don t come to me, i ll come to you. the president makes the trip up pennsylvania avenue as democrats set their priority list. senate majority leader chuck schumer was in the room, and now he will be here on the lead . a plot to kill foiled in michigan as authorities arrest a man they say wanted to kill jewish lawmakers including fwf michigan s attorney general. after six weeks of testimony and more than 70 witnesses, now the jury gets the case in the double murder trial for alex murdaugh. welcome to the lead. i m john berman in for jake tapper. we start with our national lead. moments ago the jury began deliberations in the murder trial of alex murdaugh. the jury will have to decide if murdaugh killed his wife maggie and son paul. more than 70 witnesses testified in the trial, which spanned more than six weeks. murdaugh admitted on the stand he lied to investigators about where he was the night of the murders, but he has fervently denied he committed the killings. mu
it is the first day of black history month. happy black history month, everybody. or as ron desantis calls it, month. good morning, everyone. thank you for joining us. we re going to get to what is happening down in florida. there you key caitlan is live on capitol hill. president biden face s a series of investigations. also moments from now, the gop is gearing up to kick congressman omar off of a key committee. big questions on whether or not they have enough votes. they believe they do. they face some pushback from republicans. also hunter biden with a counter offensive. the president s son demanding investigations into those who access data from his personal laptop. what is behind this really aggressive new legal strategy. we ll get to all that in a moment. we re going to begin with breaking news out of ukraine. there is heavy shelling this morning. live to sam kylie. sam, hello. what are you hearing? well, hearing is quite literally what we ve been doing here,
most important people in the courtroom at this time that now have to digest all that information that s been given through the last six weeks. so a major reason why a judge doesn t allow a jury to take notes is because they want the jury to focus on the witnesses, focus on their demeanor, focus on what is being said and how it s being said because they are the judges of the facts, and they are to deliberate as to the credibility and believability of each of these witnesses. so that s why judges majority of the time do not want jurors to take notes, focus on what s being said in the courtroom. both you and bernardo brought up credibility here. one of the key facts of this case is that alex murdaugh lied for 20 months about the fact that he was at the murder scene not long before these murders were believed to have been committed. the defense made the case that he lied about it for so long because of drug use. how persuasive do you think that
defense took another opportunity to remained the jury that they don t believe alex murdaugh would have had enough time to wash up and change clothes after allegedly killing maggie and paul. john. randi kaye, you ve been there for so long in walterboro, south carolina, thank you so much for your reporting. i want to bring you two others, criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor, and trial attorney misty maris. we re talking about six weeks for this jury right now, this trial s lasted six weeks. they re now in the jury room. i know every jury is different and the processes are all different, but what might be happening behind those closed doors right now? you can bet that they re going through the closing arguments. they re probably talking about the prosecution and the defense . that s what s fresh in their minds. now the jury is in there deliberating on the charges. the judge has now explained what the elements of each charge are, and they re going to be applying
interviewed the people this juror spoke with, and after reviewing recordings of those interviews with those people, the judge decided to dismiss that juror, so he called that juror into the courtroom today. made her aware she was being dismissed and replaced her with an alternate. what was the final point that the defense made to the jury? reporter: the defense really in their closing argument was trying to explain away the state s most powerful piece of evidence, that s that video recording pulled from paul murdaugh s cell phone. it s the kennel video as it s come to be known. it was recorded at 8:44 p.m., just a few minutes before prosecutors believe that maggie and paul murdaugh were killed. al alex murdaugh is heard on that recording. he denied that for more than 20 months until he took the stand at this trial telling the jury, yes, that is me. i was there. the defense is trying to help the jury be okay with that. meanwhile, in the rebuttal closing, the state pushed back. watch