There was nothing hyperbolic about this discussion, and it made it even scarier as CNN's Brianna Keilar and Jim Acosta talked about the coup attempt.
"There is so much -- look, we don't need more evidence. We know there was an attempted coup, failed coup, but just the headlines that are piling up here to support that, it seems endless," Keilar said.
"Yeah, we had a coup attempt in this country. We just have to come to grips with that, deal with that reality. And we have to get to the bottom of it," Jim Acosta said.
"I was talking to a couple of sources on the January 6th committee, one of these sources said unless Merrick Garland acts and compels these witnesses to testify, that is going to severely undercut the strength of the committee.
"Another source said to me, you know, about why these witnesses aren't testifying, this person said, 'Why would they? They're not being forced to testify.' And we have a mountain of evidence, a growing mountain of evidence there was a coup attempt in this country and Brianna, what we're dealing with right now, I think, is a cowardice pandemic. We have Republicans who are unwilling to police their own ranks.
"And until we have that day come, we're going to be caught in the grips of the MAGA comeback. And they're coming back, and mainly because we're letting them come back. Not that there is anything wrong with a political movement rising up in this country, but at the heart of it, when at the heart of it is a coup attempt, and people who want to undermine our democracy, there is a very serious problem."
"I have to talk to you about this Sydney Powell headline from Jon Karl's book, where Sydney Powell, who is a former Trump lawyer, fell for a conspiracy theory that then-CIA director Gina Haskell was injured on a secret mission, taken to Germany to seize a election-related computer. This is part of what Karl says in the book, the server contains evidence that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of votes had been switched using rigged voting machines," Keilar said.
"Of course, she wasn't in Germany. She was fine. She is fine. But what does it say to you that the Qanon conspiracy theories were that close to the president?"
"I mean, I was standing outside the White House, you know, around that time, and remember seeing Mike Lindell on his cell phone outside the West Wing. I'm thinking, 'Why is the My Pillow guy hanging out outside the West Wing?" I called him that night, he was there to drop off evidence for Donald Trump and it was accepted by people in the West Wing. This goes to show you, Sydney Powell is one of these characters, you know, circus-like characters, Star Wars-like characters, who are hanging around Donald Trump at the time. I talked to a Trump adviser after January 6th, and asked, you know, what was Sydney Powell doing advising Trump, advising his team?
He said these were the kind of people Trump was surrounding himself with during that very critical point in our nation's history. "It is frightening to think about it. Why is Sydney Powell running anything?"
"Going back to the January 6th committee, where are the hearings, where is the Justice Department, why are they not hauling these people into Congress to explain what they were up to, why aren't we seeing more indictments?" Acosta said.
"I think there's a real serious hunger out there, Brianna, for justice. You and I remember all of those rallies where Donald Trump would talk about law and order. Where is the law and order? It does not exist when it comes to a coup attempt in this country. It is insane."
"I wonder what you think about Mike Flynn's episode here that Jon Karl has uncovered, where he was trying to enlist help from the Pentagon to seize ballots," Keilar said.
"Yeah. I mean, and Michael Flynn who is already indicted once, for lying to investigators -- "
"He was fresh off a pardon when he did this."
"Fresh off a pardon, I guess wants to go for another one, not going to get it obviously from this president, but, again, we're going back to the insanity that we're all caught in the middle of at that moment."
He said Flynn is someone who should have never been national security adviser, and noted that Barack Obama warned Trump not to hire him.
"If Donald Trump becomes president again, what is to stop a Mike Flynn from becoming defense secretary? It is going to be a whole lot easier for a Secretary of Defense Michael Flynn to order people to seize ballot boxes if he's in charge of the Pentagon. One of the things I experienced covering the Trump administration, is that there were people, you know, various levels of the federal government, who are willing to sort of put the brakes on the crazies inside the Trump administration, and fortunately that's what we saw in this episode.
"There were people in the Flynn episode, according to Karl's book, who are basically saying no to Michael Flynn. People who are going over to the Justice Department and saying we need to go back and recount these ballots in various states. Fortunately, there are people at the Justice Department saying no.
"So, I mean, thankfully, we did have people at various levels of the government who were protecting the Constitution. Who is to say that's the case next time?" Acosta concluded.
