chris jansing reports follows with ana cabrera right now. hello on this busy friday. i m ana cabrera in for chris jansing, and it appears to be down to two. a senator from ohio and the governor of north dakota emerging as the front runners as donald trump inches closer to making one of the most consequential choices of his campaign, picking a running mate. but could there still be another name on the list? plus, turning to trump s legal woes, the former president may be the one charged with mishandling secret documents, but in a hearing in florida today, special counsel jack smith appears to be the one with the most to lose. in an unusual decision, the judge is hearing arguments about whether jack smith should have been appointed in the first places and whether he has the authority to prosecute trump going forward. and rain bringing some relief to central new mexico where massive wildfires have destroyed hundreds of homes, forced thousands to flee, and left at leas
course, that there are documents being returned because the prosecutors don t find them very valuable. just because michael cohen says they re valuable doesn t mean prosecutors find them so. but it is true that they typically hold on to the originals for a long period of time. so it is very hard to sit here today and feel any comfort that the district attorney is aggressively pursuing this. and if news reports are accurate and some of the reporting that we have seen has said that what he is looking for a witness to flip, someone who will make it easier to secure a prosecution, you know, then it s very hard to do that when the pressure is on. maya, turning to trump s other legal trouble, though there really are so many, one has to choose. the new york times reports the january 6th committee has enough evidence to refer him for criminal charges. what does that tell new. well, i think we have all been looking at the facts that
backing off the demand for border wall funding to end the shutdown. but ever present in every step of the process is trump and his approach to deal making. during the last meeting on wednesday, the washington post reported, vice president pence leveled a sharp accusation at senate minority leader chuck schumer. he never bothered to respond to an offer to reopen the government that pence made days earlier. turning to trump, schumer reminded him that he said this week he wouldn t accept less than the $5.6 billion in wall funding that was approved by house republicans late last year, far more than the $2.5 billion pence was proposing. george conway put the whole mess this way ah, yes, how many times have we seen this now? undercut and contradict your representatives so no one will deal with them. nothing gets accomplished, but at least you remain the center of focus because that s the only thing that matters. the narcissist s art of the deal. good one. joining us at the table, rev
rule of law in top of it. we decided in 1776 we wouldn t be ruled by a king and put in place a constitution and laws that people abide by and we have an independent fbi and an independent department of justice that really is our instrument to investigate violations of federal criminal law. he s calling into question all of that. and what makes it even worse is, if you look at just the allegations involved here. i mean, julia is right. this peter strzok thing is complete nonsense. the worse thing the guy did was put in a text message, before he even began working for mueller, that president trump is an idiot. but president trump s secretary of state called him a moron. there s that. i don t know which is worse. but americans out there who think this is a witch-hunt, who believe the president when he says it s a witch-hunt and says this is politically motivated. the very least, and not saying this colored an opinion in any way, at the very least, though,
that s the hardest thing we ve seen so far of any type of leaning or bias in the investigation and mueller was on top of that before the public knew anything about it. it could be pretty difficult to find that and an effort to try to undermine the mueller investigation, they could, in fact, undermine their own investigation on the house intel committee to paint that as a political expedition. do you think that they re at serious risk doing that already? even with just the news of this investigation? i do, katy. we ve talked a lot about the countless things that happened on the house intel committee side. especially starting with devin nunes and even after he started leading that investigation. they ve had closed-door meetings. scheduled one with trump s former assistant who, of course, would know a lot about his business dealings. they scheduled that meeting in new york, katy, right as congress was leaving for the recess. people were going home to their districts for christmas, and