The Special Counsel charges donald trump with conspireing to shatter the american experiment. The ha 45page indictment nar tat rates a plot to stay in power after losing an election. And it does so with some new evidence, including realtime notes from then Vice President mike pence. The politics, the third Trump Indictment slipped the field into familiar camps. The charges will also test joe bidens resolve to do what is sometimes unnatural. Stay quiet. The consequences, how the prosecution plays out in court may determine the future of both donald trump and american democracy. Im dana bash. Lets go behind the headlines and inside politics. Tomorrow a court date for the former president here in washington. Today the country gets a line by line look at The Plot Against America and the alleged crimes of donald trump. Central to the indictment is the Special Counsels assertion that trump knew that he lost the election and pushed lies to stay in office any way. Describe d in the indictment
i would encourage the american public to read the indictment. it s incredibly powerful, but it read a lot like the january 6th report that we put out. over 800 pages of documents in our final product. and i thought the facts laid out in the indictment were closely aligned with the work that we did. i paid particular attention in the indictment to the mike pence portion because i chaired that panel. but just the pressure campaign that mike pence was under. january 6th, christmas day phone call that the president put pressure on him, january 2nd, january 3rd, january 4th, either directly the president pressuring pence or his advisers pressuring the chief of staff to mike pence. just an incredibly orchestrated campaign thatter clearly the
jerry nadler says you and your lawyers can testify in front of our tonight he. but there are reasons why the white house would not want to do that, right? yes. the president has an opportunity now if he wishes to come to testify to see others to testify. but the white house has been blocking people from testifying at the intelligence committee level and the judiciary committee level as well. people like mulvaney are of great interest, the president s acting chief of staff are of great interest to the congress because he was at the center of the deliberations that went on between the president and ukraine as president put pressure on ukraine to investigate his political rival back to the united states. so the white house has been saying no, they cannot, and others can note testify. the white house also didn t want
mick mulvaney, rudy giuliani, and ambassador sondland. why is that or is that not an effective argument? it just seems hard to believe. the person who was going to benefit was donald trump. he was concerned that joe biden was the leading candidate at the time against him. and it defies plausibility that all these people around him would try to sabotage joe biden when the person benefitting was donald trump. have you seen or heard direct evidence in this testimony that president trump ordered the holdup of military aid in ukraine until there was a public pronouncement to investigate the bidens? well, based on the public reporting, there are a number of people including ambassador taylor that the president put pressure on president zelensky to order a public investigation into joe biden and there were
$400 million in military aid, the fact that he refused a meeting. we have the fact that this aid was vital to the survival of ukraine. so that s the fact that has to come out. the u.s., the president put pressure on a foreign country to help him in a political campaign. the key here is republicans know exactly what happened. they still voted the way they voted. let s see if having it out in the public actually changes, gets pressure from the american people on that. elizabeth holzman, great to see you. jake sherman, appreciate it. thanks, chris. right now one of rudy giuliani s business associates is in court. igor fruman is one of two arrested last month on campaign finance violations. his lawyer called his bail conditions onerous. fruman has pleaded not guilty to charges he made illegal contributions to political