teachers at the end of may. and new details about what the 77 minutes of school hallway surveillance video shows. plus, a new covid variant spreading at an alarming rate throughout the united states, and this one is not deterred even by recent infections. so how do the vaccines hold up against it? welcome to the lead. i m jake tapper. we start with our politics lead and members of the january 6th select house committee now publicly suggesting they will use tomorrow s hearing to draw direct links between the extremist groups who stormed the u.s. capitol and have been charged with seditious conspiracy and people inside donald trump s orbit. we are going to be connecting the dots during these hearings between these groups and those who were trying in government circles to overturn the election. what we heard cassidy hutchinson testify along the lines of trump telling mark meadows, the chief of staff, to talk to roger stone and others, mike flynn, and stone and flynn ha
gun legislation in three decades, just a week after a gunman killed seven people in highland park. this legislation is real progress, but more has to be done. those families in highland park, on july 4th a parade became a killing field. the white house being urged to do more on guns as democrats are also calling for more federal action on abortion rights. yeah, there s more that needs to be done. and i know the president knows that. president biden is facing challenging political headwinds as he s hemorrhaging support in his own party ahead of the midterm elections. elections matter. a new poll shows 64% of democrats want a different candidate in the 2024 presidential race and only 26% believe that biden should be renominated. biden is already the oldest president in american history and 33% of democrats who were surveyed voiced concerns about his age. he intends to run. and if he does, i am tend to run with him. so there you go. among all voters, biden s job
harris. the president wasting no time taking jabs at trump and his supporters early and often. keep in mind 74 million people voted for donald trump in 2020. so the current president taking the opportunity to bash just about half of american voters. president biden: maga forces are determined to take this country backward. they promote authoritarian leaders and fan the flames of political violence. they are a threat to our personal rights. the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country. biden laser focused on attacking republicans. but failing to mention stuff that affects americans live every day like inflation, border, rising crime to name a few. republicans, of course, taking note. what a missed opportunity. to talk to the american people straight up about the reasons when they lie down to sleep at night they can t. the water is not going to clear up in washington until we get the pigs out of the creek. i think, raymond, he came acros
reporter: cnn has learned that the january 6th committee is planning to zero in on a healing. extremist groups that are tied to roger stone and michael flynn. the hearing comes as another trump ally, steve bennett, changes his tomb. telling the committee he would be willing to testify in a live setting. they believe it is a stunt to try to wiggle out of his criminal contempt charges. a judge on monday declined to postpone his. the committee has already revealed a bevy of information. trump and his allies were made fully aware that there was no evidence the election was still interested in i didn t say what was happening was necessarily reporter: trump new he lost the election but kept telling his supporters that he won. the will of the voters extended all the way to the states where trump personally pressured. he knew that his supporters were armed and planning to be feminine. he directed them to the capital, anyway. stephen i don t care that they have weapons. take t
priority. we just had a circle breach the line. we need backup. key members of that far right extremist group are charged with seditious conspiracy. in an interview with cnn s jake capper right after the hearing last night, bennie thompson dropped a bomb shell about the role of extremist groups in all of this. are there going to be witnesses that describe actual conversations between these extremist groups and anyone in trump s orbit? yes. there will be? yes. we also heard top trump staffers admit there was no widespread election fraud. i remember sharing with him that we weren t finding anything that would be sufficient to change results in any of the key states. i made it clear i did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen own putting out this stuff which i told the president was bullshit. we also heard from trump s family members. i respect attorney general barr, so i accepted what he said was saying. and we heard what then presi