January 6 Committee: Trump was told his plan for Pence to overturn the election was illegal but tried anyway

Anderson Cooper 360

CNN

News

3.7 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2022

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol held its third public hearing and focused on former President Trump’s efforts to pressure former Vice President Pence to stand in the way of certifying the 2020 election. The committee revealed that Trump was told repeatedly that his plan for Pence to overturn the election was illegal but he tried to do it anyway. Conservative lawyer George Conway tells Anderson Cooper whether he thinks the Justice Department could find the former President criminally liable for his actions. The committee also said that on January 6 there was just "40 feet between the Vice President and the mob." Carol Leonnig is a national investigative reporter for the Washington Post and has reported extensively on Pence and his safety during the insurrection. She joins AC360 to discuss the details the committee laid out about how close the Vice President, his family and his aides were to real danger. To learn more about how CNN protects listener privacy, visit cnn.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Good evening.
0:01.8	It was billed as an examination of the pressure put on then vice president Mike Pence to do
0:05.9	Donald Trump's bidding.
0:07.2	And today's testimony before the January 6th Committee hearings certainly was that.
0:12.0	But in a larger sense, it was also a revelation of just how thoroughly those who were pushing
0:16.5	to overturn the election knew what they were doing was legally and constitutionally dubious
0:22.6	and potentially a crime.
0:23.8	They knew, but according to the testimony, we heard today they did it anyway.
0:27.9	And the former president not only knew that, according to the testimony, he also knew
0:32.4	in real time that the actions he'd been taking and was about to take with his 224 PM tweet
0:39.0	condemning Mike Pence directly endangered his vice president's life.
0:43.9	He'd been told exactly how bad it was at the Capitol.
0:49.2	Although the president's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has refused to testify before this
0:53.0	committee, Mr. Meadows, Ed Ben Williamson, and White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah
0:58.2	Matthews testified that Mr. Meadows went to the dining room near the Oval Office to tell
1:03.7	the president about the violence at the Capitol before the president's 224 PM tweet.
1:10.3	It was clear that it was escalating and escalating quickly.
1:16.5	So then when that tweet, Mike Pence tweet was sent out, I remember us saying that that
1:23.7	was the last thing that needed to be tweeted at that moment.
1:28.1	Congressman Pete Aggrillar says the committee's investigation shows that immediately after
1:31.8	that tweet, the crowd inside and outside the Capitol surged, two minutes later, the
1:36.4	secret service evacuated the former vice president from the Senate chamber, coming
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from CNN, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of CNN and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.