0 djokovic is back in the country. he was threatened with a three-year ban after it was determined he was a public health risk. that all happened after djokovic said he didn't want to be forced to get the covid vaccine. and australia's immigration minister was concerned at the time he could be seen as a, quote, icon for anti-vacciners. but the ban was lifted in november, allowing him to compete at tournaments in australia. djokovic was shut out of the u.s. open in 2022 due to his vaccination status. he said he was willing to pass up tennis records he might break if it meant remaining unvaccinated. thank you so much for joining us tonight. "ac 360" starts now. the former president's chief of staff setting documents on fire and qanon being discussed favorably at the highest levels of the white house. pamela brown here in for anderson tonight. those are just some of the revelations from testimony released today by the january 6th committee. and in both cases, testimony by cassidy hutchinson, former close aide to then chief of staff mark meadows. jessica schneider joins us with the very latest on this striking newly revealed testimony. really some stunning details coming out of these transcripts, jessica. >> yeah, pamela, we've been seeing this throughout the past few days. this one in particular a lot of new details. that's particularly because one of these is cassidy hutchinson's final deposition. it dates from june 2022. crucially, that was right after cassidy hutchinson had fired her trump world attorney, and her new attorney was really letting her correct the record and tell every truth for the committee. so first thing she told the committee that she saw mark meadows burning documents in his office fireplace, she says about a dozen times. and that amounted in her estimation to once or twice a week. that was between december 2020 and january 2021. she says also at least twice she saw meadows burning documents after meetings with republican congressman scott perry, who of course was subpoenaed by the committee, but he never complied. then in addition, cassidy hutchinson told the committee how these discussions about qanon conspiracies really permeated throughout the white house after the election. she said not only did mark meadows bring it up, but congresswoman marjorie taylor greene. she made mention of what is this far right wing political movement that spreads these outlandish conspiracy theories. and then cassidy hutchinson said she had this exchange with white house trade adviser peter nav navarro. cassidy hutchinson saying "at one point i had sarcastically said oh, is this from your qanon friends, peter? because he would talk to me frequently about his qanon friends. he said have you looked into it cass? they point out a lot of good ideas. you really need to read. this make sure the chief sees this. cassidy hutchinson said i did note take this as sarcasm. peter navarro has been indicted for not complying with the city's subpoenas. but as these transcripts trickle out here, as we're expecting throughout the week, there are a lot of crucial new details in here that we might not have seen before. >> yeah. and it's just remarkable that a top administration official like peter navarro would be giving credence to qanon and these ridiculous conspiracy theories. we're also learning more about what former white house press secretary judge dear told the committee. what do you know? >> judd dear told the committee he really heard this all gossip. but still, it was the week after the 2020 election. he heard from them that trump in fact was considering conceding, and even inviting the bidens to the white house. so judd deer said he was looped in on the conversations because he would have been the one arranging the press access for any visit from the bidens. deer told the committee this. he said in the week after the election, there was gossip around the building that he was seriously considering conceding, even strongly considering inviting the president-elect and the incoming first lady to the white house. of course, though, none of those things happened. trump refused to concede. he held on to those claims of a stolen election, and none of those rumors actually came to fruition. >> they didn't. i know from my reporting a the time that white house officials, they were saying that to reporters that that's what they were hearing. jessica schneider, stay with us. thank you so much. i want to bring in cnn chief political analyst gloria borger along with former prosecutor gloria rogers. is there any parallel in u.s. history that you're aware of for a white house chief of staff to be burning documents in a fireplace inside the white house? >> you know, off the top of my head, i cannot think of any. even richard nixon didn't burn the tapes. there was a gap, but he didn't burn the tapes. this is stunning. and look at the timing of this. after the election, before january 6th. i think we should point out that we don't know what those documents were. we don't know whether they were required by the archives because of the presidential records act to be preserved. but i would say unless this was some kind of a shopping list that he was throwing inside the fireplace for these dozen times, that this is a real problem for mark meadows. what was he thinking about when he threw things in the fireplace that he thought needed to be destroyed? >> well, and we know according to the testimony from cassidy hutchinson, two of the times where after meeting with congressman scott perry who tried to install jeffrey clark as head of doj, as the attorney general who tried to get dni to investigate some of these conspiracy theories and defied the subpoena from the committee. is there any legal justification that you know of that would permit a legal white house staff to burn documents like this? >> well, as gloria said, pamela, only if it was something that really has nothing at all to do with the job. and almost everything has to be maintained pursuant to the presidential records act. it's likely that whatever was being burned was being burned in violation of the act. the problem is if you're thinking about criminal law, of course, you know, it's not good enough to say it probably was. you would need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. it just gives prosecutors another reason to dig into mark meadows as potentially either a criminal defendant or their crucial insider witness in their investigation. >> yeah, let's talk a little bit more about that. we know that cassidy hutchinson is already cooperating with the justice department. how do you think this fits into their investigation? and does it give them leverage against meadows? >> well, they've long had a lot of leverage against mark meadows. he has been central to all of the different strands of the plot that they've been pursuing for some time. this is just added to the pile of evidence that they want to confront mark meadows about. they'll certainly be looking at meadows. the question is, is he already talking to them? are they treating him as a potential defendant? are they going to approach him as a cooperating witness? that will be for doj to decide. but they have all of those options on the table because there is so much evidence that mark meadows was at the center of this conspiracy and knew all about its various parts. >> gloria, what do you make of the fact that former trump aide peter navarro, as well as republican congresswoman marjorie taylor greene were pushing qanon conspiracy theories inside the white house? >> it's bizarre. it's outrageous. and i never thought i'd say white house and qanon in the same sentence. and it is remarkable to me that this even went as high as the president, the former president himself. i mean, cassidy hutchinson talks about marjorie taylor greene being at a trump rally in georgia before january 6th, and this is a quote from cassidy hutchinson. she was showing him pictures of them, meaning qanon, traveling to washington, d.c. for the rally on the 6th. what did the former president say about that? oh, that's great? so excited to see qanon at my rally? i mean, what was that about? >> yeah. >> and i remember covering the white house, the president was asked multiple times about qanon. and he was always reluctant to bash them. >> exactly. >> or criticize them. so this just kind of adds an interesting layer to that. jessica, cassidy hutchinson also testified to the committee about how mark meadows was managing oval office meetings during the transition period. what did she tell them? >> so we're talking about mark meadows. she saw him burning documents. but it also turns out he was giving this direct alternative some of the white house staff during the transition period to keep what he called a close hold on any of their meetings, and he basically said don't worry about what exactly that means. i'll explain it later. but don't give any of this information out. don't leak it. don't tell anybody. and on top of that, cassidy hutchinson says that that means that none of these meetings were recorded in the oval office diaries. so there is no record of them. >> yeah. >> she says that she doesn't really remember what was discussed at these meetings, if anything surrounding january 6th was discussed, but it really adds this other layer to mark meadows' potentially burning documents, now making a concerted effort not to create any documents that were supposed to be created as a record of what was going on at the white house. so that's another concerning element to this. >> yeah, and gloria, what cassidy hutchinson said about this was corroborated. >> sure. >> by what sources told cnn that the white house diarist told the committee earlier in the year that significantly less information about trump's calls and visits were being provided in the days leading up to january 6th. putting all the pieces together and knowing what was happening in the months after the election, it begs the question of what meadows was trying to keep close hoecld. >> and who was he trying to protect. this is the question. if the president, the former president's behavior grew more and more bizarre, if there were discussions going on inside the oval office about january 6th, for example, or about changes at the justice department, et cetera, et cetera, which we've reported, these are important conversations that need to be archived. and what mark meadows was saying was shh, don't tell the american people about this. don't let the american people know what was going on in the oval office. >> gloria borger, jennifer rodgers, jessica schneider, thank you so much. >> sure. still to come tonight, the supreme court rules on title 42, the covid restriction on migrants. and later, a rise in the death toll from that epic snowstorm that buried the buffalo region. and a look at the travel nightmare that has ensued, much of it due to southwest airlines. what exactly went wrong there. we're going to take a look.