Today, the nation heard stunning testimony from former White House Chief of
Staff Mark Meadows aide, a woman by the name of Cassidy Hutchinson, and
the point of her testimony was to disclose what was going on behind the scenes
both before and during the capitol riots that took place on January 6.
Now she focused her testimony on something that's quite common during these hearings,
which is the fact that so many people around Donald Trump knew what was coming.
So in the testimony you're about to hear, Hutchinson testifies that on January 2,
Rudy Giuliani had actually met with Mark Meadows who she was an aide for
and then told her that on January 6 something's gonna happen.
What did Giuliani say?
Well, here's what she says happened.
>> Miss Hutchinson, do you remember Mr. Giuliani meeting with Mr.
Meadows on January 2, 2021?
>> I do.
He met with Mr. Meadows in the evening of January 2, 2021.
As Mr. Giuliani and I were walking to his vehicle that evening, he looked at me and
said something to the effect of Cass are you excited for the 6th?
It's going to be a great day.
I remember looking at him saying Rudy,
could you explain what's happening on the 6th?
He had responded something to the effect of we're going to the capitol.
It's going to be great.
The president is going to be there.
He's going to look powerful, he's gonna be the members,
he's going to be with the senators.
Talk to the chief about it, talk to the chief about it, he knows about it.
>> So when Giuliani tells her talk to the chief about it, what he is referring to is
Mark Meadows and she probably went to Mark Meadows, she's an aide for Meadows,
she's curious about what the details are about, what will transpire on January 6.
And there was some indication that Meadows not only knew that something was gonna go
down, but he had some concern about what was gonna go down.
Let's watch.
>> After Mr. Giuliani had left the campus that evening,
I went back up to our office and I found Mr. Meadows in his office on the couch.
He was scrolling through his phone, I remember leaning against the doorway and
saying just had an interesting conversation with Rudy, Mark.
Sounds like we're going to go to the capitol.
He didn't look up from his phone and
said something to the effect of there's a lot going on Cass but
I don't know, things might get real, real bad on January 6th.
>> Now before we get to the details about the weaponry the rioters had,
the information they had beforehand and how Trump reacted to it.
Let me just say that Trump prior to this testimony was
concerned about what she would say.
He apparently knew that her testimony was gonna be compelling.
It absolutely was compelling.
So compelling in fact that even Bret Baier and other conservative pundits
jumped in and talked about how persuasive it was and that's not a usual
response that you typically get from conservatives, certainly on Fox News.
And so now he has been reduced to temper tantrums on truth social,
which we can get to later.
But Cenk, this is just yet more evidence that all these people surrounding
Donald Trump not only knew that something was about to happen, but
that something terrible was about to happen.
And it's important to note that Mark Meadows did absolutely
nothing to act on his concerns.
She testified about that as well.
>> Yeah, so look, if there are any real prosecutors in this country, if there's
real rule of law, Mark Meadows and Donald Trump are now in a lot of trouble.
Now that's a big if though because I've never seen the law apply to the elites,
so we'll see if they do their job or not.
But there are two significant crimes here.
One is witness tampering and that gets to the point that Anna was making.
Liz Cheney at the end of the hearings talked about how Trump folks,
people in Trump world, called the witnesses and tell them,
remember Trump thinks you're a good guy, don't be a bad guy.
And he reads the transcripts, so watch what you're saying, okay?
So that's witness tampering 101.
And so that'll be an easier case and
usually prosecutors wanna take the easier case, not the harder case.
The second case is seditious conspiracy.
This is actually sedition.
So I want you guys to watch more of the testimony that I wanna explain
to you why it's seditious conspiracy and why this today's testimony for
the first time in my opinion gets to Trump aiding and abetting that conspiracy.
>> Yeah, The testimony today was damning and she's a persuasive,
when I say persuasive, I don't mean that she's trying to make a case here.
She's just testifying under oath about what she experienced in the days
leading up to January 6 and what happened on January 6.
So let's talk a little bit about what she had to say about what Trump
the president knew was happening on that day, January 6.
So he was told that there were individuals with some pretty
serious weaponry who wanted to attend his rally which of course
preceded the rights that took place on January 6.
He was fully aware of the weaponry that they had and
he actually had no problem with it whatsoever.
In fact, what he was more furious about was the safety checks in place,
including having the rally goers go through a security checkpoint to make sure
that they don't have weapons on them.
And if they do have weapons on them,
they won't be able to get through to get closer to him as he's doing his rally.
He didn't like the fact that they were doing those security checks.
So in the next video, you're gonna hear more from Cassidy Hutchinson again,
the aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, about this very issue.
Let's watch.
>> I recall Tony and I are having a conversation with Mark
probably around 10 AM, 10:15 AM,
where I remember Tony mentioning knives, guns in the form of pistols and
rifles, bear spray, body armor, spears, and flagpoles.
Spears were one item, flagpoles were one item, and
then Tony had related to me something to the effect of and
these I think people are fascinating spears onto the ends of flagpoles.
Mark was sitting on his couch and on his phone which is something typical.
I remember Tony just got right into it was like I just wanna let you know and
informed him like this is how many people we have outside the mags right now.
These are the weapons that were known to have.
It's possible he listed more weapons off that I just don't recall.
And gave him a brief but concise explanation but
also fairly, fairly thorough.
And I remember distinctly Mark not looking up for his phone.
I remember Tony finishing his explanation and
taking a few seconds for Mark to say something to
the point where I almost said Mark, did you hear him?
>> So just to clarify and summarize what she said there.
She's referring to the fact that she along with Tony Ornato,
every time she mentions Tony she's talking about the head of secret service.
They approach Mark Meadows and they're like, yo, there's a bunch of
Trump supporters, they have all sorts of weapons, we are concerned.
Mark Meadows is sitting on a couch looking down at his phone.
He doesn't even bother to look up as they're telling him this.
And she was concerned that maybe he didn't hear what they were saying, but luckily
he jumped in before Cassidy Hutchinson asked him, hey, are you paying attention?
And at that point, all he said was, have you talked to Trump about this?
And so she had talked about Trump, and what's really interesting
is how Trump reacted to this news about his heavily armed supporters.
Let's watch that.
>> The president apparently wanted all attendees inside the official rally
space and repeatedly said, quote, they're not here to hurt me.
>> And just to be clear, so he was told again in that conversation or
was he told again in that conversation that people couldn't come
through the mags because they had weapons.
>> Correct.
>> And his response was to say they can march to the capitol from,
is it from the ellipse something effective?
>> Something to the effect of take the effing mags away,
they're not here to hurt me, let them in, let my people in,
they can march the capitol after the rally is over, they can march from the ellipse,
take the effing mags away, then they can march the capitol.
>> So when she says take the effing mags away, referring to what Trump
had said in response to the information about the weaponry.
He wants to do away with any of the security that would
prevent them from going to the rally, the official rally area with the weapons.
And he specifically stated, they're not there to hurt me, and afterwards they can
march over to the capitol knowing full well that they're heavily armed, Cenk.
>> Yeah, I need you guys to remember that she is a very right wing,
this is not a Democrat, this is not just a normal Republican.
She worked apparently for Cruz and Scalise, she was working for
Mark Meadows who was one of the worst right wing tea party members.
So this is true right winger saying, wait,
are we really unconcerned about people coming to raid the capitol with weapons?
That's a thing that's not a concern to us.
Well, I mean, Mark Meadows,
as she explained earlier said four days ago that there was real, real danger.
They knew, they knew definitively.
Now we know for the first time that all of them including Donald Trump,
knew that the riders were going to go to the capitol.
So that's a huge part of the evidence, they had to have known that in order for
you to prove any crime.
If he's like, hey man, I just gave a speech,
I didn't know they were going to the capitol and bust in.
Well, okay, that's a different story then.
No, I know they're going to the capitol and I want them to have weapons,
let alone later her explaining that Trump knew that they were trying to
murder his vice president and he was happy about it.
>> Yeah, I mean completely unapologetic about what happened to
Mike Pence both during and as we've experienced after the capitol riots.
And what she did a good job in disclosing to the American people was that again,
there are so many people close to Donald Trump within the White House
who knew that something was coming, right?
The initial conversation that Cassidy Hutchinson had with Rudy Giuliani
about what was to come on January 6, took place on January 2.
And remember there's this effort by Trump and
those closest to him to pretend as though they knew nothing about January 6.
They were kind of caught off guard by it.
But through these hearings, we're learning more and more about the fact that no,
they knew Rudy Giuliani certainly knew and think about it.
He was making these statements to Cassidy Hutchinson on January 2.
We also learned through previous testimony that Rudy Giuliani knew that
the ridiculous theory of installing these hoax electors was complete BS,
and it wasn't grounded in any type of law or anything like that.
But it didn't matter, on January 6, he decided to add fuel to the fire
by promoting that theory as if there's any type of legal weight or merit behind it.
So they knew that there was something violent coming, they knew that they were
dealing with individuals who were heavily armed, some with AR 15 style weaponry.
And they just kind of went forward with everything that happened,
Trump wanted to green light everything that would pave the way for
them to do what they did in the nation's capitol that day.
And you have all of these people including Rudy Giuliani stoking the flames.
Now, go ahead Cenk.
>> Yeah, I'm sorry.
I just wanted to do the last link here because, so I'm gonna go a little bit out
of order here and ask to go to the last video, video eight, because guys, so
they know that they're going with weapons, Trump says let them in with weapons.
But did he know that at any point they were calling for
violence specifically against government officials, which would be an enormous
help if you were going to prosecute him on seditious conspiracy.
Because that means, yes, he wanted them to hurt government officials to
stop an official government action so that he could basically
overthrow the legitimate government of the United States.
Well, let's go to the last video here and see what he knew or didn't know.
>> I remember Pat saying something to the effect of Mark,
we need to do something more.
They're literally calling for the vice president to be effing calm.
And Mark had responded something to the effect of you heard him,
Pat, he thinks Mike deserves it.
He doesn't think they're doing anything wrong.
>> Wow, that is a top aide to the chief of staff saying that the chief of staff had
just talked to the president,
told them they're looking to murder your vice president, your supporters are.
And he says, I don't think there's anything wrong with that and
I'm not going to stop it.
Well, that's seditious conspiracy.
There's no question about it and they need to prosecute them.
Otherwise, you're green lighting political murder in this country,
that you could aid in a bet political murder all the way up to the vice
president of the United States to get him killed and
that there will be no consequences in law.
Now they must prosecute now, they must prosecute.
>> No word from Attorney General Merrick Garland yet.
But when you even have conservatives weighing in on this to talk
about how devastating it is for Donald Trump,
it would be one of the most embarrassing moments in American history if
this attorney general under democratic leadership does nothing about it.
But I mean, Democrats never cease to amaze me with their fecklessness and
their unwillingness to hold the elite accountable for anything that they do.
Whether it's war crimes or in this case sedition.