i am stephanie ruhle. the january six committee is on the eve of revealing more crucial evidence about a key part of donald trump s plan to overturn the 2020 election. the panel s fifth hearing starts tomorrow afternoon at 3 pm eastern. it will focus on how trump himself pressured his own top justice officials to go along with his plan, and how they repeatedly resisted. trump also tried to install a loyalist to leave the department of justice, a man name jeffrey clark, who backed his false claims of fraud. former attorney general, jeffrey rosen, the man tried along with his former deputy, richard donahue, and another official, steven angle. we heard from donahue at yesterday s hearing. in a taped deposition, he told the story of a january 6th 2021 oval office meeting, where january 3rd, excuse me, oval office meeting, where he threatened to resign if trump made jeffrey clark attorney general. the president said, suppose i do this, suppose i replace him with jeff rosen,
so i wasn t democratic administrations, we went hard after democrats. attorney general went hard after democrats, they did not go after republicans. that is what trump s justice department did was from sessions to matthew whitaker to bill barr, it was a bunch of political people doing trump s bidding. but here is why it is so significant, what is going on tomorrow, even with those folks, they found a line that they could not cross. and they threatened to resign if trump installed jeffrey clark as the acting attorney general, because jeffrey rosen, the current acting attorney general, would not do the bidding of trump. could you imagine how bad you would have to be, just how evil, to get your entire hand picked justice department to resign, to mass resign? that is what happened here. these were not deep state folks. these were trump s own people,
we want pads to polonium to come in, and cooperate in a robust way. there is no reason he shouldn t. here is why he won t want to. this is trump s boy, barb. yes. i think pat cipollone has a potential to be the john dean of this moment. he was there, he was a white house counsel, he knows what is happening, he was the one who uttered that phrase, the murder suicide pact. he was there, and he, as well, threatened to resign along with the justice department officials of trump persisted in replacing the attorney general and sending out these letters. who knows what else he may have been a party to? it sounds like he did the right things, he tried to push trump to stop from some of his illegal impulses, but he could tell an awful lot. to the extent he is relying on executive privilege, we know that the supreme court has already said that the interest and investigating what happened on january 6th over outweighs any interest in
his justice department, and why it is so important to hear from these witnesses. why? this was an effort by donald trump to use the justice department in the words of richard donahue, for improper ends. he was trying to use, this was one of the plot points that he was trying to do. he at one point had said, just say there was fraud, and leave the rest to me, to use the justice department to legitimize the fraud. and then jeffrey clark planned to write letters to georgia and other swing states, saying falsely, we have detected irregularities in the election in your state, and we encourage you to conveniently legislators to select alternate slates of electors. this was an absolute effort to utilize the justice department to overthrow a free and fair election. i think that what we should expect here tomorrow should be some very breathtaking testimony. jeff, let s talk about this documentary that is coming out. are people in trump world concerned?
merrick garland is confronting, did the former president commit a crime, a felony, as already one federal judge has said he has, that he has basically up until the end of 2024, at least, for that. obviously, he should not take all of that time, this is one of the most grave crimes, grave events in our nation s history, so i think that speed is warranted here. but he has got time. jeff, why are we clearing our schedules for 3 pm tomorrow, what do you think it s gonna go down? well look, remember at the outset of these hearings, congresswoman liz cheney said that the committee had uncovered evidence of what she described as a seven-point plot, a seven-point scheme, involving donald trump to overturn the election. tomorrow is the fifth hearing, so when you will hear from the committee, is them detailing the fifth part of this plot. and it was donald trump s attempts to pressure the justice department. pressuring doj leadership to say that there was a fraudulent election when there was