A new batch of transcripts released by the House select committee could give the Department of Justice a reason to turn their focus on Donald Trump Jr. and his fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle.
The legislative panel released transcripts of the couple's interviews that showed them refusing to answer questions about their possible contacts with "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander and members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection, but Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that the DOJ had the authority to dig deeper.
"What really stood out to me in the latest batch of transcripts yesterday is not so much what the witnesses were saying, but what the witnesses weren't saying," Lowell said, "and it really stood out with people like Don Jr. and people like Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was a Trump 2020 adviser and Don Jr.'s fiancée. Several moments in Kimberly Guilfoyle's testimony that really illuminated the whole, I think, was when she gets questioned about the Jan. 6 rally organizers. This is not the sexy stuff, this is not Trump and [Mark] Meadows in the West Wing running around uncontrolled. This is really the dark stuff about how these rally organizers were connecting with people around the Trump campaign and around the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who actually stormed the Capitol."
"So from an investigative perspective, it's really interesting," Lowell continued, "and if you see how Kimberly Guilfoyle cannot recall very conveniently how she was supposedly on the phone with Ali Alexander, this far-right activist, days before Jan. 6, how she didn't recall she had been copied into a list of speakers for the rally itself, which is a real big point of contention. This wasn't some throwaway list that ended up in her inbox. It was a big deal for Trumpworld, because they were trying to keep, quote-unquote, the crazies off the stage."
"That is where the Justice Department will focus next, because those are the kind of errors the committee doesn't have the investigative powers to go after, but the Justice Department does," he added. "They can see cell phones, they can subpoena people to appear before a grand jury. So I think the Justice Department's focus going into the next year is going to be so, not so much on what people were saying, but where people were reluctant to testify."
Watch the segment below or at this link.
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