 After our last hearing, President Trump tried to call a witness in our investigation, a witness you have not yet seen in these hearings. That person declined to answer or respond to President Trump's call and instead alerted their lawyer to the call. Their lawyer alerted us. And this committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice. Let me say one more time, we will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. That was the vice chair of the January 6th Select Committee directly implicating Donald Trump in witness tampering. She name dropped him. She said he tried to call one of our witnesses. That is brazen. I mean for those of you who don't know that is a crime, but it just goes to show you that Donald Trump, there's nothing that's going to stop him. He doesn't care. He's shameless. He believes he's above the law and unfortunately he may be correct about that. We'll see though. But to call up a witness when they just exposed witness tampering and the implication was that you were associated, it really proves that despite these purports about Trump potentially fearing prosecution deep down, I don't think that he believes he's going to be held accountable. And again, I hate to think that he's correct about this, but it's possible. Now this particular hearing was very interesting, but it really provided us with more context and details about what happened. We learned more about the extremist groups associated with the January 6th insurrection. We heard first hand accounts about the explosive meeting that took place between Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, and others within Trump's administration who were trying to talk sense into him. And also Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony was corroborated by White House counsel to Donald Trump at Cipolloni. So there wasn't that much new, but there were some moments that really stood out to me because of how clear they were improving Trump's criminality. For example, this is the testimony from one of Trump's supporters explaining how he was hanging on to every word that Donald Trump said. Trump said to march to the Capitol. He did. Trump said to leave. He left. Take a look. You know, earlier today, we showed how Donald Trump's December 19th tweet summoned both extremist groups as well as rank and file supporters of President Trump to come to Washington, D.C., average Americans. He told them to, quote, be there, will be wild, and they came. We showed how President Trump repeatedly told them, fight, fight, fight, and they marched to the Capitol. Mr. Ayers, you were in that crowd at the rally and then the crowd that marched to the Capitol. When you arrived on the ellipse that morning, were you planning on going to the Capitol? No, we didn't actually plan to go down there. You know, we went basically to see the Stop the Steel rally, and that was it. So why did you decide to march to the Capitol? Well, basically, you know, the president, you know, got everybody riled up, told everybody head on down. So he basically would just follow him when he said. I believe that included a video telling people to go home. Did you see that? And did that have any effect on what you were doing? Well, when we were there, as soon as that come out, everybody started talking about it. It seemed like it started to disperse, you know, some of the crowd. Obviously, you know, once we got back to the hotel room, we've seen that it was still going on, but it definitely dispersed a lot of the crowd. And did you leave at that point? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we left. So in other words, that was the key moment when you decided to leave when President Trump told people to go home. Yeah, we left right when that come out. I mean, that to me is a legal checkmate. That ties Donald Trump directly to the insurrection. What he said, they did, they were taking his tweets and his words as directions. So it's just it's astonishing to me to think that there's not a 100% guarantee that Trump will land in prison after all of this is concluded, but we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. But another video that I wanted to share with you that stood out to me was the testimony of a former oathkeeper who had a very, very, I think important warning about democracy in this country. Take a look. I do. I think we've gotten exceedingly lucky that more bloodshed did not happen because the potential has been there from the start. And we got very lucky that the loss of life was and as tragic as it is that we saw on January 6th, the potential was so much more. Again, all we have to look at is the iconic images of that day with the gallows set up for Mike Pence, for the vice president of the United States. You know, and I do fear for this next election cycle because who knows what that might bring if if a president that's willing to try to. And still and and and encourage to whip up a civil war amongst his followers using lies and deceit and snake oil and regardless of the human impact, what else is he going to do if he gets elected again? All bets are off at that point. And that's a scary notion. I have three daughters. I have a granddaughter and I fear for the world that they will inherit if we do not start holding these these people to account. Really well said. And to be clear, it's not just Trump getting reelected or another insurrection potentially ending democracy in the United States. It's also now the Supreme Court who poses a direct threat to democracy. If you haven't seen my video about this, look up the case, Morvey Harper. That case alone could singlehandedly be the death blow to our democracy. So there is a lot of different threats coming from within to our democracy. And we have to be concerned about this. But one element of protecting democracy is to make sure that people who were overtly trying to overthrow the election, they are prosecuted. And that means Donald Trump. OK, nobody should be above the law. Now, whether or not he gets prosecuted, I don't know. Again, I referenced how there are articles stating that he is worried about the prospect of prosecution. I just feel like he can't be that worried because he's raised enough to try to tamper with witnesses. But at the same time, perhaps he believed genuinely that witness tampering is going to help him and not further incriminate him. It's hard to get into the mind of somebody who I think is genuinely unhinged and mentally unstable. But regardless, Jamie Raskin's closing statement was, I think, one of the most important moments from this particular hearing because of the ways that he contextualized this moment and democracy itself from a political science perspective, which is something that we don't often hear from members of Congress, but what they say matters. But take a look at what Jamie Raskin said. It's worth playing his comments here at length. You're not going to see all of it. I try to edit out some of it just so that way it's not as long. But what he says here, very, very crucial for every American to hear. When Donald Trump sent out his tweet, he became the first president ever to call for a crowd to descend on the capital city to block the constitutional transfer of power. He set off an explosive chain reaction among his followers, but no one mobilized more quickly than the dangerous extremists that we've looked at today. Seizing upon his invitation to fight, they assembled their followers for an insurrectionary showdown against Congress and the vice president. On January 6th, Trump knew the crowd was angry. He knew the crowd was armed. He sent them to the capital anyway. You might imagine that our founders would have been shocked to learn that an American president would one day come to embrace and excuse political violence against our own institutions. Or knowingly send an armed mob to attack the capital to usurp the will of the people. But you know, Mr. Chairman, the founders were pretty wise about certain things. And at the start of the republic, they actually warned everyone about Donald Trump. Not by name, of course, but in the course of advising about the certain prospect that ambitious politicians would try to mobilize violent mobs to tear down our own institutions in service of their insatiable ambitions. In the very first Federalist paper, Alexander Hamilton observed that history teaches that opportunistic politicians who desire to rule at all costs will begin first as demagogues, pandering to the angry and malignant passions of the crowd, but then end up as tyrants, trampling the freedoms and the rights of the people. A violent insurrection to overturn an election is not an abstract thing, as we've heard. Hundreds of people were bloodied, injured and wounded in the process, including more than 150 police officers, some of them sitting in this room today. In his inaugural address, Trump introduced one commanding image, American carnage. Although that turn of phrase explained little about our country before he took office, it turned out to be an excellent prophecy of what his rage would come to visit on our people. Mr. Ayers just described how the trust he placed in President Trump as a camp follower derailed his life and nearly wrecked his reputation and his family. A few weeks ago, we heard Shea Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, Speaker Rusty Bowers from Arizona and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperter describe how hate-filled intimidation campaigns by Trump and his followers made them prisoners in their homes and drove their stress and anxiety to soaring new heights when they refused to do Trump's bidding. American carnage, that's Donald Trump's true legacy. His desire to overthrow the people's election and seize the presidency interrupted the counting of electoral college votes for the first time in American history nearly toppled the constitutional order and brutalized hundreds and hundreds of people. The Watergate break-in was like a cub scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions. Mr. Chairman, these hearings have been significant for us and for millions of Americans. In our hearing next week will be a profound moment of reckoning for America. But the crucial thing is the next step. What this committee, what all of us will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political violence and campaigns to steal elections away from the people. Unlike Mr. Ayers and Mr. Van Tatenhove, people who have recovered and evolved from their dissent into the hell of fanaticism, Donald Trump has only expanded his big lie to cover January 6th itself. He asserts the insurrection was the real election and the election was the real insurrection. He says his mob greeted our police officers on January 6th with hugs and kisses. He threatens to take one of America's two major political parties with him down the road to authoritarianism and in his Abraham Lincoln's party, no less. The political scientists tell us that authoritarian parties have two essential features in common, in history and around the world. They do not accept the results of democratic elections when they lose and they embrace political violence as legitimate. And the problem of incitement to political violence has only grown more serious in the internet age as we have just heard. But this is not the problem of one party, it is the problem of the whole country now. American democracy, Mr. Chairman, is a precious inheritance, something rare in the history of the world and even on earth today. Constitutional democracy is the silver frame, as Lincoln put it, upon which the golden apple of freedom rests. We need to defend both our democracy and our freedom with everything we have and declare that this American carnage ends here and now. In a world of resurgent authoritarianism and racism and anti-Semitism, let's all hang tough for American democracy. Again, very, very powerful words here. And I'm so glad that people are finally citing political scientists because they've been saying the same thing all along because it's science. Democracies are fragile. You have to work to protect democracies and as flawed as our democracy is, as anemic as our democracy is, what's left of it is at risk of dying. I mean, every single democracy in the world has a shelf life. Empirically, this is a factual statement. This is what political scientists have pointed out. So just because everyone alive in the United States today have only known democracy doesn't mean that that is always going to be our system of governance. I mean, people like Donald Trump, people like Montezantist, the Supreme Court have worked to undermine our democracy and it's not just them, individuals like George W. Bush, the Democratic Party in some instances stopping members of the Green Party from getting ballot access. This is all a threat to democracy. And if we don't protect our democracy, if we don't abide by the institutions that reinforce our democracy, if we don't further consolidate democracy, it dies. So this is what I think that Jamie Raskin speech made very clear. Now he said that, quote, the Watergate break-in was like a Cub Scout meeting compared to this assault on our people and our institutions. And it's funny that he mentioned this because as I stated in a different video, I'm currently rereading Howard Zinn's The People's History of America and I just got through the Watergate portion and as I was reading through the details, it was striking to me how unshocking all of that was. I was reading it and thinking that's it. They just broke into the DNC and still files. Sure, that's a crime, but the fact that it was this gigantic scandal in the United States that captivated everyone that led to his resignation is shocking to me. Coming from the perspective of post-insurrection America in 2022. So that scandal pales in comparison to what's happening currently in the United States. I'd say that Watergate is less scandalous than the Supreme Court taking up Morvey Harper where they could endorse independent state legislature theory which ends democracy. Now another thing that Jamie Raskin pointed out, he says the crucial thing is the next step. What this committee, what all of us will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political violence and campaigns to steal elections away from the people. That right there is key. So he's stopping short of recommending criminal charges to the DOJ, but what he's saying there's, what we have to do is fortify our democracy. And the implication is you hold people accountable for attacking democracy. And they've proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Trump indeed directly attacked democracy. He tried to stay in power illegally and unconstitutionally. He directed people to storm the Capitol. I mean, if you don't prosecute him after everything that we've seen to me, it's no question that democracy dies. It's just a matter of when. And I don't think that that timeline is far out in the future. I mean like really soon within years. Now the last thing that Jamie Raskin said, he threatens to take one of America's two major political parties with him down the road to authoritarianism. This is key because Republicans are in lockstep with Donald Trump. Even if privately, they don't necessarily agree with everything that he's saying and they know that he's unhinged. Publicly, they've decided to go along with it because they're too afraid to counter what he's saying. Now in some respects that's changing, right? But still, if one of two major political parties is becoming explicitly and overtly authoritarian, I mean, both parties have issues with democracy, right? Look at the primaries for Democrats. And you can see that there's a lot of issues there. Look at the way that they reject Green Party ballot access in states where they're in control. There's issues with Democrats too, let's be clear. But the way that Republicans are openly anti-democracy, the way that they fabricate lies about elections. I mean, that doesn't just hurt democracy. It poses a grave threat to democracy. It could end democracy, literally. So all of this is, I think, really important. Again, today's hearing, not necessarily as explosive as former hearings, but it just solidifies what we know. And what we know is, as I've stated before, Trump has to be in prison. If this doesn't end with him in prison, then there's no hope. It's just a matter of time before another demagogue comes along and actually is successful at stealing democracy in the United States. And sure, Trump poses a risk himself to democracy if he's allowed to seek a second term. But it's not just Donald Trump, let's be real. Ron DeSantis, other authoritarians who are rising up fascists, are now posing a major threat to democracy because they feel emboldened after Donald Trump was able to stage an insurrection and he still hasn't seen a day of jail time. So if you wanna actually fortify democracy, as Jamie Raskin put it, Trump's gotta land in prison. Mike is a total shitless, shitless. Once he started shilling for the DNC, I stopped watching. So I definitely won't be hitting the subscriber or turning the notifications by clicking the bell, no way. It's very sad, I know.