-We got more bombshell revelations
from the committee investigating
Donald Trump's attempted coup on January 6th.
Today, the committee released new evidence
that Trump and one of the key plotters in the coup,
a lawyer named John Eastman,
knew their plan would violate the law
and that same lawyer also
had direct contact with Ginni Thomas,
the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
in the lead-up to January 6th.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ]
These hearings keep providing us
with more damning evidence that Trump's attempted coup
wasn't just some spontaneous outbreak of mob violence.
It was a detailed plan orchestrated by figures,
including Trump himself, who had criminal intent
and who almost certainly
knew what they were doing was illegal.
I know, on one level, that's obvious,
but it's still important to establish.
It's kind of like how you know
the mysterious British husband in an HBO miniseries
is the bad guy, just from looking at him. [ Laughter ]
But you still need to like watch Hugh Grant
push a dude out a window, just to be sure. [ Laughter ]
And, even then, Nicole Kidman's character
will probably still be like,
"I just don't know what to think.
Fetch me my giant shawl.
I need to go for a midnight walk."
[ Laughter ]
For example, the committee played new video
from a deposition with Pence's
former chief of staff Marc Short,
where Short said Pence has made clear many times to Trump
that he had no authority
to unilaterally overturn the election.
-Was it your impression that the vice president
had directly conveyed his position
on these issues to the president?
Not just to the world, through a Dear Colleague letter,
but directly to President Trump?
-Many times.
-And had been consistent in conveying his position
to the president? -Very consistent.
-Although, no matter how consistent you are with Trump,
you know he's going to keep pushing.
The dude probably can't buy a toothbrush at CVS
without haggling. "That'll be $2.99."
[ As Trump ] Alright, how about you throw in five bucks
and a lifetime supply of toilet paper?
[ Laughter ] "No."
[ As Trump ] Alright, what if you just
give me the toothbrush for free? "No."
[ Laughter ] [ As Trump ] Alright. How about this?
I'll give you $2.99, you give me the toothbrush,
and we'll call it even.
[ Laughter ] "Alright, yeah, fine."
[ As Trump ] Another successful deal by The Donald.
[ Laughter and applause ]
I'm going to turn this around and sell it for $2.49,
and then who's laughing?
[ Laughter ]
In fact, in a meeting in the Oval Office on January 4th,
the lawyer pushing the plan
to have Pence overturn the election,
a guy named John Eastman,
admitted that his plan would violate the law,
according to a deposition
from a Pence lawyer named Greg Jacob.
We'll have more to say on this meeting later,
but here's what Jacob had to say in that deposition
about Eastman admitting, in front of Trump,
that his plan would break the law.
-When, exactly, did President Trump know
that it would be illegal for Mike Pence
to refuse to count electoral votes?
Here is one sample of testimony,
given by one of the witnesses before us today,
the vice president's general counsel.
-Did John Eastman ever admit,
as far as you know, in front of the president,
that his proposal would violate the Electoral Count Act?
-I believe he did on the 4th.
-So, that means Trump knew it was illegal.
Even his own pro-coup lawyer admitted it was illegal,
and yet, he still tried to threaten and coerce Pence
into doing it, to the point where he basically sicced
the violent mob on Pence to get him to do it.
I'm no lawyer, but how is that not an indictable offense?
I feel like even Nicole Kidman would say,
"Oh, yeah, he's definitely guilty.
[ Laughter ]
I don't need the shawl for this one."
[ Laughter ]
By the way, this comes on top of all the evidence
already provided by the first two hearings,
that Trump and everyone around him
knew his stolen election claims were false
and that they were just fabricated pretext
for a premeditated plan to overturn the election.
In fact, there was actually supposed to be
another hearing before today,
but that hearing, originally scheduled for Wednesday,
was postponed for mysterious reasons.
So far, members of the committee have said the reasons
for that postponement have been technical --
they need to give their team more time
to produce the materials,
specifically, the video clips needed for each hearing.
-I understand there is a bit of a change in the schedule,
pertaining to tomorrow's hearing.
Do you know anything about when it will be?
What's going on?
-I think we're just firming up.
There's no big deal, but I'll tell you.
Putting together the video and exhibits
is an exhausting exercise -Yeah.
-for our very small, you know, video staff,
so, we're trying to -- You know,
we were going to have one, two, three in one week
and it's just it's too much to put it all together.
-I get it. We also have a small staff pulling
and cutting together video clips
three days a week for our "Closer Looks."
True story. Here's a real picture
of our "Closer Look" video researcher Emily
from when she started on this show.
And here she is after eight years
of watching Fox News clips.
[ Laughter ] Oh, damn it!
Guys, we got to deprogram Emily again.
[ Laughter ] You know, if producing these hearings
is getting too hard for you guys,
you know what you should do?
You should just do them
from your attic at home.
[ Laughter ] No audience, no crew,
just Liz Cheney, an iPad camera,
and an annoying painting of a Sea Captain
in the background. There you go. [ Laughter ]
People don't know this about Liz Cheney --
she's actually a huge Sea Captain fan.
[ Laughter ] This is true -- after we came back to the studio
and stopped featuring him on the show,
I called her up and asked her what she thought
of the Sea Captain and she told me --
-"Please get him on tv."
[ Laughter and applause ]
-Anyway, the reason they gave
for postponing Wednesday's hearing was logistical,
though Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren
did provide this tantalizing hint that, perhaps,
they had also learned some new information
that made them delay that hearing until next week.
-Explain to us why tomorrow is postponed
and how we should understand
that affecting the rest of the hearings.
-Well, I don't think it's going to have much of any impact.
We had a lot of hearings compressed together
and there were logistical problems
that are going to be avoided
by kicking one of the hearings over to next week.
-There's no reason that I should think like,
"Oh, there's something going on.
They learned a new thing,
a witness backed out," et cetera?
-Well, you know, we're constantly learning new things,
but this is primarily logistical.
-"Primarily."
[ Laughter ]
-I'll just leave it at that.
-Ooh!
[ Laughter and applause ]
That is quite the tease.
I do like that members of Congress
who've spent their whole lives
learning when to talk and when to keep something secret
are suddenly turning into high school gossips,
[ Laughter ] now that they've got secret dirt
the rest of us want to know.
[ Changes accent ] Did you hear about Rudy?
He was wasted at the party last night.
[ Campy voice ] "Is that why he's not in school today?"
Mostly. "Mostly"?!
He also hooked up with his cousin.
[ Laughter and applause ]
"Second, I hope."
Yeah, second.
He got wasted, first,
and hooked up with his cousin second.
[ Laughter and applause ]
That was definitely the order.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Say what you will about this committee,
but they do know how to build suspense.
At the end of Monday's hearing, for example,
they played a preview clip teasing what was to come.
It was a clip from a deposition
with former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann,
describing a conversation he had with Eastman.
Here's a fuller clip that was released later,
of Herschmann describing that conversation with Eastman
after the attack on January 6th.
I screamed...
-[ Laughs ]
-And I screamed --
[ Laughter ]
[ Laughter ] Damn, that guy should definitely audition
for the next season of "Billions."
[ Laughter ]
The guy you'd be playing is a hardass lawyer
who has a baseball bat with "Justice" written on it.
[ As Herschmann ] Hey!
I [bleep] already got one of those!
[ Laughter and applause ]
Excuse me. Effing got one of those.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Now, as we've explained,
Eastman is obviously a key figure in the coup attempt.
For example, even though Eastman apparently admitted
that his plan would break the law,
Trump still tried to get Pence to go through
with Eastman's plan, in a heated Oval Office meeting
where Trump kept telling Pence to listen to Eastman.
-Stunning new details on Donald Trump's efforts
to overturn the 2020 election, from the new book "Peril,"
by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
The authors report on a two-page memo drafted by John Eastman.
John Eastman is a conservative lawyer
who was working for Trump's legal team.
It amounts to a blueprint for a coup.
NBC News has later obtained the memo.
It outlines how Pence was to have disrupted
the certification of the Electoral College results
and handed the election to Trump.
Trump tells Pence this about Eastman...
-He is not a respected constitutional scholar.
No respected constitutional scholar
would ever be caught dead working
for a famously corrupt idiot like Donald Trump.
Trump gets all his lawyers from bus stop ads
and TV commercials.
[ As Giuliani ] Hey, you want to do a coup?
Call Eastman & Giuliani.
[ Laughter ] We don't have a phone number,
but you can find us at our office
in the woods at Central Park.
[ Laughter and applause ]
Even though the cops are always hassling us.
[ Laughter ]
We need a permit for a desk in the park now? Alright.
[ Laughter ]
And, even in advance of today's hearing,
we kept getting more and more details
about the scope of this coup attempt and who was involved.
For example, we found out yesterday that Ginni Thomas,
the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
had a direct contact with Eastman
and that the January 6th Committee
has obtained those emails.
-The Washington Post is reporting tonight
the January 6th Committee "has obtained..."
...who played a key role
in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence
to block the certification of Joe Biden's victory.
-The spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice
was apparently in direct communication
with the key figure in the planning of a coup.
That seems like a pretty clear conflict of interest.
It's like if I found out my parents were doing
this year's Thanksgiving show with James Corden.
[ Laughter ] Good luck, James! Good luck, buddy.
Hope you're fully stocked on Grey Goose.
[ Laughter ]
I'm not saying justices' spouses
should always come into play or be scrutinized,
but in this case, it seems pretty clear.
I mean, Ginni Thomas also reportedly pressured
Arizona lawmakers to overturn their state's results
and texted Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows
about a bunch of truly insane
election fraud conspiracy theories.
How can the Supreme Court just ignore that?
In fact, the texts to Meadows,
in particular, are truly shocking.
At one point, Thomas wrote to Meadows...
And in another, she quoted a passage
that had circulated on right-wing websites...
And then again, she texted Meadows,
"Do not concede..."
Whoa! [ Laughter ]
Those texts make Mike Lindell sound like
a levelheaded businessman. [ Laughter and applause ]
[ As Lindell ] That lady is crazier than a [bleep]house rat,
and I should know, because you should hear
the things the rats whisper to me
when I'm sleeping under
da stairs!
[ Laughter and applause ]
Now, here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
You rats want jobs inside a pillowcase?
[ Laughter ]
Don't think of it as being stuffing!
[ Laughter ] Now, here's the thing.
I know those texts all sound insane to you,
but it's important to remember they really are
[bleep] insane. I think [ Laughter and applause ]
my favorite part is when she says
the "Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators...
will be living in barges off GITMO." [ Laughter ]
Obviously, all this stuff is bonkers,
but I am curious about one thing --
why would they live in a barge off GITMO?
[ Laughter ]
Like, why wouldn't they just be sent to GITMO?
Why would Trump, who, I guess, I don't know,
would be the supreme leader in this scenario,
incur the extra cost
[ Laughter ] of running a barge offshore?
I mean, you got staff, maintenance, you got weather.
Why wouldn't he just put them in a cell inside GITMO
and save himself all that? And why am I
pitching ideas on this?
[ Laughter and applause ]
This is how they get you, isn't it?
This is how they got Emily.
[ Laughter ] That's how they got Emily.
By the way, just last month, Clarence Thomas gave a speech
where he said that the judiciary is threatened,
if people are unwilling to...
As well as saying...
And that was him bitching that someone leaked
a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v Wade.
Meanwhile, his wife is burning through her cellphone data plan,
texting everyone in their contacts list
that it's time for an army to gather
because an election didn't break her way.
"We need to live with outcomes we don't agree with.
Now, let's get those barges ready for the Bidens!"
[ Laughter and applause ] [ As Lindell ] Whoa!
Cool down, Ginni.
[ Laughter and applause ] Once again, these hearings
have provided more damning evidence
that Trump and his cronies knew what they were doing
would violate the law, and tried to do it anyway.
It was a detailed, orchestrated plan for a coup
and they almost got away with it.
Again, I'm not a lawyer,
but if you genuinely think
Trump didn't commit a crime, all I can say is...
-"Are you out of your effing mind?"
[ Laughter and applause ]
-This has been "A Closer Look."
♪♪
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