society are given credit for the confirmations of neil gorsuch, brett kavanaugh, and amy coney barrett. it was leo who was in the driver s seat of those nominations. leo is the person who can raise the money and has the background to put in place judges who will build a conservative judicial infrastructure around the country. leonard leo now has an unprecedented amount of cash to spend on whatever political projects he likes. and while the donation was meant to be kept secret, name and address withheld on the irs form, cnn has confirmed the source as 90-year-old businessman and philanthropist barry side, who donated the entire stock of his company to marvel freedom trust, which turned around and sold it for $1.6 billion. cnn has attempted to reach mr. side without response. his donation will leave behind a dark money political legacy that could last decades. already, marble freedom trust has given more than $200 million to other causes. including $40 million to donors tru
Youll be all over it for us as always, thank you so much. Monu raju in washington. Thank you for being with us on this tuesday afternoon. Getting word from the police chief there in houston, texas, the first Police Officer fatality in the storm, sergeant perez, 34 years with houston pd. Im brooke baldwin. The lead starts now. Welcome to the lead. Im Brianna Keeler in for jake tapper. Were going to begin with Breaking News in the national lead. President trump arriving in texas. He is about to get a tour of the Operations Center there after stopping in Corpus Christi today. Today there are new warnings to residents. Get out now as a levee is pushed to its limit in houston and harvey continues to relentlessly pour down on the gulf coast. Just moments ago we learned that a houston Police Officer,
sergeant steve perez, was killed in this storm drowning on his way to work on sunday. His police chief overcome with emotion as he was explaining the decision to not go in after him. It was too t
trump to die on that hill. there are some arguments the defense can make and you wonder how you ll respond to it. for the defense to go down the road of, oh, he thought he won, plays to government s strength because there are so many sources of evidence. and at the end of the day you re going to say to the jury, and what is the contrary evidence? what are the facts? again, not sort of conjecture. what facts are there that show that he actually could have won? just start with the fact that every single legal case was lost. that s a sign that you re not doing well. but then you have so much more evidence internally, and so the dallas-ft. worth of any facts makes this something that, if you re a defense lawyer, you re thinking i need to deal with this at a different level. i think that s why very much like the documents case, the defense in this case is really going to be playing out the clock. it s not going to be about facts
to the basement during a tornado warning. meteorologist derek van dam has more on the weather thursday and what s in store for the u.s. today. they say everything is bigger in texas. that includes the size of the hail that falls from the sky. get a load of this comparison picture. this is coming out of the dallas-ft. worth region. that s a clementine. that s a three-inch hailstone. these are the reports from the national weather service. really impressive hailstones from ft. worth to weatherford and mineral wells. there s 12 reports of wind damage. 49 reports of damage in particular. but the weather service highlights some of the large every hailstones that were reported. two inches or larger in diameter. there s nine reports of that and
cancellations because of this winter storm. yesterday, that number topped out around 2,000 flight cancellations. most of those happening here at dallas-ft. worth international, dallas love field as well as the austin international airport, as well. and so those nightmares will continue and i can tell you that a drive that would normally take me about half an hour to get here to the dfw airport took well over an hour this morning, with no traffic on the road. and that is one of the good things that we ve seen in the last 24 hours, most people heeding those warnings of staying off the roadways. that s because this winter weather will continue to worsen again today. we ve had a bit of a reprieve over last 15 hours or so. but a third round of wintry mix expected to move through the dallas-ft. worth area in the coming hours. that will just prolong this nightmare. it could be well into thursday before there s really any kind of relief from the icy road conditions that we ve seen.