and for his part, attorney general merrick garland is not showing his hand. in hearing today, he gave no indication of whether the justice department would bring charges against bannon, saying they will make a decision consistent with the principles of prosecution. joining me now is congressman bennie thompson of mississippi, the chairman of the select committee to investigate the january 6 attack on the u.s. capitol. mr. chairman, thank you for coming back. i really appreciate you being here again. and i want to get your reaction to the claim by the house minority leader kevin mccarthy that the subpoenas issued by your bipartisan committee are invalid. >> well, he is dead wrong. but that's not consistent with the law. clearly, we have, as you know, the authority as a duly constituted committee to issue subpoenas. we're doing that. we're doing our work. and he knows it, but, you know, he has to do the talking points. we are clear. we're on firm ground, and we look forward to the attorney general doing his job. >> there were two members of the republican side

merrick garland isn't an aggressive man when it comes to holding donald trump or any of the people involved in what amounts to threats of violence against our citizenry, against members of congress and our democracy. he hasn't exactly been aggressive. should congress take it upon themselves and throw steve bannon in the jail under the capitol? >> we should pass legislation that would put in place inherent contempt. i'm an original sponsor of it. that's one way to do this. without the senate, you know, on board to also assist us in giving us that leverage, we should encourage merrick garland to treat donald trump no better but no worse than any other person who would be evaluated by the department of justice. he'll testify on thursday to the judiciary committee and that's one of the questions we'll have. will you agree that he should be treated no better, no worse and not just sweep this under the rug because for the sake of moving on, we would be better off. we're not better off if we don't recognize that he took a wrecking ball to every institution we value in this country and if he broke

if we get the votes, the speaker will then transmit that document to merrick garland and he has to do his job. >> if prosecuted and convicted, bannon could face a fine and prison time. this committee is indeed working at speed. over the last month they issued subpoenas that from 19 individuals in addition to the witnesses. adam schiff did not rule out witnesses for higher profile. congressman adam schiff of the california, a member of the select committee on the january 6th attack and author of "midnight in washington how we almost lost our democracy and still could." thank you for being here. congratulations on the success of the book. let's get right to the last point. in your view, if the justice department does not fully hold accountable steve bannon to show up and honor these subpoenas that, would you agree with me there would be no hope of ever being able to obtain testimony from people like senate -- i mean, house minority leader mccarthy. >> it's very hard to see how we can get timely information if we can't enforce our own subpoenas that. this is an early test whether our dem