it s 4:00 in washington d.c. a hail mary move by the disgraced ex-president that serves as an indication that special counsel jack smith may well be close to making a decision on whether or not to indict donald trump. we re at donald trump s dear attorney general, the special counsel is being mean to me phase. make no mistake we have been here before. late yesterday lawyers for the ex-president asked for a meeting with merrick garland. the letter itself was brief, filled with the usual trump rhetoric about being persecuted despite the fact that the ex-president is the one who has resisted handing over some of the nation s most sensitive intelligence secrets. documents he kept just one lock, one door away from hundreds of people at his pay for membership club to the government who rightfully owned the documents and asked for them back. the new york times says the letter asserts that trump is treated unfairly in the investigations led by jack smith. the washington post is r
we should point out nbc news has not yet verified that reporting half what we do have this afternoon is new reaction from a spokesperson for mark meadows. joining me now, luke broad january broadwater, matt miller, and joyce vance. luke, who exactly could be picking up these legal fees for at least it seems a dozen witnesses testifying before the january 6th committee? well, there are two funds that are funding witnesses lawyers. one is the save america pac which is run directly connected to donald trump. the other is the cpac first amendment fund which its director says consults with donald trump and donald trump s allies directly to decide which witnesses it will cover. so these are they offer both free legal advice to the witnesses and then also will pay for their attorneys fees if needed. this came to a head this week when cassidy hutchinson said she had to switch attorneys because she felt only with a new attorney could she be more forthright and testify publicly a
it heated up in the last few weeks, you know, the washington journal story which broke some of this said there s still some investigation left to be done but i suspect it s not much. now there s a caveat, in georgia, for example, the prosecutor said indictments were quote imminent and then there was a snafu hit because it looks like some of the defendants are represented by the same lawyer and not necessarily getting all the attorney representation that they re entitled to get conflict free so that delayed things. so you can always have a delay. but i think carol is right, the attorney general is also thinking about the clock. not just the election not just the campaign clock but also the election. and if a republican wins, say it s desantis or something like that. they may try to pardon trump and avoid these charges. so you want to try to get this to a jury so you have a final record of what the jury thinks
when this sort of thing happens and there s a long history of the justice department prosecuting not just witness tampering when it comes to justice department investigations, but witness tampering when it comes to congressional investigations. you might remember one of the things roger stone was convicted for was tampering with a congressional investigation. i would be very surprised if there is not a referral, i would be very surprised if the department of justice doesn t open an investigation. is this a text message or a phone call? did she tell anyone else about it at the time? who is it from and did that person talk to anyone else before he or she made the phone call? look, i want to bring this full circle in this conversation, because as we re getting this evidence, this confirmation of course of this witness tampering, identifying cassidy hutchinson as being one of the individuals that received these text messages from the meadows camp, we re obviously talking about this possi