it is good to be back with you for this second hour of chris jansing reports. ahead this hour, the welcome surprise from the december jobs report showing the u.s. labor market closed out 2023 with a bang. plus, former blade runner, oscar pistorius out on parole after serving almost a decade in prison for murdering his girlfriend. how her family is responding. the latest from iowa where that horrific school shooting has rocked the community of perry. new reporting on how the school s principal acted to save his students. and house democrats and their push to get supreme court justice clarence thomas off the key 2024 ballot. our nbc news reporters are following all of the latest developments. we begin with that new jobs report. nbc senior business report
big bend area near the panhandle, was it ready for a category 3 storm? reporter: it s a great question. i would say there are two different stories as i drove last night late last night from steinhatchee where bill weir is right now to here. and steinhatchee and along the coast, they were boarding up, putting the sandbags up and they evacuated, many people evacuated because there s nothing you can do in the storm surge. we re going to see pictures from there. and we have all morning. if that water rises 10 to 12 feet, no sandbag is going to stop that. if your house is in the way, your house very likely will be destroyed or severely flooded. as you headed inland, there was some areas around perry, i would say, where we just spoke and lost communication with those two gentlemen, i saw very few preparations. not much at all to get ready for this storm. gas stations were still open and had gas in the town of perry, which is unusual for days
circuit court of appeals, all judges or then to the supreme court. if you look down the road at all the argument, counterargument and teeing that up, i don t think investigators will be able to get into that phone, if at all, for another 12 months, if not more. that s mazing. andrew, you seem to feel unequivocal about the fact that they will ultimately prevail, that the facts and the law is on the side of doj in this case? . i do. i don t see how the portion that is relevant is going to be kept from the department and, although i hate to say t pete could be right. i am here a little more sanguin about the time frame. explain. i think thats once the court of appeals rules, i think it is hard to get a stay from the
but the justice department should be able to. i m sure this is a stumbling roadblock for investigators, but americans need that answer because at a bear minimum, voters need to know whether to re-elect a scott perry and extremists like that serving in congress and on committees responsible for protecting our security is a big concern, especially if they ve committed crimes and tried to overturn the federal government. is the fbi likely to be sort of intimidated or to back down when you have sort of an alphabet soup of the subcommittee, of house guys trying to protect congress? i mean, will they back down or is it as andrew described, just a legal process? no, not at all. i don t think this is going to have any impact on the willingness of investigators and prosecutors to lay the facts where they lay. the issue is, this isn t going to happen any time soon. the phone was seized six months ago. the oral argument is happening february 23rd. one side or the other isn t going to be happy
11 days to january 6th and 25 days to inauguration. we ve got to get going. representative perry followed up and says, quote, mark, you should call jeff. the rest of that is, i just got off the phone. the other guy won t work with the fbi. this was one of the architects of the coup plot, not just bringing the insurrection and militia groups to washington to stop the physical certification, but the thing they wanted to carry out fraudulently within the executive branch of government, which trump said to rosen, just declare it corrupt and my guys will do the rest. my guys was mr. perry. that s right. if you re trying to understand what trump knew, what trump did and what he was coordinating, perry is a key player in that. allegedly, he is the person that introduced clark to trump. not only did you have all this back and forth with meadows, trump s chief of staff, but some direct interaction with president trump. at the end of the day we re