Summary
The January 6 Committee drops bombshell revelations in its first live hearing. The January 6 panel has documentations of GOP lawmakers who sought pardons from then-President Donald Trump. At least 20 million people across the country tuned in on the two-hour hearing last night. The committee also revealed brand new testimony from Trump Attorney General Bill Barr and the president`s own daughter Ivanka, who both said they did not believe that Trump won the election. January 6 committee chose to focus on the centrality of pro-Trump right-wing gangs like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, teeing up those groups and their relationship to Trump in a way we`ve just haven`t seen before. More than 19 million people watched the January 6 committee`s first public hearing as all of the major news networks aired it except for Fox News.
Transcript
JOY REID, MSNBC ANCHOR: See, Officer Harry Dunn, Officer Daniel Hodges, former officer Michael Fanone, Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, Officer Caroline Edwards, who really, really moved us all last night. These guys are heroes and in an era where we`re seeing police really not always stand up and do the right thing, especially in places like Uvalde They did the right thing. They won the week. Bomani Jones, thank you, my friend. And that is it tonight`s "REIDOUT," ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES starts right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC ANCHOR (voiceover): Tonight on ALL IN.
REP. LIZ CHENEY, (R-WY): Aware of the rioters` chance to hang Mike Pence, the president responded with this sentiment. Well, maybe our supporters have the right idea. Mike Pence "deserves it."
HAYES: January 6 committee tells the world Donald Trump led the attempted coup.
BILL BARR, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I told him that it was -- it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that. And I was doing a great grave disservice to the country.
IVANKA TRUMP, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he said -- was saying.
HAYES: Tonight, Congressman Jamie Raskin on the big new things we learned on night one and what they say about Donald Trump`s consciousness of guilt.
ALEX CANNON, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN LAWYER: We weren`t finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states.
HAYES: Plus, what the incredible focus on two Trump militia groups says about what`s to come?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you say that Proud Boys` numbers increase after the stand-back standby comment?
JEREMY BERTINO, PROUD BOY: Exponentially. I`d say tripled probably.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the potential for a lot more eventually?
HAYES: And how Trump`s propaganda network keeps finding new ways to launder a coup?
CHENEY: Sean Hannity wrote in part. Key now, no more crazy people.
HAYES: But ALL IN starts right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Good evening from New York. I`m Chris Hayes. The country is still processing the testimony from last night`s inaugural primetime hearing of the January 6 committee. And while we learned a lot last night, which we will take you through this hour, one major takeaway is something we`ve been repeating on this show for more than a year, Donald Trump attempted a coup. That was the front page above the fold headline of the New York Times today, the newspaper of record. You could read a similar sentiment on the front pages of papers across the country.
The Washington Post went with panel pins blame on Trump. The Orlando Sentinels front page reads January 6 panel pins plot on Trump. The Colorado Springs Gazette went with paddle points finger at Trump. Even in red Alaska, the Anchorage Daily News implicitly blamed the ex-president with an arresting headline again, "an attempted coup."
We`ve known the contours of Donald Trump`s coup attempt for some time. And while many assume we would get powerful new images from the insurrection itself, like the ones you are seeing on your screen right now, there was a sense of trepidation, I think, partly born of what happened with the Muller report that after a year of leaks and countless tell-all books about the final days of the Trump administration, there might be just nothing left for the committee to reveal.
Needless to say, that was not the case. In fact, people across the country tuned in, in huge, surprisingly huge numbers. At least 20 million people watched the two-hour hearing last night. That`s the Nielsen numbers for contacts that`s on par with events like Sunday Night Football games or the Macy`s Thanksgiving Day Parade that`s big, America watches kind of stuff.
And the hearing also delivered in terms of what it broadcast. I mean, we on the show, I`ve been covering the insurrection, and its aftermath about as close as anyone in the media and there were still multiple, multiple brand new revelations last night that took us here on ALL IN, our staff by surprise. We were slacking the whole time. Is that new? Do we know that? Have we seen that before? There was the news that a Trump campaign lawyer named Alex Cannon told Chief of Staff Mark Meadows back in November, in November, that Trump`s claims of election fraud were bogus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CANNON: I remember the call with Mr. Meadows where Mr. Meadows was asking me what I was finding and if I was finding anything. And I remember sharing with him that we weren`t finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When was that conversation?
CANNON: Probably in November, mid to late November, I think it was before my child was born.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what was Mr. Meadows` reaction to that information?
CANNON: I believe the words he used were so there`s no there there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:05:00]
HAYES: There`s no there-there in mid to late November from Mark Meadows. That is new. But knowing that fact did not stop Meadows from pushing Trump`s big lie in public and in private for months as he helped enable the coup. The committee also revealed brand new testimony from Trump Attorney General Bill Barr and the president`s own daughter Ivanka, who both said they did not believe that Trump won the election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARR: I made it clear, I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president that was bullsh*t. And, you know, I didn`t want to be a part of it. You can`t live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence that the election -- that there was fraud in the election.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How did that affect your perspective about the election when Attorney General Barr made that statement?
IVANKA TRUMP: It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he said -- was saying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Yes. Well, both those bits of testimony were completely new that was the daughter of the ex-president of the United States saying she agreed with attorney Bill Barr, that her daddy`s claims of a stolen election were all BS. And today on his weird off-brand social media website, Trump attacked Bill Barr and his own daughter Ivanka. "Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at or studying election results. She had long since checked out and was in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr in his position as Attorney General (he sucked)."
Even though Attorney General Barr and Ivanka both knew the election was not stolen, we should keep in mind, they never use their platforms to forcefully say the election was free and fair. In fact, in Barr`s resignation letter in December 2020, in that letter, he endorsed the investigation into fraud he now admits was BS. Before last night, we had gotten contemporaneous reporting that Barr`s own DOJ staff was concerned about Trump`s coup attempt. But last night, the committee revealed exactly what Trump`s son-in-law, Jared, thought of all the lawyers threatening to quit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: Jared, are you aware of instances where Pat Cipollone threatened to resign?
JARED KRUSHNER, FORMER TRUNP WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISOR: I kind of -- like I said my interest at that time was on trying to get as many pardons done. And I know that you know, he was always -- to him and the team were always saying, oh, we`re going to resign. We`re not going to be here if this happens if that happens so I kind of took it up to just be whining, to be honest with you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Again, we -- that was new. Jared Kushner just whining oh, there`s a coup happening and I don`t -- I couldn`t -- I tuned them all out. It`s funny that Kushner mentions his work on pardons there because another big, big revelation from the night and again, another one of those, wait a second, wait till we know that we didn`t know that. That was the multiple, multiple Republican Congressmen including coup plotters, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who sought White House pardons for their role in trying to well, we think, overthrow a free and fair election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: As you will see, Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6 to seek a presidential pardon. Multiple other Republican Congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Now, Perry said today that that was a lie. I think he called it a soulless lie. I mean, I guess we`ll find out, right? I think we`re going to get to the bottom of that. Now, I`m no lawyer, but it seems like you would probably only seek a pardon if you think you`re going to be charged with a crime or did something wrong. Now, the committee did not just reveal brand- new information. It also fleshed out previously reported incidents like the meeting, which precipitated the now-infamous Trump tweet, where he invited supporters to a Wild Day on December -- on -- in DC on January 6.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: On December 18, 2020, a group including General Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and others visited the White House. They stayed late into the evening. We know that the group discussed a number of dramatic steps, including having the military seize voting machines and potentially rerun elections. You will also hear that President Trump met with that group alone for a period of time before White House lawyers and other staff discovered the group was there and rushed to intervene.
A little more than an hour after Ms. Powell, Mr. Giuliani, General Flynn, and the others finally left the White House, President Trump sent the tweet on the screen now telling people to come to Washington on January 6, be there he instructed them, will be wild.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: The committee also provided a new perspective on events during the insurrection. Like for instance, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying that Vice President Mike Pence, who is actively under siege in the Capitol was, we think, appears basically running the country at the time?
[20:10:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: So it took two or three calls with Vice President Pence. He was very animated. And he issues very explicit, very direct, unambiguous orders. There was no question about that. And I can get you the exact quotes, I guess, from some of our records somewhere, but he was very animated, very direct, very firm.
CHENEY: By contrast, here is General Milley`s description of his conversation with President Trump`s chief of staff, Mark Meadows on January 6.
MILLEY: He said, we have -- we have to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Yes, golly, gee, where would that narrative come from? The reason Pence was making all the decisions is because Trump steadfastly refused to stop the insurrection. It was what he wanted to happen, which we already knew from past reporting, but Congresswoman Cheney laid it out perfectly and with this new detail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: President Trump believed his supporters at the Capitol, and I "we`re doing what they should be doing." This is what he told his staff as they pleaded with him to call off the mob, to instruct his supporters to leave. You will hear testimony that "the President did not really want to put anything out, calling off the riot or asking his supporters to leave." You will hear that President Trump was yelling, and "really angry" at advisors who told him he needed to be doing something more. And aware of the rioters` chance to hang Mike Pence, the president responded with this sentiment. "Maybe our supporters have the right idea." Mike Pence "deserves it."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That made me set up. The president said his own vice president deserved to be lynched by the mob because he would not go through with the plot to steal the election. That is a summary of what we learned from one night of these hearings. I suspect there`s still more we will learn.
Danya Perry is a former New York State Deputy Attorney General and federal prosecutor, she co-authored a Brookings Institution paper titled Trump On Trial: A Guide To The January 6 Hearings And The Question Of Criminality, Ari Melber is an MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent, of course, host of THE BEAT every weekday at 6 p.m. They both join me now. It`s great to have you both here. Thank you very much.
We were here last night, and are digesting this, but we`ve had a little bit of time to sort of go back through. What are -- what is your sort of takeaway today with a little bit of perspective on what we saw last night?
ARI MELBER, MSNBC CHIEF LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: What you are through there is critical because this is ultimately about violence and overthrowing the government, not what technical statutes say. And the violence you just ended with was so striking and it`s not about partisanship, and it`s not about how high-ranking you are, it`s simply about the fact that Donald Trump, according to people around him, contemporaneous evidence, supported violence and wanted people killed, as you said, that`s the testimony. He can not tweet, I guess it`s the opposite of tweeting when he posts now.
HAYES: Right.
MELBER: And say Bill Barr sucks.
HAYES: Right.
MELBER: That`s sort of his rebuttal.
HAYES: Right.
MELBER: Telling that he`s more concerned about, again, family dynamics, and Bill Barr than the larger allegation that he was directly staging a coup and rooting for violence. The other thing that I thought came through last night, and I think you made a very important point that yes, we all follow the news, people watching MSNBC follow the news, but 20 million people, a lot of folks who don`t usually watch the news at night.
And they`re being reminded or seeing with evidence for the first time, the depth of it, that these people were willing to attack armed police. Is there any doubt they would have attacked and killed unarmed members of Congress, or the vice president does have his own security detail?
HAYES: Right.
MELBER: But if they would have found these members in either party, they would have stopped them to death. They would have beat them to death. That was the whole point. They said it, they meant it, they prove their violence, and they proved it in a way their defiance. Because they went up people who aren`t many of those officers showed restraint and did not use deadly weapons, which is more common. We`ve seen in many other protesters that involve -- many of the protests that involve non-white people. So all of that hangs over this, is not just about the law on the Constitution, although that matters, it`s also American seeing this as the violent coup, they want it.
HAYES: Yes. And that -- right. And the idea that like this was a coup fomented by the president, as a takeaway, I thought was very important. But it also is the case, Danya, and part of the reason I wanted to have you here is that I really found the thing that you wrote very useful for Brookings, you guys co-wrote. Because it`s very clear to me that Liz Cheney, particularly, but others are thinking in the statutory criminal U.S. Code terms. You know this is something that potential crimes that you`ve talked about.
[20:15:00]
And one of the things that you talk about there is the essence of a conspiracy is an agreement to commit an unlawful act. To be convicted, a defendant must know the scheme`s criminal purpose, specifically intended for that objective. The defendant need only know the essential nature of the plan the core wrong to be committed, not every detail. I was thinking about that as I was watching them establish in that first part of the Cheney argument, he knew, he knew, he knew.
DANYA PERRY, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Yes. Liz Cheney was prosecutorial in her opening statement. She was methodical, deliberate, crisp, and she really gave the overview of what it would take to establish the elements of that crime. She actually ticked off. There was some -- you know, she was dropping breadcrumbs I think for folks like me, watchers, who were kind of in the know, but really more for Merrick Garland, no doubt.
HAYES: Yes.
PERRY: She uses terms like corruptly influenced or obstructed in an official proceeding. And she talks about specific criminal intent. So, yes, she`s giving a presentation to the American-watching public. She`s also got an audience of one, I believe, and that`s the attorney general.
HAYES: That point about corruptly leaped out at me too in violation of the law. She said about his -- I mean plainly, she said about Donald Trump`s actions many times. And the broader idea here of the -- of the kind of the plot, right, Ari, which again, I think you`re right that like the 20 million who saw it, I -- here`s the way I feel. I think people`s impressions of what happened on January 6 was that like things got out of control. Like -- and what yesterday seemed to lay out to me, which is something that you and I both in reporting on is this wasn`t the plan going sideways. This was the plan.
MELBER: Right, and a plan with a multi-prong strategy. You know, sometimes when people ask for advice, they say, like, how should I plan my career? And I always say like a plan is shooting at one thing and a strategy is multiple ways to do something, even if one door closes.
HAYES: Right, yes. So it was a good planning exercise from that perspective.
MELBER: Now they had a strategy with multiple doors.
HAYES: Correct.
MELBER: You talked about this last night in our coverage. Disappear, Mike Pence, one way or another.
HAYES: Right.
MELBER: That`s one way to do this certification. Send it back to the states by obstructing the official proceeding, Cheney`s legal language, right? Recruit enough lawmakers to say that some states were so formally contested that the election has not been "certified." That`s the -- that`s the sweep, which is a football term for a coup.
HAYES: Right.
MELBER: All of these different strategies show you that there was more than one thing going on that was designed to get to the place where Donald Trump either stays in power past the 20th, or the whole thing is much more "contested" and goes back to the courts than it -- than it should have.
HAYES: Do you think -- I guess my question is having worked in the federal prosecutor`s office. I mean, again, this is -- I mean you can`t think of a -- of a hotter more -- I don`t know, polarizing scary thing to be, Dana, if you`re a federal prosecutor like we`re going to indict the former president for a coup. But that is a lot of what centers around this. And I wouldn`t - - I`m not just saying that it`s just so evident in Cheney`s presentation that committee`s binding that they clearly think that`s the case.
PERRY: Absolutely. That was a clear takeaway from my client.
HAYES: Very clear.
PERRY: It`s -- you know, Chairman Thompson said it right off the bat. This was not a spontaneous riot. This was a multi-pronged, multifaceted, long- time-in-the-making conspiracy, and Liz Cheney called it -- well, I`d quibble with the characterization, but a sophisticated seven-part plan. It was a little ham-handed, I think, far as we can tell, is a little bungled. But, yes, it`s -- I`m sure, you know, frightening for DOJ or any prosecutor to look at something, this profile and the level of polarization and politicization. On the other hand, that is what prosecutors are supposed to do.
HAYES: Yes.
PERRY: They`re supposed to look dispassionately and clearly at the evidence in front of them. And Liz Cheney, in particular, laid it out very clearly and succinctly last night.
MELBER: In a sentence, if indicting a former president were unfathomable or impossible, Richard Nixon would not have sought and accepted apart.
HAYES: That`s right. Quickly, I didn`t get to your show at six because I was preparing my own. Did you --
MELBER: Understandable.
HAYES: Did you do the Nick quit -- Chris quested rap video thing?
MELBER: So funny you say this. We did not. We did not.
HAYES: I was like if the world is ever produced Ari Melberby.
MELBER: We did not.
HAYES: I better just --
MELBER: So -- No, I`m giving you that one. I`m not even going to bring it up.
HAYES: Can we take this? That`s a --
MELBER: We debated it and the seriousness of the time we haven`t able --
[20:20:00]
HAYES: All right, trick daddy, I`m a thug, stopped being greedy.
MELBER: You got to do it, right.
HAYES: Danya Perry --
MELBER: We didn`t do it.
HAYES: Danya Perry and Ari Melber, thank you both.
PERRY: That is new.
MELBER: I really appreciate it.
HAYES: Now, we learned all of that from just one hearing. So if last night was any indicator and there`s a lot more than the committee has in store for the next few weeks, I will talk to Congressman Jamie Raskin about their strategy from night one and where the hearings go from here right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHENEY: What President Trump demanded, that Mike Pence do just wrong, it was illegal, and it was unconstitutional.
[20:25:00]
You will hear this in great detail from the vice president`s former general counsel. Witnesses in these hearings will explain how the former vice president and his staff informed President Trump over and over again, that what he was pressuring Mike Pence to do was illegal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Last night, the January 6 Committee held its first hearing on the attack on our democracy. It was the first hearing of seven which are expected to be scattered over the coming two weeks. The next hearing, if you want to just put this in your calendar, will be on Monday at 10 a.m. Eastern with live coverage here and special analysis in this hour of everything we learned, so definitely turn -- tune in that.
Joining me now is a member of that committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Democrat of Maryland, who also serves as the lead impeachment manager for Trump`s second impeachment for inciting the January 6 Insurrection. Congressman Jamie Raskin, it`s good to have you on. You know, I think going in yesterday, I was wrestling with like, what is the genre of this thing? What does this look like? What does it sound like? Like, how is it -- what is it? And so I was -- I was impressed, honestly, at a sort of craft level by what you presented last night. How did the committee think about what exactly these hearings are? What are you trying to do in that?
REP. JAMIE RASKIN, (D-MD): Well, one thing we`re trying to do is to change people`s concept and understanding of what a hearing is because for the last several years, based on Trump`s GOP, a hearing has just been members coming in and then engaging in polemical combat and fighting each other and engaging in ad hominem insults.
So we have a real bipartisan committee in the sense that we`re all together, we have a common purpose, we`re trying to draw on everybody`s best talents, we`re brainstorming together, and we`re trying to make progress. And so that means that we don`t have to divide the time up in such a way that like it`s a debating society but we divide the time up in such a way that we focus on arriving at the truth.
And imagine if we can have hearings like this about climate change, or about gun violence, where we`re actually out there trying to solve the problem rather than just, you know, denounce the other side. And, of course, I`m being charitable because I don`t think the majority is responsible for that. But in any event, we play into it. It would be great if we could get beyond that and move to a different concept of what a hearing is, that it`s related to getting to the truth, getting the facts, and then pragmatic responses to the problems that we encounter.
HAYES: Were you aware on the committee what was -- what was new? What were the revelations? I mean, when you played, for instance, the -- I want to play this, the campaign data worker who`s talking about a call, I think it might have been -- I think it was actually a lawyer, technically, but someone who was working on the data side of it. This was a really gripping piece of sandwich, I want to play for you, and get your response too about how much you guys were aware of what was new to us on the outside or not. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CANNON: I remember the call with Mr. Meadows, where Mr. Meadows was asking me what I was finding, and if I was finding anything. And I remember sharing with him that we weren`t finding anything that would be sufficient to change the results in any of the key states.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When was that conversation?
CANNON: Probably in November -- mid to late November, I think it was before my child was born.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what with Mr. Meadows` reaction to that information?
CANNON: I believe the words he used were so there`s no there there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: And you knew we didn`t know that right? I mean, when -- this is a big revelation about the timeline of when this information is being communicated internally at the very top that the lie was a lie.
RASKIN: Well, the truth has this power in an investigation like this, because things that seem too obscure or shadowy before suddenly become clear when you hear lots and lots of people talking about it. And we had over a thousand witnesses come in and freely talk to us about what was going on. And certain things just achieved a crystalline clarity to them.
One of them is that nobody bought the big lie. Everybody knew the big lie was as the Attorney General of the United States put it, BS. They all understood that. There was no there there. It was complete nonsense. It was a joke. You know, we`re going to -- you`re going to find lots of people commenting on it. And you know, the Republicans aren`t even really challenging that anymore.
Then, also everybody accepted that Donald Trump was engaged in a sequence of activities to try to vanquish and overthrow Joe Biden`s lawful majority in the Electoral College.
HAYES: Right.
RASKIN: Everybody just accepted that and everybody talks about it in the different methods that were used. And then, finally, everybody understood completely that this mass crowd was influenced by domestic violent extremist groups that got to the head of it and right to the heart of it. And they were activated and incited and exhorted by all of Donald Trump`s tweets and battlefield instructions along the way over Twitter. And we`re going to be able to reconstruct the whole thing and tell the story.
So, the street fighting and the inside political coup come together in an explosive way on January the 6th.
HAYES:: Yes. And that first point about, you know, all we saw, right during that period is we see Trump talking, we see Powell, we see Giuliani, we see, you know, some of the other lawyers. All the people on the inside who are like, this is B.S., we don`t see them, but they talk to you, right?
So, that was the other big part of this. Like there`s a bunch of people around here like, absolutely not. We haven`t gotten to hear them. And if I can editorialize, probably would have been good to speak up at the time.
But I`m looking forward to reading through those positions (PH), to read what they had to say. We will watch more on Monday. I`m very much looking forward to it Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thank you very much.
RASKIN: You bet.
HAYES: Still to come, the committee`s calculated decision to focus much of the first hearing on the involvement of as you just saw the congressman say, those right-wing gangs, those militia groups, why that matters, what it sets up for the rest of the hearings, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:36:08]
HAYES: It`s noteworthy that of all the many directions the January 6 committee could have gone with their opening hearing, they chose to focus on the centrality of pro-Trump right-wing gangs like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, teeing up those groups and their relationship to Trump in a way we`ve just haven`t seen before. Like in this exhibit they played during the hearing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What do you want to call them? Give me a name. Give me a name. Go ahead. Who would you like me to condemn? Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
MARCUS CHILDRESS, INVESTIGATIVE COUNSEL FOR THE JANUARY 6 COMMITTEE: After he made this comment. Enrique Terrio, then Chairman of the Proud Boys set on parlor standing by sir.
During our investigation, we learned that this comment during the presidential debate actually led to an increase in membership from the Proud Boys.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you say that Proud Boys numbers increased after the stand back stand by comment?
JEREMY BERTINO, MEMBER OF THE PROUD BOYS: Exponentially, I`d say tripled probably.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the potential for a lot more eventually.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you ever sell any stand back and standby merchandise?
ENRIQUE TERRIO, FORMER CHAIRMAN, PROUD BOYS: One of the vendors on my page actually beat me to it, but I wish I would have -- I wish I would have made a stand back, standby shirt.
CHILDRESS: On December 19th, President Trump tweeted about the January 6 rally and told attendees be there, will be wild.
Many of the witnesses that we interviewed were inspired by the president`s call and came to D.C. for January 6th, but the extremists, they took it a step further. They viewed this tweet as a call to arms.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: Throughout the course of the hearing, the committee provided evidence that these groups did not get swept up in the attack, rather they started the assault. Planned it after Donald Trump called them to be there.
Documentarian Nick Quested testified and provided a video showing hundreds of Proud Boys marching towards the Capitol before Donald Trump began speaking at the Ellipse.
Ben Collins is an NBC News Senior Reporter covering disinformation extremism in the internet. And he joins me now.
And Ben, I know you`ve been reporting on these groups, and particularly their actions on the internet for a long time. But were you surprised by how central last night`s -- they were to last night`s presentation?
BEN COLLINS, NBC NEWS SENIOR REPORTER: Well, if you`re going to play this large video, it`s you know, 15-20 minutes long that shows exactly how they breach the Capitol. You can`t do without the Proud Boys, the Proud Boys breached the Capitol before that massive crowd did.
You know, they were the people who are leading the charge. And then, afterwards, all these other groups came.
I think a really interesting thing that was brought up by Nick Quested was this idea that the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers talked beforehand. Enrique Terrio talked in a parking garage to the Oath Keepers` leaders beforehand about what was you know, planned for that day.
You know, the Proud Boys were, you know, infantryman, they were the people in the front of the line. They were the people there to break through the line.
But afterwards, the Oath Keepers where people would -- you know, walkie- talkies, and plans and ideas and maps and you know, a QRF, a quick response force back in a hotel across the river.
So, look, if you`re going to say that this was an insurrection, if you`re going to, you know, show that this was a massive staged coup, then you have to show the people who were staging that coup and there were a couple of armed militias, you know, who had been strategically at first at least disarmed themselves going to the Capitol.
HAYES: So, one thing that I`ve been thinking about, and I would love to get your response to this, why would you bring a documentary filmmaker, right?
So, these are not people that are completely naive about up second about the law, right? In fact, we know testimony about the left weapons in Virginia because of gun laws. We know Terrio had got Nick because he had arms that he said he was trying to sell.
They were aware of all this. And yet, they`ve got this documentarian there. How do you square that?
COLLINS: Chris, what`s that quote from "All the President`s Men", these people were -- these people -- these guys just aren`t very smart and things get out of hand. It`s really what went on with these people.
You know, people think the Proud Boys have been around for a while, they haven`t been. They`re -- you know, five years old, barely, they are -- you know, barely a group. And they`re based on -- you know, their name is based on an Aladdin quote, this is -- did not begin as a serious group of people.
[20:40:12]
But then, they got seriously aggrieved very quickly, you know, in the run up to the election, and shortly after the election, where they realized their path to power, their path to what they thought was diplomatic immunity was waning.
So, they had to get pretty serious pretty quickly, they turned from a street gang to a street gang for at the time the president of the United States.
So, that`s what happened here. Like, they were not -- you know, I don`t think they were geniuses, Chris. I don`t think that`s what was going on here.
They were previously very fame hungry people looking for new members to their little group. And then, very quickly, it got very serious and that`s, you know, the documentarian was there, and Nick Quested was there to see that shift.
HAYES: How -- what effect do you think this has the legal ramifications, the hearings on those spaces of extremism as they exist today?
COLLINS: Well, they have moved on, Chris. They have -- you know, the idea that they are singularly focused on defending President Trump or you know, ex-President Trump, that is not the point of these groups anymore. They are back to the idea of being a menacing street gang, and they want to get in the way of people that become pariahs to them. So, that -- you know, they are hugely and deeply into this anti-trans panic that`s going on right now.
If you go to their pages, they`re not talking about January 6th, they`re talking about LGBTQ groups and pride month in places to go for that. They`re looking for a leader who`s more into that sort of thing. And they are -- they`re open. They don`t necessarily need it to be Donald Trump to give them directions anymore like he did during that debate a few years ago. They are looking for anyone who is willing to ratchet up the rhetoric and maybe lead it to violence.
HAYES: All right, Ben Collins, thank you very much, appreciate it.
Coming up, the desperation was palpable. It was wafting off the screen over Fox News last night. The extreme lengths they went to in order to shield their precious viewers from even catching a little teeny tiny glimpse of any evidence presented by the committee, after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:46:47]
HAYES: Last night, more than 19 million people watched the January 6 committee`s first public hearing. All of the major news networks aired it except for one, of course, the odd one out as you can see there in the center is Fox News.
Earlier this week, the network announced they would not be carrying the hearing live. And frankly, the reason is obvious. The truth of what happened on January 6th that a mob (INAUDIBLE) by Donald Trump violently tried to overturn an election is both indefensible and embarrassing for them personally.
Multiple Fox News hosts were in communication with the White House that very day. And last night, they went to great lengths, not just to avoid airing the hearing and to counter program but to do everything in their power to make sure their viewers were shielded from the brutal truth about the violent coup that Donald Trump fomented.
First of all, they didn`t take any commercial breaks for the entire two hours when the hearing was taking place.
Now, I know a little bit about this. The reason you would not take a commercial break is because you do not want your viewers to have a chance to click over to another channel to see what`s going on. You want to keep them with you the whole time.
Now, it`s one thing to skip commercial breaks during breaking news or say while you`re airing a live hearing. But last night, Fox News eliminated two hours of commercial breaks at the costs of I don`t know how much money, thousands of dollars, all to keep their viewers eyes away from the truth that was airing on every other news network in the country.
And they went even further than that, OK? While everyone else watching T.V. last night was seeing what you see there, the horrific footage of a Proud Boy using a stolen riot shield to break a window so the mob could stream into the building. That was obviously too much for Fox News to show.
Watch what they do here instead, Tucker Carlson is interviewing a Republican congressional candidate from Washington. And another box on the right there showing these wide camera angles from the back and far side of the hearing room.
They made this deliberate choice so you can`t really see whose talking or what`s happening. But when the video up on that screen starts to get violent. That`s right before the Proud Boys smashes in that window, they cut away right there. That does not happen by accident. Someone made that decision, even in a box, they do not want their viewers to see that.
And of course, because some Fox News employee views are part of the investigation, it was likely they would be featured in the committee`s presentation. So, what do they do when Liz Cheney, for instance, starts reading text that Sean Hannity sent to the White House press secretary the day after the insurrection?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Sean Hannity wrote in part key now. No more crazy people. No more stolen election talk. Yes, impeachment and 25th Amendment are real. Many people will quit.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HAYES: That happened right in the middle of Tucker Carlson bragging about he was the only one protecting American propaganda yada yada yada.
Watch what happens when Fox News has to manage that embarrassment on air. The 8:00 p.m. host is doing a monologue about how he`s defeating groupthink or something, showing that all the other networks are covering the hearing. When the committee puts up the text between the 9:00 p.m. host and the White House strategizing around the coup and its aftermath. Bye bye Hannity, cut to wide shot. There you go.
Great work control room. Whoever the director was at that night deserves a raise. These granular second by second program decisions were not made without effort planning and coordination.
[20:50:07]
Fox News made those choices to keep the images of the violent coup that Donald Trump fomented away from their viewers` eyes. And even by their own standards. It was a level of propaganda I think surpasses anything I`ve ever seen from them.
But will the Fox News propaganda be enough? That`s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HAYES: If you watched the January 6th committee hearing last night on almost any channel on planet earth, you learned that the attack on the Capitol was a real attempted coup planned and coordinated effort to change who controls the presidency in this nation. And there was lots of evidence to that effect.
But if you happen to switch the channel and tuned to Fox News, you definitely got the complete opposite of that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NEWT GINGRICH, FOX NEWS CHANNEL CONTRIBUTOR: A coup is a serious effort to replace the government by an organized group who have that purpose. This was -- this was a mob, it was a riot.
A real coup is an effort to occupy the government and to change who controls Washington. There`s no evidence of anything like a coup here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:55:12]
HAYES: Oh, there`s quite a bit. Charles Blow a New York Times opinion columnist who writes about politics, public opinion, social justice, and he joins me now.
And Charles, I got to say, I mean, obviously, you know, you and I are both in media and there`s a sort of wide spectrum of different kinds of media. And there`s like opinion media.
And you know, there`s people on the right who write things that I read. What they did last night, like down to the second cutting away was truly to me a level of propaganda I have not encountered before.
CHARLES BLOW, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, but you know, there`s a range as you say, but you can`t put Fox in the range anymore. I just don`t believe so. I`ve been in journalism my entire professional career has been 30 years, I`ve seen the rise of opinion journalism. I just don`t know how this could fit into anything that we would call journalism.
What we have learned during the Trump years, and particularly during this congressional hearing is the level of coordination that is, you know, kind of off the charts.
I never would have thought even a Fox, you know, maybe call me naive, whatever. The idea that you`re running things passed president, you`re texting, saying this is going to destroy what we have built. That`s what those texts say, you know, it`s not just his legacy, what we have built. That`s just an extraordinary thing. And that the tragedy of it, is that there are millions and millions and millions of Americans out there who cannot discern that this is actually not (INAUDIBLE) news on the screen. They may hear things that are a little bit think a little wacky, but they believe that there`s kernels of truth floating around in that milieu. And that is a tragedy here because that is what has cost us or is costing us our democracy.
HAYES: It`s a great point, right? There`s two levels here, which is the evidence being presented is an evidence of collaboration of unity of purpose between the network and Trump that is just like nothing I think that exists anywhere else.
I mean, again, Laura Ingraham saying, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us.
Charitably, all of us America, but probably like us at Fox News, and also the president destroying everything you have accomplished. Like there`s that and then there`s the fact that they have to -- in order to cover that up. They then have to double down by hiding that from their viewers.
BLOW: Yes. And have Newt Gingrich on saying a coup is a serious attempt, as if. The people roaming the halls looking for Nancy Pelosi and setting up a gallows outside to hang up vice president as if they -- if they have found him, what were they going to say. Oh, just joking. We`re not in a serious coup. It`s just a make believe coup.
You know, what is he even talking about? Whether or not the coup was successful is not a marker of whether it was a coup.
HAYES: That`s right.
BLOW: Whether or not they were ragtag in your opinion is not the marker whether or not they attempted a coup. It absolutely was. There were people running through, like, we still have to stop and process that.
There are people broke into the Capitol of the United States and ran through that building. Some of Confederate flags, by the way, which was also an offense, but ran through that building looking for specific members of Congress.
It says an extraordinary thing. That is an attempted coup, there is no precedent for what happened on January 6th.
HAYES: And part of -- I mean, part of why I think -- I mean, there`s a desperation here, right? That the idea that, you know, like, -- you know, all sorts of networks show all kinds of things. And, you know, the Benghazi hearings, which were, you know, where Hillary Clinton testified, I mean, everyone carried that, right? There`s no sense you have to protect people from it. I mean, it is what it is, right? You can watch and make their own decisions.
But the idea that you -- that you have to cut down to the second level, I think it only works, right? If you`re totally confident that the universe of knowledge of your viewers is so sealed tight, that they`re not going to see it somewhere else and get mad at you, or you know what I mean. Like, and it`s in some ways, it`s both desperation and confidence embedded in that decision.
BLOW: Right, and tragedy, because there are echo chambers in their echo chambers. And this is a hermetically sealed echo chamber.
You know, there are people who are watching Fox News who are watching nothing else. You know, if they`re watching something else, maybe it`s Newsmax or if they`re listening to the something else, maybe it`s conservative talk radio.
But you know, people are not venturing far afield of their comfort zones these days, and that`s hurting everybody.
I actually sometimes listen to Fox, it`s insane to me, you know, some of the things that are being said, or the framing of stories. You know, I know the facts of the story. So, I`m like, How could you frame it that way?
So, but you can see how people can be led astray by the framing and also the content of what`s happening on our channel and they are sure that their viewers are not watching other news programs.
[21:00:14]
HAYES: Charles Blow, always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for making time on a Friday night. I appreciate it.
That is ALL IN on this Friday night. "MSNBC PRIME" starts now with Ari Melber who`s just sitting here. Good evening, Ari, and thank you for coming on the show.
