it over to josé diaz-balart to pick up on the coverage right now. good morning, it s 11:00 a.m. pacific, and 11:00 a.m. eastern. an attorney for hunter biden released a statement to nbc news that reads in part, quote, i know hunter believes it s important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life and he looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward. joining us this morning, nbc s justice and intelligence correspondent, ken delanen, and barbara mcquade, msnbc legal analyst, and u.s. former attorney and law professor at the university of michigan. walk us through this deal and the charges. good morning, josé. so hunter biden is agreeing to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay income taxes in 2016 and 2018. we know he paid back more than a million dollars, or paid a tax bill of more than a million dollars last year as part of the effort to resolve this case, and those
welcome to the beat. i m ari melber. we re tracking several pieces of news in this coming criminal trial of donald trump. his allies advise delay, this key tack we hear about in dealing with the indictment. we know jack smith, however, guaranteed a speedy trial. my office will seek a speedy trial in this matter, consistent with the public interest and the rights of the accused. there are some complexities with the case, but the federal judge is making news with a fast time line, ruling that trump s espionage trial will now be set to begin august 14th. that s just eight weeks from now, and trump s run for office is ongoing. it puts the trial on a collision course with the first republican presidential debate the following week. it will be held in a small florida courthouse, and this plan is putting even more pressure on trump to get in gear. he has seen several lawyers depart his defense team. he was recently adding new ones as of last week. now, to be ready for a trial
let s start with the war in ukraine. russia has launched a fresh wave of missile strikes against ukraine speaking to the bbc, the ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky has ruled out conceding any territory to russia in a potential peace deal. our world affairs editor, john simpson, reports from kyiv. with the anniversary of the russian invasion coming close, president zelensky is showing signs of increasing confidence. he s been visiting several of his main backers in britain and other nato countries, and the promises of weapons and support that he s received have clearly buoyed him up. when i met him today, he was defiant and seemed more than usually sure of his position. i asked what he felt about the threat that vladimir putin might strike at ukraine through neighbouring belarus, and he dismissed it out of hand. it will be a big mistake for him and for belarus. it will be a historical mistake. but if belarussia does involve itself, can you survive? we will fight. we wil
register with the government if he was representing a foreign government s interests. that s speculation. we re at the point where there is an ongoing investigation as stated by the u.s. attorney s side. that was the nature of some of the hangup here. we re waiting to get that indication that this has been resolved, at least as it relates to the charges we began expecting the day with. harry litman, give me your reaction to that, right? we don t necessarily know the details of this revised agreements plea deal that memoli was just taking us through. but from what we know so far what is your reaction to how this has all played out and the agreement made between both sides? in terms of how it played out, it s dramatic and rare. it was an oh, my gosh moment when all of a sudden, especially as closely watched as it is, it seemed to break apart over a basic misunderstanding of what s covered and what isn t covered. the judge had a concern about the gun count, which i can
to is the bible for a plea agreement. you come in, it sets out colloquy, the judge makes sure the defendant isn t on drugs and the plea is voluntary and the like. and the judge has a limited ability to question and push back on and even reject the plea, and she was exercising that based on her question why does a drug case have this gun count in it also. so that s just how it started and how we got to the misunderstanding. the second thing that s going on is has to do with diversion agreements. as the judge says, these happen all the time and what they are are agreements by the government not to bring charges. so they really have in a sense nothing to do with judges. instead of saying we ll dismiss this outright or we ll exercise