0 mouthpiece meets the committee. >> they asked me if we were with the proud boys. they kept asking me, who is your white house connection? who was it? >> tonight, what we learned from today's hearing, what the january six committee wants to know from alex jones, and you reporting about what is in those newly-released white house documents. then, the race to uphold the rule of law as one of two major parties a damned abandons it. >> they're the ones who in fact face a real risk of jail. >> you know what? notes right. >> plus, david remnick on the american response to russian aggression and as covid keeps claiming lives, florida picks and you fight with science. >> florida's going to absolutely put data as number one in deciding -- >> forgive me, are you telling me that the food and drug administration are not experts as to what drugs to prevent what's not to approve? >> all in starts right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes, there is now a trial set. there's gonna be a trial, in the government's case against the far-right extremist gang known as the oath keepers. stemming from the group's involvement in plotting the january 6th insurrection. today, 18 members, the oath keepers, were in virtual court. some of them were just charged with regular old can criminal conspiracies for their involvement in the attack of the capital. their trial date is set for april, just three months from now. other groups, including the group's founder, elmer stewart rhodes iii, will face trial in july for the separate, more serious charge of seditious conspiracy. and that is an important distinction. seditious conspiracy is a rarely used statute. basically only ever leveled to extremist groups who are trying to overthrow the government. i'll read the relevant section, according to the criminal code, quote, if two or more persons conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force, the government of the united states, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the united states, and just in the face of it, that does seem to be exactly what happened here. a heavily armed, right-wing group plotted to storm the capital on january 6th, in order to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as outlined in the electoral count act and the constitution. and believe me, we could spend the entire hour just reading some of the details from these indictments. take for instance this guy, you may have seen him before. thomas caldwell. he was in charge of the so-called quick reaction force, that's at least according to court documents by prosecutors, whose purpose was to rapidly transport weapons into d. c. once the group had successfully taken control of the capitol. that's the same guy who tucker carlson puts on his show who's just a poor old disabled veteran who is only in d. c. on january 6th to stand up for his beloved country. >> they claim that you plan to bring, quote, heavy weapons by boat across the potomac river. were you planning -- what kind of heavy weapons do you think that refers to? were you planning to do that? >> i have no idea and no i was not, tucker. look, i was a navy guy, okay? navy guys know about water but it's like, aircraft carriers, we're talking blue water navy here. so this other stuff, i don't know anything about it. didn't have any role in planning any of it. it's just more hooey. >> maybe he's right. maybe the whole thing is entirely fabricated and ludicrous. the seditious conspiracy indictment does paint a very different picture, i should say. the indictment lays out how caldwell booked a hotel room in arlington that could have quick access to d. c., and that a fellow quick reaction force member, quote, said we'll have goodies in case things go bad and we need to go heavy. and caldwell was asking contacts if they or anyone they knew could land a boat, so that we could have a real quick response team with heavy weapon standing by, quickly load them and ferry them across the river to our waiting arms. caldwell pleaded not guilty today. as did stewart rhodes, the alleged brains behind this entire operation. after the election, he began to, quote, encourage members and affiliates of his organization to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power. you can see there the sort of call back to the seditious conspiracy language. also, how he and his allies, quote, began recruiting others to travel to d. c., to participate in operations aimed at stopping the transfer of presidential power. they coordinated travel across the country to enter washington, d. c., equip themselves with a variety of weapons, dawned combat and tactical gear, and were prepared to answer roads call to take up arms at rhodes's direction. to be absolutely clear here, those are all quotes from an indictment, rhodes and caldwell and their associates. that are all innocent until proven otherwise in the court of law. but we should say this, rhodes did do a fair amount of this plotting in public. take this november 10th 2020 episode of conspiracy theorists alex jones'internet show. where in the middle of detailing a truly bananas theory about deep state pedophiles trying to sabotage donald trump rhodes just openly admitted that he had oath keepers stationed near d. c. to keep trump in power. >> we have men already stationed outside d.c, as a nuclear option in case they attempt to remove the president illegally, we will step in and stop it. i've good men on the ground already. we have been doing recon last week, and we are sorting out what we are going to be staging. we will be there. we will be inside d. c., we will also be outside of d. c. armed, prepared to go in. >> oh my god, he admitted it! this was not -- this was not some high tech surveillance by the fbi. this was not some wiretap. stewart rhodes just went on alex jones's show and said that this is what we're gonna do. and it sounds like, in his own words, what he was gonna do was seditious conspiracy right there. armed men stationed outside d. c. is a nuclear option to use force to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, the peaceful transfer of power being getting rid of donald trump, because he lost the election. and speaking of alex jones, the guy who is on your screen there, the man to whom rhodes admitted the plot amidst his peroration about the deep state pedophiles, alex jones had his own run in with investigators just yesterday. in fact, alex jones sat down before the bipartisan house committee investigating january 6th. he pleaded the fifth nearly 100 times instead of answering questions. he's not the first to plead the fifth. and he is absolutely within his constitutional rights to do just that. but then he went on the show and blabbed about the whole thing to his followers. >> you can't walk in to something like that with people like that -- i don't know these lawyers are running it. i don't know if they're good people or bad people. there came always polite and nice. but when you've got predators like schiff back in the background like a moray eel on the rocks getting ready to eat you, then there is no reason to even dignify it because it's not legitimate. that said, the questions were overall pretty reasonable and i wanted to answer the questions. but at the same time, it's a good thing i didn't because i'm of the type who tries to answer things correctly even though i don't know the answers. and they can then claim that that's perjury. >> i mean, put that on the january six committee movie poster. pretty reasonable, alex jones. so jones admits the investigators were polite and that the questions were reasonable. but he nonetheless refused to answer them because he did not want to get charged with perjury. he also shared much of what the committee asked him, we'll get to that shortly, it's interesting. but he also went out of his way to add this little tidbit about his friend, stewart rhodes. >> i saw it all as larping. i didn't see the oath keepers as bad people. but i saw a lot of it as playing soldier in the backyard. their mission was something that i agreed with for most of its operations. but if the indictments true that they thought they could form in and kickstart and detonator rebellion at the capitol that would lead to a larger war, that is not something that i knew about or something i support, or something i want. >> oh my goodness! your honor, i don't know, they were dressing up, we had an internet show. i have nootropics to sell. i don't what's going on. a certain amount of this is likely just jones covering his own legal exposure. but i think it's worth asking why alex jones gave his platform to the head of oathkeepers, stewart rhodes, to allow him to articulate his plan, to use armed members to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, if you don't think that they are serious about doing just that. senior reporter at buzzfeed news zoe tillman and senior legal affairs reporter for politico zoe, i'll start with you, i was looking at your coverage in realtime of this virtual court situation. what was happening today across these many defendants involved and what are two alleged conspiracies? >> that's right, this was a more than two hour-long marathon hearing here in federal court, in d. c., to get a handle on what is the largest and arguably most complicated case of all the january 6th prosecutions. it was an arraignment and it was a scheduling bonanza. it was trying to make sense of two different conspiracy cases, a third case involving another defendant, coordinating with lawyers about trial dates, evidence trying to understand where these different cases stand, and, the overarching theme was, how can the judge keep this on track and not let this get into 2023, 2024. this case was one of the earliest cases, back in january 2021. and the judge said today that he wants to get them to trial, and he kept an april 19th trial date that was in the books, that's for the noncitizen conspiracy defendants who will protested. they argue that the sedition case changes everything and they need more time. and the judge said no, that he will keep the july date. and that the seditious conspiracy defendants need to face a jury before the. so they're trying to keep things on track, trying to sort through all sorts of evidentiary issues. coordinating with the few defendants who are in custody in pretrial. so as much as the seditious conspiracy indictment was this big boom that went off and this important moment in the prosecution effort, today was the nitty-gritty, practical logistics of shepherding multiple complicated criminal prosecutions through the justice system. >> and maybe, kyle, you've been covering this as well, the logistics have been overwhelming. it's not often that that division of the u.s. attorney's office has this kind of criminal case with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, maybe over 1000, when all said is done, that are involved in essentially the same crime, on the same day, who all have to be processed through the system which is that is pleaser trials. but this trial, particular the conspiracies seditious trial, it's got to be the most high-profile we've got, would you say? >> easily. i mean this was the thing that everyone said, when are we going to see these kinds of charges? on january six? people call it the insurrection, so where are the charges that capture that conduct? while this is, at this sedition case. and you talk about the complexity of it, there is even complexities beyond these cases where some of the lawyers are representing some of the other members of the conspiracy in civil cases, they're being sued for what they did. they're representing other defendants who are part of the oath keepers in front of the january six committee, who are seeking some of their testimony, like stewart rhodes, for example. so it's extraordinarily complicated to tee up a case like this. it's going to be remarkable if the judge can keep to this april timeline, as we mentioned, there are people who are sitting in jail waiting for this to happen. and the judges mindful of that as he's trying to keep the wheels turning. but it seems almost impossible to imagine that that time will stick as much as the judge wants it to. >> let me follow up with you, kyle, about the jones testimony. i thought it was fascinating just to hear a window into what he was asked. i want to play this action where he played the fifth and bend gives information about how he got asked about his white house conduct. >> they kept asking me, who is your white house connection, who was it? i knew the caroline wright was a big fund-raiser headed up one of trump's packs. and i knew that i talk to other people and they said, she is the one who's sets up the events. it's not the white house itself. but they contact the white house. so yes, that was my contact. for the fifth and sixth. caroline wren. and that's what i called white house contact. and she's there that day behind the stage with the trumps and the family. >> have to say that -- i find it funny that he goes and, he pleads the fifth. he says, look, i don't wanna -- and then he goes on his show, and there's this woman, caroline wren, i can give you her cell phone number if you want. you get a sense here that this is not nothing, even to someone sort of pugilistic as alex jones. >> right, you can see how careful he is being here, because jones is not someone who's necessarily known for his position and karen terms of how he frames things. he is trying to speak in a way that's not gonna cross any boundary. i think he's talked about very loosely about his connections to the white house on january 6th and what he's saying here is, will actually, it wasn't directly with the white house, it was a person who is a fund-raiser, who was herself connected to the white house. so he's really trying to thread some needles here about what he did and he's saying i'm not gonna do this in a situation where i'm gonna be charged with lying to congress, but also my listeners and operating with a little bit of care. making sure he doesn't go too far with what he's saying. >> zoe, i think you can tell, you've got the department of justice now is this continue speed bump into this massive investigation this produce all these different criminal cases. there's conspiracy cases, they're seditious conspiracy, you've got the january sixth committee. i wonder how you, as a reporter who sort of mired in this every day, think about those two tracks. because what we see from jones is, of course, there's a lot of interest in the possible connections between the alleged, frankly criminal, activity, the part that justice is pursuing. and the sort of plot from the top down of the white house. >> well, you know, it's interesting in that i think alex jones is also speaking in a way that is mindful of the fact that the criminal investigation is ongoing. and that one of his associates in infowars, owen shroyer, has been charged. our intro your was with iron -- owen shroyer had been charged with illegally being in an area in the capital where he wasn't supposed to be. and so, i think there's some careful language from alex jones wanting to be mindful of what he says about where he was, and who he was with, and why he thought he was where he was supposed to be. so, i think that for some of these key top level witnesses or individuals of potential interest, i think they were listening closely when the attorney general said a few weeks ago that they are still actively pursuing this, willing to go in multiple directions, not just sideways but up the ladder, and building up cases. so, i think there is an awareness of the fact that congress is interested. but the investigation is open. and they know it. >> zoe tilman, kyle cheney, thank you both. donald trump did everything he could to keep hundreds of pages of documents from reaching the hands of the committee investigating january 6th, taking the fight all the way to the supreme court. last week, he lost. now, the committee has over 700 pages of handwritten notes, calendars, talking points, and more to sort through. so, what was donald trump fighting so hard to keep from seeing the light of day? next, the latest reporting on what is in those documents and what the committee is trying to piece together, after this. piece together, after this