the john in that email is john eastman, the constitutional expert the came essential -- we don't knoweport to memos outlining his plot to create fake slates of electors in seven swing states. he used them to pressure pence to swing the election for trump. in the days before january 6th, he wrote that leaky pens begin to open and count the ballots, starting with alabama. at the end, the dispute in seven states, given the fake electors. there are no electors that could be deemed validly appointed. that means the final number of election -- is 454. a majority of the electors appointed with therefore be 228. there are at this 0.232 votes for trump, and 220 votes for biden. pence gavels president trump as reelected. we've known about this for sometime now, but still, wow. eastman wrote a second memo, outlining wargames scenarios should pence reject the fake elector plot. despite all of this evidence, and despite with the january 6th committee has uncovered about the plot, john eastman has told the new york times that he is actually the reason that a more perilous outcome did not happen. se

the focus has been the fake electors plot, and john eastman is the potential target.s barbara mcquade, former attorney and district attorney of michigan and professor at university of michigan law school. let me get your thoughts on john eastman's contention that he somehow saved us from more uncertain peril in all of this. >> well, alex, there is a reason that lawyers often tell their clients when they're under investigation not to say anything out loud because you might say something foolish that can be used against you later. he took that advice, john eastman did, when he was testified before the january 6th committee, invoking his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. when it didn't count and he's talking to the press, he has a story and he's got an explanation. when it matters, he chooses not to answer those questions. i think that's a tell right there. i also think this is inconsistent from what we're hearing from mike pence, pence's aides, and others in the white house means in the end i think it's going to be difficult for him to persuade the jury

bowers would later get a call from another trump attorney, john eastman. >> we know there was fraud.porter: whom the january 6th committee sees as a key player in this grand plan to undo the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. >> the ask was kind of that we would throw out the electors. and i said, "has it ever been done?" he said, "uh, no." i said, "you want me to take my state, 3.2 million voters, and just throw them out the window because i want to? and that's responsible on my part?" i said, "okay, thank you, we're not doing that." >> reporter: bowers kept his caucus on the sidelines. but in the arizona senate, republicans there yielded to pressure from team trump and voted to conduct an audit of the results in arizona's largest county. >> when they got the cyber ninjas, i thought, i'll watch. this will be interesting. i don't want to be close to that. >> reporter: you might remember the ninjas, the company was run by a trump supporter. they employed ultraviolet lights which could supposedly identify ballots from china. >> they came out that mr. biden won by a l

i thought about what if those folks did decide to go with what john eastman and people were forcing? the consequences of we will be in the no man's land of what do we do now? it would have been in a big crisis. they're worried about people grabbing their pitchforks. you see that. especially in georgia and down south when people have a strong antigovernment am a local resident of the community and i have a family legacy of the law school here. you can join in, too. i've done a lot of reading on the republican electoral ballots. i am curious to know if the -- is there a statute that prescribes a natural sentence for the people who find them? approximately 100 people around the country assigned phony republican electoral ballots? i would like to see those people get 20 years. can you guys give me some idea of what kind of sentence might result from those who signed them? >> that is pretty specific. >> there is no federal law i am aware of that would have been violated. the question is what state law would have been violated by signing? in discussing this issue with various legal experts

there is john eastman at the ellipse, warming up the crowd. eastman the chief architect to over turning the 2020 election. he invoked the 5th amendment more than 100 times under the questioning of the january 6 select committee. while today there is a late breaking development involving mr. eastman. today the state bar of california filed him with multiple disciplinary counts. there are 11 in all. arising from allegations that eastman engaged in a court of conduct to plan and promote and assist then president trump in executing a strategy, quote, unsupported by facts or law to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by obstructing the county of electoral votes of certain states. this is important because the california state bar specifically cites that eastman speech, that we just showed you, the one he gave on the ellipse on january 6, specific charged allege that he made false and misleading statements regarding purported election fraud including statements on january 6, 2020 at a rally in washington, d.c. that cont

>> he introduced me to a gentleman named john eastman. >> that's then president trump making the linkn the call to eastman, a coup plotter who had a coup memo and a playbook he circulated. mcdaniel says under oath it was trump who both made the introduction for what would become a request to commit crimes, and trump listened in. >> what did the president say when he called you? >> essentially, he turned the call over to mr. eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case there are any legal challenges that were ongoing changed the result. >> the results didn't change. her description of it under oath refers to donald trump's cover story, or what most prosecutors view as a crime, submitting false information, in this case elector material to the government. it's a type of fraud. it's a crime, illegal. trump was both orchestrating the call using his power as president to get the rnc chair on the line and making her talk to his lawyer, who he thought he could help keep his secret because of attorney/client privileg

and i'm not the prosecutor and, as you said, i'm not the judge, but we put a lot of stock in john eastman all that. i don't know what he was using it for. >> it floored me. it floored me that he would take this position. and since that time, it's floored me he would take these positions. as they see fit, i can only testify what he said to me. i know that others have talked to him as well on the subject -- or i should say i'm led to believe others have. i wasn't part of the conversation. but everybody has to be accountable. i am. your. >> sure. >> he is. >> so the president alluded to your campaign today while honoring you. a lot of people including president biden hold you in high regard. i do want to ask you about the political history here partly because i was -- you read about rusty bowers, i watched your testimony which was quite impressive, and then i saw, and i'll remind viewers, that around june after everything you said, you publicly said if trump were the nominee against biden, you would vote for him again. by july you said actually you would never vote for him. i bring this up o

hey, what communications did you have with john eastman? what kind of communications did you have with jeffrey clark, who was trying to claim there was a fraud in georgia, when there was none. and he was a senior doj official, bucking to become the new ag in the final days of the trump administration. these are kinds of communications that would have been gettable january 7th, 2021. and it's hard to imagine what the justification was for not asking for them. there are a few things people will quibble about, about how aggressive somebody needed to be on january 7th and what new things they needed to learn. but those were pretty basic communiques and lots of people knew in public open sources about jeffrey clark and john eastman and all of these individuals, some of whom were first interviewed, by the way, i won't name each one, but some of these principles were first interviewed by congressional committee. that's just not the way that the department of justice rolls. and you know it better than anybody. they're the first ones breaking down t

there may be people like john eastman or jeffrey clark whose phones doj has already obtained.see what their roles were in all of this. and then offering them an inducement in exchange for their truthful testimony. there are a number witnesses that fit that category. i imagine a big part of the work over the holidays is to identify which witnesses they want to go after. >> gotta be curvy here. as you're talking. it feels like i'm getting the impression that you think things are really going to heat up in 2023. >> i do. i think that since egypt -- jack smith arrived he has had access to a lot of information. certainly a lot of investigation has already occurred. i think doj is running up against a little bit of a deadline now. to nobody get this case charged particular tridents an tensed before january of 2025. i think that means they've got a file charges before the first quarter of 2023. >> barbara mcquade. always good to talk to you. thank you. house democrats are calling out the irs after publishing six years of trump's taxes. trump's records show he paid 1500 dollars in tax

now, any prosecutor probing people like giuliani or trump lawyer john eastman or trump himself faces these extra hurdles. i want to be clear and spell out the reason we hear about the hurdles. prosecutors work for the government. they mostly prosecute civil yanls. those are people out of government. when the facts suggest they have to turn and investigate their own -- government leaders, their own bosses, the police who are their government teammates in investigations -- that is harder. now, let me level with you. some prosecutors just basically won't do it unless they are dragged to it. that's one reason some jurisdictions in the unite, and you can count had up, have over years at a time, no charges for the officials or police who work there, no matter what they do. and that brings us to an old case that is new again, the one that brought shame on rudy giuliani and new york, which many argued was one of the signs that giuliani cared more about order and power than any equal administration of the law, back when he was america's mayor, and more popular in many ways. giuliani was pushi

so i do think if i'm donald trump, or rudy giuliani or john eastman, or any of the people involved in that, i'm gonna be very nervous for the next couple of weeks, i need to see exactly what this grand jury found, and what the dea down there is going to bill. >> barbara, let's change topics, these classified documents that were found under washington think tank, tied to president biden. walk us through how the headlines might be, similar but how the trump mar-a-lago documents, and the five documents are not at all the same? >> first, i'd say that anytime you have the potential of leaked classified information, that is leaked into the public domain, it's important investigate that case, so i'm pleased to see that the justice department is putting the u.s. attorney on the case. in, fact one appointed by donald trump. but, their similarities, and i think. one is, upon finding these documents, lawyers for president biden immediately called the national archives and sent the documents back. that is one big distinction from donald trump's instance, where he's refused for 18 months to return

donald trump just a day later when the capitol was under attack, and trump was also talking to john eastman that mike pence could somehow intervene and block the electoral certification on january 6th. >> this comes as they're releasing a trove of transcripts. what are we learning from these? >> reporter: a lot of witness transcripts. obviously the primary takeaways from the report and the committee we already got. this is giving us a little bit more color, a little bit more texture about what was happening around january 6th and the run-up. the executive assistant to donald trump when he was in the white house was talking about how she got a phone call from trump when the riot was unfolding, asking her what she thought, and she said the images i was seeing is the predominant memory i have. she was describing what she was seeing on tv to the president. he said, i don't have a memory of his response, and the committee investigators were sort of incredulous about this. he said, the phones were ringing. a lot was happening. i don't recall, and she said, i don't remember him expressing anything

maybe jeffrey clark, john eastman, tom klukowski, some of those people who may have been involved inould rather be witnesses than defendants. i think if we see charges against those individuals, that could be a sign that the prosecutors are trying to flip them. same in the mar-a-lago case. you may see some of these lawyers who signed these documents saying that they've turned everything over, or other people i know there's been some talk that the valet who gave statements to the fbi first was not as forthcoming as he later was. that is somebody who also has potential criminal exposure. if you see criminal charges against lower level people you will know that they're working the way up the chain. >> glenn, there was a federal judge who's ordered trump's lawyers to provide the government the names of private investigators he hired to search his properties for any classified material still in his possession. what does this mean for smith's investigation? >> it means the federal prosecutors are pushing as hard as they can to make sure they get all the evidence of potential crimes by dona

he was reaching out to john eastman, an attorney we now know is involved with coming up with this notionhat mike pence could block the certification of the election result. that is what the former president was focused on just ahead of january 6. >> thank you. alyssa farah griffin, who served as white house communications in the previous administration. also cnn legal and national analyst, carrie cordero. what do you make of these text messages, hope hicks texting, we all look like domestic terrorists now. this made us all unemployable. >> she's right. those who attacked the capitol that day were domestic terrorists. i'm glad she used that language. hope in the white house was an assistant to the president. that's the highest ranking level you can have as commissioned officer of the president. it's my belief that anyone that senior had a duty to speak out and to speak out publicly. what's remarkable two years after the fact is some of the most compelling and important testimony we've gotten from january 6th was from junior people, people like cassidy hutchinson, people like sarah matthew

worked directly with some of the people that congress has now recommended for indictment, like john eastmanident in that suit. of course, it was also the rnc that tried to back up what is now a convicted sedition plot as, quote, legitimate political discourse. fact check, false. and then there's all the parody. >> i don't believe that president trump wanted people to attack the capitol. president trump didn't choose me because i'm a woman. he chose me because i was the best person for the job. i'm proud of this president. i'm going to vote for him again. i'm excited to work on his re-elect. i think he's done the thing that he's campaigned on. i hear people every day say that he fought for us, he gave us a voice, he's somebody who listened to the average voter and fought for us in washington. and now they feel their voices are being diminished under joe biden. >> it's january 2023, to start the new year, meet your new republican party chair. she is your old republican party chair. >>> now, we're going to fit in a break, but i want to turn next to something that many around the nation are bra

people affiliated with john eastman or jeffrey clark, in an effort to work your way up the chain.terms of a timeframe, i think we need to see something in the first quarter of 2023. and maybe the ultimate charges by the first half of this year. that is because of looking at the other end. there's gonna be a new administration in january 2020. five that could bring with it a president trump or a president from some other member of republican party. that person would then have the power to shut down this investigation. so i think you need to make sure this case is charged. and well on its way to trial before we get to that point. and i think that means charging this case before if there are charges to be made before the middle part of this year. >> middle part of this year. and what also comes to mind immediately is, the presidential elections. starting how early, and how long you have to calculate these especially coming from merrick garland, what he's doing, and how he telegraph city. how do you put that into the timeline? does that mean by the end of this year? really gonna make

she was on the phone call with john eastman when pushing the false electors scheme. republican party is reconciling between the far right and the far, far right, right, but then there were structural issues which i think are legitimate, such as should the rnc be more decentralized and have more representation out in the states. did they spend the money the best way and the auditing and what not. there are structural issues that i think there will still be a debate about in the party. >> i think that, you know, at the end of the day, the average american is really would have had trouble deciding who actually in -- would be a good chair for that party to unit independents and people in the more extreme wing of the party. it's important to realize at the end of the day to everyone's point, what we saw is that a number of people across that we were looking at denied the results of the election and they were involved in different parts of january 6th and all of that and their different conversations with president trump going into it. it's hard to tell the distinction as

the president call med and forced me on the phone with john eastman. they're saying the jury is accelerating its activity, talking to witnesses both high and low level. this is the other big game in town, and as i've told you before, the facts and the potential crimes and the insurrection part of it are much more significant than the classified document part, and that's before you even goat all of the new swirl of pressure on the doj to resolve what are two different but to many people overlapping classified document cases. with this much public evidence on this many crimes, even short of the insurrection offense, the question is, will special counsel smith take any action? we have a lot more coming up tonight when you look at the d.c. chaos. we have someone who's been inside the congress, barbara boxer. and coming up, george santos spending time with matt gaetz. as we sometimes say around here, but why? well, it was steve bannon's internet show. does that clarify. we'll get into it next. l get int ♪ just till they taste what we've got ♪ [ tires squeal

coming out of that work, the obviously needed criminal referrals of donald trump, john eastman and others to the department of justice, the culpability of those bad actors is crystal clear, and the crimes that were committed that day cannot go unpunished. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> that's right. the committee also made incredible legislative and executive branch recommendations, policies that will improve our democracy going forward. and so now we are looking to our elected leaders, to the white house to move forward on those democracy reforms. the things that will protect our country as antidemocratic forces continued to online and try to destroy it. so i make an honor to be here with the president for people for american way, with all of our incredible allies to gather and on the memories of those we lost. so with that we are going to launch right into a program starting with represented john sarbanes. picky is an incredible democracy champion. [applause] he represents maryland's third district. he chairs the democracy reform task force any as the original assembly of h.r. one,

. >> to which, cody's attorney, john eastman, responded -- >> baloney. >> why do you say that?by cody. >> and when her parents support the idea that she was abused, why would parents do such a thing? >> i don't know. i don't think you abuse someone into committing murder. i've never heard of someone being abused ending up committing murder. >> tony was founded over for trial, just like cody. analysts now sitting in a jail cell, facing the daunting prospect of losing her life,, not to kody patton but to lethal injection, unless what if tony told a whole new story about her role in mickey costanza's murder? a story that just might eventually set her free. after advil. feeling better? on top of the worlddddd!!! before advil. advil targets pain at the source of inflammation. when pain comes for you, come back fast with advil liqui-gels. every parent knows when it's time to go into protect mode. adding lysol laundry sanitizer kills 99.9% of illness-causing bacteria detergents leave behind. clean is good. sanitized is better. theo's nose was cause for alarm, so dad brought puffs plus

john eastman made that argument about the constitution when he argued for the coup law.bout when you have to certify the election. you know what we could do, don, we could call state house guys. you got some of those on your phone? let's call them in michigan. this is exactly how trumpism functions. frankly, it's how putin's propaganda and troll farm functions too. the similarities are jaw-dropping. finds a little gray area that no one ever thought to exploit before because no one else was ever so anti-american. it's not good for the country to not be able to pass a law. we don't have any members of congress. they're all members-elect. >> what's not good for the country, this is a preview of what this congress is going to continue to do. what you're just seeing here is a dress rehearsal for what's going to be happening on issues that really do matter, including whether or not we're going to raise the debt limit. and what we're seeing is -- and i think this is an interesting point that you're making is, yes, there are flashes of substance here. but ultimately, the goal se

there is not just one call that john eastman led, there was a second call where she was back to donald trump to get an update on what was happening. she talked to his campaign lawyer justin clark about the progress. so testimony like that, which is basically innocuous on its face can be very valuable to the justice department in putting together all of the pieces here. >> yeah. and i meant to ask all of you what pieces of the testimony stood out. katie, i missed that with you. what for you added to your understanding of something you've covered before or didn't know? what sort of piece of evidence or full transcript added context to something for you that you think is notable? >> i think when we were reporting the story at the time, it was really interesting that the folks closest to donald trump and even in the outer circle, people working in the white house like mckennedy, they were really adamant that all was going well, things were normal up until january 6th. and even then, you don't see a lot of public statements coming from folks in the white house, but you see privately that th

pronouncement, again, from the other branch -- from another branch of government that donald trump and john eastman likely committed felonies, had it had a transformative effect on not just how people covered january 6 but how americans saw donald trump's criminality in the deadly insurrection. i wonder how we take a judge without a dog in the fight other than dealing with the cases before him who is plainly calling it out. >> i do think one thing to keep focused on is as much as everyone is thinking about criminal accountability and certainly that is very valuable thing to keep an eye on, suits like dominion, this case with sanctions, this sort of civil remedies are really important and now that the former president is repeating some of the same lies now that he is a former president, the protections you have, you have a lot of immunities and privileges when you say things as the president, those don't exist anymore. >> yeah. so his saying these things is going to expose him over and over to these kinds of lawsuits. many people are asking the question in the dominion case essentially will he get a

. >>> and there's a new effort to disbar john eastman, the chief trial counsel for the california baratement yesterday explaining that eastman faces eleven disciplinary charges, all stemming from allegations eastman quote engaged in a course of conduct to plan, promote, and assist then president trump in executing a strategy unsupported by facts or law to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election. the statement accuses eastman of making false and misleading statements about election fraud, including remarks at a rally on january 6th before rioters stormed the capitol. eastman has been under investigation by the state bar since march of last year. let's bring in democratic congressman dan goldman of new york who was just named to the house oversight committee. dan, it's good to see you, congressman. tell us a little bit about your work on the committee, and the possibility of getting anything productive done. >> well, as you know, mika, the republicans have put the qanon caucus on the oversight committee, and we can expect every conspiracy theory under the sun t

his friends ranged from john steinbeck, the radical author of the grapes of wrath, max eastman, editorof the marxist publication the masses, to lord mountbaton, a member of the british royal family, last viceroy of india, and of course winston churchill. churchill wrote glowingly about chaplin's early work as an entertainer during churchill's own early days as a journalist. churchill, in fact, was a frequent flyer in the chaplin orbit, visiting him in hollywood and meeting with him during chaplin's various trips back to the uk. but conservatives beyond churchill could have found more to like about chaplin had they've been looking more carefully for things to like about his work. in many of his films, chaplin's character is a striving capitalist figure trying with all his might to find and keep a job in difficult circumstances. in many of the tramps films, chaplin's character is trying very hard to escape poverty by his wits and find a way to settle down in a conventional marriage with a secure, one might even say suburban, dream of financial security. in modern times of 1936, which has