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Hi, joining me now is katie better she's a pulitzer prize winning justice department reporter for the new york

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times she's an msnbc contributor and katie you have literally

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been piecing all of this together because you've been reporting on the justice

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department pursuit of the january sixth perpetrators but now you're

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seeing the other side of the picture right what was actually going on in at the highest levels

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of the justice department that was sort of fueling that fire of the big why there was

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...actual attempt to have stage overturn the results that's correct and we started

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this reporting back in january we found that there had a lot of pressure from the white house

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Asked in slate of officials including the acting attorney general jeff frozen and

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the acting deputy attorney general richard donahue to both investigate voter

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...allegations that are already...in found to be not

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credible and they were also being pushed to make some sort of public declaration

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that the election was in doubt the kind of declaration would speed the public mind

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with doubt so they were being asked to go before the supreme court and see if the supreme court would

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vacate...the election something that just department officials do could not

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happen they were asked to write these letters both by the

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president bush and eventually by somebody within the department sharepoint have they actually have the

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simulation jeff march so there was tons of

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pressure it was a sort of thing if reporters were sort of pulling out in dribs and drabs out of the department

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route january february but now with a few key

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investigations including the senate judiciary investigation and the inspector

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general's own investigation we're starting to see a lot of documents and evidence

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...support not only that reporting but to really

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...in those blanks including jeffrey roses testimony of the

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last two days before the inspector general and before the senate judiciary committee in which

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he details the pressure campaign that both the white house

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and his own subordinate placed on him in order to try to get

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georgia officials to invalidate the election results to the tale of

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two jeff's that everybody doesn't really know all that well because jeff rosen who came in as the attorney

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general was after bill barr and one assumes that when trump appointed

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him to that position truck comes only thoughts in those days were overcoming the election so you're

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probably assume that jeff frozen what at least be supportive in that effort since bill

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barr was not but jeff clark who is jeff rosen subordinate really played a

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key role in this who is jeff clark and why was he involved in this?

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...of clark was you-know-who is adjusted department official he had the invite

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he'd headed the environmental natural resources division near the end of the

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administration he was also promoter to be the acting head of the civil division which is the division

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that leg gates they, you know, united states is positions in...are really important position

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...notes to all of the other officials he had been in

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contact with president trump we know that he was put in touch with the president by representative

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scott paris...pennsylvania and others nobody inside of the justice department really

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understood what those conversations were about they didn't know they were happening until the end

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of december when jeff park started to approach the acting attorney general the

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deputy attorney general and others asking what the justice department could

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do to publicly declare the results of the election invalid

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this was a shock to his colleagues they felt that they

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...already better these claims they were on every front pushing back against

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white house efforts to get them to make these public statements and unbeknownst to them somebody within

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their own ranks had also been quietly speaking with the president about doing

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...to a series of confrontations at the end-of-the-year and then it

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...to jeff...and being informed that he could lose his job the

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president was thinking about replacing him with jeff clark something that we now know from notes that

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richer donahue took had been on the president's

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mind for days before january third when there was a showdown at the

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oval office between the two jeff speech and a variety of other justice department officials

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confirm the president that they were to remove jeffrey rosen replacing which of

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...where they were all which would subsume the justice

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department and the white house with chaos and would take the public's eye off of terms

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...false claims about the election it helped convince

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the president not to make that spot but again it's just another example of how close

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republic came to, you know, being pushed to a point of chaos that would

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have further called into doubt the result of the election?

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This is just wild katie you and I've known each

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other a lot of years this is just this is wild and, I always I encourage people

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to follow your reporting on this because this is what real reporting is the idea that you have

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you figured out every part of the story from what was going on behind the scenes to the stuff that happened that

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caused people to go to the united states congress and try and

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overturn that election by preventing the certification of the results this whole

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story knits together as something that looks more and more like an attempted coup every day

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...better thank you as always for your excellent reporting katie better as a pulitzer

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prize-winning reporter with the new york times.