i m ari melber in for nicolle and i ll anchor for the next three hours right now with a lot of news breaking out of new york as the d.a. alvin bragg moves forward with two witnesses who faced this grand jury today, robert costello a legal adviser to that key witness we all know about, michael cohen. he s testified today at the request of trump s legal team. under new york law a person who is expected to be indicted which in this case may or may not be donald trump but in an abundance of fairness, that individual can request a witness appear for them before this grand jury finishes its work. so that s part of what we re following on this big breaking news day. today cohen also on hand, this weekend he said he would be back today to address what costello says making him the rebuttal witness and this, today, is his third appearance before the grand jury. so, that alone makes all of this a major day and probe that is quite near deciding whether or not to indict donald trump. so,
there may never be one. those are powerful gop leaders doing it as a political message. they don t through congress have authority over a local criminal probe. they don t fund it or oversee it. at the same time, this weekend s earthquake from trump is also opening a fissure within the republican party. take speaker mccarthy. he echos trump s argument any charges are politically motivated. he s saying lawyers think this is a weak case against trump but the speaker breaking with trump s call for protests on saturday saying clearly people should not protest if trump is indicted, mccarthy also telling reporters, quote, i don t think people should protest this, no, nobody should harm one another, we want calmness out there. a sign that mccarthy knows exactly what it means when donald trump talks about protests. they re not automatically peaceful. now, this is a split among republicans. you have house member, powerful chairs siding with trump s attack on the rule of law and loud allies like
tawdry, ari. there s a lot to talk about here but, you know, imagine if a democratic president had been accused of trying to cover up an affair, wait, you don t have to imagine that because what happened to bill clinton, the very same republicans impeached him when he was president and here the republican party has reached a point where they are defending somebody who was covering up an affair with a porn star and, oh, by the way, they are supporting a member of their party, george santos who lied about everything, who committed fraud in an election in order to get himself elected. they re defending paul gosar who did a video of killing aoc and the tawdriness of what the republican party has become. would the party of reagan countenanced any of this? i m not terribly impressed speaker mccarthy somehow found it in himself to say we shouldn t be violent. my god, that s a low bar.