conspiracy charges. he lived with rhodes for months and is expected to reveal how he capitalized on conspiracy theories to build membership and funding. he met with the committee for three hours and also met with the commit personally. steve bannon, with his criminal trial for contempt of congress approaching, bannon now says he is willing to testify. that s a pretty remarkable about face among those least wanting to testify. in a filing today, the department said that trump attorney justin clark confirmed the former president, quote, never invoked executive privilege over any particular information or materials in response to the subpoena bannon received. like pat cipollone s lengthy testimony on friday, panel member zoe lofgren says his testimony will be similar. would it be a public hearing or would it be behind closed doors? ordinarily, this goes on for hour after hour after hour. we want to get all our questions and answers and do that in the right format. joining
with lester holt good evening americans feeling the heat tonight in ways and places they maybe never have where they live as high temperature records are expected to fall across much of the country. it is where we begin tonight. 38 million people across 20 states from california to the mississippi river right now living under heat alerts. record highs in the forecast today from cheyenne, wyoming where the forecast high is 99 to dallas/ft. worth airport which could reach 109. between now and wednesday nearly three dozen new record highs could be set the heat wave working its way to the east tonight, leaving the most vulnerable in its path at considerable risk experts are warning it is not summer as usual but rather another global gut check moment from a changing climate just as we face new obstacles in dealing with it. we ll get to that and the forecast from our team standing by in just a moment. let s start with miguel almaguer. reporter: shattering records and threatenin
threats against lawmakers, all as the insurrection was about to begin. there s no escape, pelosi, schumer, nadler. we re coming for you. we re coming in like white on rice for pelosi, nadler, schumer, even you, aoc. we re coming to take you out. we ll pull you out by your hairs. how about that, pelosi? might as well make yourself another appointment. when i get done with you, you re going to need a shine up on top of that bald head. and that s not just another trump fan recording their own crimes or what would later be trespassing, the january 6 probe is linking him to a controversial capitol tour led by an incumbent republican congressman on insurrection eve. this is the surveillance video from that day. it is now evidence in the probe to how planned this attack was and if there was help on the insi the same man threatening to, quote, take out lawmakers with that eerie confidence about how far his plans might go appears to be inside the capitol doing what looks like reco
testimony. he insists he couldn t comply, saying a lawyer for former president trump directed him not to, citing executive privilege. the judge, carl nichols, a trump appointee, tossed out that defense saying it is not at all clear that mr. trump s lawyer ever told him not to cooperate with the committee. the judge ruled bannon cannot argue he was following advice of lawyers or that justice department policies against subpoenaing administration officials applied to him. bannon has been barred from calling members of congress as witnesses. the judge says that is irrelevant to whether he failed to honor the subpoena bannon is pretty well out of defenses at this point and really all of the posturing we re seeing is setting up an appeal down the road after he is convicted. it is not really about a trial defense. reporter: bannon has ignored a hint from the judge to consider pleading guilty about all he has left is claiming he was confused about the subpoena deadline. if he is convicted
self-evident the judge in this particular case found that the committee was valid. he basically held that the committee was properly constituted, that they had the right to subpoena bannon, and that it was done properly with a vote of the full house. essentially the judge said what the committee did was absolutely legally correct. secondly, the idea there was any kind of privilege the judge blew that out of the water, too. bannon tried to claim he was told by one of trump s lawyers that he didn t have to testify and he shouldn t testify. but there was no real privilege here. bannon was not a government employee. he was not covered by executive privilege. executive privilege doesn t cover an insurrection or any kind of criminal activity. his defense is a big zero goose egg. there s nothing to it. and the idea that he s going to try and take members of congress