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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Here's one revelation from yesterday's January 6th Committee hearing. President Donald Trump planned to tell the crowd at his January 6th rally to march to the Capitol, but he and his advisors concealed that fact from the public and never got a permit for the march. Why conceal the planned march? We'll explore that in a minute, but here's another revelation from yesterday's hearing, very related.

On the night of January 6th after the riot, Trump's former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, and Trump advisor, Katrina Pearson who helped organize January 6th had an exchange of text messages in which Parscale wrote, "A sitting president calling for civil war, this week I feel guilty for helping him win," he helped him win in 2016. Pearson replied, "You did what you felt at the time therefore it was right." Pascal wrote, "If I was Trump and knew my rhetoric killed someone," Pearson disagreed writing, "It wasn't the rhetoric." Parscale replied, "Katrina, yes, it was." That's dramatic and revealing because right there on the sixth, someone that close to Trump was blaming his rhetoric for inciting the violence. By the way, Brad Parscale now works for a Trump-related political action committee again, but that's another story.

That ties to testimony from the previous hearing when White House aid Cassidy Hutchinson testified about a warning from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone advising against going to the Capitol saying they would be charged with all kinds of things imaginable. If they did that, they would leave themselves open to that criminal liability including this.

Cassidy Hutchinson: He was also worried that it would look like we were inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to erupt at the Capitol.

Brian Lehrer: Cipollone was worried that it would look like we were inciting a riot or encouraging a riot to erupt at the Capitol, that was before January 6th. That testimony indicates Trump was warned by his White House Counsel about inciting a riot by sending protestors to the Capitol. He did it anyway, and afterwards, his former campaign manager said Trump's rhetoric caused it, including the death of the rioter who was shot by police.

That was the point of yesterday's hearing really, the present evidence and testimony tying Trump to the plans for violence at the Capitol leading up to January 6th. Next week's hearing will focus on his relationship to the violence once it began. With us now, Washington Post national correspondent, Philip Bump. One of his articles in the last day is called Why Evidence that Trump Planned a Capitol March is Important. Philip, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Philip Bump: Thank you very much, sir.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with Trump planning to send the crowd to the Capitol, but concealing that fact from the public. The committee revealed a tweet that Trump considered, but never sent announcing the march in advance. Can you tell the story of that tweet?

Philip Bump: It was fascinating for a number of reasons, including the fact that it was this printout of a proposed tweet for Donald Trump that was stamped with a stamp that said viewed by the president essentially indicating some interesting background about how Donald Trump actually went about releasing his tweets. That's beside the point, nonetheless interesting, but what the tweet said essentially was that it gave people details on what to expect on January 6th.

It was clearly not written on January 6th itself since it said it referred looking forward to the date of January 6th, but it included-- they mentioned that a march to the Capitol would follow his speech that morning. That was not something that was part of the stated public plans for the White House. It was however something that had been an element of what the outside allies who helped put together the events on both January 5th and January 6th had been planning for some time.

When Donald Trump in December 19th, 2020 released his tweet saying that people should be in DC on January 6th because it will be wild, that infamous tweet, very quickly allies put together a plan for a number of events that were merged together including Trump's speech and then something at the Capitol, but they didn't have a permit for an actual march and there was a debate about whether such a march was actually a good idea. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: You write that the fact that the tweet was never sent suggests that he or his team got the message that they shouldn't say that part out loud about planning a march, not just a rally. Was that because of advice like from White House Counsel Cipollone that he would look like he was inciting a riot?

Philip Bump: I think that's probably the safest assumption. We know that Donald Trump was very actively encouraging people to come and be a part of the events on that day. He did on January 1st I believe retweet a relatively old tweet that was calling for a "Trump march" which was [chuckles] both pointing people to the sixth and also highlighting the idea of a march.

We've heard this testimony saying that his lawyers were very fervent in saying "Look, you can't do this. You certainly yourself should not go there, [chuckles] you should not even direct people to the Capitol because it raises all sorts of legal problems." The idea, I think that is safe to take away from this is that on this at least, the advice of his lawyers was heeded.

Brian Lehrer: When January 6th came, Trump did implore the crowd to march the Capitol. Of course they did, and sure enough, there was a riot. Did the committee hear evidence or draw a conclusion from that, that Trump wanted a riot at the Capitol since he had been warned about exactly that but sent the crowd there anyway?

Philip Bump: If you read between the lines, I don't think that anyone who sits on the house select committee has much doubt that Donald Trump wanted to see a large crowd there and was not dissatisfied when they actually interrupted the electoral vote count. I'm not sure that, and I don't know if any of them are sure, they certainly haven't presented concrete evidence to fact, but I'm not sure that Donald Trump anticipated there would be a violent riot there necessarily.

We know, however, from Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony last week that he understood that people in the crowd were armed and that those armaments were not intended to hurt him. We know as well that he was working behind the scenes. He had a plan. Other evidence that came out yesterday included his allies being pretty clear with others that Donald Trump had a quiet plan to push people to the Capitol.

That there was an expectation he would push people to the Capitol even if that wasn't what they had agreed that he was going to do and that's not what they were publicly saying. Donald Trump came to the Capitol, came to the Ellipse that day, knew that there were people with arms there, intended to push them to the Capitol and you can put two and two together to get four even if there isn't a smoking gun saying that Donald Trump said, "Hey, I want to have a riot there," he did everything else necessary.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your reactions to yesterday's January 6th Committee hearing revelations, or your questions for Philip Bump from the Washington Post 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @Brianlehrer. Philip, staying right on this point for the moment, that warning about inciting a riot was attributed to Cipollone by Cassidy Hutchinson in her testimony as we heard in that clip of her.

They then interviewed Cipollone himself on Friday and played some clips yesterday, but the parts I saw, I didn't see a clip where he corroborated that per se, that he warned Trump that he could be seen as inciting a riot if he sent people to the Capitol. Was there anything from Cipollone himself about a warning of inciting a riot?

Philip Bump: Not that was shown yesterday, you're correct. There was a tease at the end of the hearing that Cipollone's testimony would play a larger role in the next planned hearing which I believe is the only one currently scheduled. I think, however, it is fairly obvious [chuckles] that someone understood they ought not to be pushing people to the Capitol based in part on the, there was a text message sent from Kylie Kremer who is with one of the organizations that was central to putting together the events on January 6th.

She was texting Michael Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, not that I need to identify him at this point, and she essentially said to him, "Hey, look we're going to do this, but don't let it get out. The National Park Service can't know about this," and so on. That's probably in part because again, she didn't have a permit to have that march but it shows that people understood that they couldn't be public with this. I don't think that Donald Trump would've been chastened by worries about Kylie Kremer's, but I think he might have been worried about the threat of legal exposure. I think again [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that's why they didn't get a permit for that march? They would typically need one, I think for that planned route, Ellipse to the Capitol in a march by thousands of people, but they didn't even apply.

Philip Bump: That's right. If the permit applications do indicate that there might be some transit between the Ellipse and the Capitol, but there was not a formalized march that may have been a resource allocation issue. There was some of the organizers, this gentleman, Dustin Stockton who spoke with the media and the January sixth committee said that he was concerned about the actual logistics of doing that, but I think that obviously there are a lot of other problems with sending a group of very angry people down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol.

Brian Lehrer: Another important piece of this is that while the general public did not know about the plan that Trump was warned he could incite a riot, there were people acting like they did. For example, you just mentioned Kylie Kremer, whose group held the permit for the rally on January 6th. She promoted the event, saying it would include a "march for Trump." Alex Jones, the Infowars conspiracy theorist talk show host said, "Trump wants the American people to march on Washington." Steve Bannon on his radio show on the fifth said this.

Steve: All hell is going to break loose tomorrow. It's all converging and now we're on, as they say, the point of attack, the point of attack tomorrow. I'll tell you this, it's not going to happen like you think it's going to happen. It's going to be quite extraordinarily different, and all I can say is strap in.

Brian Lehrer: That's a longer version of that clip of Steve Bannon than we've used before. I wanted to get that one on because I think the end of that has been minimized too much. Everybody's playing the part where he says, "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow," but that second half where he says, "This is going to be much different than people think it's going to be, strap-in," that indicates something.

Philip Bump: I think one of the challenges we have with someone like Steve Bannon or Alex Jones is it's very hard to differentiate the bluster from the reality. Steve Bannon obviously had access to a lot of people in the White House. He's in conversation with folks. Steve Bannon is also known to be a bloviator. He goes out of his way to say things to make himself sound important, to make everything seem more dramatic than this, it served him well in terms of his media career.

I would love to know more about the conversations that they have in the white house. I'm sure the January 6th Committee they've been very actively trying to get testimony from Bannon. That's been the subject of a recent court fight. I think they want to know as well. I find it very hard to give Bannon the benefit of the doubt that he actually knew something because he would go out of his way to insinuate that he knew something even if he didn't.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. We'll see if he actually testifies, if there's actually anything to learn from that or if it's all him promoting himself. Then there were those who Trump might have known or his inner circle should have known and arguably, probably did know were actually planning violence. Another Washington Post article, by some of your colleagues on yesterday's hearing, goes down this partial list as presented by the committee from after Trump tweeted be there will be wild about the coming event.

It says, Tim Poole, a prominent YouTuber said of January 6th, "This could be Trump's last stand." Matt Bracken, a right-wing, commentator became specific envisioning storming right into the capitol. Further afield, the tweet that will be wild tweet caused violent rhetoric to course through anonymous pro-trump sectors of the internet. "Trump just told us all to come armed," one message read. Another user said volunteers were needed "for the firing squad."

"Some of the messages, the article continues, were openly homicidal according to committee member Jamie Raskin, who presented this yesterday, and littered with racist and genocidal rallying cries." One asked, "Why don't we just kill them, every last Democrat." Another said, "White revolution is the only solution." A post on the popular pro-trump forum TheDonald.win envisioned police officers "laying on the ground in a pool of blood," police officers.

The site's founder Jody Williams told the committee that the president's tweet focused attention on January 6th. A post on that forum pressed, "Join your local Proud Boys chapter as well." The article goes on, "The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, some of whose members have been indicted on charges of conspiracy related to January 6th responded immediately to Trump's call.

Kelly Meggs the head of the Florida branch of the Oath Keepers took to Facebook the morning of December 19th to declare an alliance between the two groups writing, We have decided to work together and shut this expletive down." All that from the hearing yesterday, most of it read by Jamie Raskin and summed up there in the Washington Post.

Philip all that evidence that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, known to be violence risks were using language like that, plus the randos cited there who were threatening far worse even as quoted, did they present evidence yesterday that Trump or Kylie Kremer who held the permit or anyone else involved knew about those threats and those plans?

Philip Bump: Not explicitly, no. I think it's important to recognize, and I think we all do implicitly, I think it's worth stating, to recognize the spectrum on which this language operates. There are a lot of people even now but especially at the time, would use all sorts of [unintelligible 00:15:20] language about this is 1776 and yadda, yadda, yadda to be melodramatic and to inject emotion and inject their own sense of self into what actually is going to be happening and the importance of the moment, the importance of them and their costs.

People like to use that rhetoric. The challenge was in part on January 6th that we had so many people there who are so fired up and got caught up in this mob that was surging toward the Capitol, but then secondarily, we had these people who were actively trying to incite violence, people like the Oath Keepers who came planning to actually serve as a reactionary force on Trump's behalf. People like the Proud Boys who very eagerly jumped into violence as they had it at rallies in November and December immediately prior to what happened on January 6th.

We have like these isolated comments on 8chan and 4chan, which I think are easy to cherry-pick as examples of rhetoric of people just saying things, but I think you have these very real, very dangerous organizations and very dangerous people who then showed up on January 6th. Whether or not we know that there was a connection between them and the white house, I think is almost irrelevant.

It's what Donald Trump did, is Donald Trump said, "Hey everyone, get here, every one be angry, everyone this thing is being stolen from you, our country is at risk." He used that sort of inciting language which everyone then pointed to as saying, "Yes, this is what we need to fight for," and people came prepared to fight, and I think that's the important distinction here.

Brian Lehrer: One of the witnesses yesterday to that point was a convicted January 6th rioter named Stephen Ayres, who has since come to regret his participation and testified how the social media world he followed had wrongly convinced him that the election was stolen and he personally had to do something about it. Trump's December 19th tweet promoting the coming January 6th rally, "Be there, it will be wild," about that Stephen Ayres said this.

Stephen: We went basically to see the stop to steal rally and that was it.

Speaker 1: Why'd you decide to march to the capitol?

Stephen: Basically the president got everybody riled up, told everybody head on down, so we, basically were just following what he said.

Brian Lehrer: We have a caller reacting to Stephen Ayres's testimony. Let's go to Kathy in The Bronx. Kathy you're on WNYC. Hello.

Kathy: Hi, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: What are you thinking?

Kathy: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi Kathy, can you hear me?

Kathy: Good morning. Thank you. I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, what you got on Stephen Ayres?

Kathy: Good morning, thank you so much. I love your show and I think you're a treasure. Stephen Ayres, I was so upset yesterday listening to that because I could in some ways identify as just a regular American and you get caught up in things that you hear sometimes and just following that. I think that he's paying a price, he lost his job, he lost his home, his family is affected, and the man who will be unnamed is not paying a real price at this point. It's frustrating, it makes me angry. I think whether this results in any criminal charges, I think it needs to be-- One of your speakers at one time said, "We just need to make sure that this man is nowhere near a source of power again."

Brian Lehrer: Kathy, thank you very much. We'll get more in a few minutes into what forms of accountability there could be for Donald Trump for all of this. Philip as you might imagine about half our caller board is people with similar thoughts to what Kathy was expressing at the end there. "Trump should be held accountable like this, Trump should be held accountable like that," we'll get to that, but what did you take away from Stephen Ayres's testimony that Kathy was referring to, and of course, we've played the clip.

Philip Bump: Honestly, I had a personal element to it. He's from a town called Champion in Northeast Ohio, which is very close to where I went to high school. It's an area Trumbull County just outside of Youngstown which has made one of the sharpest turns to the right in 2016 to support Donald Trump, and it really is the place for all of the discussion of the intermingle factors of race and the economics that helped power Donald Trump's rise in 2016. This is the nexus of a lot of that transition and so I saw in him. I actually went back last year or rather in 2020 and talked to my former high school

classmates about how they felt about the election and how they felt about Trump. I saw in him a representation of a political respondent who was very familiar to me, of someone who got caught up in this thing, who believed that the country was at risk and imperiled, and who believed Donald Trump and saw Donald Trump as someone who was actually going to do the sorts of things the politicians had for years been pledging to do.

It was hard for me to extricate from Ayres' testimony to see it in the macrocosm. I was so focused on the microcosm of who he was and what he represented, and the fact that he only belatedly came to the realization that Donald Trump was full of nonsense. I think one of the most telling parts of his testimony was he was asked if he still believed the election was stolen, and he hemed a little bit. He wasn't quite sure.

He said he knew that he should say no, but he was a little cautious in doing so. I think that too also speaks to the power of Donald Trump's insistence. If you believe Donald Trump and he's saying this thing so I consistently, you're going to believe him and you're going to think, "Hey, this was really stolen and our country's really at risk," and that of course was the fundamental danger.

Brian Lehrer: Matt in Tuckahoe you're on WNYC. Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hey, how are you doing? When I listened to the speech originally, and Donald Trump said, "I'll be there with you," I immediately said, "That's not happening." Donald Trump doesn't strike me as a person who has the personal bravery enough to join a march. Now that we know from Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony, that he actually did indeed want to go to the Capitol, but he wanted to go in an armed limousine, I find it interesting. What did Donald Trump expect to happen if he was able to convince his security detail to drive him to the Capitol? Was he going to be escorted into the Capitol by the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys? Is there any connection there, is this of interest to anyone?

Brian Lehrer: What a great question, Matt. Philip, that's a great question because we did hear that Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony last time about how Trump really did want to go to the Capitol so much that he was trying to commandeer the steering wheel, according to her, from the Secret Service driver of his car to go there. I haven't heard anybody lay out the scenario that he was envisioning if he did. Have you thought about that, or has anybody talked to you about that?

Philip Bump: I have actually. I think that one thing that's underrecognized is what occurred on January 5th and January 6th was a series of what was anticipated to be three events. There was this speech at the Ellipse that was organized by Kylie Kremer's group. That was the centerpiece of it. That was the thing Donald Trump was focused on.

They created an event on January 5th as well, because there were a lot of these sort of fringe actors, like Alex Jones, like Ali Alexander from The Stop the Steal Movement, who'd been advocating to do an event also on January 6th, and they got shunted off to January 5th, where they used all these rhetoric that was aired during the hearing yesterday, but then there was supposed to be at one o'clock, when the electoral vote counting started, there was supposed to be another rally at the Capitol at that point in time.

That never actually coalesced, obviously in part, because there was a riot that occurred, but it may also have been the case that they expected and had a loosely formed plan to go to the Capitol and be there. Alex Jones actually ended up at the Capitol a short while after that. I'm not sure if that's necessarily related to it. He may have actually thought, "Okay, now the next step is we go and we have this event." They were pitching that on their websites. They were pitching, "At one o'clock, another rally at the Capitol." That was the plan as of January 3rd, January 4th.

He may have simply thought, "Yes, we're going to go there and we're going to do something else, maybe less formal, less structured, but that's going to be the next part of it." I don't think he planned to go in, but I think he planned to actually bring the fight even closer to the Capitol than he actually did.

Brian Lehrer: There is a Trump counter-narrative that I've heard from Peter Navarro, one of the core Trump people at that time, who himself is being held in contempt of Congress at the moment for refusing to testify before the committee. He did go on MSNBC with Ari Melber. Peter Navarro says, "The last thing we wanted was a riot.

We were trying to get Congress to use these parliamentary moves," questionable as they may be. He says they were trying to get Congress to use these parliamentary moves and Mike Pence to use what they saw as his power to send the election back to the states and continue the process. The rioting discredited that process. The rioting was not in their interest, not in Trump's interest. Does evidence suggest that might have been their point of view?

Philip Bump: I would say this is what the kids today call a retcon, which he is trying to revise what actually happened. Peter Navarro is not really credible on any of this stuff. He said that Mike Pence should be accused of treason for having not going along with Trump's plan. We know that Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani were calling legislators as the riot was underway, trying to continue to cajole them to stand up in opposition to electoral votes, and actually insisting that, "Hey, we just need more time so that we can get these state legislatures to potentially revoke their submitted electors." They were using the riot to their advantage to enact the exact plan that Peter Navarro says this worked against. I just think it's simply not credible.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Philip Bump from The Washington Post. We'll get into potential consequences after all these evidence is being presented in such a compelling way. We'll talk about the tantalizing way that Liz Cheney ended the hearing yesterday and what it may partain for next week right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer On WNYC as we continue to break down yesterday's, January 6th, committee hearing with Philip Bump, national correspondent for The Washington Post. Tom in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Tom.

Tom: Hi. This is a very important program that you're having today. There's been very little mention of a war room that was set up at The Hotel Willard during those days with Roger Stone, and Giuliani, and Flynn, and The Pillowman. They seemed to have been coordinating with several of the militias that were active in the riot.

Trump has had two telephone calls on the morning and night of the fifth at very important times. The phone calls were both over five minutes with that room in the Willard. Nobody's really asked about the substance of those phone calls because that tends to tie Trump actually to the action that was going on in the Capitol. I think that's was an important thing that should be looked at.

Brian Lehrer: Philip, familiar with that?

Philip Bump: I am. Yes. There's actually three different things that are being deflated there, which I think deescalates the importance to some extent, although obviously, it's still important. There were two separate things going on at the Willard. There was the Giuliani room with some other allies that were actively trying to pressure legislators. There was a separate room, if I remember correctly, which I think I do, which included Steve Bannon on-- Roger Stone was one of several people who had Oathkeepers, who were acting as security for him.

On January 6th himself, Roger Stone, for example, wasn't at the Willard. He was actually in his own hotel room, which we know for a fact because he had documentarians with him. The Oathkeepers eventually just left him. One of them actually went to the Capitol because they had nothing to do guarding Roger Stone. Yes, we understand that there was at the Willard Hotel, this group of people that was actively trying to call legislators and overturn the results of the election.

That's something that's been well documented and included in the book by Bob Woodward and Bob Costa that came out called Peril. There was this other group that was also at the Willard, which of course is a hotel that has some useful proximity in Washington, DC. There are different elements here.

I don't think that we know that there is a strong smoking gun connection between the fringier side of what was happening and what was going on at the Willard. I don't know that anyone necessarily would be surprised if there was. What we know to have been happening at the Willard was this cajoling of legislators that we understood happening even as the riot was underway.

Brian Lehrer: Dwayne in Whippany, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dwayne.

Dwayne: Hey, good morning. Great program. As much as I would love to see Donald Trump go down for all this, I still can't help but remain really skeptical that the January 6th Committee is really going to be able to produce any really hard evidence that directly links Donald Trump to a planned insurrection, which I understand really has to occur.

I could be wrong, but my question is the January 6th Committee, why are they not also looking into the issue around the horrendous support that the Capitol Police never received? This seems to be a critical component that might very well have stemmed so much of the debacle that occurred. We all have received piecemeal information about this stuff, but it seems like the January 6th Committee, why is that not part of their agenda also?

Brian Lehrer: It's a great question. It's true. I've been struck by this too, Philip, that it's really

the January 6th select committee on Donald Trump's responsibility and they haven't gone into why the Capitol Police were not as prepared. Given all this evidence we've been talking about in this conversation today and that the committee presented yesterday, all this evidence that there was a threat of violence at the Capitol.

They were too undefended when it came to it. One of the things that the pro-Trump people tend to raise in the media too is, and I don't even know if this is true, but it's in the same direction that the White House asked Pelosi to call out the National Guard. Somehow that was in her power for DC but she didn't. Can you talk about this whole ball of wax?

Philip Bump: Sure. I think that one of the important distinctions here is between what the January 6 Committee is doing publicly and what it's doing privately. What they're doing publicly is they're holding hearings very specifically focused on drawing attention to what occurred, Donald Trump's role in it in an effort to turn the public against the idea that this should be allowed to happen again in the future.

That's pretty obviously what their goal is. They are at the same time doing a lot of investigating that is happening behind the scenes. I can't, therefore, speak to the extent to which they're looking at the security failure. People also forget that last summer, the very first hearing wasn't the televised hearing that happened in prime time last month, it happened last summer and it focused on the response of Capitol Police and it focused on this question.

Your point about the National Guard as I assume, you know has been pretty broadly debunked. Donald Trump didn't make the request that he says he did. It's not up to Pelosi to actually authorize any National Guard response. She does not have sole command over what the Capitol Police are doing. All of those things are after-the-fact attempts to rationalize what actually occurred by the right often.

Nonetheless, it is absolutely the case that the public deserves an explication of why this was allowed to happen. If it was preventable, if there was a scale of law enforcement presence, that would've prevented this model from gaining access to the Capitol and should have been there, people need to know that. We can't say, however, simply based on these public hearings that the January 6 Committee isn't looking at that, because the January six public hearings are not intended, they're intended to have to focus specifically on what you said, which is what Donald Trump did.

Brian Lehrer: Rich in Pennsylvania, you're on WNYC with Phillip Bump from the Washington Post. Hi, Rich.

Rich: Yes. Hi, Brian. Hopefully, you can hear me because I'm outdoor to tennis court.

Brian Lehrer: The singles are doubles.

Rich: I wanted to-- Doubles. I'm too old for singles. I wanted to raise this issue because there's so much discussion about whether he's going to be held accountable. Then there's a question of what's Merrick Garland going to do? The question is can they re-impeach him with the expressed purpose of penalizing him if found guilty and penalizing him so that he can't run for office again and so--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Rich: That's basically the question. Are there any impediments to doing that? Of course, there are the political questions, whether it's a good idea or not, but it is one thing I would think if there's no impediment to doing it that they'd have under their control.

Brian Lehrer: Rich, thank you so much. That raises the whole question of what kinds of consequences and what is the committee even aiming for in this regard. Isn't it something you never know, who's going to call a talk show, Philip? Here's a guy out playing tennis in Pennsylvania on a beautiful July morning and what is he doing?

He's listening to The Brian Lehrer Show I guess on the web because he is not even in state in our core listening area and [laugh] calls in to have his voice heard, but I guess re-impeachment is one way to go, but they probably won't get a conviction in the Senate. They didn't in the last two impeachments. What are the committee's options for holding Trump accountable if the ultimate goal as expressed by a previous caller is to see that somebody with these authoritarian tendencies doesn't take office again?

Philip Bump: I think the January 6th Committee has two goals. The first is to gather enough evidence to make it impossible for the justice department not to act in response to what happened on January 6th, in particular, in regards to Donald Trump, that the committee as part of correlated legal debates, basically trying to argue that John Eastman shouldn't be able to use attorney-client privilege in his communications with Trump because they were plotting a crime together.

They have argued that the crime they think Donald Trump committed is twofold, that there is conspiracy to defraud the United States by putting together this plan to prevent the election from being read, and then essentially obstructing an official proceeding, by actually establishing the conditions by which the electoral vote count would be disrupted. They have said that they think those are the two crimes that Donald Trump committed.

They think they are trying to cobble together evidence pretty obviously to make it so the Department of Justice has no choice but to actually charge Trump with those things. At the same time, I think the January 6 Committee is trying to do the political side too. They're trying to establish for American voters, "Hey, look, this guy who is flirting with potentially running again in 2024. Here are the ways in which he abused his power to try and overturn a democratic election. That is a danger and you should be aware of it."

I think they're trying to do the political side. I think it's really important to note the Department of Justice is really acting very independently of all of this. They could get a criminal referral from the January 6th Committee. They could act on recommendations from the committee, but we know very clearly that Merrick Garland and his team are already conducting broad investigations into what occurred. Obviously, they've arrested hundreds if not by now a thousand people for the role in the riot very directly but we know that they're investigating what happened.

We've seen from their subpoenas. We know from the comments that they've made publicly from Merrick Garland saying, "Hey, look, we're watching this committee. We want to get the evidence from the committee because this is relevant to the investigations we have that are ongoing." We know this is underway, but the Justice Department, unlike the January 6 Committee is not in the habit of making public presentations of what it's doing for fairly obvious reasons.

Brian Lehrer: All these pieces of evidence that you and I have been discussing this morning as well, it seems to lead to a conclusion that Trump knew this or Trump did that, despite what he knew, all these things. It's one thing to draw that conclusion as a matter of logic. It's another thing to draw conclusions like that as a matter of evidence presented to a jury.

I imagine that Merrick Garland considering the political backlash and polarization and the fact that it could even enhance Trump's popularity among Republican voters if it looks like he's being persecuted, not just prosecuted, that Merrick Garland doesn't want to go there unless he thinks he has a slam dunk criminal case. Would you say that's true?

Philip Bump: I think that Merrick Garland is faced with one of the hardest decisions any attorney general has ever faced. The idea that a former president of the United States very clearly took steps to try and overturn the results of an election to undermine American Democracy and to launch what outside observers have referred to as a coup, to have that obvious reality sitting in this space, but understanding the very dire political consequences of potentially charging him with a crime for doing that. It is an incredibly tough decision that he needs to make. I think the ramifications, either way, are potentially dire.

Brian Lehrer: Here's one final clip which seems to promote a revelation to come at the next hearing, it's committee vice chair, Liz Cheney, and in the previous hearings, she suggested Trump could be guilty of witness tampering by some of the ways he might be reaching out to people's scheduled to testify. Yesterday, Cheney said this.

Liz Cheney: After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings, that person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. This committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously.

Brian Lehrer: Philip, do you have a scoop yet on who that future witness is?

Philip Bump: I think that it's interesting because Cheney did something similar at the end of the Casey Hutchinson hearing as well, articulating actual specific appeals from Trump world to have people be like, "Hey look, we know whose team you're on and you'll be rewarded for staying loyal," that sort of thing. I think that there's a meta point to be taking here which is that what we are seeing that Donald Trump might call someone, we don't know what he intended to do.

I think we don't need to give him the benefit of the doubt on this, but that Donald Trump might call a potential witness to try and cajole them into doing a certain thing which would be pretty clear witness tampering as we understand it, is a function of his having done this stuff for so long and not being held to account. The fact that during the Russia probe, he obstructed the Russia probe, that he withheld information from Robert Mueller, that he withheld information during his first impeachment.

All of those things, he got a pat on the head from first Bill Barr and then second, the Republicans in the Senate. He has paid no price for standing in the way of efforts to hold him to account and so he continues to try and apparently stand in the way of efforts to hold him to account. That of course is the entire point of the January 6 Committee's work. They want to hold him to account so he doesn't think he can get away in the future with potentially trying to undermine the results of an election.

Brian Lehrer: Phillip Bump, national correspondent for the Washington Post. In fact, among his several articles on yesterday's hearing is one headlined Trump has never been held accountable for impeding inquiries. It shows. We'll see next week, what happens this time? Philip, thanks so much for your time today.

Philip Bump: Of course.

 

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