was the president expressing his dissatisfaction that the justice department in his view had not done enough to investigate election fraud but

at different junctures, other topics came up at different intervals, so at one point he raised having a special council for election fraud. at a number of points he raised requests that i meet with his campaign council, mr. giuliani. at one point he raised whether the justice department would file a lawsuit in the supreme court. at a couple juncture, about public statements or about holding a press conference. at one of the later junctures was the issue of sending a letter to state legislatures in georgia or other states. i will say that the justice department declined all of those requests that i was just

referencing because we did not think that they were appropriate based on the facts and the law as we understood them. >> the president said just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen. so mr. donoghue, that's a direct quote from president trump, correct? >> that's an exact quote from the president, yes. >> the next note shows that even the president kept pressing, even though he had been told there was no evidence of fraud, the president keeps saying that the department was quote obligated to tell people that this was an illegal, corrupt election? >> that's also an exact quote from the president. >> john, let's go back to this quote. he responded very quickly, the president of the united states, he said, what i'm asking you to do is say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the

republican congressman. that's richard donoghue, handwritten notes direct confederate from the president of the united states. what does that tell us and where does it lead us. >> it leads us to a place we were many times until the trump administration, the president was on some level an idiot, and also on some level kind of nuts but he wasn't totally a moron, and he wasn't completely crazy. he wasn't literally certifiable. these moments where you see trump acting -- he's acting improvisationally, he doesn't have a thought out plan. he's surrounded by various people who are incompetent, the rudy's of the world and the inner circle. he doesn't really understand how the government works. if he was really going to try to pull off a coup or have a chance of succeeding, he would need to understand the constitutional order better to subvert it. what that shows is a guy that has a plan, and that plan was

premised on the other part of what we saw at this hearing, which was knowing that there was this slavish feelity to trump, especially members we saw cited by name who asked for preemptive pardons, right, he had a core group in the house who were willing to do anything for him, all in on the coup, and they were already actively planning the siege for it. he knew he had a larger group in the house that would go along with them because of the fact, all the reasons we know those people will always stick with trump. he has his eye on the ball. he thinks if i can get one little thing out of the justice department, say the word i need you to say, corrupt, i'll let my lap dogs in the congress take it from here, i'll say to joe, one of the most extraordinary things about this hearing, i don't know

even in the watergate hearings or any other hearing i have seen or heard about has a congressional committee been willing to turn its guns on fellow members of congress in the way this committee did yesterday. even in the house which is so toxic and polarized now, you don't see members go after other members in quite this way. this committee was like we don't care about this group. we're going to nail them to the wall. i don't think it's the end of it, what they're going to try to do. especially someone like adam kinzinger, he's a republican and going after fellow republicans with guns blazing basicallying saying you people should be thrown in jail. you're coconspirators to a coup. fellow members of my party. amazing. >> i was going to say, it hasn't happened before, but again, at least since 1861, you haven't had members of congress trying to overthrow the united states

government. we have it here, but again, extraordinary moments. extraordinary moments when they started playing the clips of the extreme statements that were being made, again, pointing to january 6th. revving crowds up. it was just an extraordinary day of testimony again yesterday. i'm wondering, amanda. i have been wrong time and time and time again about when republicans are going to finally turn on donald trump. i don't think that 55, 60% of republicans are going to turn on donald trump, but the one thing i do hear from my family members and friends who voted for trump twice is just this level of exhaustion. we started hearing reports, yesterday was a bad day for donald trump. i'm wondering what your thoughts are about it. does this increase the level of exhaustion where they're just

saying, oh, my god, let's just get ron desantis or anybody but trump. let's get this behind us. >> i'm super glad you asked that because earlier this week i had reason to listen to a couple of focus groups for trump supporters who had some knowledge about the january 6th committee. it was hosted by my colleague in her podcast airing that discussion this weekend. what was really interesting was that for the first time these groups of trump supporters indicated they weren't willing to have him as the nominee again in 2024. now, did they say the january 6th committee changed their mind, absolutely not, but i think the committee is raising the political price. by raising the issue continually of what happened january 6th, how deep it went, that makes supporting trump just

uncomfortable. right? it's like they're sitting in a chair, and they're getting little electric shocks. they're ready to get up and move on. they're never going to say i regret voting for trump, but they say things like, well, he's too divisive, he's not going to be able to bring the democrats together because the democrats are too far off the reservation. the name that continually comes up again and again is ron desantis. going back to the question of republicans in congress being able to move on and the political repercussions of this, i really do think the question of the republican members of congress involved with the creation of the fake slates of electors do have some sort of political consequence coming. i don't know if that's at the investigation, center, maybe something worse. anyone involved in submitting false documents to congress, clearly that's a problem. earlier this week, he had rnc chairwoman talking about how she played a role in doing that on

behalf of the trump campaign as well. they knew enough, they were members that knew enough to seek pardons for their participation in trump's schemes. there may be more reasons to move on not only from trump but maga republican congressmen as well. >> amanda carpenter, thank you so much for joining us. come back. it's great to have you. and still ahead on "morning joe," late last night, the senate passed the most sweeping gun safety bill in decades. we'll talk about the significance of this rare defeat for the national rifle association. but the nra was also handed a victory yesterday. we'll go over the new supreme court ruling that could make it easier for americans to carry a concealed handgun outside of their home. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. finding the perfect developer isn't easy.

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the deadly shooting in uvalde, texas, congress is expected to send the most sweeping gun safety bill in decades to the president's desk. house speaker nancy pelosi says the lower chamber will take up the bipartisan safer communities act first thing in the morning today after it passed in the senate yesterday with broad support. 15 republicans, including senate minority leader mitch mcconnell joined all 50 democrats in voting for the bill's passage. after weeks of negotiations between the two sides. under the new legislation, states would receive funding to strengthen red flag laws and crisis prevention programs. the bill also enhances background checks for younger gun buyers and closes what's known as the boyfriend loophole, keeping guns out of the hands of dating partners convicted of

domestic abuse. and despite orders from republican leaders in the house to vote against the legislation today, it is also expected to receive bipartisan support there as well. let's bring in the host of msnbc's "the sunday show," an associate editor at "the washington post," jonathan capehart, jonathan, does this open the door to perhaps future legislation that could make gun safety even better but also i'm looking at hopes for trying to get some of the existing guns out there off the streets. >> well, look, the fact that this is the first gun legislation in three decades or so is huge. even if this bill is incremental and doesn't go as far as some folks, particularly progressives want, the fact that congress is able to get this done is a huge

accomplishment. also success sometimes breeds success on capitol hill, so the fact that they could take these incremental steps means it's possible to take even more steps. what makes it possible to get more things done is if after the midterm elections democrats get more seats in the senate, more seats in the house so that they can do -- take the next big incremental step to do part two or part three, the other things that you're talking about, ie, an assault weapons ban, but that is a huge if, and that's why folks should celebrate what's about to happen today when the house votes, even if it's not everything they want, particularly progressives, it is better than nothing. >> you know, john heilemann, i was on the floor in a debate, probably about 1997. it was a debate on gun safety, and it was something that

republicans at the time were fearful. hated talking about guns. but i notice in the middle of the debate you had john murtha, a democrat from pennsylvania, and a couple of other conservative democrats stand up and blast the legislation, and you could really see in that moment a shift where suddenly republicans realized this was a winning issue. it was post waco, it was post ruby ridge, post a lot of things that made the nra more aggressive. that's changed. it changed. perhaps the big change started after sandy hook. the numbers started being overwhelming in support of public safety, gun safety legislation. and i do think it's just taken ten years for us to get from that horrible tragedy and that awakening of the american public

on the issue of gun safety and public safety and school safety to what happened yesterday. i think jonathan's right. i think this is the beginning of an era where more and more americans, republicans even, moderates, want public safety, want gun safety, and want their legislators to do something about it. talking about the overwhelming number of phone calls she received from her state. people saying do something about this, she did. . >> yeah, i mean, look, joe, if you want to do that history, the thing that happened back in that era when you were in congress in the 1994 election when there were a few democrats who lost seats because the nra targeted them. marjorie sbinsky, one of the classic examples, people pointed to her and said this is what

happens if you adopt gun control, if you're for the assault weapons ban, you can pay a political price. democrats were, especially in purple districts, were terrified from '94 on that if the nra trained its sites on you, you would lose. the question now, i agree with both you and jonathan about the fact that the tide has turned, certainly in public opinion since sandy hook, and it's gotten more and more clear that that's where the public opinion is. i think for the politics of it to change, a couple of things really to change, to really cement this change, right, it's got to be safe, first of all, to take these votes, and there's got to be a couple of elections where it's demonstrated that you take a tough vote like this, seems a tough vote, shouldn't be a tough vote, but politicians perceive it as that, they get targeted and survive. the other way, if people don't take the vote, if the gun safety movement as big and powerful as it is now starts to target

people who won't adopt common sense gun safety, and they start to beat people. it's like you have to start to show both that it's safe to go in this direction in a top swing district, and on the other side, if you take the vote in opposition to 85% of your constituents that you could pay a price for that. this is the start of that. we're going to have to see a couple of election cycles, if they're for gun safety or the water is dangerous to go into. if they continue to buck will of the people, that's what will start to turn the tide is demonstrable wins and losses in the electoral column. >> you know, willie, i'm not sure we've gotten to a point that somebody's going to lose an election because they don't take a gun safety vote, but there are plenty of examples over the past few years where republicans in

very conservative districts have taken pro gun safety vote, have taken pro public safety votes. in the florida legislature, in the connecticut legislature, brian mast, a congressman in florida in a very conservative district in florida, they all voted for gun safety laws. in fact, mast voted for, i believe, so-called assault weapons ban, won without any problems whatsoever, in florida, in one of the most conservative states in the country when it comes to guns. it's just not having an impact. the nra can't point to anybody and say look what happened to them in florida, look what happened to the congressman who voted for the assault weapons ban. look what happened to the people that 90% of americans support or 75% of americans support or 2/3

of americans are supporting. there's no there there for the nra. >> it takes a few examples to prove that. john cornyn, the texas senator at the middle of these negotiations, going to events getting booed by people. it's not like he's taking away assault weapons or raising the age to 21, which a lot of people think would be a good idea, just for stepping in the room to have these negotiations he was booed in some corners but he didn't care. he persisted throughg that most americans hoped would get done in the negotiations but something did get done, and lives will be saved, and maybe somebody who shouldn't have a gun won't get a gun now, maybe it will stop a school shooting or a grocery store shooting. it is incremental but progress deed on a day that nothing seems to get done, 65 votes in the senate ain't nothing. also yesterday on guns, the supreme court struck down a new york law that required people to

show a special need to carry a handgun in people ruling for the first time the second amendment protects gun rights outside of the home. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams has details. >> reporter: for the first time in american history, the supreme court ruled when the second amendment says there's a right to keep and bear arms, that means the right to carry a handgun outside the home for self-defense. the court struck down a new york law that required showing a special need beyond a general desire for self-defense to get a permit for carrying a concealed gun in public. by a vote of 6-3, the court said no other constitutional right requires showing some special need to exercise it and that's not how the second amendment works. clarence thomas, said they can ban guns from sensitive places, but that doesn't mean anywhere the public congregates. and john roberts and brett kavanaugh said the states can

impose licensing requirements like background and mental health checks and firearms training. >> the supreme court said you can't require someone to justify while they want to carry a conceal carry gun but leaving open where the states could restrict guns and who could have them. >> reporter: it will have an immediate impact on states with similar restrictions but in the far reaching language, it said a concern for public safety isn't enough to justify new gun controls. justice thomas said gun regulations must be quote consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation. >> i think this language is going to make it really difficult to justify gun laws going forward and will lead to courts striking down a wide variety of gun safety laws. >> in dissent, the three liberals, listed nine recent shooting, the school in uvalde, texas, and the supermarket in buffalo, new york. courts must consider the serious and dangerous consequences of

gun violence that leads state. >> the right to keep a handgun at home, to keep something at home to protect yourself, this takes it outside the home and directly impacts for example, where john and i are sitting right now in new york city, the sullivan act, put in 1911 that showed you had to have proper cause to carry a weapon outside the home, to have a concealed weapon outside the home, there was a direct threat against you or something like that. that goes out the window for the time being after 111 years. >> right. the court, as far as the decision goes, back in 2008, the court of course decided in heller, that americans had a constitutional right to have a handgun inside their homes to protect themselves. it's an extraordinarily limite decision. i read the opinion, i wanted to see if they filled in some of the spaces that the court

refused to fill in in heller, they did not. in fact, what they did is took heller saying you have a constitutional right to protect yourself with a handgun inside the home, and took heller outside the home, and said in effect, if you have a constitutional right to have a handgun to protect yourself, if you're law-abiding for purposes of protection, that right doesn't stop at the door. but i read through the rest of it, and in a concurring opinion, justice alito said our holding decides nothing about who may lawfully possess a firearm or the requirements that must be met to buy a gun, nor does it decide anything about the kinds of weapons that people may possess. i was especially interested in ar-15s if they were going to try to again, fill in some of the blanks that justice thomas's statements in heller said.

they also said this, said, hold on one second, the court's use of the word ordinary suggests their use of the phrase law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs. >> right. >> again, law-abiding citizens, they use this language time and again, with ordinary self-defense needs. there are going to be a lot of constitutional lawyers, of course, also a lot of law professors trying to figure out whether that is limiting language when we're talking about the expansion of the rights of whether it's just a pistol or whether suddenly you're talking about ar-15s. that said, for the mayor of new york city and for leaders in six other states that this is going to impact, obviously the decision makes their job to stop

killings with guns harder. let's bring in new york city mayor, eric adams. mr. mayor, you have been fighting some of your own city council members. you have been fighting people in the state legislature. you have been fighting people all around to try to make new york city safer, try to bring down gun violence. what does the supreme court decision do to that task of yours. >> you could not have state it had better. we're analyzing the bill. new yorkers and americans are less safe based on this ruling. we are connecting this ruling to our historical past with guns without taking into account the current present crises as well as the endangerment of our future. this is theory colliding with reality. theoretically someone could say that law-abiding citizens should have a right to carry guns, but my law enforcement and my public life has clearly shown me that

even law-abiding citizens could reach a point when they have a gun to use it incorrectly. we saw it back in the days of the bernie goetz on the subway station. new york is going to have probably the largest amount of impact as any place in this country because of our population. >> let's take the supreme court argument, take their side of it and put it to you. crime is up. the subway is a dangerous place unfortunately for many people, and that folks ought to have a right to defend themselves, and if the other person on the subway trying to rob them has a gun, they ought to be able to defend themselves with a gun too. what do you say to that argument? >> this is new york city and not dodge city, and certain parts of the country where you are not as densely populated as new york, i don't think when people hear about new york city and 8.8 million people, congregant settings in our subway system,

millions of riders, in times square they clearly stated we could not blanketly indicate this as a sensitive location. we had 350,000 people in times square last monday. this city is a unique place, and if you state any and everyone that is a law-abiding citizen that can carry a gun. that's problematic, a simple traffic dispute, when an untrained individual discharges a weapon, they don't hit the target of the person they're shooting at. many innocent people are caught in the cross fire of that shooting, and they did not take that into account. >> it's jonathan capehart, and i hope to see you on my show on sunday, hint hint. i'm going to pick up on language joe pulled out from the decision where it talked about ordinary self-defense means. black man to black man because to hear self-defense in relation

to guns makes me very nervous. because it's so easy for people to say i was in fear of my life, therefore i had to shoot this person, and that's one part of it. the other part of it is as a black man, if i have -- let's say i have a gun, and now you basically don't have to have a permit to have a gun, but let's say i have a gun for self-protection, and i use it for self-protection. will i have the equal treatment under the law to have my right to self-defense be respected. i would love to get your perspective on that aspect of this ruling. >> jonathan, you are analyzing this in a manner in which i believe the supreme court should have done. we cannot have so much idealism that we don't acknowledge the realism. several components to that. number one, that black man

discharging the gun, coming with the predispositions that historically they have been part of policing in our cities. he better be concerned. many black police officers lost their lives due to taking police action while they were in civilian clothing. you have to look at those who perceived the threat of a black and brown person, trayvon martin, he felt he was in fear, his shooter felt that trayvon was a threat, and trayvon lost his life. already clear issues that are facing this ruling that can use just the ethnic part of this that is very real, and as black and brown people who have witnessed overaggressive policing, and victims of shootings, and many communities where illegal guns are at a high number, you find them in the black and brown communities in our large city, chicago, san francisco, atlanta, new york, this is only going to add to the

crises we have been facing. >> mayor adams, as a former cop, give me a sense of how this ruling impacts the daily life of your cops on the streets of new york city? >> it changed the game. when we looked at the technology, we wanted to identify if someone is carrying a gun. now, everyone has the potential to be careful a gun. when you look at how do you distinguish between a legal carry and someone who's carrying illegally, it's just really challenging, and then responding to the bad days of that individual's have in the city and big cities across america, but they're armed with the weapon. you can see a simple dispult elevate to a shooting. this is real concern the supreme court put in place. we must use our preexisting laws to minimize the danger of the supreme court ruling, and i am

just really surprised that the justices did not acknowledge the present day crises that we are facing. these are not the days of the 6 shooters. these are the days of automatic weapons, such as ak-47s. we change the game on the every day police officer in this country. >> your point is really so important for people to understand which is. >> there is theory, constitutional theory, and the practical experience of what the cops are having to deal with on the street. i would guess, i'm sure i'm wrong, but i would guess though that some of the six justices haven't spent a lot of time in new york city to understand things are far different in south dakota than new york city. how many people did you say were in times square last week. >> over 350,000 people, now, can you imagine if just a third of

them were carrying weapons, and got into a dispute, and remember. once one person discharges a weapon in an environment like that, everyone else who's carrying will have the potential thought of pulling out their weapon, and discharging it. this is a real concern. there's many rivers, senate down one river but unfortunately the supreme court opened another river. >> i will tell you, every gun owner i know, they all want people if they have guns to want them to know what to do with guns and be trained. as we saw in uvalde, and as we have seen too often with the mass proliferation of guns across america, too many people are getting guns, not getting the proper training, and you're exactly right, it puts all of us in cage. new york city mayor, eric adams, thank you so much. we always appreciate you being here.

jonathan capehart, thank you as well. i know you've got to go. we're going to be watching "the sunday show", and also this sunday is jonathan's special hour called "pride of stage and screen" with jonathan capehart, speaking with pioneering, lgbtq plus members, including laverne cox, harvey firesteen, wilson cruz, and michael r. jackson, that's this sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc, and also streaming on peacock. thank you so much, jonathan. >> thanks. so john heilemann -- >> it was great having you here. jon, i want to draw your attention to a survey that gallop took that shows confidence in the supreme court is lower now than it has ever been. according to the latest gallop poll, one in four americans have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the nation's

highest bench. that's the lowest it's been in the 50-year history of the survey. the previous low was in 2014. and, john, look at the data, you have the supreme court majority that on a lot of the hot button issues that americans pay attention to and look to the court to, that's wildly out of step where mainstream america as you look at row and you look at the majority, and you look at how the majority came about, and it's no wonder confidence in the supreme court plummeting, not just because of the outcomes of the cases but, again, something chief justice roberts has been worried about for some time, but because the court is disconnected from where americans are. >> i think that's right. that's part of it. another part of it is not just about the outcomes in the cases

but other things that go into people's perceptions of the court. there's no -- i haven't watched the way, and in some sense, the legitimacy of the court is a reflection of things like the way mitch mcconnell politicized the appointment process, you know, the way in which he refused to have a hearing for merrick garland, and the way in which he totally contradicted himself on what his principle was to get amy coney barrett on the court in the last minute at the end of 2020. these are things that undermine, that give americans a sense that the court is a political instrument that it's been manipulated by politics, that it's wholly partisan. it's the case that a lot of rulings of the court now do line up more along partisan grounds than they used to. looking back over history, one of the great things about the supreme court is republican appointees would often rule in ways that were not conservative

supposedly or democratic appointees would side with conservatives. you don't see that much anymore. the court is looking like the rest of american politics and the icing on the cake, you see something like this controversy over ginni thomas, which again drags the court further and further. i understand, she's not a supreme court justice but she's a spouse of a supreme court justice. we have never seen anything like this before. the spouse of a supreme court justice having been shown to be actively working on behalf of overthrowing the united states government on behalf of a coup. we don't know what she has communicated to clarence thomas. all of it piles on the sense, again, that the court is not special. the court does not exist to outside politics. the court is another polarized, politicized, partisan instrument. we could have a debate about how true that is, but that's what a lot of americans think, and they have some evidence to work with. >> you look at like you say, you look at what's happened over the past five years.

you look what happened when mitch mcconnell said merrick garland's not going to get any hearings. and then he talks about a rule that prevent the him from doing that. then you see after rbg passed away. how quickly he and lindsey graham threw that rule out. you look at the kavanaugh hearings. michael avenatti, throwing in, just insane rumors about rape rooms in washington, d.c., and high school parties, and people going to it. i'm not going to make people happy here but go back and look what the democrats did to someone like miguel estrada, qualified to be a federal judge but democrats just wouldn't put him in because they didn't want a conservative hispanic in the d.c. circuit. all of this combined has made americans over time think, you

know what, the supreme court is nothing more than an extension of the two political parties. when i hear people on the far right say, oh, don't even dare talk about messing with the complex of the court or expanding the court by one or two or three seats. that would undermine confidence in the supreme court. it's nonsense. let's look at the gallup poll again. again, don't tell me what would undermine confidence in the court. the court and the republicans and democrats and senators in both parties over the past 25 years have done their fair share in undermining the court. so if the court were to be expanded in the future by two, by three, and the way jefferson expanded the court, and the way jackson did, and the way lincoln

did, and the way some of the great presidents in american history have done, what's it going to do, take that confidence from 25 to 22, 21, 20%? i'm sorry, you can't lie through your teeth talk about a rule, a tradition that stops us from having merrick garland even get a hearing, and then lie through your teeth again a few years later, and say, oh, wait, we can put somebody else on, and then basically say if republicans take over this fall, doesn't matter who joe biden puts up, they won't get a hearing. please, the politicians have sunk into 25%, john, it's hard for me to see how expanding the court would make those numbers go any lower. it would only piss off the far right is the only thing it would do, so please, let's stop pretending republicans wouldn't do this if they were in the same position that democrats are in.

>> i would say quickly, one, i don't know that there's anybody who has done more damage to the supreme court's reputation in america than mitch mcconnell. you can't say it enough times, he got what he wanted, he engineered the 6-3 majority he now has, which he's proud of that legacy, and has undermined the standing of the court. i agree with you when you say how much worse could it be if you added justices, how much damage that could do. i agree with that, but i would go further than that. i think there's a chance, and i know that there are institutionalists who would never have accepted this idea before who now say expanding the court is okay. i think there's a chance it could do something to restore confidence in the court if there was a greater sense of balance on the court than what there is. i think there's a chance that's the road back from where the current low standing is. >> john heilemann, thank you so much for being on this morning, and still ahead, the gun debate

is a major issue in the race for governor of texas: democratic candidate, beto o'rourke will be our guest on his bid to deny republican greg abbott a third term. plus a new witness in the capitol attack investigation. documentary film maker, alex holder, had extensive access to donald trump, his family, and advisers in the days surrounding january 6th. he joins us on the heels of his closed-door deposition to the january 6th committee and we have much more coverage of yesterday's dramatic testimony. the hearing was just part of what's been a bad week for trump loyalist jeffrey clark. his home was also raided by the fbi. >> that's not good. >> we're back in 90 seconds. goo goo >> we're back in 90 seconds. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn?

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focusing on donald trump's relentless pursuit to get the justice department to support the big lie, to cheat in the election. it is friday, june 24th. we begin in washington where the first round of public hearings by the january 6th committee wrapped up yesterday. nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent garrett headache -- garrett haake has the details. >> reporter: the january 6th committee unveiling what witnesses describe as a presidential plot to use the department of justice to overturn the 2020 election, accusing mr. trump of personally trying to stronghold the department. >> he responded quickly, what i'm asking you to do is say it's corrupt, and leave the rest to me and the republican congressmen. >> reporter: when they refused to announce investigations into nonexistent voter fraud claims, president trump sought to replace the department's acting head and replace him with an

inexperienced loyal is, jeffrey clark, a doj environmental attorney who drafted a letter to key states falsely claiming election irregularities. >> when he finished discussing what he planned on doing, i said, sorry congratulations you just admitted the step as attorney general would be committing a felony. >> i said how about you go back to your office, and we'll call you when there's an oil spill. >> reporter: when doj leadership threatened to resign en masse, they say mr. trump backed down. >> jeff clark would be left leading a graveyard. >> reporter: on wednesday, federal agents searched clark's home, seizing his electronics he pleaded the 5th in his february committee deposition but spoke to fox news last night. >> i don't recognize the country anymore with these kinds of things happening. >> reporter: the committee also sharing texts from pennsylvania republican scott perry, connecting clark to white house

chief of staff mark meadows. perry one of five lawmakers named by a white house aide has having sought presidential pardon. >> mr. perry, did he talk to you directly? >> yes, he did. >> perry denies he asked for a pardon, telling nbc news quote this never happened. mr. trump responding to the hearing on social media calling it a quote kangaroo court, the likes of which we have never seen in this country. >> jeffrey clark, what an ass clown, i mean, benedict arnold probably was saying the same thing when they were dragging him away, i don't even recognize my american country, come on, please, he doesn't recognize what, he tries to steal an election. he tries to undermine democracy and this guy is being self-righteous about what it means to be an american. please. >> had the same thought, maybe a different word of description, but i'll go with yours, i mean, this is the guy who was the

environmental lawyer, nobody knew who he was in the department of justice and tried to work his way up to become the acting attorney general and lead a coup alongside the president of the united states, and he's very concerned about what's happening to the country. >> i don't recognize my country anymore. >> thanks to you, jeffrey clark. >> why don't you go back to your office and call us when there's a -- wait a second, you may not have your office much longer because you may get arrested. >> it's the banana thing, don't buy green bananas. >> he pointed out during the execution of the search warrant, he wasn't allowed to put on his pants when he was rushed out of his house so they could search him. chief washington correspondent for abc news, jonathan carl is with us. read his recent book entitled "betrayal the final act of the trump show," it's great to have you on with us. you have written so much about betrayal, you have covered for

your book and subsequent reporting. as you have watched two weeks from the hearing and select committee, and yesterday, what we heard in detail from the highest reaches of the justice department, and starkly from meetings inside the room with president trump, how does it dove tail with what you have written? >> i think you saw in clear fashion a betrayal of american democracy, and you were seeing it told in the words of republicans who donald trump appointed to positions of power. i mean, this is as stark as it could possibly be. it does track much of what i wrote chapter by chapter in betrayal, particularly the last hearing about what happened at the justice department, but now instead of, i don't know, journalists writing about it, talking about what sources have said, you hear the individuals themselves. i mean, this was the top ranks of the justice department, each and every witness, the three of them yesterday, and several of those you heard in taped

depositions were the people that donald trump appointed to positions of power. and they described bluntly and candidly an abuse of power that is frankly far beyond anything that we saw during watergate. i mean, richard nixon orders the firing of archibald cox who was the special counsel. here you had donald trump ordering the top officials at the justice department to file bogus lawsuits with the supreme court to seize voting machines in the states. to chase down wacky conspiracy theories or just flatly lie about election fraud. he was on the verge of having three attorneys general over the course of three weeks time. >> that's high turnover. so jonathan, the select committee's investigation found what it called a quote, wild,

baseless conspiracy theory about the election, made it from the bowels of the internet to the highest levels of our government. the committee says pennsylvania republican congressman scott perry text add you tube link to trump's chief of staff mark meadows with the question why can't we work with the italian government. a man in that video made an outrageous claim. >> used to switch votes from trump to biden. >> being said out of rome, out of italy is this was done in the u.s. embassy. that there was a certain state department guy whose name i don't know yet, i guess, this is probably going to come out in italy at some point, and he was the master mind, not the mastermind, but the guy running the operation of changing the

votes. and that he was doing conjunction with support from mi6, the cia, and this leonardo group. >> what was your reaction when you watched that entire 20-minute video. >> i e-mailed the acting attorney general and i said pure insanity, which was my impression of the video, which was patently absurd. >> he called the video absurd and despite the absurdity of that conspiracy theory, we learned that mr. meadows discuss it had frequently in the white house, and mr. meadows didn't let the matter go. the request went from the department of justice to the secretary of defense christopher miller, as you'll hear secretary miller actually reached out to a high ranking official based in italy to follow up on this claim. >> can you call out the defense and find out what's going on.

i'm getting all of these weird crazy reports that probably the guy on the ground more than anything. >> the select committee confirmed that a call was actually placed by secretary miller to italy to investigate the claim that italian satellites were switching votes from trump to biden. this is one of the best examples of the lengths to which the president trump would go to stay in power. scouring the internet to support his conspiracy theories shown here as he told mr. donoghue in that december 27th call, quote, you guys may not be following the internet the way i do. >> definitely not. jonathan carl. >> come on. >> first of all, can you just imagine these guys watching this 20-minute video, like spending 20 minutes of their precious time watching this garbage, you

know, these conspiracy theories that were dug up everywhere, and you report that it was mark meadows that was asked to do a lot of this sort of digging around. >> i mean, i went chapter and verse into this because it was one of the craziest things i have ever encountered as a reporter in washington. the origins of this italygate conspiracy, that these italian military satellites were used to switch votes in coordination with mi6 and the embassy in rome, actually, the story got to the white house by this character who was pretending to be a wealthy heiess having a meeting, with the top official on trump's national security council for cyber security. that's how this initially started. this is wacky, but it's beyond even what you heard there. the acting secretary of defense

convened an emergency call on tuesday, january 2nd, four days before the insurrection with the head of the defense intelligence agency, and cash patel, his chief of staff, the acting secretary of state about this issue and what they were going to do on it. this wasn't the only conspiracy theory. there was another one that jeffrey clark was pushing aggressively that said that, get this, wireless thermostats made by google nest, thermostats made in china were used to switch votes very specifically in georgia. and they actually asked the director of national intelligence, john ratcliffe to investigate this one. this is using all of the apparatus of the federal government, the justice department, defense department, the intelligence agencies, to chase down conspiracies in the service of an effort by a president to cling to power after he lost an election.

again, this is not watergate. this is way beyond anything that we saw in watergate. >> just because people will think, john, you're making that up. here's a quote from jeffrey clark in an e-mail he wrote. dominion machine accessed the internet with a smart thermostat with a net connection trail leading back to china. he wanted that investigated. thermostats. >> come on, this is the guy that donald trump is trying to make the acting attorney general. >> and it gets worse, john, witnesses testified yesterday president trump became increasingly agitated as january 6th approached, leading to a new year's eve meeting where the former president made a startling request to the acting attorney general. >> mr. rosen, the president asked you to seize voting machines from state governments, what was your response to that request? >> that we had seen nothing improper with regard to the voting machines, and i told them

that the real experts had been at dhs, and they had briefed us that they had looked at it, and that there was nothing wrong with the voting machines, and so that was not something that was appropriate to do. >> can you explain what the president did after he was told that the justice department would not seize voting machines? >> the president was very agitated by the acting attorney general's response. since dhs had been mentioned, the president yelled out to his secretary, get ken cuccinelli on the phone, and she did in very short order. mr. cuccinelli was on the phone, number two at dhs at the time, i was on the speakerphone, and the president essentially said, ken, i'm sitting here with the acting attorney general. he just told me it's your job to seize machines, and you're not doing your job, and mr. cuccinelli responded. >> mr. rosen, did you ever tell the president that the department of homeland security could seize voting machines. >> no, certainly not. >> so joe, we've got italian

satellites, and the order of seizing voting machines in collecting evidence. again, as john said, and we have been saying all morning, if you have a couple of different people sitting in the chairs, other than jeffrey rosen and richard donoghue, dhs may have gone after the voting machines. >> and think about the timing of all of this. let's put this in context. jonathan carl, this is happening in the middle of a transition between two administrations. i know you have talked to many presidents, many people that have worked for administrations going in during a transition. even in the best of circumstances, it is an impossible task to get the new people going in the white house up and running on domestic

affairs, international affairs, even in the best of circumstances. but here we had that transition. we had tensions with china. obviously problems rising in russia, we had covid a pandemic that killed over a million people, and donald trump has his entire government focused on chasing internet conspiracy theories instead of trying to manage a next to impossible transition between his administration and the incoming administration. >> the national security implications are far reaching. not only what you outlined. we were also very concerned, the national security agencies were very concerned about iran because we were coming up on the anniversary of the assassination

of soleimani, the anniversary i believe was january 3rd, and the iranians had been increasing the threat on u.s. forces in the region, while our embassy compound in baghdad was shelled quite aggressively in late december, and there was real concerns that the iranians would try to do some kind of an attack to take out an american official on the anniversary of the soleimani assassination. that was going on. the pentagon delivered a message that if they did kill an american, the response would be swift and would not be proportionate. it would be a very strong attack from the united states on iran. there was a real possibility we were facing war with iran. at this moment, you have the director of national intelligence, the leadership at the pentagon and the leadership of the department of justice, you know, chasing down these

conspiracy theories, and there's one other thing, i was told that in every meeting, i'm not -- this is not an exaggeration, every meeting that donald trump had during this period, no matter what the subject, whether it be covid or the iranian threat or what the chinese were doing, any of it, would come down to the election. this is all he wanted to talk about. whether he was talking to his defense official, his intelligence officials, anybody, he would come down to the election. >> obsession. british documentary film maker, alex holder, had unique access to former president trump, and members of his family both before and after the 2020 election. he shot over ten hours of footage for a documentary series called unprecedented, footage he has shared with the january 6th

committee. here's a look at the trailer. >> okay. >> my father, he's very honest, and he is who he is. >> he believes everything that he's doing is right. >> i think i treat people well unless they don't treat me well, in which case you go to war. >> can we talk about january 6th. >> yeah. >> and alex holder joins us now, fresh off the closed door deposition yesterday with the january 6th committee. it's good to have you on the show. >> morning. >> one of the things that i have read about, if you could confirm, that in the scenes that you shot there with donald trump's family, often what they say is very different than what they told the january 6th committee. i'm thinking specifically ivanka who told the january 6th committee that she deferred to bill barr, believed him, but

speaking to you, she seemed to be backing the big lie. >> yes, to be honest, the trump kids at least in my interactions with them sort of always echoed their father's position, so at the time, it wasn't particularly surprising but clearly there seems to be some sort of discrepancy between what ivanka said to me december 10th and what she said to the committee. other people decide what that means materially, but there's clearly a difference of position for sure. >> how fascinating, and by the way, what a jarring line coming from ivanka to grab your attention at the beginning of the tease. my father is very honest. and then you have don jr. saying he's always right. of course those two children were desperately calling trying to get donald trump to intervene on january 6th, saying something must be done, so yeah, quite a

disconnect there, right? >> yeah, absolutely. absolutely. and i think what is interesting as well, and unprecedented in the series that i directed is the absolute admiration and love that the three children have towards their father. it's absolutely clear and evident and eric says at one point is his father is his best friend. they totally admire their father, and you know, i see there that it is interesting the way certain narratives have come out recently about how the narrative changes differences of opinion, but certainly do admire him very much. and part of the series is also about the dynamic between the three children and who could be the successor of donald trump. >> can we talk for a minute about january 6th. >> yeah.

well, it was a sad day. it was a day there was great anger in our country. people went to washington because they were angry with an election they think is rigged. a very small portion as you know, went down to the capitol, and a very small portion of them went in. but i will tell you, they were angry from the standpoint of what happened in the election. because they're smart and they see, and they saw what happened, and i believe that was a big part of what happened on january 6th. >> of course they think the election was rigged because donald trump told them that lie again and again and again. i'm curious about the circumstances, just taking a step back of how you got so much access to donald trump and to the white house. some people in the white house have come out in the last couple of days around your testimony and said, oh, we didn't realize, you know what the cameras were for or who he was or any of

that. what was the idea or pitch from you to the white house about tracking them so closely in these final days. >> at the end of the day, it was about we wanted to find out who these people were, and we wanted to explore the dynamic of the trump family. for them to say they didn't understand what we were doing, we weren't hiding the cameras. we were literally up close with the president at rallies in the buffer zone. my cameraman was at certain points closer that night the secret service agents. we went into mar-a-lago with three cameras. the idea they didn't know that we were there, is strange. i wanted to give them the opportunity to answer questions, and have their voice, and the people to determine whether they sort of agree with them or don't agree with them about all sorts of different aspects of their life. the series isn't just about the

election and the events that took place. obviously that's a key part of it, but i think just on the clip you saw just now, and as you said, people will be able to see donald trump answering the question about january 6th, and come to their own conclusion as to what his role was in that particular day, that particular tragic event. >> we've heard from people like former attorney general william barr who said donald trump knew he lost the election. he was fishing around for some reason to stay. was it your sense in realtime talking to him that he knew he lost the election. >> i definitely don't want to disagree with former attorney general, at least in my interactions with the president, i actually think he really genuinely believes that he won. in some cases, i think is actually more terrifying. because there isn't much of a conversation then. it's sort of trying to discuss

something that's irrational. i didn't think he believed it prior to meeting him. but a month after it took place, he was convinced the election was stolen from him. he started telling me how we need to find brave judges to overturn this sort of result that he believed to be erroneous. so it was in some ways, if he was lying, you know, you could sort of see, all right, maybe we can persuade him, but i don't think it's possible. >> alex holder, thank you so much for being with us. greatly appreciate it. >> thank you. jonathan carl, and i know you talked to a lot of people around donald trump after the election. i did as well. and they all said -- they kept saying the same thing, just be patient. we have to worry about his feel, which of course, how ironic is we saw flags that said f your feelings, trump 2020, and donald

trump ended up being the biggest snowflakes in american political history. he knows he lost, just let him get to it, and it even went in phases where trump recognized he lost but had to figure out a way to get there. he just never did. >> i quoted a republican member of congress who was very close to trump shortly after the election saying he's a man who knows he lost. it's tough on him. i mean, that was the quote from one of his allies, just give him time. this is the message i was hearing. i remember talking to kellyanne conway, he'll concede eventually. it may be more of a concession that the election was stolen but he's going to come around. we need to give him time. give him time for what. and point of fact, what happened

is he got more and more unhinged, he was trying everything possible to overturn the election, every means possible, you know, started with the legal challenges, and which are fine, the requests for recounts, all of that, and when he lost 60 legal challenges it goes into, well, maybe we can activate the state legislatures, maybe we can get congress to vote to overturn on january 6th. maybe we can get pence to do this, on and on and on. everything he could possibly do, every possible effort to overturn an election. >> you had the clips of ivanka and don jr., let's be clear to people who may not have had all the information about it. ivanka reportedly was trying to get in touch with her father to get him to do something. don jr. was sending texts saying this has to stop, a statement has to be made. after january the 6th, certainly it appeared to be a separation

between jared, ivanka, and donald trump. at least a geographic separation where they went off and did their whole thing, and did not want to be associated with the chaos of january 6th. >> you know, i mean, they made their moving plans not long after the election, made, you know, plans to get their kids in school in florida. i still think one of the astounding facts of january 6th is how many people close to trump were not in washington on that day. you know, i mean, jared kushner was coming back from saudi arabia. you know, several others were, you know, his homeland security secretary was in qatar. his national security adviser was down in florida. the place was somewhat of a ghost town. nobody wanted to confront him, and i think they were all really worried about what was going to happen on january 6th. and worried for good reason, but

not worried enough to be there to try to prevent it from happening. >> all right. jonathan carl, thank you very much for being on this morning. >> thank you. >> your book "betrayal: the final act of the trump show" really reflecting the news out of the january 6th committee we're reporting on today. thanks very much. still ahead on "morning joe," we have so much more to get to on yesterday's hearing, including why the committee said donald trump would not take no for an answer, and the congressmen who were seeking these blanket pardons from the former president, a lot of them, why? >> yeah, because they knew they were guilty. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. were guilty. you're watching "morning joe." you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b.

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wouldn't accept it from mr. rosen either. so he looked for another attorney general, his third in two weeks. he needed to find someone who was willing to ignore the facts. that is not the norm. >> let's bring into the conversation, former u.s. attorney and senior fbi official chuck rosenberg, white house editor for politico, sam stein and founder of the conservative web site, the bulwark, charlie sykes. just your impressions of what you heard, we knew a lot of this from media reporting, the depositions, we knew what was coming. to hear it chapter and verse from the mouths of jeffrey donoghue. >> seeing and hearing it makes it more palpable. that said, i grew up in the department of justice, so i have some views on what happened. like you, i'm glad richard donoghue, and steve engel and

jeffrey rosen were there, but in the justice department, this may sound corny, your job is to do the right thing in the right way for the right reason. that means doing the right thing when it's hard, even standing up to a president of the united states. like you i'm glad those guys were in that room in that moment. that's what you're supposed to do, that's the job. and sometimes the job is saying no in a sea of yes. they were the right people at the right moment but i would like to think a lot of justice department people could do exactly what they did. maybe i'm wrong about that. they deserve credit for being there, but the job is to say no when you have to. i actually think, willie, they would agree with me. i'm quite sure they wouldn't think of themselves as heroes, they would think of themselves as doing what justice department lawyers are trained to do. >> you know, one trip i took when i was in congress was down to peru to see an american, laurie barenson, to see her be

tried, and after about three minutes, i was horrified by the proceedings. where you had one guy that seemed to be playing judge, jury and executioner. and i came back with such an understanding of america's third branch, how extraordinarily important it was and how what separated our country from all the others and charlie sykes, this is something you and i talked about. about two months after donald trump got into office, and you know, charlie and i -- it's very weird, but, you know there are about 30 different factions in the conservative movement. we were from one of 30 different factions, after trump got elected, we were talking, and i remember you telling me you were very distressed about what was going on. you said the federal judiciary will hold the line, and i said,

are you sure about that, you said, i'm sure about that, whether they're the most progressive federal judges or whether they're the most conservative federalist society appointees, they will all up hold the constitution. i don't know whether you believed it or not, you made me believe it, and that's what we saw with the federal courts. that's what we saw with justice, and it just makes me proud to be an attorney first of all, but also just makes me so proud to be an american because they held, the line held. >> yes, but it's a thin line, and. >> it's a thin line, yeah! as i listened yesterday, i kept thinking this was a close run thing, you know, if you had different people in that room, would it have been different? i mean, i hope he's right about this. i look at jeffrey clark, and i'm thinking it's what trump 2.0

will look like. one of the mediocrities to pursue the bizarre fantasies. farcical fascism is still fascism. what you saw is the playout of the president of the united states pushing these bizarre insane conspiracy theories, these fantasies, but pushing every single lever to use and corrupt the department of justice. thank god that we had these individuals here, but keep in mind also this was 17 days before the term was over. in trump 2.0, you will have more jeffrey clarks in that room, you will be able to find people who will be willing to do what the president wants, and now of course the president has figured out what he can do and get away with. it was an extraordinary moment. >> we've got more on this with sam stein straight ahead, plus the slow rolling insurrection, members of the january 6th

committee says the baseless claims of voter fraud aren't really about 2020, but future elections that trump allies aim to manipulate. "the washington post" jackie alemani joins us with that reporting straight ahead on "morning joe." g straight ahead g straight ahead "morning joe." others want immediate gratification... and long-term gratification,too. they have their own interests, but at the end of the day there's nothing like being... a gold-owner. visit invest.gold to see why gold is everyone's asset.

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wrong with the voting machines. and so that was not something that was appropriate to do. >> mr. donoghue, can you explain what the president did after he was told that the justice department would not seize voting machines. >> the president was very agitated by the acting attorney general's response, since dhs had been mentioned, the president yelled out to his secretary, get ken cuccinelli on the phone. and she did in very short order. mr. cuccinelli was on the phone, number two at dhs at the time. i was on the speakerphone, and the president essentially said, ken, i'm sitting here with the acting attorney general, and he said it's your job to machines and you're not doing your job. and mr. cuccinelli responded. >> did you ever tell the president the department of homeland security could seize voting machines. >> no, certainly not! so sam stein, just remarkable, the president's tried everything

at the time. nothing's working, and now he's ordering ken cuccinelli at dhs to seize voting machines. again, talk about criminal intent, it just seems to be laying out there. >> yeah, i mean, the whole thing had this kind of absurdist feeling to it, and it would have been sort of more darkly humorous if it wasn't exceptionally humorous. imagine you're in rome, and getting a phone call from the acting dod secretary, saying hey, can you run down this rumor of italian satellites changing votes from biden to trump. you must have been, you know, completely confused at what the heck was going on at that moment, and it was absurd, but to charlie's point, you know, this was not absurd. this was deadly serious. it wasn't a stress test, it was dozens of stress tests, some of

them were totally benign and ridiculous, a lot of them were extremely serious, and it's remarkable that we didn't have a break. we're extremely lucky, i think, that we didn't have a break, that sidney powell didn't get appointed special counsel, that jeffrey clark didn't get the job of acting attorney general. if any one of those things happens, we're in a real constitutional crisis, and the other thing i would add that i think kind of gets lost in this. maybe it's not materially important, but to me at least it is is that, you know, here we have essentially the main powers of government, department of homeland security, the department of defense, all of those top people completely consumed, whether by choice or directive on this idea of what happened with the voted. all of our government is focused on this absurd conspiracy theory, and you're in the middle of a pandemic, right, like the government had a job to play at that moment in time, and it just

basically forfeited that job, and said we're not going to focus on this stuff because we're going to have to prevent the president of the united states from executing on what is an attempted coup. not just costly in that it could have damaged our democracy forever, there was realtime costs in real life that were happening. border crossings are up, not in the way you might think. more and more women are headed to mexico for abortion services as many states enact restrictive new laws at home. nbc's morgan radford reports on this straight ahead on "morning joe." morgan radford reports on this straight ahead on "morning joe.

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sir, you are out of line. sir, you are out of line. please leave this auditorium. i can't believe you're a sick son of a [ bleep ] that would come to an issue like this to

make a political issue. >> this is on you. why don't you get out of here. >> that was last month the mayor of uvalde, texas, those words from former congressman beto o'rourke when he stood up in the news conference. and congressman o'rourke joins us now. he's the democratic candidate for governor of texas. congressman, it is great to have you here today. and i was looking at recent polling in quinnipiac. in december you were down ten points and that number has been slashed in half to five points. what is going on? >> it is actually a 15-point lead. >> excuse me. 15. >> and we cut it by ten. that is significant. and in those 6 1/2 months he's spent millions of dollars on tv trying to burnish his image and tear mine down. in that time we've spent $0 on tv doing same.

i think it is less about me and more about the people of texas who reject his extremism, certainly on guns, where he signed permitless carry in texas that allows anyone to carry a loaded gup in public without any back ground check or vetting or training. a total abortion ban without exception for rape or incest. this is an attack on schoolteachers and educators in our public schools in the state of texas, this is not a reflection of the people of texas. including importantly republicans nnd independents. we want to do big things to bring us together. world class public schools and great jobs, the ablts to see a doctor. on that much we could agree and i think that is reflecting in that poll and that is why i'm so confident we could win this on november 8th. >> the margin was 15 points and now down to five points in the latest q poll. how much does uvalde play into this. we saw that clip of you there confronting the governor at the news conference, it horrified your state and the country and i

know there was some legislation passed through senate. there is change coming even if it is on the margins on guns. how much of this race do you think will be about guns in texas? >> i think it is about people and it is about kids and it is about doing what we can for the most vulnerable among us. so, after 19 children are shot with a weapon of war, and some could only be identified by shoes they were wearing, after 23 people are slaughtered in el paso texas in 2019. after sante fe high school and southerland springs and midland, and the ome thing he does do is make it easier for criminals to carry guns in our streets, in our movie theaters and schools and walmarts. people want change. they see a child or foster care system in texas where 100 children died in the cutdy and care of the state of texas since 2020. so badly run and underfunded. they see our public schools

where teachers are leaving by the thousands because their under attack by this governor. and so badly underpaid they're working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. this is about standing up for our values. and especially those kids who are depending on us right now. i have three kids. one who just finished ninth grade and one who just finished eighth and one who just finished fifth. and some day they'll be looking back at and ask me and my wife amy what did you do and i want to tell them we fought and we won and we made texas better for you and for all of us. >> you ran of course the united states senate, ran very closely, losing by about 2 1/2 points po ted cruz. at the end of the day texas is still a red state and loves its guns it is tough for a democrat. to win in texas. to that you say what. >> it is a nonvoting state rather than a red state.

7 million texans doesn't cast a ballot in 2020. the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes. not because their lazy or lack of love for democracy. but because we're literally drawn that way. we have the most restrictive voting laws in the nation bar none. that is why our 77,000 volunteers in this campaign are knocking on the doors of those eligible voters to help explain the rules of the road and in the new election bills. make sure they're registered to vote and that they understand what is on the line in the lext election. this is the lives of their kids an the future of the state of texas. we could overcome that by bringing in the voters who have been the focus of voter suppression and voter intimidation. they will prove the margin of victory on the night of november 8th. >> i think we could agree there is a crisis on the border with mexico right now. congresswoman just won in a special election there a place where republicans don't win flipping the district to latino american. what is your assessment of what

is happening on the border. how would you change what this administration is doing? >> well greg abbott is doing is say political circus on the border. activating 10,000 members of guard who are sitting in humvees, who have no constitutional authority to arrest or detain. seven of them have died and four by their own hands since this involuntary activation. he's busing migrants to the border to d.c. at public taxpayer expense. and he's building a wall. he's spending $5 billion of our resources and we're gaining nothing as a result of if i governor, i would bring the best democrats and republican and independents together and come up with a plan to address border security and immigration. a guest worker program. for those who want to come this to this country and work jobs no american is willing to do, let's make sure there is a legal orderly path. and listen to county judges and

residents and understand the best solutions to the challenges that face them and to longer try to score political points at the expense of the people of texas or those desperately seeking asylum and refuge in this country. there is a legal orderly way to do this. >> is the biden administration doing enough. >> they haven't done enough. and i would love to see the president and his administration in the border communities, in loredo, listening to the people with the most at stake. they deserve to be front and center of this conversation. >> mika has a question for you. >> back to the news conference right after the shooting in uvalde, and governor greg abbott was making this sort of issue of it as mental health issue, we need to talk about mental health. when we all know that he cut funding for mental health and that the reason a lot of these guys on stage wanted to focus on

mental health is that was their reason not to talk about guns. they called you all sorts of names. knowing what we know now, about what they were saying on stage, and what really happened in uvalde, what were you trying to say that day and what would you say to them today? >> you know, if the priority is mental health, the governor tut $211 million out of the mental health budget the month before the uvalde shooting. texas, mika, is 50th in the nation in access to mental health care. our largest provider is the county jail system in the state of texas. so certainly he doesn't really care about that. what i would tell the governor is that i'm in constant contact with the mothers and fathers of those 19 children who were taken from us in uvalde last month. and they want answers. and they deserve them. every single day they get

another drip or drop of information. we just learned this week that law enforcement was there on the other side of the door with ballistic shields, with long guns and a door that was not locked, no key was needed. there were kids who were alive whose lives we could have saved if we had done the right thing including in that hallway were department of public safety state troopers. the governor of texas has stonewalled, refusing to release information to families. they're desperate for answers and justice and for some closure. and mika, they're desperate for some action and it is action that we could take in texas. >> what about the senate bill that went through. does that make a difference in your state? the one that went through last night, led in part by texas senator john cornyn. >> it is progress. and listen, we sit on different sides of the aisle. i'm grateful to the senator and grateful for chris murphy working so hard, so tirelessly and courageously, i'm grateful for shannon watts and moms

demand and pushing on the politicians to form the will to actually get something done. they deserve the credit for what happened yesterday. it is not enough. but it is a step in the right direction. now let's take the next one. >> former congressman beto o'rourke, now candidate for the state of texas. thank you for being here this morning. >> thank you. it is now the top of the hour. the fifth public hearing by the house committee investigating the january 6 attack on the capitol focused on how former president trump tried to strong arm the justice department into over turning the results of 2020 election. those efforts include a pursuit of the attorney general who would go along with trump's conspiracy theories in his attempt to hold on to power. also ahead this hour, evidence that at least six republican members of the house who assisted trump sought pardons. plus the latest on gun safety that we just mentioned overnight with the senate passing a bipartisan bill. hours after the supreme court issued its most significant ruling on guns in years,