MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Pete Aguilar

Interview

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And joining us now is Democratic Congressman Pete Aguilar of California. He`s a member of the January 6th committee and he is vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Congressman, I want to begin tonight with this historic censure vote. Most members of Congress never cast a censure vote against a member of the House of Representatives. You cast that vote today.

What was your feeling at the end of that process today?

REP. PETE AGUILAR (D-CA): You know, most of my colleagues including myself we didn`t -- we don`t take a lot of pride in that vote but what I will say is we just feel a deep obligation to want to protect the institution, to want to protect our colleagues while all of whom are serving under that dome and to make sure that there`s safety is foremost of our mind.

And so that`s how I came to the decision to cast this vote. And you know, clearly, this is something I wish the Republican conference would have dealt with but Kevin McCarthy has a problem with extremism in his caucus and he refuses to deal with it.

O`DONNELL: The threat in that video was specifically to Representative Ocasio-Cortez and to President Biden. But was that threat felt by other members of Congress in a personal kind of way?

AGUILAR: You know, someone who threatens one of us is threatening all of us. That is how we feel. And that`s how I feel if it was to happen to one of my Republican colleagues.

Those of us who serve know how difficult the job is. We don`t talk about it often and that`s fine. We`re chosen by our constituents to do this work and we don`t apologize for that but we want to protect each other and we want to make sure that at the end of the day, everybody can go back home saying that they served and that they did the very best that they could. And unfortunately, that type of behavior that Paul Gosar puts forward really puts a stain on the entire institution.

O`DONNELL: In that same federal court building where Jacob Chansley was sentenced today to 41 months, Steve Bannon was scheduled to appear tomorrow for arraignment and plea. He`s already submitted a guilty plea in writing tonight. But there will be a status meeting anyway on his case as of tomorrow. This is the -- this is the subpoena case that you and the January 6th committee are pursuing in federal court.

Why is Steve Bannon at this point the only one who is facing a criminal contempt charge when Mark Meadows has basically done the same thing that Steve Bannon has done?

AGUILAR: Well, we`ll deal with some of those other cases and we have some options and some tools and clearly the public saw us exercise those options with Mr. Bannon who is someone who has just total contempt for the court system, for congress and for the presidency.

And that`s the difficult part but what the public is seeing is that there are consequences to the actions that these individuals are taking. And we would hope that anyone would follow a lawful subpoena but clearly, you know, this individual and some of them are incapable of doing that.

And so this was the first, it doesn`t necessarily mean the last but we will make sure that we`re doing everything we can to continue to follow the truth and to chase the facts of what happened on January 6th and the leadup to that.

Who funded the attack on democracy? What happened on January 5th and January 6th? Those are the questions that we want asked.

O`DONNELL: It seems there are two kinds of witnesses that you`re interested in. Witnesses who don`t need subpoenas, some of whom have been very helpful including people who were in the Justice Department, the Trump Justice Department in the final days and then those who need subpoenas who must be subpoenaed in order to testify.

So far, none of them have testified. The subpoenaed group seems to be in a position to just defy what this committee wants.

AGUILAR: I don`t think that`s accurate. I think that there are individuals who have received subpoenas who continue to engage and have dialogue with us. Some folks just want, they don`t want a subpoena and others are cooperative without one.

[22:34:57]

AGUILAR: And so those are the -- our job, our task is to continue to ask the questions in whatever manner we can to try to get to the truth.

And so you saw the committee put forward 16 subpoenas last week. There may be others in the future. We`re going to continue to do everything we can. But if someone is willingly going to come in and cooperate we`re going to give them that opportunity. And we know that because we`ve had over 200 witnesses come forward.

And so we continue to build the case and find out the information that we need.

O`DONNELL: Congressman Pete Aguilar, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

AGUILAR: Thank you, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

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