having lost the election. that s actually something that the january 6th committee did a lot of work to establish. the idea of his mindset. the idea there were people around him telling him he lost the election, that he was hearing them, he internalized that, and he then went forward and applied these pressure levers anyway. that s going to be really important. again, for the sake of transparency, it s something that we have the benefit of knowing. it gives us some rare insight here after having seen a year and a half s worth of investigation here on capitol hill, that casts some rare light on the fact that now this special counsel investigation is obviously coming to a close, and we re understanding a little bit more of what they may have found out and the lineses of questioning they may been answering. we have two sources with direct knowledge telling nbc news that former president trump did receive a target letter from special counsel jack smith on
anything. it s an interesting data point. everything that our core has believed about the election, and the transfer of power, any other fund-raising elements around it it was a pretty big investigation. it could involve dozens of potential indictments. for now, only the one target letter. most of the people i mentioned and reached out to, had spoken to the grand jury already. they had the opportunity to give their side of the story already. donald trump one of the few major players that has not spoken to the grand jury. haez more likely to get a letter like this, which is not a requirement to send a target letter. i will share, as i m opening my notebook, the other thing i m curious about is the timing of this. donald trump said he got this letter on sunday night.
personal aide, walt na nauta, w also charged with federal crimes. it makes sense to me that the government would at least be investigating, looking seriously at the conduct involving fake electors. if you are charging somebody with the attempt to defraud the united states government or try to overturn a free and fair election, the fake electors would have to be part of the investigation. whether or not they re ultimately part of the chargcha we ll have to wait and see. i want to bring in nbc news capitol hill correspondent ali vitali. she s joining all of us, who are just digesting this news here. you re tracking reaction there on capitol hill. ali, what are you hearing from lawmakers? reporter: shockingly, not the first time we re seeing republican lawmakers react to the former president being in legal jeopardy. this is now something we ve seen before. republicans, largely in the house, rushing to his defense, in part that s because we ve
we appear on the verge of his third indictment, a fourth may be a few weeks away in georgia, and this one, to what dave said, this is the weightiest. this is about our very democracy and about the peaceful transition of power. it seems he is on the verge of being criminally charged there. mika? all right. that does it for us here on morning joe. of course, we ll have a full report tomorrow morning. but the breaking news continues right now with ana cabrera. it s 10:00 eastern. thank you for being with us. i m ana cabrera reporting from new york. we begin with this breaking news. former president donald trump has just posted on his truth social account, claiming he has received a target letter in the january 6th grand jury investigation being led by special counsel jack smith. now, trump also claims that the department of justice gave him four days to report to the grand
jury. now, at this time, this news is only coming from trump himself. we have not heard anything from the doj or other officials. let s get to our experts and reporters to discuss this. garrett haake. justice and intelligence reporter ken dilanian, who is in florida where, by the way, trump s legal team has a hearing in his other federal case involving the classified documents. also with us, danielle cohen higgins, county commissioner in dade county. garrett, what more do we know about this post by donald trump about being informed that he is a target of the january 6th probe by the special counsel? reporter: ana, this kicks off a familiar pattern here for donald trump, where he essentially scoops the justice system, announcing ahead of time in the new york case, he was to be indicted, in the documents case, that he had been indicted, in this case, that he is the target of an investigation in which he believes he will be indicted. the former president posting two