country. velshi starts now. good morning to you. it is sunday, january the 28. i m ali velshi. demonstrators in major cities around the country took to the streets again yesterday after the memphis police department released footage of the brutal beating of tyre nichols by five members of its own police force. in the continuing aftermath, memphis pd announced yesterday that it has permanently deactivated its scorpion unit. scorpion what the departments anti violence group which has been under scrutiny in recent days after it became public that all five of the police officers who were fired, arrested, and charged with second degree murder in nichols death where members of the unit. joining me now from memphis, tennessee, is nbc s antonia hylton who have been covering the story from the beginning. antonia. welcome tell us a bit about this new development with the scorpion unit, of which all five of these police officers were members. ali, i was actually with protesters yest
of people that included roger stone and steve bannon urging trump to declare victory regardless of the results, the actual legal results, of the 2020 election. now the january 6th select committee cites a memo that fitton wrote for trump in the run-up to election day, i think the summer before the election, as evidence that in the words of committee member zoe love gren friend the big lie was untensional, promeditated and a plan concocted in advance. here s a snippet from the january 6th select committee s final hearing. a few days before the election, mr. trump also consulted with one of husband outside advisers inside activist tom fitton about the strategy for election night. the select committee got this pre-prepared statement from the national archives. as you can see, the draft statement, which was sent on october 31st, declares we had an election today and i won, and the fitton memo specifically indicates a plan that only the votes counted by the election day deadline
it was dismissed in less than six months. practically actually laughed out of court. now the ruling by u.s. district judge donald middlebrooks ordering trump and his attorney to cover the legal costs of the defendants in that suit is one for the ages. it is a stinging rebuke of donald trump the man and of donald trump s lies and his tried and true now legal strategy of jamming and gumming up the courts with lawsuits. it starts off like this, quote, this case never should have been brought. its inadequacy there is that word again as a legal claim was evident from the start. no reasonable lawyer would have filed it. the judge then makes it crystal clear that the ex-president himself bears responsibility for the suit. he goes on, quote, trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries. he is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following
at bill barr s efforts as part of the incitement. was it his testimony after the fact was so valuable that you took everyone willing to make the case against trump? what attorney barr did right after the election in authorizing u.s. attorneys to conduct voter fraud investigations before an election was certified at the time were criticized as helping the president or was a partisan move. then president. different from prior practice. i think he knew going in that there was going to be controversy, before the president ranted before the election this would be riddled with fraud. there were going to be questions about the legitimacy of the election. so barr s conduct, his appearance on media outlets, fitton s e-mails, all the groundwork that played the summer before the general election takes place and voting in america commences is part of what you would imagine the special counsel s
it is a huge and growing problem, and i want to be clear that i m going to prosecute anyone who engages in death threats against our elections officials, intimidation against voters than a mask to interference in our elections. the office that you have assumed has five pending voter fraud investigations right now. or at least as of right before the election, it had. those what is the status of those? yeah. those are ongoing. obviously i cannot talk too much about the specifics. five cases are is about to the norm. that is what happens every couple of years. it is not hundreds of cases. it is not thousands of cases. this election integrity unit, which is obviously completely misnamed as it was more like an election suppression unit here in arizona, it won is thousands