Watch The Beat Highlights: Dec. 16

january 6 investigation pointing to possible crimes by trump and his allies in congress the probe intensifying as new evidence is uncovered today and a major new subpoena just revealed philip waldron the retired u.s army colonel who circulated that powerpoint coup plan has been subpoenaed the committee wants to hear from this election denier who got access to the white house bolton's powerpoint uncovered in the meadow strove of data detailed a plot to overturn biden's win here is the brand new letter from the committee stating waldron has quote information concerning attempts to disrupt or delay the certification of the 2020 election results meadows got a copy of the powerpoint one day before the insurrection waldron saying he visited the white house on multiple occasions after the election and spoke with meadows maybe eight to ten times waldron subpoena citing that very statement he made to the washington post here he is last december at a georgia senate hearing spreading false information president chavez designed him for their their their design to control and manipulate votes and that's what we found reviewing these things we have affidavits the in pennsylvania and in arizona that these machine printed ballots were injected into the system have you had an opportunity to examine any of other dominion machines no no but we'd like to um that was rudy giuliani laughing but he might not be laughing now a major trump ally turned over phone records former trump campaign manager brad parscale says the phone data was subpoenaed and he's cooperating singing like a jaybird all of this coming as trump allies in congress are rattled and scrambling maga's gym class jordan admitting to a coup text to meadows others worry the committee knows what they did last summer the new york times reporting six gop loyalists fought to keep trump in power as maga insiders were holding so-called crisis meetings as early as november 9th more on this in a moment this explosion of evidence stems from mark meadows trump's top aide who led trump allies in congress to pressure the justice department to overturn the 2020 election meadows in serious legal jeopardy and with this evidence so are trump allies in congress joining me now i could not think of a better pair of people to talk to joining me now is former u.s attorney joyce vance and justice correspondent for the nation the angriest lawyer on television ellie mustal thank you guys so much for joining me this evening um joyce i'm going to start with you i could i could read from the script i could go from technical information i'm just going to ask you the question that every single american is asking why the heck aren't these people in jail already why why why are we not seeing perp walks i do not understand this tell me explain this to me like i'm a seven-year-old why we don't already have members of congress and these people who plotted to take over the government in jail already well you're not a seven-year-old and i know from our our conversations that you understand this as well as any lawyer the problem here is that we're on the precipice we're struggling to remain a rule of law country the democrats can't become the party of lock em up we saw how dangerous that was when trump supporters perpetuated that sort of role and sort of whipped mobs into frenzies in this country evidence comes first and conviction comes second and so we're now going through the slow painful process of putting the evidence together it's frustrating it takes longer than any of us would like it to because the facts seem so clear in front of our eyes but it's critical that the committee do its work and hopefully that doj do its work and that they meticulously collect evidence so that we understand the difference between what we suspect and what we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt in court who the participants are and what they did just what we've seen tonight with this waldron subpoena is momentous you know the committee describes the powerpoint as a blueprint to overthrow an election if it's true and waldron's credibility will have to be tested we don't know if he'll hold up as a credible witness if he does and if he had a series of eight to ten meetings with mark meadows that culminated in the production of a powerpoint that sounds an awful lot like we're in conspiracy territory so i think unfortunately for all of us we have to be patient for a little bit longer you can call me cool you can call me miracle i can be whipped into a frenzy very easily because this seems pretty clear to me um ellie so here's my question for you we have so much information here about what appears to be conspiracy we have people sending text messages back and forth saying hey want to take over the government sounds cool let's do it legally are there ways that we could be moving faster i understand what joyce is saying that hey we want to be meticulous but are the ways we could be moving faster because i still seem to see people who are ignoring uh or or not paying attention to when they should be coming in to testify and there's just a process of being in contempt i i can't help but think to myself if you or i were caught with a trove of documents saying we wanted to take over the state of michigan we'd be in jail by now so i don't understand why that hasn't happened faster on a federal level sure we could be moving faster um joe biden could have nominated liz cheney for attorney general maybe maybe that would have worked out or maybe he could have nominated jamie raskin or adam schiff or joyce or glenn kirschner or you or me or a ton of other people who would be putting the wood to these people by now already now i agree with joyce that we are fundamentally in the investigative phase my question is why is congress doing the investigating and not the fbi where's chris way where's federal society republican appointee chris wray on the subpoenas why is brad parscale turning over documents to the select committee as opposed to the fbi why is walden being subpoenaed by the select committee as opposed to the fbi is the fbi on the case now they might argue that they are and maybe we don't know and maybe there's a super double secret investigation that's boiling beneath the surface that's ready to erupt um at the opportune moment maybe that's the case but i don't see evidence of that yet right now what i see is congress which is an oversight which has an oversight function doing with all deliberate speed as quickly as they can putting together a case and i see the fbi doing nothing to go get these people and that is my question and that's my problem and i think it all comes back to joe biden's decision to appoint merrick garland a slow-moving institutionalist to the to the department of justice as opposed to some of his more aggressive choices like schiff or raskin or yates or i i could keep going on about other people who i think would have prosecuted this um who would have who would have prosecuted the prosecution a little bit more expeditiously than what we're seeing from garland i can think of hundreds of of da's local da's who could be i mean harvey dent would have been able to do a better job than what we've seen so far from mayor garland um i want to play this sound bite here it's from an organizer janice i want to joyce i want to hear your thoughts it's an organizer who is basically talking about how they had planned to stay at one hotel then they heard trump talking i want to get your thoughts on the other side as to how this also plays into the idea that these people were very clearly being directed by the president and his cronies what we revealed to the committee is that there was an internal conflict that was ongoing inside the organizer groups about what the program and what the day on january 6 should look like and we kind of lost that battle and we didn't realize we lost that battle until president trump told people to walk down to the capitol joyce what does this tell us about the direct involvement of the president not to mention what may or may not have actually been occurring within the sort of organizers of this attempted coup well it certainly gives us some good leads that investigators need to follow and you know i'm sort of in ellie's camp on this i have this same question about where the fbi is i think you can make an interesting argument that all that matters is the ultimate result of this investigation and that it would be a very compelling case if a bipartisan congressional committee were to refer an investigation to maine justice for prosecution after they completed their work so that's certainly a possibility but it does seem like the fbi has plenty of leads that they can follow up on and this is one of them how did the events on january 6th itself take place who was calling the shots was there some sort of master plan or was this really something that just happened on an ad hoc one-off basis throughout the day there are so many questions along these lines one of the intricacies of developing a conspiracy case is you need to identify the subject of the conspiracy there has to be an illegal objective that a group of people come together and agree to accomplish so it's not as easy as seeing pieces of activity here and there you actually have to find the group you have to prove the agreement the specific conduct that they agreed to do and establish that it's illegal it's always been a possibility that on january 6 there were multiple conspiracies involving multiple people or perhaps no conspiracy at all but someone needs to get to the heart of that whether it's the fbi or congress joining me now is journalist sarah kinseyor she's author of the book the 2020 book hiding in plain sight the invention of donald trump the erosion of america and msnbc terrorism analyst malcolm nance thank you all so very much for joining me this evening sarah i'll start with you we now know that this coup attempt it started right after the election but probably started beforehand they already had a plan in place i want to start with you on this you have been consistent and one of the loudest voices out there about the failures of merrick garland and the department of justice to be aggressive about these individuals just take us through just a little bit of your timeline as to what merit garland has failed to do so far especially in the face of this newfound evidence well merrick garland should have been prepared because i want to take the timeline a little further back which is that this plan had actually been in the works for the 2016 election that is when roger stone coined the phrase stop the steal that is when roger stone promised a bloodbath if trump were not installed as president and they made these threats consistently for the four years that he was in office and so there's plenty of evidence in the public domain generally speaking about their tactics there's also plenty of evidence throughout 2020 about specific actions they are going to take michael flynn was calling for uh a coup lynn wood was recruiting insurrectionists off the internet this was all happening in plain sight the day before uh january 6 steve bannon announced the coup on his podcast like this is extremely easy to find out and that is why when the house uh impeached trump in february they were able to rely uh exclusively on public domain evidence and did not call witnesses perhaps they should have they could have gotten mark meadows wonderful powerpoint back then but yes uh merrick garland an experienced professional could have gone uh right into this you know uh aggressively making sure that our country is not attacked again in this fashion instead he has done basically nothing but allowed trump and his crime cult to run out the clock which has been the tactic that trump has used with his goon squad of lawyers for the last 40 years so none of this should have come as a surprise to anybody malcolm after hearing what sarah just said i i don't i don't have a tremendous amount of confidence in this administration being aggressive at hunting down these people who are terrorists with your particular experience if you found a powerpoint right if you found a powerpoint for people who attempted to overthrow a government i don't care if you were if you were in the middle east if you were in somewhere in africa or somewhere in asia you found a whole powerpoint wouldn't your third first thought be well if there's this powerpoint there's probably another one out there for the next time they're going to try this what do you think is likely still out there if we've already found this kind of information for what these republicans are planning to do in 2022 and 2024 you know it's interesting i've actually been in that circumstance where you know with the us intelligence agency where we actually intercepted plans of a terrorist plot in action in motion we mobilized three commands across the region the entirety of european command the entirety of special operations command i mean we move resources when we know something is about to happen we try to do disruptive you know counteraction uh i'm not seeing that from the united states government i think what we're seeing now is january 6 is being seen as a you know as a as a point where the fbi is going out and trying to collect a lot of data against a lot of individuals but many of these are very low-grade um uh you know low-grade arrest we're seeing the the judiciary it's actually being quite mild with them they're letting people go on vacations they're letting one guy retain his gun to protect the church that being said what we could be doing certainly and i hope that the justice department is doing it we're seeing no evidence of it of course is understanding that the nation is under direct attack you know we're all going back today over this timeline of november 4th well you know a year ago when i came out and predicted that we were actually in route to a major insurgency which started with the insurrection insurgency is multiple operations right but it's also political and paramilitary we started seeing paramilitary training for this of many of the people who have been indicted in september and october of 2020 and now we're seeing the bridge to the political component of this connect what's missing here is the actual conspiracy and we have a powerpoint on how they expect it to execute it we just need to get the orders this is where merrick garland should be mobilizing the justice department to defend the nation from future threats because the coup is underway the coup attempt is still underway sarah i want to play some sound from a u.s representative who is talking about continuing his cue this coup and get your thoughts on the other side this is uh representative louie gohmert in effect the ruling would be that you got to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa and blm so look this is this is five days before the attack we're hearing this sort of thing you know sarah i guess my concern is with all of this evidence that we're hearing now we're coming up we're closer to the one year anniversary of this attack than we are to when it happened and we have all this documentation we have all this video from people saying yes engage in this behavior we have text messages we have smoke signals we have passenger pigeons we have a freaking bat signal in the sky with a big old t that says take over the government i guess my my question for you is when you see video like this do you think any of these republicans are actually scared at this point or has the effectiveness and impotence of the doj and this administration so far emboldened them to continue with what they were trying to do earlier this year they're absolutely emboldened they were emboldened going in because nobody held trump accountable for the four years he was in office or the 40 years before that when he was a criminal a career criminal backed up by various mafiosos and so they're flaunting their impunity and that frightens people it draws americans uh into their fold it makes them seem like they too may be protected if they engage any sort of actions that's why you had all those low-level operatives you know recruited by people like flynn and wood willing to attack the capital in broad daylight have it aired on national tv have it live streamed on the internet all of this was open and that somehow gives people the impression that it's not illegal that it's not treasonous that it's not sedition it is still sedition if it is in plain sight that doesn't change what actually happened what you need though what what merit garland should be doing is going to the top you know these low-level q anon folks and and whatnot you know a lot of them got conned into participating into this these high-level operators people like roger stone and michael flynn and of course trump himself have been at this uh for years and they are heading for a comeback they are trying for coup two now with more bloodbath and that is something that this nation must do everything in its power to prevent and it's very interesting to me that they're not you know what it looks like to me now with all these faux revelations emerging is that they are feigning shock to avoid accountability because they should have been holding them accountable all year long i completely agree and it's crazy to me the insistence that we should be happy with them bringing in all these red shirts when we know the commanders are still behind the desk controlling this and looking for their next plan sarah kinsey or malcolm nance thank you all so much for joining us on the beat this evening do [Music] you

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Length: 18min 4sec (1084 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021