good evening. happy holidays. welcome to the beat. i am ari melber. i ll be joining you the next two hours for a special holiday edition of the beat. donald trump has a criminal trial problem. he has several trials looming in 2024. that s where we begin tonight. we ll do it a little different for the holidays. former federal prosecutor joyce vance with me to start the show. we re looking at this legal heat coming up. i want to get into this with you, joyce, but first show you and viewers something we put together to consider tonight, historic indictments on the road donald trump has already been on. donald trump has been indicted under seal by the new york grand jury. 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. we have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone. this will now be months if not the next year of our lives. the former president was placed under arrest on charges brought by the government he once led. the guy who s running for
thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we are grateful the beat with ari melber starts right now. welcome to the beat. we begin with what many are saying is the revelation of something we knew but continue to see in more depth, a kind of staggering weakness of speaker mccarthy. as you see him giving out rewards to the very people who broke with him and tortured him before finally relenting this that historically chaotic beginning to the new congress. there s also some santos news so first the full picture today of what mccarthy has given away to the rebels who according to many republicans and this is again mccarthy s allies, they say those folks were politically extorting him. the lesson that mccarthy may be teaching which is why it matters in the news tonight and in the future is that his weakness can be exploited on any number of issues so this caucus which held the speaker bid hostage is getting assignments this he m
good to be with you, i m katy tur in for hallie jackson. and we re on the cusp of something, but what that something is still unclear. the fbi search of former president trump s mar-a-lago home has stood up a lot. republicans slammed the move as politically motivated with many of his allies claiming witch hunt and basically blaming president biden for the search. the white house said it was not given a heads-up for the events and found out with the rest of the country when the news broke. at this hour, we have more questions than answers. here s what we know so far. a source familiar with the matter tells nbc news that the search was tied to alleged removal of the classified documents from his home in 2021. according to donald trump the estate was searched by agents. the way this happened might be shocking but it didn t come out of nowhere. we know that the national archives asked mr. trump to return 15 boxes of documents they say were improperly taken from the white house. t
my first question for you, sir, is who do you believe? they think it s russia. i have president putin, he just said it s not russia. i will say this, i don t see any reason why it would be. i will tell you that president putin waswi extremely strong an powerful inro his denial today. president of the united states of america, donald trump, standing alongside russian president vladimir putin, aligning himself with russian claims over u.s. intelligence. and denying what everyone at that point knew to be true. russia interfered in the 2016 election. throughout his time in office, trump denied and down-played and excused russian interference in america s elections. he called the investigation into thatd interference a hoax and witch hunt over and over and over again. and now mr. trump is set to be on trial for his own efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his baseless claims that the election was stolen. in trump s new defense in that case appears to be the court should b
a heavy media focuses on hunter biden trial in the drug addicts tail and even natural suffering his defense was downright awful, so awful that even in delaware where the biden name is golden the federal georgia took three hours to convict him on all three gun felony charges, so awful that nobody was buying it, so awful he had nothing to say afterwards but d.o.j. special counsel david wise did tell the reporters the verdict was not about addiction. s choice to line a government forum when he bought a gun and the choice to possess that gun. it was these choices and accommodation of guns and drugs that made his conduct dangerous. to set up a contest for the press after donald trump a former president become a convicted felon in the hush money case the current president s son became a convicted felon in the illegal gun case two extremely different cases. after demanded the hunter must be held accountable because of his last name many conservatives immediately shifted their