Updated
Summary
Congress claimed blockbuster insurrection hearing tonight, presenting new evidence and testimonies from witnesses including injured Capitol Police officer. The January 6 Committee vows new evidences against Donald Trump at the hearing. Mary Trump joins Ari Melber to talk about testifying against the Trump family about the January 6 attack. Trump allies went from legal lawsuits to illegal coup plans.
Transcript
ARI MELBER, MSNBC HOST: Welcome to THE BEAT. I`m Ari Melber. And this is it.
It`s been over a year of investigating. Interviews with over 1,000 witnesses. Congress got over 140,000 documents. The January 6th Committee promises tonight`s hearing will have bombshell new evidence and they`ve scheduled accordingly. This is the first primetime public hearing that they`ve held, and really the first primetime hearing any Congress has held in years.
It`s hours away. It will reach millions more people than the traditional daily news because we know that many, many networks, well outside of the cable news universe, are taking this live tonight. So it will reach people who are trying to get law and order, and they`re going get this version of how law and order fell apart at the end of the Trump era.
The committee says Donald Trump was at the center of a, quote, “coordinated multi-step effort to overturn the results of the election.” Tonight it will play for the first time ever just a few highlights of the many interviews it`s done, including what we now know is videotaped interviews with Kushner and Ivanka.
We will also hear from the very first Capitol police officer known to be injured, and testimony from the filmmaker who got this footage that shows this secret militia meeting in a parking garage on the eve of the insurrection. The filmmaker recording Trump supporters also on the day of the riot. Some of this has now being released for the first time today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Freedom.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am not allowed to say what`s going to happen today because everyone is just going to have to watch for themselves. But it`s going to happen. Something`s going to happen.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will storm the Capitol.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right on.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Whose house?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our house.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All we want is Pelosi.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: Nancy. Nancy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nancy Pelosi.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Like so much in any legal proceeding or investigation, some of what you see there is technically old, but brand new. Old in that it happened on the day of the 6th. New to everyone who doesn`t have, well, subpoena power. If people out in the crowd knew something was coming, and we`re talking about storming the Capitol, if it went that far to reach hundreds, how high up did it go?
We`re also learning that the key elections official who stood up the Trump in Florida, Brad Raffensperger, will testify at one of the future hearings and a top Pence adviser who was with then Vice President Pence on January 6th when he has to be ushered to safety will also testify.
Democrats say this is more than telling a story or filling in details. They say what begins tonight and doesn`t end tonight is making sure this thwarted coup will not become a rehearsal for one that works.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): It is eye-opening for me to see the story that we are about to tell America.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re going to find out some things that we didn`t know 24 hours ago.
REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): There is no way to move on without getting accountability.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exercise of addressing a slow-moving attempted coup against our democracy right now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re not dumb. We know the former president wants to do it again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Our special coverage on this special a diagnosis of THE BEAT begins right now on the law and the historical significance. I am joined by NYU law professor Melissa Murray and presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
Welcome to both of you. Michael, what would or will make this historically significant if it is done in the proper sober way tonight?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, it`s already historically significant because, as you and Melissa, we`ve talked about this a lot the last number of months, never before have we seen an incumbent president or anyone else waging a coup d`etat against the Congress and the government of the United States to try to stay in power even though he was not re- elected.
This was an attack on Congress and the Capitol of a kind that we have never seen before. People keep on talking about the war of 1812. That was British soldiers. That was not Americans conspiring against our own democracy. So it`s already historic. The important thing now I think is we`ve got to discover what really happened. It`s still mysterious. We`ve got to know who was behind it. This seems to involve in a great way three branches of government — the president and his circle, who increasingly seemed to have agitated for this.
We now know that there may have been members of Congress who are part of this horrible conspiracy and plot, and even the spouse of a Supreme Court justice, Ginny Thomas, who texted things that shows that she was involved.
[18:05:04]
The other thing is there are all sorts of people who probably gave money to this that we don`t know about yet and also domestic terrorist groups. That`s something we may find out about tonight. You know, we`ve got the spectacle of a president of the United States possibly dealing with domestic terrorist groups to stay in office, saying go up and attack the Capitol and presumably even if the vice president of the United States is shot to death, or the speaker of House, perhaps, Nancy Pelosi, might have been attacked or taken hostage.
This is what`s at stake. It can happen again. These people have to be found, punished, and make sure that this is not something that`s a big part, just as you were saying, Ari, of our future.
MELBER: Yes. Professor?
I think all of that is correct, but I think the special committee has an even bigger task ahead of them. That the American public is relatively anesthetize to these sorts of things. We haven`t had primetime hearings but we have had impeachment hearings, we`ve had a number of different kinds of episodes like this in the relatively recent past.
MELISSA MURRAY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW PROFESSOR: And so the question is, can they hold the attention of the American people and explain a story that actually is quite complicated and nuanced, and show that these weren`t two disembodied events, one at the Capitol, one in the Oval Office, but in fact that they were joined together, that they had a concerted effort that they fed into each other more inextricably linked and the underlying concern to our democracy persists until this day.
That`s a really Herculean task that they have to deliver. Otherwise this really will have been for not. They have to deliver that to the American people, make this claim that this is a threat and it is an ongoing threat.
MELBER: Yes, you both are really bearing down on the core of this. Our historian reminding us that that which is not dealt with only grows, and our lawyer reminding us that there are actual connections between what might sound like a dizzying array of crap, and that`s deliberate, too. Mr. Bannon who we`ve interviewed talks about flooding the zone with crap. He uses a different word. And that is also designed, as the professor said, to confuse, sort of discourage, and yes, anesthetize everyone because, oh, gosh, I don`t even know what`s going on.
On that note, Professor, take a look at some of this reporting. We`re going to hear more about this tonight. But you`ve got a former aide to Mark Meadows talking about how Meadows was warned of the violence in advance, that he was burning his papers in his office for weeks.
What does that tell you, Professor?
MURRAY: This is, you know, this is standard banana republic stuff. I mean, this is stuff that happened in the Marcos administration in the Philippines in the 1980s. I mean, the fact that you would be destroying evidence in advance of something coming, you know, this is the stuff of dictators. And there`s so much here that I don`t think the American public really knows. Like, I was surprised to see that footage where they were storming the Capitol and chanting Nancy Pelosi`s name.
Everyone knew that they got to Nancy Pelosi`s office, but I hadn`t seen them calling for her. And there`s a way in which so much of this has the lens of gender, the lens of race, and really this kind of demographic anxiety that the leadership profile of this country is changing, and the people that we once expected to be leaders are no longer the leaders that we have and that there are some people in this country who are really angry about it.
And so I think all of that is part of the story that the American people need to understand, need to wrestle with. And think about. Like, is this the country that we want to be?
MELBER: A very key question that hangs over tonight. And that brings me to the next thing I wanted to play for you, Michael, which is when we talk about the power of this testimony, we know we`re in a more polarized, balkanized world, and we also know there are people who would do democracy and us harm, who want us to believe that nothing matters, that facts don`t matter, that the world will never get out.
And yet even in their cynicism, they betray a certain awareness that the facts matter because if they didn`t, why would they have to lie so much?
BESCHLOSS: Right. Absolutely.
MELBER: Donald Trump needs people — he needs people to actually think something. It doesn`t work for him to just say he is a full-blown dictator. What he needs is people to think, well, maybe there was such (INAUDIBLE) and voter fraud that it was a, quote, “tossup,” or maybe he really won, which ironically shows that the liar does still have some relationship back to the truth which — that which he protests.
Not to be too poetic. That`s your job. You`re the more acclaimed author. And so with that mind, sir, let`s look at something quite serious, which is the testimony we`re going to hear of. This is the TV interview with the injured officer, Officer Hodges.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OFC. DAVID HODGES, U.S. CAPITOL POLICE: I don`t know how they sleep add at night. It`s incredibly transparent how — what they`re trying to do. They have no to the know how important this is. What makes you want to keep the truth from coming to light so badly that you`re willing to just put boldfaced lies out there all the time, constantly, and mislead the people?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[18:10:06]
MELBER: And for your response, I want to clarify, Officer Hodges there speaking. We`re going hear from another separate officer tonight. Just want to get that — corrected myself on the record. But what does it mean for the nation to hear from these individuals?
BESCHLOSS: You`re getting to a primary source and you`re penetrating this body guard of lies that the Trump circle has created around itself. That is working. You know, we`ve talked about these poll numbers. Many fewer people think that Donald Trump had anything to do with this than thought that was the case a year ago. All I`m saying is, what has happened to our country? What`s happened to our poor country?
If we were together, let`s say, the three of us 20 years ago, and someone told us that there was a president of the United States defeated for office who was not willing to concede and who was willing to exploit military forces, conceivably, was willing to consort with the domestic terrorist groups, was willing to have members of Congress essentially plotting against their fellow members if the evidence suggests this, and was taking money from shadowy dark moneyed groups that was funding this entire operation.
Twenty years ago certainly the three of us would have been shocked, but most Americans would have said, you know, that`s not someone who should be president again. We`ve got think hard about this.
MELBER: At a minimum.
BESCHLOSS: We`ve got to make sure that this threat against our democracy is eliminated forever. So my question once again is, what has happened to our poor country in 20 years that so many Americans see everything I`ve just mentioned and just yawn?
MELBER: Yes. I`m letting that sit for a beat. I hope people are listening because as mentioned the cynicism is what some want and they benefit from it. Both of you have called not for any type of partisanship or agenda, but both of you calling for us to as a nation, those watching and everyone, to consider the facts tonight. So I appreciate that. A fitting — yes, go ahead sir.
BESCHLOSS: No, that`s all. I mean, let the facts speak, and if we are living in an age when a lot of Americans don`t care that these things happened, don`t care that they might happen again, are cool with the idea that the guy who was behind this conspiracy and coup d`etat, if he was, might come back as president in 2025, I just don`t know what kind of a country we`re living in.
MELBER: Yes.
BESCHLOSS: I don`t think we`re that far along yet. I hope not.
MELBER: Yes. Michael Beschloss, Melissa Murray, thanks to both of you.
As our special edition of this BEAT episode continues we have new audio that shows just how far things have come from January 6th itself and the committee`s approach to the Trump insiders including those now indicted, some of them, who have admitted their plans on television. We have an update on that including our primary reporting.
And the question that hangs over all of this, I`m going give you a breakdown tonight about really one legal way to watch these hearings. I mean, you`ll decide how to watch them, but I want to share with you the key questions that we think hang over this, and then by the end of the hour we will hear from none other than Mary Trump herself live on this special edition of THE BEAT.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:17:39]
MELBER: The Republican Party has been hardening its line about the facts of January 6th. If you remember, there was a time when it was a big deal, and then it wasn`t. And then it became outright sympathy with rioters. But let`s remember, because if there was ever a night to do this together, it is tonight, at least that`s according to the government.
Let`s remember the shock when this all happened and think about what we`ve now learned. And you don`t usually get this, I could tell you, in journalism. You don`t always get these behind-the-scenes stuff. What top Republicans were telling their colleagues in that month of January that they, too, had to get to the bottom of what happened. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): We cannot just sweep this under the rug. We need to know why it happened, who did it, and people need to be held accountable for it. And I`m committed to make sure that happens.
What we`ve learned is that people can get in. We learned that people planned. We need to have all the facts especially for all of us. And we should do it in a bipartisan manner.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Wow. That`s what Kevin McCarthy was privately saying. It`s this thing in politics that sometimes happened where people are actually seemingly better in private but then the nature of their soulless need to stay on top of whatever their base says has made them act worse in public or eventually maybe they internalize it. Now they`re politicians. We hold them responsible for what they do. They don`t get extra credit for what they privately muse about potentially doing.
McCarthy went on to of course vote against the very thing he privately thought was necessary a few days after the insurrection which was a bipartisan probe. Now Republicans are denying that there even was an insurrection. Mitch McConnell, though — I want you to see this tonight — admitted it was exactly that on the 6th of January.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): This failed insurrection only underscores how crucial the task before us is for our republic.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: Wow. That`s Mitch McConnell that night. That`s what he or his aides realized had happened, and he decided to say it and he said it on the Senate floor. That is now controversial an anathema inside his own party. Indeed you`re going to hear people tonight who say what he said then, and many of them will be Democrats because so many Republicans bail on the committee, and then you`re going to hear Republicans oppose that when that`s what their leader McConnell was saying on the Senate floor.
[18:20:02]
And other Senate Republicans also in those moments speaking out about exactly the truth of what they knew about why that Senate floor on which they spoke that night, why it was stormed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MCCONNELL: We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs, or threats.
SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): We do not encourage what happened today.
SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): My heartfelt gratitude goes out to the Capitol Hill police who valiantly defended our building and our lives.
MCCONNELL: We will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation.
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): Violence is not how you achieve change. Violence is not how you achieve something better.
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Chaos, anarchy. The violence today was wrong and un- American.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): We had police officers, the men and women that we walk by every single day, with riot gear getting spit on and attacked.
SEN. ROB PORTMAN (R-OH): Mob rule is not going to prevail here.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: “Enough is enough.” Those were all Senate Republicans I just showed you. Why do they sound so different now, and why does that matter?
Michael, you`re about to be on television. Michael Hirschorn and Elie Mystal are here when we`re back in one minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: We`re back with our special coverage. And I just teased that we`re going to have two special guests. They`re sitting with me but this breaking news is the first excerpts we`ve gotten from Chairman Thompson`s opening remarks tonight. I`m just going to tell you a little bit, which gives us the sense of what`s coming.
Chairman Thompson will say, quote, “We can`t sweep this under the rug,” which is similar to what McCarthy said as we just pointed out. The chairman will also say, quote, “Democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over. And the scheme was an attempt to undermine the will of the people,” end quote.
Now as promised we bring in our guests on all of this. Justice correspondent for “The Nation,” Elie Mystal, and an Emmy Award-winning TV producer, writer and now progressive advocate, Michael Hirschorn.
Welcome to both of you. Michael, I`m going to start with you because for years you produced reality TV. We`ve mentioned that before as either a credential or a caveat for some viewers for you. Is that fair?
MICHAEL HIRSCHORN, ISH ENTERTAINMENT PRESIDENT AND CEO: Yes. Fair enough.
MELBER: But what you were very good at and sought after was producing all kinds of riveting television. Now you work on a lot of progressive advocacy. We`ve talked to you about gun reform, we`ve talked to you about progressive organizing, and so you seem like a great person to assess what I just showed.
How much has changed on the floor of that very body that was breached and how that fits into the story that the Congress is trying to tell them?
HIRSCHORN: Right. Well, I think — before I even start, part of the problem has been the reality TV-ization of politics and of journalism. Right. And the Republicans I think have been very smart about storytelling in a way that the Democrats have not been smart about storytelling. So what`s interesting about tonight is, can these hearings really recapture the story and take it away from the fake news and from the other outlets that are trying to use distraction to sort of change the subject and to distract us from what`s actually happening and what happened.
MELBER: What makes a story break through?
HIRSCHORN: It`s very tough to say. I mean, in my world and I think also in politics, it`s casting. It`s the right person. It was John Dean. It was Joseph Welch, should we go back to 1954 in the Army-McCarthy hearings.
MELBER: Have you no decency, sir?
HIRSCHORN: Have you no decency? It`s the right person.
MELBER: Which Jay-Z sampled on 444. One of the only congressional hearings to ever be sampled.
HIRSCHORN: Really good point. And —
(LAUGHTER)
HIRSCHORN: I absolutely defer to you on that one. It`s the right person saying the right thing at the right time.
MELBER: So, before I bring in Elie, to that point, from your perspective, do you see any such witnesses yet?
HIRSCHORN: I don`t know, and I hope that person is there and they`re hiding that person, because surprise is also key.
[18:25:07]
And if they`re smart and if they`re also former head of ABC News who`s producing this as a televised event, is smart, we are going to be surprised. Surprise is everything in narrative.
MELBER: Fascinating. So that brings us to Elie on the legal perspective. You follow this very closely. Let`s be clear, the government, the committee touts this as a primetime hearing. That`s not a constitutional concept, and it`s not a congressional concept. It is a television concept, and it`s also people around this committee saying, they saw what happened to the Mueller report fizzling, and they are going to present this to the public through the television tonight.
Your view on how to do that?
ELIE MYSTAL, THE NATION JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, there`s really an audience of one here, right? And that audience is Merrick Garland. Because at the end of this hearing, at the end of these hearings, what we have to have is Merrick Garland watching this thing at home and being like, you know what? Crimes have been committed and the American public will stand for nothing less than the dogged prosecution of those crimes.
And that`s why we need to do it on television. That`s why we need to have people kind of ready. But here`s the other thing, Ari. As you say, this is — what happened to the Mueller report, really? Part of that is a media failure. And we have to be prepared, I think, in the media, to not fail again. Right?
What we are witnessing is one of the biggest acts of American political cowardice in the history of this country, all right? We have McCarthy, we have McConnell. We have these Republicans whose lives were in danger, who have been turned around and sided with their abuser. Sided with the person who sent people to either kill them or certainly bully them into doing what he wanted, right?
Now these Republicans turn around and so like, oh, the committee is not bipartisan. They had an opportunity.
MELBER: Right.
MYSTAL: To participate. They had an opportunity. There`s a reason why this is a House committee and not a Joint Session of Congress committee.
MELBER: Right.
MYSTAL: And it`s because Mitch McConnell refused to participate. And the media has to remember who was willing to show up for the American government and who wasn`t whenever these Republicans make their comments about how the committee is stacked in a partisan nature.
MELBER: You bring up such an important point. I want to get into it. We sometimes say around here fact check. To what you just said about the goals of the individuals there, fact check true. They wanted to kill anyone who was upholding democracy. We live in a world where this has now been repolarized as if it were partisan, but what`s striking to the facts and we have to see tonight and in these hearings how it comes out is, to your point, they wanted to kill Mike Pence. They said so.
They wanted to kill and hurt Nancy Pelosi. They said so and there`s new video on that today. It wasn`t even about teams. Of course killing people, murder is wrong. If the party can`t deal with that, they`ve got bigger problems. And what we`re just shown in the introduction was that two in line, every senator in the Republican Party who spoke that night, said that stuff, it was bad. So if they`ve moved this far away, what is the truthful obligation of those with any platform or power to deal with that?
Because you could tell two sides of the story as to what McCarthy saying today, or you could just say what McCarthy said then, which might be truer.
MYSTAL: Yes, I mean, look, the people need to understand how close this happened to — they got to succeeding. And as you said, they weren`t trying to kill based on party lines. They were willing to kill Republicans if they had found them. If Eugene Goodman doesn`t heroically lead these people on a wild goose chase throughout the Capitol, congressmen would have been kidnapped, potentially harmed, potentially killed.
If staffers don`t have to wherewithal to secure the electoral ballots, the physical electoral ballots and shuttle them to a secure location before the insurrectionists ransacked the Senate Parliamentarian`s Office, the election would have been thrown into chaos. And so it`s incumbent I think not just on the January 6th Committee but on everybody with a voice, on everybody with a platform to refocus the issue on what almost happened to the country, and how we stop it from happening again.
HIRSCHORN: And I think also, too, the moment you`re framing this as, how will it affect the midterms, you`ve already lost. Because that`s not the point of these hearings. The point of these hearings, it`s a last stand for truth in the democratic sphere, right? It`s a battle to establish facts and that facts matter in a way that allows democracy to continue to function. So in a way, the stakes are much, much higher than what will happen in the midterms, but also it`s crucial that journalism and the media not turn everything into a horse race.
This is not a horse race. This is an existential moment for this democracy and the hearings that take place overcoming the month are going to determine whether we have a democracy in the future or not.
MELBER: Can I ask you a follow-up?
HIRSCHORN: Sure, it`s your show.
MELBER: Who won the morning?
(LAUGHTER)
HIRSCHORN: Not falling into that trap.
MELBER: That`s what some of these sort of D.C.-based outlets always do. And that`s what they`re going to do tonight. So, to Michael`s point, in conclusion, the joke being making fun of us here in the media and the mistakes some of us make. What is on your mind a watch tonight? What`s the point?
MYSTAL: We need to know what the President knew and when he knew it, right? There`s a debasement that`s happened that we can`t let become normalized, right? Donald Trump had the opportunity to call the National Guard. These are actual people who are supposed to come in and stop insurrections. He did it. Mike Pence called the National Guard. We need to know why. And we need to know what if anything Trump was doing to protect the American government during the hours that it was under attack.
MELBER: And had this been slightly more effective. And I use that word precisely. Mike Pence would not have been in a position to do that.
MYSTAL: There was — he was — he was in mortal danger.
MELBER: Elie and Michael, thanks to both of you. When we come back Donald Trump`s niece Mary Trump speaking out here live.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:35:33]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): The committee has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity. I think that Donald Trump and the White House were at the center of these events —
REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): And the public hasn`t seen it woven together, how one thing led to another, how one line of effort to overturn the election, led to another and ultimately led to terrible violence.
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY), VICE CHAIR, JANUARY 6 SELECT COMMITTEE: It`s absolutely clear that what President Trump was doing, what a number of people around him were doing that they knew it was unlawful, they did it anyway. There`s not really a dispute on the committee.
RASKIN: The Select Committee has found evidence about a lot more than incitement here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: The first big hearing is tonight, we`re joined by Donald Trump`s niece, Mary Trump, the author of Too Much and Never Enough as well as The Reckoning. Tonight`s hearing and the evidence they`ve gathered includes Trump family members, and most viewers are familiar with your evolution and the tortured relationships he`s had throughout his family. What do you think first and foremost of the role of that testimony?
MARY TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP`S NIECE: Ari, I was honestly surprised to hear that it was going to be featured so prominently. But in — since I have heard that I sort of reconsidered what it might mean. I believed all along that Ivanka and Jared would try to walk a very, very fine line. They would reveal information that would help them or promote their own self-interest without necessarily betraying Donald.
But again, I`ve also said that if they really believed it was in their self-interest to — they would be entirely out for themselves. So again, the fact that their testimony is being featured so prominently is intriguing to say the least.
MELBER: Take a listen to Trump on January 6.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We`re going to have to fight much harder. We`re going to walk down to the Capitol. You`ll never take back our country with weakness.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MELBER: What is the committee in your view need to do to add to what`s publicly known there, what he said, to what people around him may know about what his intent was, and the big question that Elie Mystal crystallized just moments ago on our program, what — what criminal intent might there have been?
M. TRUMP: I`ll do my best to answer your question, Ari, but unfortunately, I can hear other people discussing their audio. So, I`m having a little trouble hearing you properly.
MELBER: I`ll jump in and tell you that I also am hearing these other audio feeds with a technical problem, but it`s good to flag for viewers. Mary`s doing her level best, as am I. Sometimes that happens and we just go through it. So yes, we`re working on that audio, and did you hear my question or do you want me to repeat it?
M. TRUMP: If you could repeat it, because they`re a little louder than you are.
MELBER: Yes, no, I been there. And to viewers, we`re sorry. It`s on our end, you`re being a sport and this happens in live T.V. sometimes. The question was, do you think there is testimony that can add to the understanding of whether he had criminal intent that day?
M. TRUMP: Yes, I do. And I think one of the things that`s been so frustrating for lay people like me, is that we think we saw what happened. We don`t really understand why it isn`t so straightforward. Why it`s not apparent to anybody who`s been paying attention, that of course, he had criminal intent.
But I think that`s one of the — certainly tonight, one of the most important aspects of this hearing. To help people understand, one, why it`s necessary to lay it out. And I`m sure add to the record of what actually happened, because it`s one thing as you know, better than anybody, it`s one thing to believe, you know, there was criminal intent and an entirely different thing to prove it.
MELBER: Exactly. That`s all quite striking. It`s on our minds as we think about who`s going to testify tonight. What I`m going to do is fit in a break while we work on some of the tech. And again if Ms. Trump said anything that sounded off from a question I`m going to go ahead and take my responsibility for it because I know you were just struggling with the audio.
[18:40:00]
But everything you said made sense to me, and we appreciate you hanging with us tonight. Appreciate it. When we come back, we have been working on a report that fits into tonight. The biggest question, how high did this go, and will there be evidence, not conjecture, not just recollection, but hard evidence of it going up to the top of the White House. A special report when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MELBER: We are looking here live pictures right outside the hearing room where the January 6 committee will hold its first-ever primetime hearing tonight. We`re also now just about 15 minutes away from Rachel Maddow, leading our special elections coverage of this tonight. You can see right here, Rachel, Joy, Nicole, Chris, Lawrence, and myself throughout the evening.
[18:45:00]
Rachel starts up promptly at 7:00. So, we encourage you to be ready for that. I wanted you to know that because some people might be looking for that right now. And well, you`re within 15 minutes of that. We`re also keeping an eye on other late-breaking developments. Mr. Peter Navarro, the second person indicted for contempt of Congress after Bannon.
And coming up after this short break, we have something I mentioned the top of the hour. Our breakdown of the evidence that has led up to this day. How the committee will handle not only the coup confessions, but so much that has emerged since January 6, in evidence, in investigations, in journalistic accounts, and sometimes in freewheeling seeming admissions. How is that all lead into what we`re going to learn tonight? That breakdown is next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[18:50:20]
MELBER: Tight congressional hearing on the insurrection may recount and relive that day for many Americans. That has value. Let`s be clear. That`s not enough. The special committee was created to do more than that. Explicitly to establish the facts of what happened to inform potential policy and potential punishment, which is one way to deter such future attacks.
So, by the end of these 6th hearings, the committee has a duty to try to answer the larger questions, which is our special report right now to end the hour. The questions, was the January 6 events, initially a gathering that then got out of control, or were they specifically planned attack? And was the effort to stop certifying, then-President-Elect Biden`s win, a kind of futile series of machinations by random politicos are part of an organized attempted coup by the incumbent, outgoing president.
One of the committee`s main avenues to answer these questions involves going to the source and interviewing people, just as journalists interview sources during and after momentous events, something we`ve done right here on MSNBC. And the statements that admissions of Trump`s own aides have shown what may not have been apparent in the weeks after Trump lost in November.
That public complaints and farfetched lawsuits were not one final performative grievance that led to what you see here. No, they overlapped with and morphed into actual plans to overthrow Trump`s lawful final loss. It`s something we asked the Trump lawyer about back at the time.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JENNA ELLIS, SENIOR LEGAL ADVISOR, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Our strategy is to make sure that we continue to challenge all of these false and fraudulent results —
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: This election was stolen by mail-in ballots —
D. TRUMP: Will be going to the newest Supreme Court. We wanted all voting to stop.
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, FORMER PRESIDENT TRUMP`S NEW PRESS SECRETARY: The president is still involved in ongoing litigation related to the election.
MELBER: What is the point of all this?
ELLIS: Well, the point of this, of course, is to get to fair and accurate results because the election was stolen and President Trump won by landslide —
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MELBER: Now, let`s be precise, some of what those Trump lawyers said and did was legal. You can file lawsuits with no basis. They`re called frivolous lawsuits. They`re generally legally pointless. But that`s not a crime, that is allowed. But notice the goals were moving even then, in that interview, Miss Ellis, the lawyer started pushing that they wanted their own results to show a Trump quote, landslide which did not happen.
So, Congress must probe how that became a potentially illegal conspiracy to commit voter fraud and elector fraud and install fraudulent electors who they thought might somehow override a state`s entire lawful vote in the states that Biden won. Now that goes beyond frivolous lawsuits trying to seat fraudulent electors for the January 6 certification. While then- President Trump openly demanded Mike Pence reject the Biden electors for basically any reason they could make up.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MELBER: Did you ever make calls like that regarding what you`re calling these alternate electors?
BORIS EPSHTEYN, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN ADVISER: Yes, I was part of the process to make sure that we`re alternate electors —
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We, the undersigned, being the duly elected and qualified electors hereby certify the following for President Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida, number of voters 11.
DAVID MUIR, HOST, ABC NEWS: New pressure from President Trump on Vice President Mike Pence to reject the electors.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.
EPSHTEYN: Not fraudulent electors, Ari, it`s alternate electors. Because of the process again, that`s laid out in the Constitution under the 12th Amendment —
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MELBER: The last admission you heard there is from Giuliani`s deputy, Boris Epshteyn, a Trump campaign lawyer copping to a plot reported in January by Rachel Maddow and other journalists, that is now under investigation by both Congress. We may hear about it tonight. And the Justice Department.
That plot goes way beyond pressuring Mike Pence to magically declare trump the winner. Something Pence and his own lawyer knew was not constitutional and they said so at the time it goes beyond that. And goes to a plot that would appear to come from inside the Trump White House recruiting lawmakers to stop or just sort of delay the certification of then-President-Elect Biden`s win.
Now, think about that. I was just very careful to note some of what was being done then might have seemed fanciful and ridiculous but was lawful. Mr. Giuliani can file baseless lawsuits. People can talk and lie about the results of the election in public. In public, the First Amendment protects all kinds of speech, including lives, most of the time.
[18:55:00]
But when you start having meetings of fraudulent electors, in concert with other individuals in the White House, and the president formally publicly calling to seek frauds and electors, that`s voter fraud. That`s electoral fraud. That`s why the word fraud keeps coming up. Now, part of this attack on democracy is not even contested.
There are Trump aides who admitted. One was just indicted last week. Indeed, the only contested part would — according to them, sometimes boiled down to whether to call overthrowing democracy, a sweep, or a coup.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER NAVARRO, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE AIDE: We had over 100 congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill ready to implement the sweep.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A dozen senators now saying they will object at least in some form to the votes on the electoral college.
NAVARRO: We believe that if the votes were sent back to those battleground states, most or all of those states would decertify the election —
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As several Republican members of Congress and senators, egged down by President Trump and his false claims of electoral fraud in this election are going to object.
MELBER: Do you realize you`re describing a coup?
NAVARRO: No.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MELBER: No. To Mr. Navarro, it was a sweep. Mr. Navarro, like Mr. Bannon, is someone who has pushed harder, more vehemently in public to both overthrow the election at the time, and to defend that act afterward. A kind of a public laundering, if you want to call it that to say, this could have worked, and it could have been lawful or constitutional.
Now, what else do those two have in common? They both been indicted for going farther to defy the Congress and the investigation than just about anyone else, including Trump`s own family members. So, what might have initially looked fanciful or extreme or even like just poor judgment in the public square, has started to look like something else, if their hands were on the plot that intersected with Trump`s calls, to find any excuse no matter how thin out of court to overthrow the electors.
So, tonight`s hearing digs into that. Congress has to probe who else was in on Mr. Navarro`s admitted plot. And if the evidence shows it was his own rogue dream, OK. That would be good news for Donald Trump. But if it shows that the former president directed this. And directed trying to seek fraudulent electors. And directed a plot to commit massive voter fraud in Georgia and elsewhere. That starts to build evidence of a criminal conspiracy.
The government, Attorney General Garland always has an obligation to indict leaders of criminal conspiracies, no matter who they are, not because of who they are, but no matter who they are. And that`s the question hanging over these hearings. Is there evidence linking all these pieces into that orchestrated plot? Then there`s the violence. Now, in all fairness, there were certainly people who went to that day`s rally just to be at a rally to protest to exercise free speech.
And remember, most Trump rallies did not turn into insurrection. So, it could have been a reasonable expectation for some people that they were going to a rally just a rally. But the Justice Department is already indicting others, with sometimes damning evidence that there was this plan. The most serious crime possible against the government, sedition. And then there`s this new video out today showing — well, let`s take a look at how we`ve pressed some of those organizers of that rally.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAROLINE WREN, FORMER NATIONAL FINANCE ADVISOR FOR DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN: My role that day was similar to my role at other events where it had been to assist many others in organizing and executing a professional unlawfully obtained like permitted event there at the White House Ellipse.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The subpoenas seek planning and funding records, including any coordination with the Trump White House.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger Stone, a confidant of former President Donald Trump, flanked by men wearing insignias of a militia group.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 11 people tied to the events and rallies that took place before the insurrection.
CATHERINE HERRIDGE, HOST, CBS NEWS: Create a crowd that would then be leveraged to facilitate the riots.
DUSTIN STOCKTON, CONSERVATIVE STRATEGIST: We knew what kind of logistics it took to move a crowd of that size.
MELBER: Would you ever vote for him again?
STOCKTON: I`ll definitely be looking to support somebody else in the Republican primaries.
HERRIDGE: Alleging the attack was part of a broad and well-organized conspiracy.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MELBER: A broad conspiracy. We know it was for Donald Trump`s benefit. Was he in on it that is the big question that hangs over tonight and it`s a question of evidence, not politics. MSNBC`s special coverage of this hearing starts right now.