starts right now. martha: thanks very much. good afternoon. i m martha maccallum. live in des moines, iowa. this is the story. we re just hours away from our third big event of this week. tonight we will speak with former president donald trump as he heads in to caucus week, monday night, very important night for him. he will take the stage here this evening with me and with bret baier. that will happen at 9:00 p.m. eastern, 8:00 p.m. here in iowa. we have a lot more ahead on tonight s town hall as we prep and get ready for all of that. we re looking forward to it. first though, a shocker on capitol hill this morning. hunter biden showed up at a hearing, no one was expecting him. it was his contempt of congress hearing that was getting underway after he defied a subpoena from house republicans to testify behind closed doors. that s the general procedure before you do a public hearing. so here s how that went over both sides of the aisle. watch. you re the epitome of whi
you should stay there and watch it. if you see bags of crap coming into the voting areas, you have to stop it. the legal path just took trump back to the truth, that i d won the election and he was a loser. we re going to win for the third time. i just don t want the results of the second. for me and kamala, our campaign is about america, about you. first, they say, sir, how do you do it? how do you wake up in the morning and put on your pants? look at the authoritarian leaders and dictators trump says he admired. president xi of china, strong, smart, tough. putin liked me. i got along. i got along withhussein. i will say, he hung that sucker and he spit in their face. you know, tough guy. when he visited the cemetery called dead soldiers suckers and losers. john mccain for some reason couldn t get his arm that. he goes after all we ve been through in our history, independence to civil war. the civil war was fascinating, so horrible. i was reading some
keeps our democracy in place. and thanks to you at home for joining me this evening. in february of 2021 joe biden had been president for less than a month. the united states senate was still in the middle of impeaching the previous president for stoking insurrection. the house impeachment managers, all of them democrats, were making the case that even though trump was no longer president, he had to be impeached because otherwise future presidents would be free to commit any crime or misdemeanor as long as they did so right before leaving office. to rebut that trump s lawyers offered this counter argument. if my colleague on this side of the chamber actually think that president trump committed a criminal offense and let s understand a high crime is a felony and a misdemeanor is a misdemeanor. the words haven t changed that much over time. after he s out of office you go and arrest him. so there is no opportunity where the president of the united states can run rampant in
moments ago, democrats on capitol hill just pulled a political stunt. was it to save, a, joe biden, hunter biden, hunter biden crashed the house oversight committee hearing. and they were considering contempt of congress charges against hunter biden. so he didn t want to show up for a subpoena but he wanted this circus. he wanted the cameras. make no mistake about it. democrats knew it was coming. secret service was in place over an hour ahead of all of the stunt that went on in that hearing room. i m harris faulkner and you are in the faulkner focus. it was a crazy move. hunter biden walking in unannounced to an oversight committee hearing about him. the committee had just begun considering legislation to hold hunter in contempt of congress for defying a congressional subpoena. a taste of how wild it got. my first question is who bribed hunter biden to be here today? that s my first question. second question, you are the epitome of white privilege coming into the oversig
as trump s lawyers are arguing? or is that claim not just constitutionally wrong, but also say license for future presidents to commit crimes while in office, as the justice department argues? and on the eve of a hearing on the question of whether trump can be prosecuted for his actions while in office, we are learning incredible new details about what donald trump said on january 6 and what h did and did not do. thanks t testimony, to the special l closest aides, the deputy chief of staff dan scavino. from that reporting, quote, sources say scavino told smith s investigators as the violence began to escalate that day, trump was just not interested in doing more to stop it sources also say that the former trump aidk luna told federal investigators that when trump wa informed that then-vice president mike pence had to be ush rushed to a secure location, trump responded so what. luna saw an unexpected willingness by trump to let potential harm come to a long time loyalist. and