Trump's Post-Insurrection Interview Airs

An audio clip of former President Trump discussing his plans on Jan. 6, 2021, that aired Thursday on CNN may become valuable evidence for the prosecution in his election interference case, experts say. In an interview with ABC News' chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl, recorded two months after the insurrection, Trump said he wanted to go to the Capitol and would've been "very well received" by the crowd who went there "because they thought the election was rigged." "I was going to [go to the Capitol] and then Secret Service said you can't," Trump said. But "I would have" and "I wanted to go back." "I was thinking about going back during the problem to stop the problem," Trump continued. "I could've done that" and "I would have been very well received."

Karl calls it an "astounding admission" in his new book, Tired of Winning. Speaking to CNN's Erin Burnett on Thursday, Karl said Trump was essentially admitting that those trying to stop the certification of the 2020 election were his people and that he had control over them. Legal analyst Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who worked alongside special counsel Jack Smith, told Burnett that the recording corroborates testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson and bolsters her as a credible witness for the prosecution. The former aide in Trump's White House famously offered her secondhand account of the president lunging for the steering wheel of his limousine in an attempt to reach the Capitol in testimony before the House Select Committee that investigated Jan. 6.

The audio could also support the prosecution's claims that Trump knew there was a serious problem at the Capitol but waited hours before telling rioters to go home. Trump faces four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, at a trial in March. In court documents, prosecutors say testimony and video evidence will show Trump "directed a large and angry crowd—one that he had summoned to Washington, DC, and fueled with knowingly false claims of election fraud—to the Capitol," per NPR. Trump's attorneys counter that "not a shred of evidence suggests President Trump called for any violence or asked anyone to enter the Capitol unlawfully." They claim Trump instructed the crowd to be "peaceful and patriotic." (More Capitol riot stories.)