Whether or not Speaker Pelosi votes. Its tradition the speaker doesnt often votes but on a day like today i would think she would want to lead from the front. Well see. It seems like unprecedented times. Hagar, felipe, congressman, thank you so much. Well hand off to ari melber. Good morning. Im ari melber reporting live from nbc headquarters with coverage of todays events on msnbc. The breaking news coming out of capitol hill, lawmakers in the house about to take their first ever formal votes on how to proceed with the Impeachment Inquiry of president donald trump. This new resolution maps out the blueprint and rules of the road
for what democrats say is the next public phase in this impeachment probe. Now many are expecting a Party Line Vote today. Lawmakers will vote on these ground rules which includes moving the closed door depositions of all of these key witnesses into public hearings. Weve seen squabbling over this process. Were expecting in our special coverage to hear from Spe
addicted to drugs. the charges carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. today s trial gets underway after a deal with federal investigators collapsed last year. hunter biden has pleaded not guilty and has argued that he s being unfairly targeted by the department of justice. joining us now, former u.s. attorney and msnbc legal analyst joyce vance. she recently joined the brennan center for justice at nyu law as a senior fellow. joyce, thank you so much for joining us this morning. let s talk to start just about the charges that hunter biden is facing here, the prosecution s case against him. does this seem unusual the fact that someone like this is being charged this roy for this kind of offense? right. so the statute that forms the basis for these charges, jonathan, is one of the statutes
by sidney powell on behalf of donald trump. you are looking at the rico case. it s strong, it s long running and there are a lot of defendants more nervous today than they were when they woke up yesterday. i want to bring in our experts tonight. a man who has tried rico cases in georgia, jay tom morgan, former district attorney for dekalb county, neighboring fulton county, and back with us, professor melissa murray from nyu law. welcome to both of you. rico is broad and in some ways if you do the federal and state history, it s complicated. i went through both all the way back to the mafia hearings in the 50s and 60s and what they wanted to do. congress said okay, you guys are ducking and weaving. and you have this guy money laundering and this guy over here and this guy had a restaurant, and we re going to sweep it all in. it worked, it busted about the five families. what do you think of the way the d.a. is now using this as a strong case against so many trump defendants who accord
time that you re dismantling affirmative action, which seems like a one-two punch that will undermine the efforts of minority students to be admitted to these highly elite colleges where, you know, the chances for success and later paving the way in the world are really high. so there s a lot going on here. this is part of the broader picture that goes all the way from college to secondary school to kindergarten, all the way involved. and you re directly involved. what are you trying to achieve here? thank you for having me. great to be with you, professor. i went to nyu law so keeping it in the family so to speak. i love the numbers you were putting up, ari, because those are the facts and the facts that speak for themselves. at lawyers for civil rights we re extremely concerned that we re talking about six, seven times more likely to get into harvard if you are a affiliated
justice at nyu law. and author of the super majority, the year the supreme court divided america. so, joshua, let s begin with you. it s just an incredible, incredible work here. the mind-blowing decisions that came down this term that, you know, really a separate issue in one sense, but there are still these ethics concerns and there are some connections being made. paul singer, the billionaire, who funded justice alito s fishing trip, for example, lobbied to cancel student loan forgiveness. yesterday, alito voted against biden s student loan forgiveness plan and, of course, you would ve thought that that would ve been some disclosure there that, hey, you know, i hang out with this guy and he s telling us to do what we are about to do. what do you make of that and what should we make of that? the citizens watching this court, sort of sink into this ethics hole? yeah, so, i mean, to be