DOJ Deals Devastating Blow To Donald Trump

Donald Trump and his legal team had claimed that the former President's efforts to get the Department of Justice to look into overturning the election were protected by "executive privilege," and therefore no one involved could be compelled to testify in any setting. The DOJ this week said that this isn't true, and gave full clearance for everyone with knowledge to give "unrestricted testimony," should the need arise. Farron Cousins explains what this means for the former president.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Shortly before the January 6th select committee

Hearings began on Tuesday. Donald Trump

Was dealt a devastating blow by the United States

Department of justice.

Before I tell you the blow, let me tell you the backstory on this. Okay. Donald Trump and his legal team had been trying to argue and had argued for quite some time now that any communications between him and people at the department of justice, where Donald Trump was allegedly telling them to do what they can to overturn the 2020 election, you know, find the fraud, all that blah, blah, blah. They were trying to say that all of that material, all of those conversations are protected under executive privilege. And therefore none of the people involved in it, none of the people he spoke to, none of the people, the other people at the DOJ spoke to about it. Basically, anyone involved in any conversation, all of that was protected by executive privilege. And therefore these individuals could not ever be called to testify

To explain what happened. Well, Tuesday morning,

Again, right before these hearings began, the DOJ sent down a statement that said, yeah, we're not going to do that since these were extraordinary circumstances, executive privilege doesn't apply Donald. And we are here by granting unrestricted testimony from any, and everyone involved in those conversations, nobody is protected by executive privilege. If you get called to testify,

You can testify and tell

The whole story

That is a major, major blow to Donald Trump.

And it's not coincidental the timing of this again, right before the hearing started because these individuals at the DOJ that Trump spoke to, or then they spoke to the other people, whatever it's going to be, they're going to be a central part of these investigations of these hearings. Because part of the deal here is not just to uncover who the rioters were, why it was so terrible, yada yada, yada, the underlying factor in all of this was Trump trying to overturn the 2020 election. That's why those people showed up. They were led to believe the election was stolen. They got driven into a frenzy. They storm the Capitol. So we have to look at all of the root

Causes of this. And Trump reaching out to the DOJ

Is one of them. They may not have even known that it happened. I don't think any of them knew that

It happened, but it shows

You how desperate Donald Trump was to overturn the election and to stay in power. And of course, how he abused the power of his office to try to get the DOJ to do this, which luckily they did not

Because they knew it was bogus. Excuse me. They knew it was bogus. And

The fact that they knew it was bogus and the fact that they didn't do what he asked him to makes it all the more likely

They would be willing to spill the beans. If they're ever called to testify, that is powerful. And that is something Donald Trump has been afraid of for a very long time.