Times is reporting on how the january 6th is working its inquiry, taking a page out of organized crime investigations, using data mapping techniques that they also use to i. d. terrorist networks. is it possible the committee as outpacing whatever the doj might be doing? could it be the justices only focusing on prosecuting those who carried out the actual riot? what do you read into this new information? i think the committee is reacting to a really unprecedented stall destruction strategy by the trump white house. it started with them trying to destroy the documents trump reaping them up. he didn t rip them up in small enough pieces that the archives were able to put them back together. then he asserted executive privilege over the documents trying to prevent them from being turned over to the 16 committee.
Outpacing whatever the doj might be doing? could it be the justices only focusing on prosecuting those who carried out the actual riot? what do you read into this new information? i think the committee is reacting to a really unprecedented stall destruction strategy by the trump white house. it started with them trying to destroy the documents trump reaping them up. he didn t rip them up in small enough pieces that the archives were able to put them back together. then he asserted executive privilege over the documents trying to prevent them from being turned over to the 16 committee. he lost that in the supreme court 8 to 1. so now the new tactic is to say well, they forgot so that s no surprise that the justice is using a bunch of serious techniques to try to get at that. in fact the most serious technique we just got word of today, which is steve bannon s attorney, a guy named robert
0 he left office. the archives released a statement saying quote, in mid january, 2022, the national archives and records administration arranged for the transport from the trump mar-a-lago property in florida to the national archives of 15 boxes that contain presidential records following discussions with president trump s representatives in 2021. the statement continues. they are continuing to search for additional presidential records that belong to the national archives. the washington post was first to report on this writing quote, trump advisers deny any if areas intent and said the boxes contained momentous, gifts, letters from world leaders, including kim jong-un own and barack obama. tonight, the new york times reports the retrieve documents also included a map that mr. trump famously drew on with a black sharpie marker to demonstrate the track of hurricane dorian heading toward alabama and 2019 to backup a declaration he had made on twitter that contradicted weather forecast. it s not yet known if any of those 15 boxes of records taken from mar-a-lago contain any documents related to january 6th, but recall trump did go to the supreme court to try to keep the records out of the select committee s hands. a case he lost. we re also learning more about the january six committee strategy and tactics as it focuses on trump s allies. the new york times reports the panel is quote, borrowing techniques from federal prosecutions, employing aggressive tactics typically used against mobsters and terrorists as it seeks to breakthrough stonewalling from former president donald j trump, and his allies and develop evidence that could prompt a criminal case. earlier this evening, one committee member spoke of his concerns about the justice department s handling of cases that are stemming from the capitol attack. the violence of january 6th, they re pursuing it vigorously, including people who are not present but nonetheless were involved in a seditious conspiracy. where i have less confidence s other efforts to overturn election, such as the former president on the phone with the secretary in georgia trying to course that secretary into finding 11,780 votes that don t exist. i think if you or i or any of your viewers were on the phone recording the conversation like that we would be under investigation. it shouldn t matter that this was the former president of the united states. we re also getting another view of just how dangerous january 6th was for officials, staff and law enforcement of the capital. the justice department today released more new video evidence from its criminal cases. one rioter is seen making violent threats about what would happen if then vice president pence did not overturn the 2020 election. if pence k, we will drag those bleep burst through the streets. you politicians are gonna get dragged through the streets, because we re not going to have our effing votes stolen. we are here to take it back from you. cut their head off! one of the two republicans on the january 6th panel says he s now concerned the nation could be heading towards civil war. it is a real possibility. am i hearing you right, congressman? you fear potentially there could be a civil war here in the united states? i do. and a year ago i would have said no, not a chance, but i have come to realize that when we don t see each other s fellow americans, when we begin to separate into cultural identities, when we begin to basically give up everything we believe and so we could be part of a group, and then when you have leaders that come and abuse that faithfulness of that group to violent ends as we saw on january 6th. we would be naive to think it s not possible here. our basic survival is at stake. house democrats are also focusing on preventing a government shutdown just 11 days from now on february 18th. lawmakers are expected to act as soon as this week tomorrow they will consider a bill that would fund the government through march 11th, and as democrats try to maintain the majority in the house and senate, a supreme court ruling tonight is raising new concerns about voting rights. the high court cleared the way for alabama to use its new conversion will district map, even though a lower court said the map violates the voting rights act by denying african american voters and your district. at the white house today the president was focused on the crisis over ukraine. he met with germany s new chancellor olaf scholz to discuss potential actions should russia invade ukraine. as those talks were going on in washington, french president emmanuel macron was sitting down with vladimir putin in moscow. we have a lot more on the high stakes situation along the ukrainian border in just a few minutes. with that, let s bring in our lead off guest on this monday night, philip, pulitzer prize -winning senior washington correspondent for the washington post, coauthor with carol of the new york times bestseller, i alone can fix it. big veteran washington journalist and associate editor and columnist for real clear politics. the department of justice and former acting solicitor general during the obama administration who has argued dozens of cases before the u.s. supreme court. welcome one and all. phil, we now know the national archives as waiting for more records from trump. but here is something your colleagues reported in the washington post. when the january six committee asked for certain documents related to trump s effort to pressure vice president mike pence, for example, some of them no longer existed because they had already been shredded, set someone familiar with that request. the presidential records act is not a suggestion, it requires presidents to turn nyone like te counsel s office saying wait, we can t do this? you re exactly right, chris, as a federal law as presidents and their staff turnover all of those records to the national archives and it s a matter of public trust and they were of course public servants while serving or while trump served as president, and as for the white house counsel, keep in mind the white house counsel any other lawyers in the counsel s office have a ton of issues on their plate in those final weeks of the presidency, including trying to restrain us best they could the presidents impulses to try to overturn the election results. there was a lot on the line for that then white house counsel pat cipollone. that s not to make any sort of excuse for not maintaining these records, but it s just to provide some context of with a high stakes high pressure environment it was in those final weeks of the presidency for those people who were working as the president s lawyers in the counsel s office. is there any doubt based on your reporting that donald trump had been told at some point or multiple times that these records needed to be kept? chris, of course he was told these records needed to be kept, it s something that all presidents are told at the beginning when they come into office. it s also something that his chiefs of staff, is assistance and of course the people who served over the years as the white house counsel were well aware of it s a matter of federal law. this was a requirement from day one of the presidency and the fact that trump did not maintain those records and hand them over to the national archives speaks to him not caring about with the lot required of them. we all remember, at least i remember that after one of his state of the union s he was actually walking to marine one he started saying how nancy fellow see had broken the law because she ripped up his speech. i want to play for you, yes some understanding about documents, somebody had told him that, that documents should be shredded. this is a sample of what we heard from trump about hillary clinton s emails all through the campaign. hillary set up an illegal server for the obvious purpose of shielding her criminal conduct from public disclosure and exposure. this was not just extreme carelessness. this is calculated, deliberate, premeditated misconduct. people have nothing to hide don t bleach their emails or destroy evidence to keep it from being publicly archived as required under federal law. a criminal action was willful, deliberate, intentional, and purposeful. we could be sure that what is in those emails is absolutely devastated. so he seemed to have two different standards for himself and for hillary clinton, who by the way, was not president, having said that is there any legal exposure for trump here, or is this a case of well, if we eventually get them all as well that ends well? no, there is huge illegal expenditure to use i think you stole my thunder. trump went around the campaign time and again saying you can t destroy records, you can t destroy records. i take those points about how the end of the trump administration, there was a lot of chaos, but even a white house as incompetent as donald trump s from the first day on said here is the presidential records act, was passed after watergate because nixon tried to destroy documents. it s a crime to violate this. he had to have been told about that. and trump was bent on hiding evidence, whether he was ripping it up or trying to hide it in mar-a-lago or whatever. you get the sense that donald trump would have burned all these documents of somebody on his staff would have trusted him with a match. there are several criminal statutes that are violated like 2071 which forbids the concealment, the removal or the destruction of the documents. it is no defense that his defenders are saying this is how donald trump ran his business. he ripped up memos and stuff like that. that s not a defense. jimmy carter can t comply georgia government rules when he s the president. the first president bush can t apply cia rules. the second president bush cannot apply texas ranger rules. you are the president of the united states. there is a rulebook that applies. it s criminal. these are fairly easy cases. i think if they are not brought, what does that say about the criminal justice system? you ve got a guy at the very top who is flagrantly violating the law that undoubtedly he was told about time and again. so let s talk about the republicans and we are hearing now from some of the senators on the party s decision to censure liz cheney and adam kinzinger on friday. i want to play a couple of witnessing tonight. i talked to rana, she s a good lady and the statement she doesn t she was talking about things other than violence. and, you know, i think all of us up here want to talk about forward not backward. we ve got issues that we should be focusing on besides s ensuring to members of congress because they have a different opinion. do you agree with the action, actually sunshine cheney and kinzinger? you know, it s not my job. but they said in the resolution they wanted republicans to be unified. that was not a unifying action. anything that my party does that comes across as being stupid is not going to help us. senator graham of course was referring to ron mcdaniel who happens by the way to be senator romney s niece, but to the bigger question. how much does this rnc censure decision and the move to describe 16 as legitimate political discourse complicate things from members on the hill, especially those running for reelection? i think actually this is much more consequential than people initially believe, they were sort of looking around this weekend to see if more than four republicans had said it was wrong, and now you have these letter today, 140 republicans and members of congress and public officials in the republican party discussing, dismissing this as outrageous that this is not just a censure of the two members on the committee, that bumper sticker blood legitimate political discourse is gonna be a huge problem for donors who don t want to be asked about this and four republican candidates up and down the ballot this fall. it s not just senator cornyn getting a mic in the hallway of the wrestle building. it s actually just a well-known phrase now that will burn the rnc and really put republicans on the spot as candidates throughout the campaign season to not just say what do you think about, maybe we ll, maybe they re too aggressive. they have to answer to whether or not their party believes that that is legitimate political discourse. i think that s going to be very damaging for many of them who don t who try to who don t refused to reject outright with the senators have in the last couple of days. so we mentioned the new york times is reporting on how the january 6th is working its inquiry, taking a page out of organized crime investigations, using data mapping techniques that they also use to i. d. terrorist networks. is it possible the committee as outpacing whatever the doj might be doing? could it be the justices only focusing on prosecuting those who carried out the actual riot? what do you read into this new information? i think the committee is reacting to a really unprecedented stall destruction strategy by the trump white house. it started with them trying to destroy the documents trump reaping them up. he didn t rip them up in small enough pieces that the archives were able to put them back together. then he asserted executive privilege over the documents trying to prevent them from being turned over to the 16 committee. he lost that in the supreme court 8 to 1. so now the new tactic is to say well, they forgot so that s no surprise that the justice is using a bunch of serious techniques to try to get at that. in fact the most serious technique we just got word of today, which is steve bannon s attorney, a guy named robert costello, the justice department revealed that they ve gone to try to get some of bannon s attorneys calling information and email information. that is a really traumatic step that requires high-level approval of the justice department. the justice department s been clear to say they are not seeking attorney client material, they re seeking information outside of that, but to me that demonstrates the real seriousness of this as a response to whet the former white house officials and others in the trump were trying to do stonewalling the investigation. as that investigation continues, amy, we ve heard congressman kinzinger s concerns about the new visions in this nation growing into a much more dangerous threat. maybe even civil war. do you think that s more one man s opinion or are the republicans who might agree they just don t want to step out and say so publicly? well, i think congressman kinzinger is right. we just heard the former president a week ago in his rally in texas basically call and a not remotely veiled way or the biggest protests ever against any prosecutors that would go after him in georgia, d. c. or new york state, that everybody knows with that means, that he said there were going to do illegal things in that they were racist. so he knows after january 6th when his followers will do. he knows that he is essentially inciting violence. there hasn t been a republican since there hasn t been a backlash to that since last week. people are saying this is really dangerous and after january six we certainly don t want him to encourage anymore protests that we that would become violent. everybody s looking the other way and ducking. i think it is a serious threat. it is our domestic terror threat, it s our worst security threat right now. this is the kind of thing the republican party wants to avoid talking about. it s not that the threat is real, it s just that they just want to look away and say that donald trump is just using interesting language. so when the committee turns out in terms of potential threats that are ongoing, organized funded threats, that will raise the conversation again, put those republican candidates on defense and having to answer to those findings, but every time trumps gets up and incites violence, they seem to be pretty quiet. phil, joe biden s attention has been largely focused on ukraine and russia, certainly today, obviously. it was top of the agenda. it s been a lot of time on the state of the union is coming up fast. march 1st. so this is a critical period ahead. what do you know about how the white house is trying to make sure his domestic agenda, the things they feel he s accomplished say front and center with voters? chris, there are a couple of things the white house is trying to do now with regards to the domestic agenda and politicking ahead of the midterm campaigns. they want to try to remind voters what s biden actually signed into law last year. there s been so much media attention on the failure of the build back better, which is the centerpiece of his domestic agenda that has pale to failed to pass the senate. little attention relatively speaking paid to the pair of successes, the big infrastructure bill that passed near the end of last year and that covid economic stimulus relief package early on in the presidency and so you could inspect biden trying to refrain things for the american public at the state of the union address to talk about wet has passed and how that infrastructure bill in particular is improving big roads, bridges, etc in various communities around the country. i think you can also expect to hear a full throttled push on voting rights. remember it has not passed the senate yet, but the administration has an entirely given up on it. i think you re also going to hear some clarity from the president on foreign policy. the ukraine crisis is a crisis indeed, but it hasn t quite captivated the attention of the american people. i think people are a little bit confused as to what is at stake there for the united states. i would expect to hear from the president at that state of union when he knows millions of peoples might be watching to try to articulate some sort of a mission as it relates to ukraine. thank you all. great to have you all have here tonight. thank you. coming up, as ukraine awaits russia s next move, a retired four star general helps us assess the ten situation along the border. an update on the war over masks. we will ask a leading doctor about the wisdom of winding down school mask mandates in several states. the 11th hour just getting underway on a monday night. ht