the fbi has had only eight senate confirmed directors. those directors all have a few things in common. they are all white men. they all favor a clean cut look, and each and every one of them, every senate confirmed director since the dawn of the fbi has been a republican. that includes current fbi director, christopher wray, who was appointed by donald trump. and you would not get that impression, given the way the director wray s fellow republicans attacked him and his agency during a hearing today. on capitol hill. when the court says that the fbi misled, that is a nice way of saying they lied. how many individuals were either fbi, employees, or people that the fbi could make contact with, to be in the january 6th entry of the capital? i m going to make the assumption is there is more than one, more than five, more than ten. i will say that this notion that somehow the violence at the capitol on january 6th was part of some operation orchestrated by fbi sources into
distinguished supreme court practitioner, laurence tribe. harvard historian, yell historian, and of course on this important night we are fortunate to hear from to law professors who are also practitioners, andrew weissmann, and neal katyal. neil katyal is of course a distinguished supreme court practitioner, having argued 50 cases before the court, and andrew weissmann is a former federal prosecutor and justice department official. my mission therefore in this hour is to get out of the way so that you can hear from them and not me. but i, want to take a minute to begin with two things that may reside more in the category of pet peeves than scholarly discussion that you are about to hear from our guests. one is that clarence thomas should ve recused himself from this case because everyone on that bench today knew, clarence thomas s wife was there. she was there, she was present when donald trump incited engaged in insurrection. the essence of our case is president trump s o
repercussions for the election this year and also for the future of american democracy. it is arguably the most important election case to reach the supreme court since bush v gore nearly a quarter century ago. the question before the court is pretty simple actually. does section 3 of the 14th amendment, which bars, quote, an officer of the united states who, quote, engaged in insurrection from holding public office actually apply to the man who incited the january 6th riot, who tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time since the civil war. the colorado state supreme court has already ruled that, yes, trump should be barred from the ballot in that state based on the insurrection that he clearly engaged in. quote, president trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under section 3 because he is disqualified it would be a wrongful act under the election code for the secretary to list him as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot
center of that drama. it s here in the 14th amendment arguments before the supreme court. and senator alex pay as here, yes, senate still in session, to discuss capitol hill chaos. crab or coffee inside alum, welcome to the weekend. this weekend, we start with classified documents. not president biden s but donald trump s. developing late last, night special counsel jack smith filed a motion nifor judge aile cannon to reconsider an order that smith says what identify more than two dozen witnesses, exposing them to threats. after reading that motion, judge cannon order jack smith to hand nnover that evidence to trump s lawyers by today. miss nbc legal analyst mary mccord ssis with, us she is a former principal deputy assistant attorney general for the national security division and co-host of one of my favorite podcasts, prosecuting donald trump. there s a lot of drama going on mpwith judge cannon. i ve always thought that this was sort of a live wire with her. she s provi
the appeal that they made? well, anderson, one of the first things that the president s lawyers take on is the idea that he is an insurrectionist, which is something that the colorado supreme court had ruled. they say he is not, that the january 6th attack was not an insurrection, and that the former president did not engage in insurrection. they also say that the congress, not state courts, should be the ones that determine the eligibility for the presidency. they also say that the 14th amendment, the letter, if you read the 14th amendment, section three, it doesn t mention the office of the presidency and it doesn t apply, they say, to the former president. i will read you a little more of what they argue. they say that this colorado ruling, if allowed to stand, will mark the first time in the history of the united states the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major party presidential candidate. and obviously, that is what is at stake her