today with some of our most favorite reporters and friends. i pulled my friend and colleague katy tur over. she's been helming our coverage all day long. and we're also joined by frank figliuzzi. also joining us former senator and msnbc political analyst claire mccaskill. frank figliuzzi, i want to start with you on this bombshell. do we have you, frank? i saw frank. claire, liz cheney in what has s becoming i think we can call it on brand for her revealing some really stunning testimony that donald trump himself engaged in what could only be described as witness tampering. >> yeah, you know, i'm struck right at this moment, nicolle with the stark realization, and that is everything we've heard in these committee hearings stands for the proposition that so far our rule of law has

failed because this man is continuing to use a seditious lies to try to hold on to power in this country, is illegally pressuring witnesses to not give testimony to one of the branches of government that has a sacred obligation to protect the constitution. i mean, if you think about it, we have candidates all over the country proudly campaigning on this seditious lie. it is time. i feel very strongly that there is a mountain of evidence now about this man's state of mind and exactly what went down, and that when he couldn't do it legally, he said screw the law. i don't care about the law. i want to hold on to power, and that is a crime. >> well, so much there to unpack in your one response, claire. i think in some ways, the

quietest witness was the most tragic one. it was mr. ayers. he was one such radicalized trump supporter. he described himself as a family man and a working man. he said everything about his life has changed. in an eerie way, there was an echo to a life being blown up based on a lie to some of the earlier witnesses, and i want to bring you in, frank figliuzzi on something we talk about all the time, the radicalization of donald trump's own base of supporters as casualties. he doesn't care about any of them. he doesn't care about mr. ayers life being blown up. he doesn't care about the oath keepers, and i don't care about them personally, but all the legal problems they all have now is a result of their aherence and belief in his lies. >> two witnesses so crucial to the counter radicalization process, nicolle, that yes, we've talked about before. people watching oath keepers, proud boys, people who at least

sympathize, empathize with them, needed to hear today from people who have been there and done that. they needed to hear somebody say i no longer buy into the big lie. i understand court after court after court rejected the big lie. the notion that there was fraud systemically that would change the election. and then mr. van toten hoef who said i fear for the next election cycle because if trump runs again, we have a president who can whip up a civil war. he talked about america being exceedingly lucky that there hasn't been more violence. he said i have kids. i have a grand kid. he gets it, he's been there. stewart rhodes, oath keeper leader asked him to create a duck of playing cards to feature targeted international terrorists, and he wanted to put hillary clinton on one of those playing cards. we needed to hear that today, and we also all needed to hear as we've heard about the dots being connected, we needed to see that those dotted lines

become more solid lines between trump and illegality, right? rejecting the legal for the illegal. rejecting the rule of law through the rule of trump. what's the rule of trump? get it done by any means necessary. if i don't hear what i want from official people and sources, i'll go unofficial. if that doesn't work, i'll go appeal to the public masses, and you're right, i don't care about those public masses. >> well, ng frank, to your point about illegality, pat cipollone was worth the wait. he seemed to corroborate all the evidence we heard him respond to, that cassidy hutchinson had testified to in her public hearing as well as her depositions. but he also painted a very clear picture, and there was a lot of talk about how robust his testimony would be. when he describes basically an off book set of presidential advisers who he didn't even know. i worked in the white house, to not know how someone gets in as

the white house counsel is inexplicable to me. you have to be waved in. you have to have a social security number. the white house counsel had no idea how the overstock guy who he didn't even recognize and sidney powell got into the oval office is a stunning piece of color at how off the books of government employees donald trump was turning to to run a coup against his own government. >> well, you're right. from your own personal experience, my personal experience as assistant director for counterintelligence, numerous visits to the white house, right? sometimes just waiting -- being late for my meeting because they're still checking the roster, the record. are all my clearances passed before i can get into the situation room. and we don't know how these people are traipsing in and out, and then we learned today that apparently trump magically waved a wand and gave a clearance to sidney powell and then appointed her maybe to some kind of special counsel position.

i mean, it is absolute lunacy. if that's how people want their government run, then keep doing that and you'll get that again, but you'll get more violence. you'll lose the rule of law. you'll lose our democracy and ultimately, that's what trump chose to do. he chose to do whatever was necessary to regain power, maintain power, but not to preserve the american way. >> okay. frank and claire, i'm going anywhere, i want to bring into the conversation nbc news legal analyst, neal katyal, the former acting solicitor general. we have tons of questions for you, frank's talking about illegality. first, katie, you helmed all the hours in the studio. i had on sneakers and sweat pant thes. i want to deal with two things, this bomb shell at the end that liz cheney dropped that donald trump himself tampered with a witness. >> that donald trump tried to call a witness, the witness called her lawyer, and the lawyer told the committee and the committee referred it to the doj. we got a hint of something like

this, not this exactly the other week when cassidy hutchinson was testifying, liz cheney presented evidence that people in donald trump's orbit had tried to contact somebody. we learned it was cassidy hutchinson to say we know you're a friend. we know you're loyal. >> stay on the team. >> we know you'll do the right thing. they say they're taking witness tampering very seriously, and they're going to refer it to the doj. let's seat what the doj says about it. this should not come as a surprise because we've been watching the donald trump show now for seven years, and we've heard this happen before with michael cohen specifically when he was, you know, going against donald trump. he said he got pressured from that world, and i mean, listen, i think it's a lot to hear from all of these aides to the former president, pat cipollone his white house lawyer come out and tell the truth under oath about what was happening at the time. you got to imagine that donald trump and the people around him

right now also a lot of those folks like jason miller, all the ones who already have testified are saying we've got to limit the damage. >> well, i also want to ask you about the meeting because that made up really sort of the whole build of the first part of today was to this mash basically of the crazy december 18th meeting. i want to get your thoughts on pat cipollone. he felt like someone who was pretending to be a reluctant witness, but looked like he was thanking god he finally had a chance to clear his conscience and tell his story. >> i think the keyword in what you said was finally. it's been 18 months for pat cipollone to come and tell the truth. we have a whole impeachment in which he was nowhere, so -- >> when he defended trump in the first impeachment. >> exactly. but the second one when none of the story came out. so i commend him, it's really great. the last thing he should get is a presidential medal of freedom as was suggested. >> that was for pence.

>> his nomination. >> maybe by these bottom feeder standards, i guess all these people get medals or something like that. it's good that he's come forward and what cipollone really painted was a crazy white house. what you were saying before was 100% right. white house counsel has to know everybody who comes in, how they come in. the idea that you have this motley crue star wars bar scene of people on december 18th from michael flynn to, you know, sidney powell all there advising the president of the united states. >> sidney powell gets the disof the whole hearing who says pat cipollone ran faster than the sound of light or something. i want to delve into the testimony now. i know you've all been watching. let's go through some of it with our experts. this is powell and cipollone describing this unhinged, you know, katyal's words, star wars meeting at the white house.

>> did you believe that it was going to work? that you were going to be able to get to see the president without an appointment? >> i had no idea. (. >> in fact, you did get to see the president without an appointment? >> we did. >> how much time did you have alone with the president -- and i say alone, you had other people with you, but from his aides before the crowd came running? >> oh, probably no more than 10 or 15 minutes. >> was in that -- >> pat cipollone set a new land speed record. >> i opened the door and i walked in, i saw general flynn. i saw sidney powell sitting there. i was not happy to see the people who were in the oval office. >> explain why. >> well, yeah, i don't think they were providing -- the overstock person i didn't know who this guy was. actually, the first thing i did, i walked in, i looked at him, and i said who are you? and he told me. i don't think any of these people were providing the

president with good advice and so i didn't understand how they had gotten in. >> there it was. still stunning. watching it play back and having processed it. talk about what this means, though, in terms of potential criminality, not just for the president. we'll get to that but for all the people involved in the coup plot. >> it's looking bad for all of them. let me start with the president. it follows directly from that quote we just saw. what it shows is that sidney powell, the president orchestrated to name her special counsel. the idea that she's special counsel to anyone is frightening, but particularly to the united states government. and one of the questions in the case has always been did trump try and use his powers in some way to interfere with the election? the idea that he was putting sidney powell, someone who said all sorts of crazy stuff is a direct attempt to interfere with the outcome of the presidential

election. it's his fingerprints, not someone else. sidney powell said she wasn't sure whether she was actually appointed or not, but it sounds like she thought she was. i mean, if you don't know whether you're appointed as special counsel, you're probably not a very good special counsel. but the fact is it looked like trump made those efforts. that was all part of this plot to, as you say, a coup against his own government. >> frank, i want to ask you about the significance in terms of what this committee and its investigators who we should always point out are from -- they're former u.s. attorneys, this is what they do, but in terms of the evidence, my jaw dropped when they said we're going to tell you about this meeting. we talked to six people who were in it. i think there were only eight in it. what do you do with that evidence over at doj? >> this is a great question. you heard claire say that there's now a mountain of evidence pointing to the president.

i totally agree with that. i think claire would also agree because she's a former prosecutor with the understanding that prosecutors must show evidence of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. it's quite clear that this mountain of evidence absolutely predicates the opening of an investigation with donald j. trump's name in the title of it. that is my absolute opinion that we have clearly enough for doj to open that investigation and clearly put the former president's name in the subject line. that i've got. now, with regard to the dotted lines becoming solid lines that point to the president in a way that is beyond a reasonable doubt, or at least would convince a grand jury to indict, we still have to look at this notion that the president will likely say, you know, i thought there was fraud. i didn't buy into all the official people and now there's a litany of them, right? who told from the attorney general of the united states to the white house counsel who said it's not there, it's not there, it's not there, and i chose to

go with basically a bunch of people who are crazed and pursue that. but there's a mountain of evidence, as claire says, that he chose that deliberately. he knew he was doing wrong, and in fact, he jettisoned even crazy lawyers and went to a public appeal, and that's where it gets really interesting. what did we hear today? two calls with steve bannon on january 5th, after the first call steve bannon goes public and describes the call and says what? all hell is going to break loose tomorrow. that's a great piece of evidence, but it's got to get us to a case and then to a grand jury, and then to a conviction. it's a challenge, but they need to take that challenge on for the sake of democracy. >> well, and claire, liz cheney started the day making that challenge. i think we have this part of her opening statement where she says donald trump is a -- i won't swear on tv today because you and i did that yesterday, a grown man, not a 12-year-old child who knew exactly what he

was doing. do we have that? let me play that for you quick. >> president trump is a 76 76-year-old man. he is not an impressionable child. just like everyone else in our country, he is responsible for his own actions and his own choices. as our investigation has shown, donald trump had access to more detailed and specific information showing that the election was not actually stolen than almost any other american, and he was told this over and over again. no rational or sane man in his position could disregard that information and reach the opposite conclusion, and donald trump cannot escape responsibility by being willfully blind, nor can any argument of any kind excuse president trump's behavior during the violent attack on

january 6th. >> claire, she laid it out there as you might have if you were on that committee. >> yeah, one thing she referenced there was a concept in the law called willful ignorance or willful blindness. that's not a defense in the law. you can't ignore the facts and then claim because you ignored them somehow you're not guilty. let me lay this out clearly, i get what frank's saying, but here is what i see. i see a man being told over and over again that there is no evidence of fraud, being told over and over again that he lost the election, even his own crazy, weird, dye dripping rudy giuliani that they did not have evidence of fraud. his own crazy incompetent lawyers knew they didn't have evidence of a fraud, and then you have the december 16th draft

executive order. if i were putting this case together, i would say that was the beginning of the conspiracy. they drew up this order to have the secretary of defense seize property without probable cause, without any evidence, which is wildly illegal in this country, and then in the meeting, in this executive order was that a point of special counsel. in the meeting we now have trump saying these people aren't giving me what i need and appointing crazy sidney powell as special counsel. that is a conspiracy to do something illegal, in fact, to do something that is the most serious crime, i believe, that can be committed in this country, and that is to steal a presidential election. so i really think there's enough evidence here to indict. now, will he be convicted? i don't know, but the risk of not indicting is so grave in

this country in terms of respect and accountability under the rule of law, i just think it is a big risk to not do it. there may be jury nullification. there might be somebody on the jury that is a trump supporter and they refuse to convict, but i think that's a risk that we have to take under the laws of this country. >> well, and the public pressure for accountability now transcends a right, left paradigm. i mean, it really -- and the committee laid out more evidence of the coordination between trump and the extremists. i want to play it for you, katie. this is congresswoman murphy. this is number one on my list. this is her talking about the riot organizers saying the president was planning to have them march to the capitol but wanted it to look spontaneous. they were even in on how they sold that speech on the ellipse. >> the organizer says, you know, this stays between us. we're having a second stage at the supreme court again after the ellipse.

potus is going to have us march there, slash the capitol. it cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and sabotage it. it can also not get out about the march because i will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies, but potus is going to just call for it, quote, unexpectedly. the end of the message indicates that the president's plan to have his followers march to the capitol was not being broadly discussed. >> we know that that's spot on, that it wasn't in his prepared remarks. he adds it, cassidy hutchinson can't even hear it. do you think they have the answer to how the organizer knew just what trump was going to do? >> when lynndal says this and she's expecting trump to say that also, and the question is how does that get from donald

trump's spontaneously saying it to them knowing about it? was there a phone call? are there white house logs that show those conversations? i don't know if we're going to hear recordings of those conversations to get those concrete details, but i just wonder if we've just lowered the bar for donald trump over the years about what his intent is. i've covered him now since 2015, and it seems pretty clear there's causal relation between what he says and what people do. i saw it on the campaign trail, at the rallies, punch him in the face. that happened. we saw it during his years in the white house. we see it with the insurrection. one plus one equals two. donald trump says go to the capitol. we'll be wild. i know these people have weapons. i don't care. they're not out to get me according to the testimony from cassidy hutchison. one plus one equals two. have we lowered the bar so much that donald trump -- we need more evidence for donald trump than we need for somebody else in our society, and under any

other circumstance, a person like this were it not donald trump would have been cast off long before now. he's just defied expectations for so long and lowered the bar so many times that it seems like we're putting him in a special camp where he is the only person that gets to do these things and gets away with it. >> gets to break the law and get away with it. >> he might be the only person with two volumes of crimes he committed and wasn't charged with anything. >> far from being an ordinary persons he's the president of the united states. you worked in the white house. you know every word a president says matters so much. people hang onto it, they take inspiration from it or direction from it. even if a president pauses in a speech, that has enormous practical significance on the ground. to have a president saying all this on december 19th following the star wars bar scene meeting on the 18th is really -- it is the height of irresponsibility.

it's a man saying i care about me. i care about my position. i don't care about the country. i don't care about electoral processes and the like. that's why i think claire's point is so important. you know, it might have been one thing before the hearings. maybe we could have pretended all this didn't happen, the impeachment, the second one wasn't a success. but now the american people know, they know what donald trump did, and it's not just, you know, like public. it's trump people themselves, they're starting to switch, you have to -- >> can i just add something, over the summer of 2019 or 2020, excuse me, right before the election. when donald trump was rallying and saying the only way that i could lose is if it's rigged or if there's fraud. i went to a rally in pennsylvania and talked to a bunch of people outside of it, and asked them what happens if donald trump loses, and every single person i spoke to said there's no way he could lose. this is in the summer. there's no way he could lose. it's not possible, and i said, but what if he does. well, it will get fixed.

don't worry about it. the law enforcement will come in and fix it. i asked one gentleman, what will you do if you believe democracy has been stolen from you if donald trump loses, and he told me that he would be willing to take up arms. this was in the summer before the election. so we saw this coming for many, many months, and he tried this also in 2016 when he thought he was going to lose. even on election day when he saw that the polls were not coming in in his favor, he said there's fraud in this one county. he began it. he began to already cast blame around, and then when he realized he was winning, he stopped that and said it was fair. >> he did investigate fraud because he lost the popular vote. >> he tried. >> i want to ask you, frank, about this point katy's making. there's a mistake in trump's sort of slovenly manners to think that everything's a wild coincidence, but the committee has had so much evidence, and

we'll actually get to speak to congresswoman murphy in a few moments. such mountains of evidence of premeditation and foreknowledge. i mean, everything that happened on january 6th was planned and was so exciting to trump that he shot out a 1:47 a.m. tweet, which even for him was a very sort of uncommon hour of the day to tweet, but the plan was burning inside him after meeting with all of his crazy advisers. i wonder if there's enough evidence in your mind of the planning for the violence and now that we know so much knowledge of the violence and what cipollone testified to was precisely what cassidy hutchinson testified to, which was not just acquiescence and acceptance of the violence but enthusiasm. the actual violence that was carried out against the law enforcement officials? >> yeah, we don't know what we don't know. there are grand juries sitting.

i'm concerned that there's not enough happening fast enough. katy's absolutely right that the notion of fraud, a distrust in the electoral process has been planted long ago, long ago, and, you know, you fast forward to putting people in strange places with just a couple of weeks left in his administration, why is he changing out people at dod? why does he insert somebody in the general counsel's office at nsa? why is he looking for a new acting attorney general? what is that about with days left in your administration? that's also something that really needs to get discussed as part of an overall plan to put the people in place that needs. and it's still happening in plain sight. the notion of fraud distrust in election outcomes is strategic. it's happening throughout the united states, whether it's steve bannon behind it or proud boys going local. we see what's happening with secretary of state positions. we see what's happening with

election offices at local, county, and state levels. you don't have to win in the upcoming midterms. you simply have to plant the seed of doubt enough so that people don't trust the election and as the former oath keeper said today, we will have violence in the next election cycle. it's happening in plain sight. it is a strategy and that's very, very troubling, and it is evidence of intent. and i think the next hearing will talk about inaction. we're talking about the president's actions all day today. >> yeah. >> don't forget, almost as important is the notion of inaction as to intent. if someone's told you we've got violence on our hands, people are getting hurt, let's do something and you then choose to do nothing, it's further evidence of your intention. >> neal, the committee has set expectations extremely high for itself. it felt, again today, between the live testimony, seeing pat cipollone for the first time, the bombshell, some of the phone

logs, some of those things that are really easy to wrap your brain around, that they thought they were tieing trump to the actual violence and extremists. >> 100%, what they did at the end is tantalize us with next week. what they said is pat cipollone's sat with us for a long time. the committee said they were going to go minute by minute while donald trump was sitting on his hands on january 6th. you know, and he could have done any number of things from calling the attorney general or the department of homeland security, evidently cipollone said he did none of those things, zero. we're going to start hearing about that next week. and then there's the tantalizing thing you said, the bombshell at the very end that donald trump himself personally called a witness who hasn't been publicly identified yet to the committee. that could be very ears witness tampering. i'm glad to see the justice department's already got the information. i suspect donald trump's defense is, hey, i didn't know she was

going to be a witness or he was going to be a witness. whether or not that can hold up, there's probably parties to conversations including this witness's own lawyer who may have been able to tell trump, but that's going to play out. that could be a very easy criminal case if the evidence is the way congress woman cheney suggested it might be. >> a very easy criminal case for the justice department to bring against donald trump. i didn't know there was such a thing. >> yes, because witness tampering is pretty much -- it's a pretty simple test. it's not the kind of thing in which presidential prerogatives, this is trump acting now as a private citizen. he's not the president. there's no possible privilege claims or anything like that. it's just simply are you trying to prevent this person from coming forward to tell the truth, and do you have that mens rea, is that your intent. >> you blow my mind as usual, i know we lose you for a little bit. you'll be back in the next hour. joining our conversation, congresswoman stephanie murphy of florida, a member of the

january 6th select committee, one of the lead questioners this afternoon. we have been playing some of the most shocking things that happened today, but make our job easy for us. what for you is the piece of information that you would love to be on the local news tonight and every market in the country and in the newspaper tomorrow? what for you is the most important thing that people should have taken from this hearing? >> i think the most important thing is that the president and his advisers all knew they didn't have the evidence that they had lost the election, and yet, they misled people. and as a result of the lies that they told and the encouragement they gave to average americans as well as violent extremists, those people took actions. people died, people were injured, and some of these people's lives will never be the same. i think you saw from mr. ayers, he was just a trump supporter and, you know, a family man who

followed the direction of the president to come down to the capitol, and now he finds that, you know, he's lost his job and a lot of things have happened that have negatively affected his life because he believed in the lies of powerful people and the president. >> you had so much evidence to impart on us in terms of the internal communications of the most senior white house officials and campaign officials. one of the most hair raising was brad parscale's messages to katrina pierson where they knew exactly how destabilizing trump's conduct was. can you characterize how it is you elicit such frank testimony? is there an unburdening that happens when people come before the committee? >> well, it is a combination of having received so many documents, text messages, data points, and then we have phenomenal investigative

attorneys who are then able to elicit -- as well as the members, when we're in those depositions, we're able to rely on the facts that we already know, previous witnesses' testimony, and then ask very targeted and pointed questions to elicit the information that we're looking for. it's -- but it is a -- it's like putting together a multidimensional puzzle, and we're bringing in bits and pieces from witnesses as well as documents. >> katy tur, my colleague and i have been talking about this piece of evidence that you presented tieing the insurrectionists and the rioters to very intimate knowledge of something that was a very live and fiery debate within the west wing, and that was whether or not in his speech on the ellipse, donald trump would call on his supporters to march to the capitol. of course he does. he says he will join them. an angry kevin mccarthy calls cassidy hutchinson we learned in

one of the previous hearings. how much more evidence are you in possession of? >> we have more evidence, but we pull the piece of evidence that will make the point in the most direct way, but we have corroborated the fact that the president had long planned to direct people to the capitol and just didn't tell people, wanted it to be a surprise or be unexpected of sorts. >> do you have more -- liz cheney dropped a bomb shell there at the end when she implicated donald j. trump in a witness tampering incident with a witness she described as someone you all may have heard from, do you have evidence of more than one witness that donald trump has sought to interfere with? >> we're not going to speak about the specifics as a committee, but what i will say and the big takeaway of why the vice chair mentioned that is that we want to make it absolutely clear that our committee takes witness tampering, witness intimidation

very seriously and that it can't be done inside of a vacuum where we don't find out about it. we are finding out about these things, and we will do the appropriate thing referring it to the department of justice as is required. so i don't want to say a lot more about that on the specifics around the witnesses, but i think the big takeaway is that we take it very seriously and folks shouldn't believe they can do this without consequences. >> it had been reported that the committee was in possession of metadata which suggests phone logs. do you have all of the visibility that you would like into not just the logs but the contents of donald trump's calls on the day of january 6th? >> we have a lot of information and i think the combination of data as well as witness testimony helps us understand a bit more about what exactly --

who the president was communicating with on that day. >> the call with steve bannon and then the public utterances of steve bannon make abundantly clear he's a foot soldier and marshaling the crowds on january 6th. can you say more about the people, sort of the off book operation donald trump who was at the time our country's commander in chief was running with a very different chain of command with the militia groups and his lieutenants who seem to be commanding and controlling them? >> well, we took you into the room for a very bizarre meeting in the white house where you saw that there were a set of outside advisers, not government officials, who were kind of battling with the white house counsel and others who are white house staff over dangerous and possibly unconstitutional ideas. and that was a little bit par for the course for this administration. there was always sort of an

outside set of advisers who didn't have an official role within the government, and i think you would include in that some of the people you heard about in the hearing today, roger stone and michael flynn, sidney powell. these were people who were peddling dangerous ideas to the president and they had his ear. >> what should we expect in terms of pat cipollone's testimony? it was -- expectations were managed, if you will. i know he spent eight hours with the committee, but it wasn't clear if he was a compelling story teller and it's clear from just the clips we saw today that he painted a very detailed picture of this meeting you're talking about on december 18th. there's the back and forth with sidney powell where she sort of mocks at the speed at which he sought to blow up the meeting. was he able to corroborate everything that we heard from cassidy hutchinson, and is there more that he was able to talk

about? >> i believe sidney powell said he set a land speed record for how fast he tried to get to the white house into that room and have somebody who was white house staff in that room. you know, pat cipollone provided us a lot of relevant information, but as you could also see, we had also talked to other folks who were in the white house counsel staff, eric hirshman, derrick lions and others. we combined the testimony to build a holistic picture of the conversations that were had. i think you're going to see more in the next hearing, and we'll be bringing mr. cipollone back in or bringing his testimony back into our hearings to shine additional light on what happened in those very critical 187 minutes when the capitol was under attack and the president sat in the white house. >> congresswoman, this is katy tur, i've got a question again about phone calls and the link

you could make between mike lynndal knowing that donald trump was going to spontaneously call for a march to the capitol and same with alexander. knowing about this, how did they know this? is there a phone call between either one of them and somebody within the white house? does a phone log show that donald trump had a conversation with mike lynndal about this in the days leading up to january 6th? how did they know that he was going to say it? >> well, with lynndal, katrina pierson is the one who emailed him, i believe, and said this is what the president is going to do. as it relates to ali alexander, i don't know, but what i did know is that the president notion who ali alexander is and had spoken about him in previous meetings to the january 6th. so you know, i think we -- our investigation continues. we continue to interview witnesses and gather data, and i think there are lots of points of interest that i know that

we'll be investigating to see if we can't get a little more color and context on. >> will we see a phone tree, like a phone log of all the calls that were made from the white house on that day? i know you had a couple with steve bannon the day before. are we going to see more on the day of? >> i think what we really try to do is to pull the pieces of information we have that is most relevant to the narrative that we are sharing with the american people. we have so much information that to share the entire white house phone log wouldn't exactly be productive. but as it relates and supports to the points that we were trying to make, we will be relying on those types of pieces of evidence. >> congresswoman, hearing for next week was confirmed today in today's public hearing. should we expect to be surprised after that? are you still in receipt of new testimony, new evidence, and new witnesses? >> i guess i would say that each

one of our hearings has contained surprises, and we are full of surprises, so i hope you'll tune in next week. >> we will, and i guess what i hear you saying is buy only refundable car rentals or any sort of summer travel. it was a day of incredible revelations, congresswoman stephanie murphy, i imagine it's been a long day. i'm grateful for you taking time to talk to katy and myself. >> thank you. >> the committees that get to this point is more forthcoming with what they have and less afraid to say, yeah, we got that and yeah, we got more. >> it seems for a while they really did not want to set expectations too high. >> except raskin saying we're going to blow the roof off the place. >> i wonder if somebody got to him because suddenly everybody got very tight-lipped. they've been very cautious on how they have described what is coming up because they understand if they set the bar too high and don't deliver on it, the american public is going to say i'm sorry, this is not what i expected it to be. they've done a very good job of

laying it all out. i want to go back and remind everybody all that we've seen so far, which is that donald trump was told over and over again that he lost the election by everybody in his orbit who had any authority, anybody who was in a position to know, bill barr, you lost the election, pat cipollone you lost the election, ivanka, i believe bill barr, you lost the election. everybody in and around him was telling him the same thing. you can't go after mike pence, he doesn't have the authority. you can't go after the state representatives because they've done the recounts, and the recounts show you don't have the votes. you can't do it. you can't pressure the doj, if you install jeffrey clark, we're all going to resign. you can't do this. sidney powell comes in and says we're going to do an executive order, he decides not to do that i guess. doesn't totally follow through with it, and then he moves on to the next thing, which is i'm going to look at january 6th. and january 6th is the day they're going to certify the election. i'm going to send out a tweet and get people to go to my rally. >> to pressure pence.

>> the question is did he know they would then march to the capitol, seems like yes from what we're seeing and did he know what they would do when we marched to the capitol? did he understand one plus one equals two? >> i think after your math lesson the answer is yes. i think the other thing we heard today and i know we've seen a lot of cassidy hutchinson, but i hadn't heard her reveal in terms of the lack of -- the other thing that you hear over and over is that there was never any evidence of voter fraud. there was never any in the states, never any at doj, never anything wrong with any of the voting machines and no one could argue there was. you heard rusty bowers come back and say rudy said they had theories. mark meadows went from being intrigued by whether or not there was evidence to intrigue by the constitutional loopholes. >> what i find interesting is we're hearing from all these aids now in this testimony under oath with 2020 vision. i wonder if donald trump was

able to find a constitutional loophole, find some way to stay in office, if something happened that kept him in the oval office, it wouldn't have been legal, but if he were able to stay, what all those people who said that they knew that it was over and that they were trying to tell him it was over, and they were just trying to give him some space, would they still be working for him today. >> we know that no one usually quit. i mean some quit on january 6th. >> nobody quit until january 6th until the violence actually happened. had that not happened, would they have stayed on? i find it really interesting that a lot of these folks all seem to know better now and are willing to say it at least under oath, but weren't willing to say it at the time. i mean, bill barr saying that he wasn't doing a service to democracy and to the country or to his supporters. why didn't he say that in realtime? why didn't he tell us that in the moment. >> bill barr is in for trump 2024. >> they'd vote for him again which i find amazing. the guy was threatening

democracy, but i'll vote for him again. >> it's unbelievable. we should tell our viewers what i did here, you were in here, and i grabbed you. >> let's give her a pitch. >> i want to hear from you, so i'm sorry if any baby-sitters had to stay late or anything. thank you very much. we're going to sneak in a quick break, don't go anywhere. we'll be back with so much more of today's testimony and all of our favorite reporters and friends. >> consider how millions of americans were persuaded to believe what donald trump's closest advisers in his administration did not. these americans did not have access to the truth like donald trump did. they put their faith and their trust in donald trump. they wanted to believe in him. they wanted to fight for their country, and he deceived them. h your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown, your sales rep

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i want to start by asking you if you agree with cipollone's conclusions that morgan, bill barr, all of the individuals who evaluate this claim said there was no evidence of election fraud sufficient to -- the outcome? >> i heard that, if your question is did i believe we should concede the election at that point in time, yes, i did. >> december 14th was the day that the state certified their votes and sent them to congress, and in my view, that was the end of the matter. i didn't say, i thought that this would lead inexorably to a new administration. >> the efforts to overturn the election should have stopped

once the litigation was complete. >> in my view upon the conclusion of litigation was when i began to plan for life after the administration. >> i told him that i did believe, yes, that once those legal processes were run, if fraud had not been established, unfortunately i believed that what had to be done was concede the outcome. >> a crush of evidence there shown by the january 6th select committee in their public hearing today of all of the people around donald trump. it's hard to find anyone who disagreed with the consensus opinion that he had lost and should concede. let's bring in luke broadwater, congressional reporter. he was inside today's hearing. tell my from your vantage point what jumped out at you today? >> reporter: i was pretty shocked at some of the text messages and communications they

had that showed that donald trump had wanted to march to the capitol and had wanted to keep this plan secret from a larger group of people. that to me was perhaps the most revelatory. i hadn't seen those text messages before. we knew that donald trump -- it was known donald trump did want to go to the capitol. obviously he commands the mob to go there on january 6th, but the fact that days ahead of time key rally organizers are saying this is going to be an unexpected announcement, and we can't spread this too widely. we can't let the national park police know. that added a level of sort of clandestine behavior that i think adds an extra layer onto what we already know about the way trump was acting around january 6th, that he didn't want too many of his most sober advisers to know about what he was planning to do with the

crowd directing them to the capitol. that was probably my largest takeaway. obviously the implication from liz cheney that there was potential witness influencing or witness tampering going on by the former president was a major development. and we also learned a lot more information about that completely crazy december 18th meeting inside the oval office, and then i think we saw, also, donald trump's power over the crowd, about how he could command them to go to the capitol, but he could also command them to leave. we saw testimony -- the american people heard testimony for the first time from a rioter who said, basically, when trump told us to go home, we went home. he could call off the crowd. and so, i think those were some pretty major revelations that we heard today. >> it's such a good point. i actually am going to play this again. this is number one. i thought this was the most sort of tantalizing thing that we

learned as well, that there was almost a sidebar of communication between trump and the rally organizers. they know this. potus is going to call for it unexpectedly. let me play that. >> the organizer says, "this stays between us, we're having a second stage at the supreme court again after the ellipse. potus is going to have us march there/the capitol. it cannot get out about the second stage because people will try and set up another and sabotage it. it can also not get out about the march because i will be in trouble with the national park service and all the agencies, but potus is going to just call for it unexpectedly." the end of the message indicates that the president's plan to have his followers march to the capitol was not being broadly discussed. >> this, for me, luke, brought back all of cassidy hutchinson's testimony about movements, presidential movements that are

planned and presidential movements that are otr and liz cheney has her go through, what's an otr movement? it's clear that they're building to what the organizers were told to expect, which was a movement from donald trump to the capitol. >> reporter: right. that's right. you know, we knew that even that morning, from cassidy hutchinson's testimony, that he was -- donald trump was agitating at mark meadows and others to try to get him to the capitol, and mark meadows was sort of putting it off and putting it off and telling him, we haven't -- we're going to try to make it happen, and then he sort of redirected the president to the secret service, and then we heard about the blow-up in the secret service suv as donald trump is trying to go to the capitol against the better advice from the people around him. so, yeah, i think it's -- i think that is an important development, because it does get to the ratcheting up of the crowd, which donald trump, according to testimony, knew was armed, knew potentially wanted

to commit violence, and yet he wanted them to go to the capitol anyway, and in fact, he wanted to lead them. so i think that was a major development. >> so, frank, again, pairing what luke and i are talking about with cassidy hutchinson's very inside knowledge, i mean, she was in on and involved in the two halves of any white house which is operational and sort of policy and planning, so she sat right next to the security guy and sort of the deputy chief of staff for operations. she's already testified to all of this commotion around a desired otr from the president. what we learned from that piece of evidence that congresswoman stephanie murphy puts out there is that the rioters were in on an otr, which is, on top of everything that it is, it's his participation in a coup plot, it's his participation in an armed insurrection against the government, it's his presence at the capitol where they want to hang mike pence, it's also an incredible security breach.

>> all of the above, and why is it important from an investigative, prosecutive standpoint? because intent to conceal can be used -- it's not definitive, but it certainly can be used as evidence of knowledge of criminality. why do you want to hide something you're doing if it's perfectly fine? it's really hard for the president -- the former president to be able to talk his way out of that. well, i certainly didn't want to upset the park service. really? that's what was driving you in hiding all of this? i think not. so, prosecutors will tell you, intent to conceal can be used as evidence of knowledge of criminality. so, it's really important. and then with regard to the, you know, a presidency filled with security risks, threats, and exposures, every single day, he cast caution to the wind and says, i want to go even to blow up in that suv, demanding to go to the capitol. he's got to force the ending, as

they say in studying cults. when things aren't going to cult's way, the members force the end. he was trying to force the end, because he wasn't getting his way. and everything around him -- thank goodness, held. the secret service, folks like pat cipollone, again, whether you like him or you don't like him, attorney general barr, like him, don't like him, the things held, and the cumulative effect of that was we didn't have the insurrection act declared, because oath keepers, proud boys, they were waiting for the insurrection act to be declared, and then, yes, all hell would have broken loose. >> and claire, one of the services of today's public hearing was the live testimony from a former oath keeper who said what frank just said, that they exist -- they exist in waiting for someone like donald trump to come along and run a government, run an off-book government where they are the de facto militia/military. to frank's point and to

everything we heard today, it came hauntingly close to happening. >> yeah, i think both of the witnesses performed a really important function in the committee's work. the one witness explained that the oath keepers are very dangerous, but you add trump to the equation, and they become deadly. and somebody who's willing to play to them and to play to their worst instincts. the other witness, i think, is really important, and i think this is what liz c and chaos

only to hold on to power. >> yeah, and it's something that we heard from the leaked tapes of kevin mccarthy. he knew that only trump could make them go home. it's something chris christie said on national television on the day, trump needs to tell them to go home. everyone knew that the insurrection would or could have stopped if trump told them to stop. another incredible day of testimony. we're so lucky the to have all of you. luke broadwater, frank figliuzzi, claire mccaskill, thank you so much. our special coverage continues. we'll play more from today's stunning hearing, and we also will have a chance to speak to another member of the select committee about what comes next. it's right after a quick break. t t committee about what comes for you and emily. these are... amazing. it's right after a quick break

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hearing by the january 6th select committee, an extraordinary look deep inside exactly how trump supporters and far-right extremist groups were spurred into action by donald trump's repeated lies about election fraud and specifically how his tweet on december 19th, saying about january 6th, be there, will be wild. turned out to be an explosive invitation heard all around the world, but a huge revelation from today's presentation was what took place the night before that tweet actually went out where an astonishing clash went down between white house attorneys on one side and trump, should we call them, outside advisors on the other. people like sidney powell and michael flynn, people who were feeding the ex-president lies about how the election had been conducted. take a listen to white house officials describe that scene that night. >> i remember the three of them

were really sort of forcefully attacking me, you know, verbally. eric -- we were pushing back, and we were asking one simple question. as a general matter, where's the evidence? >> i think that it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there. i mean, again, people walk in, it was late at night, it had been a long day, and what they were proposing, i thought, was nuts. flynn screamed at me that i was a quitter, kept on standing up and turning around and screaming at me, and then at a certain point, i had it with him. so, i yelled back. sit your f'ing ass back down. >> at the end of the day, we landed where we started the meeting, at least from a structural standpoint, which

was, sidney powell was fighting, mike flynn was fighting, they were looking for avenues that would enable -- that would result in president trump remaining president trump for a second term. >> a stunning situation that mark meadows' former aide, cassidy hutchinson, described in texts that were also shared with the public as unhinged. today, we also heard from a man named stephen ayres, one of the people who stormed the united states capitol on january 6th and who last month pleaded guilty to one federal charge of disorderly conduct inside a restricted building. mr. ayres described just how much he was influenced by the ex-president's lies. >> when you heard from president trump that the election was stolen, how did that make you feel? >> oh, i was, you know, i was very upset. as were most of his supporters.

that's basically what got me to come down here. >> and do you still believe the election was stolen? >> not so much now. i got away from all the social media. when january 6th happened, basically deleted it all. i started doing my own research and everything. >> would it have made a difference to you to know that president trump himself had no evidence of widespread fraud? >> oh, definitely. who knows? i may not have come down here. >> and in a really remarkable moment, as soon as the hearing wrapped, that gentleman, mr. ayres, hugged the officers who defended the capitol on the 6th. they've been in almost all of these hearings, harry dunn, gonell, and michael hodges. our nbc reporter in the room heard him say to the officers, i'm really sorry. the end of today's hearing also

brought a shocking bombshell from vice chair of the committee, liz cheney. watch. >> after our last hearing, president trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. that person declined to answer or respond to president trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. their lawyer alerted us. and this committee has supplied that information to the department of justice. let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously. >> it's where we begin our coverage this hour with some of our most favorite reporters and friends. jackie alemany is here, "washington post" congressional investigations reporter, also an msnbc contributor. miles taylor is back, former dhs chief of staff during the trump administration. he's now the founder and executive director of the renew

america movement. and harry litman is here, former u.s. attorney, former deputy assistant attorney general. he's now the host of the fabulous "talking feds" podcast. jackie, i've been starting with the reporters to make sure that i didn't miss anything that your ears might have caught. take me inside what you think the committee achieved in terms of not just what we heard right there, implicating donald trump in a witness tampering incident that has now been referred to the department of justice, but in terms of all the connective tissue that was expected and was produced between donald trump, his closest allies and advisers, and the extremists themselves. >> yeah, nicole, that was really quite an emotional roller coaster, i think, for me and for the american public. i think the committee did an extremely effective job at sort of taking us through the swings of these surreal, almost comedic moments, to in the next flash of a moment, these very panicked fears about a potential

insurrection and attempts at actually fomenting a coup, taking place at the white house in the oval office on december 18th and in the lead-up to january 6th. the committee really laid out this sort of pivot that the former president made after december 14th towards looking at extrajudicial, unconstitutional avenues in order to hold on to his power, and the desperation that took place in all of these various directions with these fringe players, people like michael flynn, sidney powell, patrick burn, that overstock.com guy, as pat cipollone called him, to then putting out tweets and seeing how that reverberated in the extremist ecosystem and actually spurred action. the committee then did a really fantastic job of connecting that to other players like twitter, other parties that were potentially responsible in some way for getting these extremists to actually breach the capitol, people who knew along the way that it was problematic, that

violence was being fomented and encouraged in some way, but turned a blind eye because of the former president's power. i think in the broader legal scheme of things, we've heard about two crimes that the former president potentially committed. an attempt to obstruct congress and defraud the american public, but one of the crimes that is much harder to prove that i think came into play today as a result of some of these findings and these links between extremist groups and trump allies is that this seditious conspiracy. and some of these players that people like roger stone, michael flynn, rudy giuliani were in touch with, have already been sentenced on criminal charges of seditious conspiracy, so i think it raises the specter of what the department of justice is potentially looking at. and then in the end, they wrapped it all up by putting an extremely human touch on things by showing that trump's words directly impacted the people who ultimately breached the capitol and the people who were affected as a result of that breach. we ended with a really

extraordinary goose bump-inducing moment of watching stephen ayres, an insurrectionist, who went up to these police officers, we know gonell, michael fanone, harry dunn, the widow of officer aaron smith and officer hodges and apologized to them and expressed his condolences. obviously, you know, it remains to be seen whether those officers accept his apology, but it was a really surreal and emotional moment in the room. >> roller coaster is the perfect word for it. harry litman, i found myself watching, and i know trump supporters, and so i found myself watching mr. ayres and feeling like, oh my god, there were so many people who believed the lies he was telling them, and at least, obviously, mr. ayres is responsible for everything that he did. he seemed to take responsibility for that. but it seemed important to both

congressman raskin and congresswoman cheney and congresswoman murphy to make clear that they were also victims, that their lives were also upended not just by the lies but what they did in service to the lies. >> yeah. i agree. they really did put a human touch on it, even to the people who were acting on his behalf. and he was in some ways, was trump, a sort of supporting player here. we found out a few nuggets. there's the statement in the december 18th meeting, which is an amazing meeting that it's crazy the chief of staff let happen. there's his rewriting of the speech and adding all this stuff about pence. but otherwise, he doesn't figure in as much, except, look, there are always ragtag terrorists out there. i've prosecuted them. there are people who are deluded or believe in a charismatic leader. what they aren't, however, are normally following the direct

commands of the president of the united states. so, in some ways, even though he's the supporting player here, he really is the looming factor in the background that is making everything happen, and that's what gives rise to the potential charges that jackie is talking about. >> yeah, well, i want to -- i haven't done this yet, because we came on the air right as the hearings were ending, but i want to deal with the beast that is this meeting, this december 18th meeting figured very prominently, and we get to read along. it was one of those things that even as you're reading the transcript of it, your jaw is on the ground, and then to see it was just stunning. so i'm going to play different pieces of it. let me start with sort of the clash between cipollone and sidney powell, which, for the purposes of the coup, are sort of trump's better angels and, you know, the other one on his shoulder. let me play number three first.

>> do you recall whether he raised to ms. powell the fact that she in the campaign had lost all of the 16 cases they had brought in litigation? >> yes, he raised that. >> and what was the response? >> i don't remember what she said. i don't think it was a good response. >> cipollone and herschmann and whoever the other guy was showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the president. >> i remember the three of them were really sort of forcefully attacking me, you know, verbally. we were pushing back, and we were asking one simple question. as a general matter, where is the evidence? >> what response did you get when you asked ms. powell and her colleagues, where's the evidence? >> a variety of responses, based

on her recollection, including, you know, i can't believe you would say something -- things like this. like, what do you mean where's the evidence? things like that. or, you know, a disregard, i would say, a general disregard for the importance of actually backing up what you say with facts. >> so, the shiny object here is the lunacy of this meeting, and it sounds like it's verbally incredibly intense, but we know from eric herschmann, there's also a threat from mike flynn to get up and throw down at one point, just an argument for all women running the world, but we'll do that another day. i want to ask you, miles, the fact that even the craziest of trump's backers couldn't even, off the top of their head, throw out any evidence, seems like the other significant piece of cipollone's testimony. >> yeah, nicole, some of the key watchwords in this hearing were, where is the evidence? i think it's so telling that it wasn't just hours or days or

weeks. it was months of there not being evidence, and the president of the united states driving the democratic process right to the brink. i mean, this episode in the oval office feels like a "b" hollywood movie. you wouldn't even imagine aaron sorkin in the "west wing" thing to write something like this because it was never until now, in the trump administration, conceivable that a conversation like this would happen in the oval office. it was exceptionally chilling to see, and to see how close we got, that there was a handful of lawyers standing in the way, and that in a lot of ways, just say no pat cipollone was one of the reasons that it didn't go further, but even still, the president was inclined to believe this cauldron of crazy people that he had surrounded himself with. i'll note another watchword, nicole, from this hearing, was the word "civil war." it was very, very jarring to see a member of the oath keepers

reference civil war, to see text messages from trump's own campaign manager, previous campaign manager, brad, saying this was akin to the president, you know, exhorting people towards a civil war, but we all know, nicole, and we've talked about on this program, that trump himself has talked about civil wars being afoot. and this has an impact. 65% of southern republicans today believe that their state should secede from the union. this is having a very perverse, warped impact on our politics, and you can see how it instigated people to come storm the u.s. capitol. the last thing i want to note on that front is the third watchword, and that is, insurrection. as jackie noted at the top end, the references to the insurrection act aren't something that was new and novel in the lead-up to january 6th. as you and i have talked about many times, trump, for years, had fantasized about using the insurrection act to exert his

powers to the maximum extent, because he had been told by lawyers he essentially could declare martial law if there was ever an insurrection. so, it was very present in his mind that if such a scenario transpired, he might be able to exert additional presidential powers, and in this case, potentially delay handover of power to a new administration. >> joining our conversation is congresswoman elaine luria of virginia. congresswoman, thank you for being with us. nbc has just learned that the next hearing has been announced and scheduled for next thursday night in primetime. your fellow committee members gave a little bit of a preview, but it's clear that with the addition of pat cipollone's deposition, there is just a cascade or a crush of high-level white house officials testifying to what has been a theme through everything, that trump lost, trump was told he lost, his plot to overturn the election was illegal, trump knew it was illegal, and today, what was

introduced was a real bulk of knowledge tying trump to the extremists and their conduct. tell us what we should expect to be built on or enhanced or what we should understand better next week. >> well, as you discussed today, we talked through the lead-up, the call to d.c., what brought people here. we had a witness who himself, you know, heard that call and answered it and came to d.c. and was remorseful after the fact. and all of the different pieces that came together to have this violent mob attacking the capitol and what we're going to go into during our hearing next week that i'm going to lead with my colleague, adam kinzinger, is the 187 minutes. what happened during that time frame from when the president walked off the stage at the ellipse and the inaction during that time frame that allowed this violence to go on for 187 minutes until he finally walked

out to the rose garden and made a statement, and we'll contrast that statement between, you know, what was prepared by his official white house staff and the remarks that he actually gave at that point in time. because, to me, those remarks really, in a way, condone the actions of those rioters and the fact that he commiserates with them. we understand, you know, this is the kind of thing that happens, you know, when an election is stolen, the kind of language that he uses, and you know, it was alluded to today as well through mr. cipollone's testimony that there was a flurry of action to try to get him to do something during that time frame. and you know, myself and mr. kinzinger, as veterans, we're going to focus a lot on what the oath means to those people who serve, people who serve in uniform, people who now serve in public office, and this was really a dereliction of duty on the part of the former president. and so that's where we will take the next hearing. >> i apologize that our camera location there is noisy.

there's nothing more important, though, than hearing from you and i do want to ask -- actually, may i play some of one of the live witness's testimony? he seemed to be issuing almost a warning to anyone who thinks that the threat isn't ongoing. for my team, this is number two, and this is mr. van tatenhove on our need, all of us, as sort of a political culture, and i took it as a note to all reporters, to stop mincing words. let me play that. >> i think we need to quit mincing words and just talk about truths and what it was going to be was an armed revolution. i mean, people died that day. law enforcement officers died this day. there was a gallows set up in front of the capitol. this could have been the spark that started a new civil war, and no one would have won there. that would have been good for no one. he was always looking for ways

to legitimize what he was doing, whether by wrapping it in the trappings of, it's not a militia, it's a community, preparedness team. we're not a militia, we're an educational outreach group. it's a veteran support group. but again, we've got to stop with this dishonesty and the mincing of words and just call things for what they are. you know, it -- he's a militia leader. he had these grand visions of being a paramilitary leader, and the insurrection act would have given him a path forward with that. the fact that the president was communicating, whether directly or indirectly, messaging kind of that gave him the nod, and all i can do is thank the gods that things did not go any worse that day. >> congresswoman luria, he's speaking about stewart rhodes, he was his spokesperson, and he

explained how he broke with the oath keepers before the january 6th insurrection, but i wonder if the committee is able to make that link to who was communicating with stewart rhodes and the oath keepers and the proud boys in terms of that 181 minutes that we'll look at next week. >> yeah, well, i think the first thing i would like to say, and thank you for playing that clip, because that was very powerful, and i think those were words that needed to be said. i think that people do need to stop, essentially, whitewashing this and trying to make it something that it wasn't. some of the critics of the investigation, the committee itself, have said, you know, why are you looking at something that happened 18 months ago? and i keep saying over and over again, the truth is that the danger still exists. this things that brought people to washington, the extremist groups, the kind of rhetoric, the fact that people are still denying the results of the last election, there's still a danger. they're a danger today as far as violence is concerned, and they're a danger for the future of our elections. so i just wanted to highlight that. and you know, throughout today's hearing, and i said yesterday when i was on with chris hayes,

it's like a venn diagram that we've put together. we showed today these encrypted communications that happened between those people and trump's orbit, like roger stone and these leaders of these domestic extremist groups, and we showed the people from these groups providing security to the people like roger stone and general flynn and you know, as the witness you just showed said, whether it was directly or indirectly or signaling, all of these pieces are coming together and mr. raskin, as he said, we just showed a small part of the evidence we gathered through our investigation, and so we'll continue to dig into that and make these connections, fill out that venn diagram of where this information was flowing, who was in the sphere of these people and it just, like i mentioned earlier, it's clear danger that still exists today. >> as you're speaking, i'm thinking of the three pardons that trump gives out and the prominent role that the pardoned people, mike flynn, steve bannon, and roger stone play in the coup.

do you have any evidence of anything that transpires around the delivering of those pardons and their roles in january 6th? >> i don't have any direct evidence. it's a great point, though. it couldn't be more clear from what we just covered in the hearing today that of the people who were pardoned, there are three key players who figured prominently in today's hearing, so it's certainly something that bears more attention. >> when you have evidence of witness tampering, and it includes donald trump, and it's made public, is it intended to put more pressure -- i mean, the committee, as a whole, seems, i don't know, out of patience or exasperated or disgusted sometimes in what feels like a lack of action out of doj. can you characterize the views of the department of justice's investigations and prosecutions of the crimes that have been detailed by the committee? >> well, what i would say is that, from a personal perspective, i feel like the pace of that is picking up.

i had made some comments earlier directly related to those people who defied subpoenas from congress, because we really wanted to hear from those witnesses, so i said to the attorney general, please do your job so we can hear from these people, so we can do ours. but these charges of seditious conspiracy, the reporting that we are aware of of the people who have been interviewed and, you know, who are being questioned by the department of justice, i feel like that pace is picking up, and it is a good sign. the attorney general said directly after our first hearing, i'm listening to what the committee's saying, and we're putting a lot of evidence out there. so, i do believe that they're taking this seriously. i can't really comment because i don't have play-by-play information on how those investigations are going, but you know, about the witness tampering aspect it, i mean, as far as being a committee who's conducting an investigation and now we have an indication again that one of the people who's spoken to the committee has been approached and in this case directly by the former president, you know, with words of caution or intending to speak to them about their testimony, i mean, it brings into question,

what other kind of pressuring, about witnesses who have spoken to us, what kind of pressure was applied, and have we gotten the full information from them? i'm speculating, but with pressure being applied from different places towards those who have spoken -- who have sought to come forward and give us the truth. >> if you look at the evidence that congresswoman stephanie murphy shared of an insurrectionist, a protester, a rally organizer knowing that not only that trump would call on them to go to the capitol, would say he would go, and then it wasn't supposed to be widely known. that's a security move called an otr. cassidy hutchinson explained it in her public testimony, and i remember from working in the white house that nobody in the white house really knows when they're happening, for operational security concerns. is the evidence building to put trump at least inside the seditious conspiracy in terms of the evidence that you've marshaled and the suggestion

that he be investigated as part of that conspiracy? >> well, you know, it was very poignant, the information that we got today, that there was -- it was known. it was known to people within these dves, the folks who were spreading the message to get to d.c., that there was going to be this movement, but you know, hush-hush, don't tell anybody ahead of time, we're keeping this on the down low, and then the president acts as though it's a spontaneous thing. so that's something that is really important to look at and draw that connection and, you know, one thing that really touched me about this, and i just wanted to have a chance to say that, is the thing that wasn't even planned by the committee that happened spontaneously at the end, when you had mr. ayres approach the four officers who had testified at our first hearing, and here you have someone who was, you know, who answered that call to come to d.c., who participated in the violence, and the officers who directly received injuries because of that, and the apology that he made, and it

seemed like, you know, there's some level of reconciliation on an individual basis, but that moment kind of gave me this hope that maybe there can be some greater reconciliation across the division that we see here that was exhibited by the riot itself, you know, against our establishment of our government and our democracy. it's just like a little symbol, maybe, of something that could be a brighter light in the future. >> well, and importantly, mr. ayres testified to quitting social media after january 6th and doing his own research, so it had, at its foundation, a purging of all the disinformation and lies, which, you know, is one of the missions of the committee itself. congresswoman elaine luria, thank you for spending time with us on these days. i know they're very long ones for you. we're grateful. >> thank you. >> harry, i want to bring you back in on this piece of evidence, whether or not the committee is marshaling evidence to suggest that donald trump should be investigated as part of this seditious conspiracy. do you think that's the case,

and do you think he should be? >> yes, and yes. and that was really what was so -- such a blockbuster element of cassidy hutchinson's testimony, because it put him, the important element for seditious conspiracy or inciting a riot is force, and so we had him all of a sudden not simply, was he aware or not, but actually fomenting it. and here, by the way, i actually think the congresswoman just gave us a small bit of evidence, which is that he edits the speech before he gives it to the -- where he says, you know, please go home, and we love you, et cetera. and then also, we had something like that about pence himself in the speech that we found he edited as he was giving on january 6th. on seditious conspiracy, i'm going to get legal and nerdy here, but you need an agreement, and it looks as if the actual action took place at the end of

this remarkable meeting when he puts into action the call to arms of his supporters. was there agreement preceding that with any of the ragtag flynn pal folks there? they don't -- they haven't detailed it. but even -- but certainly, it's something that is there, that needs to be investigated now, and the other big ticket item that hutchinson's testimony puts into play for him, inciting the riot, which is another very serious charge carrying a long penalty, that, i think, has been very strongly documented, just with the testimony we've had to date. so prosecutors are hunched over to try to hear the agreement part, but otherwise, the relationship between trump and the violence took a huge turn as of hutchinson's testimony, and it continued today with different elements showing this is just what he wanted to happen, indeed, just what he was orchestrating. >> you know, jackie, something

that didn't happen, that the right was hopeful would happen, that they sowed seeds of disinformation around after cassidy hutchinson's testimony, was that there wouldn't be corroboration, that there wasn't already corroboration. the committee has confirmed that pat cipollone provided that corroboration and in every interview i've done with any committee member, and you would know better than me, the answer is always, we have plenty more. they don't seem to put anything out there unless they have multiple sources. a good journalistic practice as well. i want to ask you, and i want to play, because i promised i would, some of the testimony about this december 18th meeting. just talk about the significance of the timeline that's been established. they have clearly widened the misconduct and the planning and the premeditation and the inside-the-room well beyond the 5th and 6th of january, back to at least mid-december. talk about what it is they have and sort of the depth of the evidence and the depth of the investigation.

>> yeah, nicole, and you know, i just want to add, on that corroboration element, and to the right wing's attacks on cassidy hutchinson not necessarily landing, not only did we hear a lot of corroboration of what cassidy previously testified, but we also saw even more texture and detail about the relationship between tony ornado and cassidy hutchinson. the committee displayed a text very momentarily to wrap up that seven-minute montage between cassidy and tony, where they were texting each other in quite a friendly matter, where she was updating him in realtime about the meeting that was going on, and she described it to tony as unhinged. that's verbatim. told him to get to the white house immediately. we also saw even more documentation from cassidy about that day's meeting. you saw a picture that she took for mark meadows. she said she took one of him every day he was in the white house to essentially memorialize the day's work and that night,

she took one of mark meadows walking out with rudy giuliani, arm in arm, so that rudy didn't wander back into the president's mansion to continue his proposal to try to seize voting machines in order to overturn the results of the election and appoint sidney powell as a special counsel in terms of investigating election fraud. and that day, specifically, you see the committee opening up the aperture to at least december 18th, but i think if you spoke to committee aides and members, they would probably say, december 14th and in the aftermath of the electoral college certification in the state, which really cemented joe biden's victory, and which bill barr, as you saw in that videotaped deposition and testimony, him saying he considered that to be the true end of president trump's longwinded run for the presidency, but at that point in time, the former president had other ideas and was already

looking in the other direction towards sort of alternative, non-mainstreamed avenues to hang on to power. but the one last thing that i realized i forgot to mention in terms of highlights, there was really so much that the committee jam packed into this, was the premeditation of it all. there were two text messages that also stood out to me from ali alexander and kylie kramer, who both had premeditated knowledge that the former president intended to, in some capacity, walk to the capitol, wanted to do so, or that his supporters and rioters intended on doing so. there are still so many more questions that this committee has to answer, especially where are they getting that intel from, were they in touch with people in the oval office? i'm sorry that answer is far more than you initially asked me. but there was -- it was a journey. >> it was perfect. it's a perfect place. i do want to show all of you one more piece of tape, because we haven't talked about it yet, and

to everything jackie's just detailed, it's really significant how aware people were of the consequences of donald trump's tweet on december 19th. there was testimony from an anonymous twitter official who said he knew exactly how his call to arms was being received online. >> if president trump were anyone else, would it have taken until january 8, 2021, for him to be suspended? >> absolutely not. if donald -- if former president donald trump were any other user on twitter, he would have been permanently suspended a very long time ago. after this tweet on december 19th, again, it became clear not only were these individuals ready and willing, but the leader of their cause was asking them to join him in this cause, in fighting for this cause in

d.c. on january 6th as well. >> so, miles, that testimony coupled with the d.c. department of homeland security official who said, when you see a merging of all these disparate extremist groups coming together with a shared -- a blended ideology, it's a real red flag in the counterterrorism world. all those things came to pass ahead of january 6th. >> even more than a red flag, nicole, i think it's a smoking gun, and there's something that congresswoman elaine luria said when she was just on a few moments ago. she used a term that she didn't define. she said, dve, which is a term we use in the counterterrorism community to refer to domestic violent extremists, not people with radical views or just radical views, but people who want to actually use violence to move those radical views forward. it's a term we use for terrorists, and she was describing the people involved in these attacks at the capitol as terrorists, because we need

to remember, january 6th was, as the justice department and many other people in the federal law enforcement pointed out, it was a domestic terrorism attack. what's important about representative luria referencing dve is she was referencing these actors as engaging with people tied to the president. so, let's put that back into context. let's imagine that back after 9/11, evidence emerged that george w. bush had been engaged with people who were working with al qaeda. can you imagine the explosive political result if we found out the president of the united states was engaging with the terrorist organization that had committed the attacks? but that's what we're talking about here. we are talking about a major homeland security failure, not from an attack from the outside, but from within. and these dve groups exerting influence over people in the president's inner circle and vice versa. the president's inner circle potentially giving them direction and at a minimum,

engaging with them. that is extraordinarily significant here, and it points to another thing that congresswoman luria said just now when she appeared. she said some important words. she said, the danger still exists. and i think that's really important to note. these weren't just events from 18 months ago. we still see growing political intimidation, and in fact, a lot of observers i've spoken to this week have said they're worried about the data showing a potential uptick in political violence and even potentially political assassinations in this country. i don't say that lightly, but the experts are still very worried that we're in the red zone of threat. >> and we heard that from one of the live witnesses today, the former oath keeper testified to those ongoing threats. absolutely harrowing. we have to do two things. we have to sneak in a quick break, but i promise everyone sticks around. there's much more to get to. our coverage will be right back. . there's much more to get to. >> president trump is still promoting the big lie about the election. how does that make you feel?

>> it makes me mad, because i was hanging on every word he was saying. everything he was putting out, i was following it. i mean, if i was doing it, hundreds of thousands or millions of other people are doing it, or maybe even still doing it. it's like, he just set about that, you got people still following and doing that, who knows what the next election could come out? it could end up being down the same path we are right now. just don't know. being down the same path we are right now just don't know.

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into our coverage phil rucker, "washington post" deputy editor and back with us, rejoining the conversation, neal katyal, former acting solicitor general, now, lucky for us, an msnbc legal analyst. neal, i've been waiting for you to come back to do this. these are the parts of the evidence presented. it's cipollone and raskin sort of fleshing out what trump sought to do in appointing sidney powell a special counsel. i want to play that, and we'll talk about it on the other side. >> he asked pat cipollone if he had the authority to name me special counsel. and he said, yes. and then he asked him if he had the authority to give me whatever security clearance i needed, and pat cipollone said, yes. and then the president said, okay, i'm naming her that, and i'm giving her security clearance, and then shortly before we left and totally blew up was when cipollone and/or herschmann and whoever the other

young man was said, you can name her whatever you want to name her, and no one's going to pay any attention to it. >> mr. cipollone, when the matter continued to flare up over the next several days, was it your understanding that sidney powell was still seeking an appointment or that she was asserting that she had been appointed by the president at the december 18 meeting? >> you know, now that you mention it, probably both. you know? in terms of, like, i think she was -- i think she may have been of the view that she had the appointment and was seeking to get that done, and that she should be appointed. i don't think sidney powell would say that i thought it was a good idea appointing her special counsel.

i was vehemently -- i didn't think she should be appointed anything. there was a real question in my mind and a real concern, you know, particularly after the attorney general had reached a conclusion that there wasn't sufficient election fraud to change the outcome of the election, when other people kept suggesting that there was, the answer is, what is it? and at some point, you have to put up or shut up. that was my view. >> well, i have come to a different understanding of the importance of this testimony and this evidence. there was never any evidence. no one ever thought there was any evidence. that's why the clown car ran the fake evidence train. and it seems that it was always a coup plot. it just took us a long time to be able to say that out loud. >> 100%, nicole. so, i think what these specific clips show is an abuse of government power by donald trump, by trying to install his own person as special counsel in order to advance his private

ends and indeed to overturn the election. our friend, ari melber, was a phenomenal lawyer, just noticed that right away, right when this happened. he tweeted, that's what this is about, and i agree with him. and it's really remarkable, you know, i wrote the special counsel regulations. they're the same ones that robert mueller was appointed under when i was a young justice department staffer. >> you almost had her as someone who would -- >> exactly. let me tell you, that was the farthest thing from our minds back in 1999 when we wrote them. we thought of people with gravitas. but in any event, it was a reticulated, detailed process to appoint a special counsel. it wasn't something you could do slap dash by whim the way trump did here. and it's reminiscent of something we already know is that trump did the same thing not just with the special counsel, he tried to do it with the attorney general of the united states. it's the same move. take this low-level environmental official who nobody thought was qualified whatsoever, jeffrey clark, make him acting attorney general so

he can do trump's bidding, and what was trump's bidding? it wasn't, like, go get me a soda from the fridge. it was, overturn this election. delay certification. >> with no evidence. >> with no evidence. and that's the other piece that i thought was so significant in those clips you showed. it's not -- it's the white house counsel, cipollone. it's everyone around him, even kayleigh mcenany, even ivanka trump saying, trump lost. by december 14th, we knew it, and still, they plot and plot and plot afterwards, and we saw the result on january 6th. >> well, the other result is they were willing to endanger, legally and physically, their own supporters. i mean, the fake electors were all sent out there without any evidence either. i mean, what do you make of -- and congressman raskin made this point at the end. the human carnage trump talked about in his inaugural address came to pass on january 6th. >> 100%. that is trump's m.o., which is not just breaking the law or being a mob boss, but also not caring about his supporters and what happens to them, whether

they face violence, whether they face jail terms or the like. i mean, at least mob bosses have loyalty to their folks. donald trump has none. and i think we're starting to see the result of that behavior. he doesn't have the same loyalty that people thought he had. he had cultivated fear, and people were afraid to cross him, and certainly it looks -- >> still are. >> certainly looks like he's engaging in some or attempted witness tampering or something to try to cook the books a little bit more, but people are coming forward. everyone we're hearing from, these are not deep staters. these are not democrats. these are trump's top people saying this. >> phil rucker, the meeting in the west wing, which was like a bar crawl, like, started in the west wing, make their way down the colonade, it had all the makings of one of the -- 38 officials describing this bat bleep crazy thing or something

from your book with carol leonnig. what is it like, though, to hear it in televised sort of deposition form? >> i mean, nicole, what we saw this afternoon in this hearing is that meeting come to life and in so much more raw detail than we or our colleagues were able to report in realtime or after the fact. i mean, we heard from people like pat cipollone what exactly was going on in that meeting, the dialogue, the intensity, the lies all over the place. i mean, that was one of the epic moments in this kind of post-election period for trump, and frankly, a real turning point in the plot for a coup intensifying, and then triggering the president to urge his supporters to come to the capitol on january 6th and in the run-up to that. i mean, it was a regular remarkable showdown between sort of the more level headed, relatively more level-headed white house advisors and the people that, you know,

congresswoman cheney shorthanded as the crazies. >> phil, i always want to know this question. i've never been satisfied with anyone's answer, why they stay. and i guess i want to ask you one more time. i want to add a second part to it. why do they stay, and it doesn't look like they win very often. i mean, he gets answers he doesn't like from barr and cipollone. he didn't care. he just goes on to the twitter or turns on fox news for an hour, and he pulls in the pillow guy and the overstock guy or gal or whatever he was. i mean, why did they stay, and did they ever win? >> you know, i had a similar thought watching the hearing today, because we heard from so many of these trump people saying, you know, look, in private, they were telling the president that he had lost the election after the electoral college was settled. they were leveling with him with the facts and yet they certainly weren't saying that publicly, and they always don't seem to have taken much action behind

closed doors to avert what we saw happen on january 6th. so, a lot of these figures continued to work for the government, continued to be public servants in the white house, and doing trump's bidding publicly, and yeah, maybe they told him to his told him to his face they thought he lost the election, that the evidence that sidney powell claimed existed was all fantasy and didn't kpis, but they didn't do action to stop anything, didn't do anything public that could have thwarted this coup attempt. you wonder how history might judge them in the end. they're coming forward now and telling their truth, but what were they doing between november 14th and january 6th? >> jackie, the story of the committee has been an incredible success story in compelling testimony. >> reporter: absolutely. i think that everyone has been, to some extent, surprised by how

much this committee has ultimately been able to piece together considering, one, the legal battles that many were anticipate as they started this endeavor almost a year ago, but also because of how much was already out there due to the excellent reporting from people like my colleague phil, people who in the aftermath of that december 18th meeting reported on it right away. but it always -- the story always ends up grabbing your attention a little more and you end up getting new details when you hear from people who were a part of it firsthand. even if it's a rehashing of information we already knew it still is gripping and paints a pretty damning picture for the former president and everything that was swirling about in the white house as he was making this attempt to hang on to power. >> miles, january 6th i remember

being called to anchor early with rachel maddow and brian williams, i believe. we were all separated because of covid. we didn't share sets at the time. and i remember calling three former national security officials, and i said, i don't know what i'm looking at. it look like a tailgate. i don't understand what i'm watching. i said, how do we fix it? they said, we can only fix it within the trump movement. do you think the committee's done the work of deradicalizing trump supporters? >> i think they have to aed moest extent. i'll be starkly realistic about this. it's difficult to deprogram anyone who's been radicalized. it's one of the clearest themes in counterterrorism, it's very

difficult to deradicalize. but what's important is you have millions and millions of republicans who don't feel comfortable with the party the direction has gone, don't want to support donald trump, but they're quiet, just like the people around him who were quiet and complicit. you've got millions more around the country who feel the same way and are just looking for an offramp. i think the committee is providing an offramp for those rational republicans or at least an excuse to say, we can't do that again. again, those people aren't the majority of the republican party, but they are a plurality. they are enough to be a pro-democracy coalition to throw elections away from people like donald trump who's a populist. but i share the same sentiment. the day i was watching this unfold like you on january 6th, to me, the immediate reaction was this is a homeland security threat. more importantly, a foreseeable one. donald trump can't say this was

a spontaneous revolt at the capitol. i had a body guard that day because of threats i was getting from maga people and my own body guard was saying he was worried the activities at the capitol were going to spiral into violence. we knew it was going to spiral in that direction and we knew in advance. this it was a foreseeable homeland security crisis, and that's one angle i'm interested in the committee investigating. why was the director of homeland security on an international junk it in the middle east rather than being in the u.s. continue a day when there was very predictably going to be violence at a u.s. institution? >> what would you presume having worked there. harry, you first. >> we think doj knows everything and doesn't tell anything. it's just not true. we know they were really struck by cassidy hutchinson. i think there's no doubt that the two grand juries that are

sitting about official investigations are taking seriously charges all the way up. christopher wray, head of the fbi, just said we're looking at everyone. you don't say that casually unless it's all been cleared. i think they are in earnest. and with what is known and has been revealed now -- and there are some important pieces that haven't been -- they simply cannot stop at the, what, meadows level or roger flynn level. they will emphatically go to the end. not to say they'll bring charges but they will investigate to the end of the road. >> so you started this program two hours ago with our friend claire mccaskill, and she began by saying the rule of law has failed and i guess my answer to you and to her, to quote lin-manuel miranda, not yet. there's still the justice department investigation. in my mind -- i know merrick garland quite well. i've argued in front of him and

so on. he's cautious. but when you're looking at the mountain of evidence, to use claire's words, it's unthinkable for me to think he doesn't indict at the end. >> trump. >> yes. as hard as that is, we've never indicted a president in the history of the republic, it's something third world banana republics do, but trump acted like a third world banana republic. >> and sought to turn our country into one. >> garland's a smart guy. i think we're looking right now at the best case for an indictment of donald trump. >> wow. best prediction. thank you all so much for being part of our special coverage. grateful to all of you. quick break for us. we'll be right back. grateful to all of you quick break for us tools and advice can help you get there. that's the value of ownership.

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so, in case you missed any of today's hearing or any of our analysis over the last two hours it's not too late. you can tune in at 8:00 eastern for our primetime recap special. i'll have the privilege of joining rachel maddow and joy reid for two hours of comprehensive coverage of the tape of the actual hearings, what we saw and heard today, and everyone's smart thought about what it call means. our coverage right now continues with a man who neal just described as a very, very, very smart lawyer, ari melber. >> reporter: hi, nicole. thank you so much. here's what we learned today -- explosive evidence that donald trump planned to lead the march to the capitol in advance. that's b