surprise appearance from elliot williams there, attorney.editious conspiracy charge is a surprising charge and something prosecutors wanted. talk to me about the significance of that effort and the convictions. >> right, it's a very rarely brought charge for the justice department. as a matter of fact, you know, some of the -- you know, this case and some of the others focusing on some of the leading figures that you saw in the violence on january 6th, some of these cases began under the trump administration before the new -- the new administration took over. and for a while it appeared there was some doubt inside the justice department about whether these cases on seditious conspiracy were going to go forward. in the end the attorney general reviewed all the cases, and he made sure he believed that the evidence was there, and that's when they brought these charges. in all, you know, they've targeted a number of oath keepers, i think 29 oath keepers in all have been -- have been prosecuted in these cases. again, the focus here has been on th

elliot williams getting oafver e technical difficulties. rolling with the punches.h us. >>> president biden is set to welcome the president of the philippines to the white house this hour, and this trip is happening against the backdrop of deepening u.s. tensions with philippines' neighbor china. >>> plus, continued anger over the new pension law in france fueled today's may day protests. we're going to take you live to the streets of paris. stay with us. your shipping manager left to “find themself.” leaving you lost. you need to hire. i needndeed. indeedou do. indeed instant mat instantly delivers quality candidates matching your job deription. visit indeed.com/hire liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. with the money we saved, we tried electric unicycles. i think i've got it! doggy-paddle! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ what will you do? will you make something better? create something new? our dell technologies advisors can provide you with the tools and expertise you need to bring ou

. >> here with us to discuss this, we have cnn legal analyst and former federal prosecutor elliot williams. he's also a former deputy assistant attorney general. elliot, great to have you here. this attorney goes on to say that the social media companies were actually maximizing engagement around this video. because of that, they were making ad revenue off of it, that that was sort of the whole point of maximizing it. when you think of this as a possibility, is it -- do they have a very good case here? >> it's a novel case, brianna. this has really never been done before. they're saying that it's an improperly designed product. that even if used properly, the design of it was so bad that it actually led to violence. imagine a car with a defective airbag that's designed badly. you would sue the automobile manufacturer even if someone were using it properly. that's the argument they're going down. it's totally new, but this is how litigation works. lawyers try new things out and see what might win. >> it's not like any product, right? >> right. >> something that includes speech, free speech,

. >>> ryan goodman of just security and elliot williams, ryan, i want to kick it off with you, as just heard paula lay out there, the special counsel is looking at the handling of surveillance footage that was turned over under subpoena. how significant is this development. >> it's highly significant if the special counsel has reason to think the surveillance video was tampered with, very significant, one, this is a case of obstruction, that would be obstruction on steroids. that the department of justice specifically subpsubpoenaed. a very serious aggravating factor pointing the justice department to indictment under the espionage act. it would also mean that more than one person was involved. >> so, let's take a step back, as a prosecutor how much of this is about due diligences making sure there was no obstruction of justice. as we heard paula, laid to a new round of grand jury subpoenas. >> pam, it's hard to say. i think as prosecutor one doesn't want to go on what you'd call a fishing expedition to find new evidence or similarly to look for things that might not be there. my guess

. >> let's bring in elliot williams to talk about the legal aspects of this. pretty key, right? where he says in this, we conclude that the justice department and the fbi failed to uphold their importaw in connection with certain events and activities described in this report. how bad is this for the s etty . it sounds like there was sloppy work by the fbi and the justice department that led to the opening of an of the have the gagz investigation is was there the grand conspiracy that many people thought, and it doesn't look like that was there, but by any measure it looks like there was sloppiness and i think the devil is in the details and i want to see the basis for how they came to that conclusion. >> i don't want to equate the two, the fbi investigation and crossfire and hurricane and this durham investigations, but we should not there are come chonnalities, right? which s.t.a.r.t. out as a conspiracy, but the legal work didn't break up with actual charges, and i believe he got one criminal charge for faking an e-mail. can you see some of the same weaknes

i want to bring in our legal experts, including elliot williams. culations was the manhattan district attorney making to determine how to charge this case, elliot, what do you think? >> so, look, wolf, it was ruled a homicide right off the bat. that's where one person causes the death of another. the question is was it justified in some way or was there some defense that takes away from the homicide it makes it not a crime you can charge. to john's point a moment ago, what constitutes manslaughter. when someone is aware of and consciously disregards a risk to another person. the calculus is, number one, what happened prior to the video that we've all seen? and what was the scene that led up to this? number two, what was going on sort of in the circumstances around involving other people and so on. what jurors and prosecutors are going to have to assess here is the reasonableness, and that's a word out of the new york state law, of the actions in taking someone's life. was this an act of self-defense or was this such gross negligence that ought to be

elliot williams, these charges are under seal, what could santos be facing potentially from your perspectivest things first, wolf, welcome to the single craziest day in the history of american law, so putting that aside, you know, i think it might be irresponsible to really speculate as to what might be in there now if we're talking broadly speaking about crimes associated with political campaigns what you usually tend to find are mail fraud, wire fraud, those are using either the mail or electronic communication to defraud people of money and you see that in the context of political candidates, false statements, or potentially campaign finance violations, any of those, and some of the other crimes identified there, the financial irregularities or improprieties. not everything can get into federal court. some things would be state crimes. these are just the things that would bump it into federal court. i think we'll find out much more tomorrow as to what these crimes might actually be. >> norm eisen, you've got a lot of experience in this area. santos could, as we just heard, appear in court