Former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor predicted Wednesday that former employees of the White House likely want to do whatever they can to ensure they'll still have a career in politics. Thus, he told MSNBC, he doesn't anticipate they're going to be willing to give up their careers for Donald Trump.
Mike Pence was told Tuesday that he must testify before special counsel Jack Smith's grand jury dealing with the Jan. 6 attack and the classified documents scandal. He's not the only Trump associate being forced to come forward, however.
Host Nicolle Wallace cited a list of Republican officials that no longer have any kind of privilege that bars them from testifying to the grand jury. They're officials from the highest levels of the White House to Ken Cuccinelli at the Department of Homeland Security.
Washington Post reporter and MSNBC contributor Jackie Alemany said that she believes Mark Meadows will actually be more helpful to the special counsel than Mike Pence, simply because Meadows was the one who was in on all the meetings, not just the pressure campaign against Pence. Meadows, for example, also flew down to Georgia, demanding to be let into the room where votes were being counted.
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Meadows joins Robert O'Brien, Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, Nick Luna and John McEntee who must also testify.
"It seems like one of the pieces that legal analysts thought needed to be sort of a loop that needed to be closed or part of the case against Trump in terms of the criminality that the congressional probe was able to establish and prove was his state of mind and his intent," said Wallace.
Taylor agreed.
"You know, look, put Jan. 6 aside, you know, any time there would be a meeting in the Oval Office with the president, these were the types of players who would be there and hear Donald Trump express his grievances, propose courses of action and really get insight into his intent," said Taylor. "I was there on many occasions when he described things that he wanted to do that appeared illegal in nature. These witnesses could provide similar insight into and around Jan. 6. What his state of mind was, his intent was in acting or rather not acting on that day, and someone like Cassidy Hutchinson just scratches the surface. It's still phenomenal that testimony was made available. That she provided insight, just that little crack of the door into what she might have seen or heard shows that these individuals really likely have a great degree of testimony to provide about the events that transpired that day that we still don't know."
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He went on to describe how Trump loyalists are "using executive privilege like a get-out-of-jail-free card."
"Whether it was Steve Bannon, or Peter Navarro, or Mark Meadows, that's not why executive privilege exists, Nicolle, it exists to protect branches of government from each other, to protect the executive branch from infringement from the others," Taylor explained. "It doesn't shield government officials from being held accountable for acts of illegality."
The latest development with Pence, however, is what Taylor found to be the biggest impact over the course of the investigation.
"I don't know what Pence means about he's going to review this with his counsel. This is an order to cooperate," he said, citing Pence trying to save face on Newsmax on Tuesday. "The last thing I'd say, is you have to know where this is coming from. These individuals aren't reaching these conclusions independently. This comes from Donald Trump himself. He also viewed the presidency as insulation from the justice system. I mean, this is the same person who said when someone is president, the authority is total. And when he found out that wasn't true, he really wanted to dismantle the justice system. He asked aides to put together bills to send to Capitol Hill to dismantle the courts, and his subordinates have followed that similar mentality toward the Justice Department."
See the full discussion below or at the link here.
'It’s like a classic mob case — they’re going to get some of these people to flip': Ex-Trump aidewww.youtube.com
