investigation. they cannot investigate a live investigation, and they cannot interfere with a pending case. but that doesn t matter. it will still meet their ends and be quite productive for them. so it s a win-win for house republicans. this was the best case that could come first, that they could call just an old misdemeanor, just a bookkeeping error. obviously, any indictment in georgia or at the federal level over january 6th would be far more difficult for republicans to defend. so they re pretty techled that this is the one that came first and allowed them to set this narrative. shan, what s the effect of the house republican process here on the legal process? zero. as a.b. was saying, there s no way they can actually get to the legal process. i mean, first of all, it s a state process, not even a federal one. second of all, it s an active investigation and bragg s office should fight all the way to the supreme court to stop any interference. so they re not going to be able t
reimbursed for advancing that $130,000 payment to stormy daniels. he has said he submitted false invoices to the trump organization. and the federal prosecutors say the trump organization had incorrectly documented that in their books as a legal expense. that is a misdemeanor in new york. so the question is would they bring this as a felony case? the lowest felony in new york would be falsifying business records to conceal or commit another crime. the question here is would that crime be campaign finance? in the federal case that michael cohen pled guilty to he admitted under oath to making this payment which prosecutors said was an outsize campaign contribution, something above the legal limit. the question here, is that something that the state prosecutors would bring against the former president? we did see some grand jury activity yesterday. the question is now how long will this decision take? brianna? kara, thank you for that. in the meantime house republicans are working overt
this possibility of a misdemeanor or a felony. yeah. the big question is what is he considering for what crime was there an intent to cover up, would that misdemeanor which would bump it up to the felony class. so he could be looking at whether there s a state election law that was given broken. that was a little bit fuzzy in terms of just taking a look at the new york state election laws. there s obviously federal campaign finance law he could try to bootstrap too. that would be a bit novel for the state d.a. to be using federal law. it s certainly theoretically possible. but that might open up a better argument by trump s team, maybe something like pre-emption, for example. the other intriguing possibility is he could try to link it to some of the other financial crimes that were involved. and he d have to show that when cohen was involved with, let s say, bank fraud or tax fraud that trump knew about that. and that could be be part of what was being covered up
you are covering the retreat and many lawmakers are having to answer questions about trump s potential indictment in new york. what are they saying? yeah, they re planning to use the power of their new house gop majority to go after the district attorney that could bring charges against the former president. just today three key committee chairmen sending a letter in a pretty extraordinary move and demanding alvin bragg, the drshth attorney in manhattan, to come and sit down for a transcribed intervow and asking for a range of communications, even as one key committee chairman asking for that information acknowledged he does not yet know the full scope of the potential charges against trump. what changed? president trump announced he is are yous for president and now they are we re going to have some bookkeeping error from sevens ago and it makes no sense. you don t know what the charges are against the former we re going on what you told
harris: house speaker kevin mccarthy suggested that committees go for it that are applicable to see if there are any federal dollars. congressman and also chair of judiciary jim jordan was on with me last hour, he and others sent a letter to demand an explanation on ongoing accusations, let s watch that really quick. we sent this letter saying we want to talk to you, we want to know what is going on. we want to see the communications that have taken place between the federal justice department and your attorneys in manhattan, because we understand, harris, first they went after president trump on russia, then it was a phone call, then they wanted the tax return, then the business record, then his children and out some misdemeanor alleged bookkeeping error, and this is from the prosecutor who initially did not want to do this. in fact, he had people resign because he was not going to do this because no one else will bring the case. harris: all sorts of thoughts on the timing of th