The most important election of our lifetime. Welcome to a Special Edition of newsnight. Im abby phillip in new york, and im laura coates in Washington Dc. Its a short time ago. Joe biden made official well, the obvious yes and he will be the democratic nominee, come this november. He is celebrating clinching in a new video asking voters, are you ready to win . Well, tonight, biden adding important victories to his win column. Look at all of these states. State of georgia, a one that he won in 2020, put them over the top. Its also a state were done on trump tried to deny democracy. I say were donald trump is on trial for Election Interference. And tonight the president put the november choice and quite the story stark terms. Are we going to stand up and defend our democracy or let others tear it down so who are the others hes talking about . Well, its pretty obvious one person, its donald trump, who sits only a handful of delegates away. Now from locking up the nomination after romping
counsel as bias. in this case, the department releasing texts appears to be helping them make that case in a selective and out of context way. and when asked about it under oath, the deputy attorney general appears to have not told the truth about that. is that going to end up being trouble for the deputy attorney general for rod rosenstein who oversees the muller investigation at the justice department? if it is going to be trouble for rod rosenstein, the white house will love that. all of these swirling beltway reporter right now that the president is seriously considering what means he has to impede the muller investigation, to block it somehow. if he gets any sort of reason to fire rod rosenstein, that will get them a good distance down that road. the president does have options if he wants to start firing people in the muller investigation. washington post reports today on hundreds of cities and towns around the country that have planned demonstrations in the event that trump fire
fbi investigation into that crime, that is easy. that s easy. that s like the fifth grade civics textbook explanation of obstruction of justice, and that will become very hard for the most partisan admirers of the president to explain away. on this first important point, the president s potential culpability for obstruction of justice, in,nbc makes one factu point which the white house will have to sort out soon. i don t know if they can sport out the next day or so before they come up with something. and that is that the white house refuses to answer, refuses to characterize in any way when the president first learned that flynn had lied to the fbi. this is from nbc scoop today. quote, trump s legal team and senior white house aids are
met with hope hicks in the situation room at least twice and gave her the names of the russians that contacted her and said that they were not who they claimed to be. the fbi was concerned the e-mails may have been part of a russian intelligence operation. the meetings with hicks what the fbi calls a defensive briefing went beyond the standard security advice they receive upon taking office. defensive briefings are intended to warning government officials about specific concerns or risks. so after hope hicks had her two big days of interviews, testimony with the muller investigators thursday and friday, that was the reporting from the new york times that followed. now today, nbc news has this scoop. quote, special counsel robert mueller is trying to piece together what happened in the white house over an 18-day period when senior officials were told michael flynn was susceptible to blackmail by russia.
investigation is to taunting they may try to blow it up. at least we won t be able to say we weren t warned. everybody is throwing red flags on the possibility of firing robert mueller. the president s long-time close aide, not just for this year at the white house but in the campaign and trump organization before that hope hicks long-time donald trump aid has had a two-day long interview with muller s investigatiors on thursday and friday next week. the new york times since reported hope hicks was given at least two defensive briefings, both in the situation room at the white house from senior counter intelligence officers at the fbi, warning hope hicks about how many russians were trying to contact her. has the trump administration took office. quote, american intelligence and law enforcement agencies became alarmed by introductory e-mails hope hicks received from russian government addresses in the weeks after mr. trump s election. after trump took office, senior fbi counter intel