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ACOSTA: And Democratic Congressman Pete Aguilar, of California, is on the January 6th committee and he joins us now.
Congressman, thanks for being with us.
I guess listening to those two talk about this more than a year ago, I guess it just brings back memories of, you know, they were trying to pull every fast one in the book to overturn the election results at the time.
What do you want to ask Roger Stone and Alex Jones if you can somehow get them to talk to you?
REP. PETE AGUILAR (D-CA): Well, the committee has been very focused on finding out everything we can and specifically all of the activity that led up to January 5th and January 6th, the rally, the evening of the fifth and the morning of the 6th.
Clearly, these are two individuals who had expensive contacts with folks inside and out of government who played a role in continuing to pursue the Big Lie.
And this is something that the committee has mandated and charged with getting to the bottom of.
We're going to continue focusing on those efforts. But we need to have more of those conversations in order to connect the dots to gain better clarity on what happened.
ACOSTA: And do you think we're ever going to see any of these guys speak at a televised hearing, any of the -- you know, people that you're trying to subpoena to bring in?
I mean, there are a lot of Americans out there who want to see that, them in front of the cameras being grilled by folks like yourself.
AGUILAR: Well, I think it says a lot that they continue to stonewall, some of these individuals continue to stonewall.
These are lawful subpoenas. And the committee will continue to use every means necessary to compel witnesses to testify.
It's our belief, and we think that the American public also feels that we need to gain more clarity on what happened to ensure that we prevent this from ever happening again.
This was an assault on a peaceful transfer of power. And we do need to hear from these individuals. And we're going to use every means necessary to compel them to speak to the committee.
Whether it's a prime-time event or whether it's something that is behind closed doors, we just want to get to the truth. That's our focus. That's the mandate that the House resolution 503 that created the committee.
And keeping in mind again, Jim -- and I know you've reported on this extensively -- we wanted a nonpartisan committee. That's what the House voted on. Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump allies successfully beat that down in the Senate.
And so now it's on the committee in order to get the work done.
ACOSTA: And Trump's former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, is risking potential criminal charges for defying the subpoena under orders of the former president, the president's legal maneuvers.
This is what Meadows told FOX News. "He's exerted his executive privilege. It's not up to me to waive it. It's got me between a rock and a hard space."
Will you be referring Meadows for criminal contempt charges like you did with Steve Bannon? Is he headed in that direction?
AQUILAR: Well, there's still a small window in which he can still comply here. And so we're keeping an eye on the calendar ahead this week. And if Mr. Meadows does comply with the subpoena that he has been given, then we can prevent some of those steps.
But if he doesn't comply, the committee has made very clear, just as we did with Steve Bannon, that we're willing to use whatever means necessary.
And so I think that that's something that will have better clarity on here in the next week.
ACOSTA: Does that mean he has about a week?
AGUILAR: There are some dates on the subpoenas and so we expect him -- we're hopeful that he complies. That's our hope, that anyone complies with a lawfully subpoena.
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If he doesn't, then the committee is going to have to think through next steps and I would imagine that would be within the next week here.
ACOSTA: And is there any talk of trying to get testimony from Trump or Rudy Giuliani, for example, his name hasn't popped up on these subpoenas yet. AGUILAR: We've said that there's no one who is off the list. But we
are performing our work, doing our investigate steps. Right now, this is the focus that we're on, these are the steps that we're taking.
If there are other steps that the committee wants to take, we'll have those conversations and I'm sure the chairman will have comments and break that.
But at this point, this is just the next investigate step, these subpoenas for groups and organizations and individuals who continued to have work in and around the January 5th and January 6th rallies.
ACOSTA: Trump's legal team is arguing that your committee and its legal fight for Trump's White House records could cause lasting damage to the presidency.
What is your response to that?
AGUILAR: Well, the courts have ruled that executive privilege is not absolute. And clearly, the former president wants to invoke a privilege that he does not hold.
The current occupant of the White House holds the keys to privilege.
And so, you know, this is just continued stall tactics. This is something all of us expected from the former occupant of the White House.
That's something he's built a career on is not paying legal bills and stall tactics within the court system. And so it's something that we are aware of.
And we're going to be successful with this court case. We're keeping a close eye on the calendar.
And we want this to move as quickly possible because we want to ensure that we have all of the documents in order to perform our investigate work to continue.
ACOSTA: Very quickly, to follow up on that, speaking of the stall tactics, do you think you're getting close to exhausting the potential recipients of subpoenas at this point? Are you getting near to the bottom of that list?
Because obviously, if you're continuing to send out subpoenas once a week well into the new year, we're starting to run into the midterm cycle and so on.
Are you getting close to exhausting that list of potential subpoena recipients?
AGUILAR: I think it's important to just say that we've heard from a number of people. Not just the subpoenas that have been made public, but 250 witnesses that we've interviewed, 25,000 documents that we've poured over. So we continue to maintain a robust amount of work product to go
through. And should that work product give us more leads, then we're happy to chase those down and pursue the truth.
ACOSTA: All right, Congressman Pete Aguilar, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
AGUILAR: Thanks, Jim.
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