Welcome to the beat. I am Ari Melbourne. We begin tonight with a breakthrough in the January 6th probe from the very top.

This is building on a story that we first brought to you on Friday night.

It is the rush towards an attempted legal surrender by a top Trump aide with the written cooperation of Donald Trump himself.

And if that sounds unusual, that's because this is the first time anyone has reported a story like this before because you never have Trump involved.

Indeed, while other Trump aides have testified about January 6th, even Trump's own family, none have ever done so with Donald Trump himself weighing in in, in what could be called a semi-cooperative

or arguably cooperative fashion. I'll explain all that and where there is room for skepticism.

But all of this is a type of breakthrough that speaks to the stakes here. And what is shaping up

is one of the House committees most aggressive and decisive legal victories as White House veteran.

And 2016 campaign chair, Steve Bannon, makes this move at an attempted partial legal surrender.

He is offering a type of last-minute bid to try to cut a deal and cooperate with the January 6th committee.

He is saying he wants to testify before this committee.

He's saying that now he will deal with them.

He will talk, and if he did so under oath, that's a new legal obligation, and he'll do so,

despite the many months of defiance that we've all experienced if you follow the news.

And then even arranging a letter from Trump himself, which aims to explain this huge reversal.

Now, the bottom line here is, if nothing else, the pressure got to ban it.

Remember, Congress did not negotiate or wait on Bannon.

The committee made an assertive and hardball decision, kind of unusual for many Democratic-run

probes, to immediately hold Bannon in contempt when he defied, to immediately push for the

DOJ to indict him, which it did.

There were some at the time who said, gosh, this sets it off on an aggressive footing,

or will it be what DOJ and Garland want to do, or will it look, quote, unquote, political?

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