as a huge surprise given the well-established history inside trump world of pressuring potential witnesses in key investigations. washington post lays it out like this, quote. evidence across multiple state, federal and congressional investigations points to a similar pattern. trump and his close allies privately shower potential witnesses with flattery and attention extending vague assurances that staying loyal to trump would be better than crossing him. meanwhile, trump publicly blasts those who offer testimony against him in bluntly personal terms offering a clear example to others of the consequences of stepping out of line. the new york times offers another view of this type of carrot and stick witness pressure campaign reporting this, quote, former president trump s political organization and his allies have paid for or promised to finance the legal fees of more than a dozen witnesses called in the congressional investigation into the january 6th attack, raising legal
custody. there s a picture there. right now the motive is unknown. it is unclear if the attacks were racially motivated. but we should know police are ramping up security in asian-american communities as a precaution. president biden has been briefed on the shootings, and at this hour he returns to the white house. we ll bring you any live comments. also today, concerns of another covid surge. cases are climbing in more than one dozen states. the cdc is sounding the alarm on two variants in california. we ll get to that in a moment. let s begin on this tragic shooting spree. our ryan young joins us this morning in atlanta. what do you know about the victims, eight total, six of them asian. what can you tell us? reporter: so far, very little information is coming out about the victims except, besides their races. of course, what we ve been told so far is at least six of the people killed are asian. of course, we re trying to move forward with parts of this investigation. w
involved with the donation, people familiar with the matter said. jackie, you seem to be encircling one of the great mysteries about meadows who turns over so much material and clearly has a directional impact on the 1/6 committee. they pursue sean hannity and now ginni thomas and so much of the leads in 2022 seem to have emanated from his texts and then he clams up, stops talking and faces contempt of congress charges. what is the committee s interest in trying to figure out why? they have a huge interest and as cassidy hutchinson in her testimony demonstrated, she put fingerprints on all of the key people who were privy and have firsthand accounts of the former president s potentially criminal activity especially on the day of january 6th. mark meadows being one of them.
stepien s got telescope, a microscope, a stethoscope looking at him. if there is anything at all there he better be plenty concerned if he wants to talk to the feds about what he might know, this is a really good time to start talk. so are they trying to rattle stepien? is this what they re doing? they want to shake him up, rattle him, and roll him against chris christie if in fact he has information that could be relevant. this is a highly focused effort. it s not an accident that they re sending this guy a message. and if you re stepien right now, it s got to be pretty tough to sleep at night, not knowing where this thing is going to go. now, what if he clams up? then where do they go? he clams up, then he has lost his chance to do early cooperation. again, we don t know if he has any incriminating information. whether he does or not, this chance is now. if he passes it and if in