january 6th investigation in recent weeks. the interview of rudy giuliani finally, right? he s a key figure in former president trump s effort to overturn the 2020 election and then today the georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger, i want to remind people why he is so key here. let s take a listen to a brief cliff from the january 2021 call between trump and the secretary of state. so, look, all i want to do is this i just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. so raffensperger is not only a witness in the special counsel probe. he is also a key witness in the state level investigation. we expect the d.a., fani willis down there to make some sort of announcement about any potential charges she ll bring in august and it appears that special counsel jack smith could be on a similar time line to announce any charging decisions this summer. we are also hearing once again from former president trump responding to our excl
mar-a-lago and this was after they had obtained the tapes after january 6th that he was going to try to push trump to resign after that. again, there are two sections here of trump wold, some thinking that mccarthy shouldn t get so many chances. mccarthy is facing increasing pressure to go out there and endorse at least one republican in this presidential advisers. remember, they think trump got him the speakership, that because of the supply report, and mccarthy himself has thank the former, aides have brushed off the idea and that he ll believe that, that he can t, yet, release neutral. they want him to be loyal to the former president and they want to see that mccarthy owes him.
and fact that he was exonerated by a jury that found he sexually abused e. jean carroll, and as you remember, a judge has allowed e. jean carroll to amend her defamation lawsuit to include comment that trump made at a cnn town hall just days after this verdict and at the town hall trump repeated the lines that he didn t rape e. jean carroll, that he didn t know who she was and that carroll is now suing trump for $10 million in damages and that is set to go to trial in january. we shall see how all of this unfolds. kara scannell, thank you for that report. just ahead, we ll go live overseas with new reporting just coming in on what intelligence officials are now saying about the recent rebellion in russia, and we ll talk to the former member of the national security council retired colonel alexander vinman and he is standing by live to join us right t here on the situation room. we ll be r right back. of energy there is . you.
we ll see how he responds to this. kristen holmes reporting. let s discuss what s going on wen wen strategist alice stewart along with david axelrod. alice, speaker mckarcarthy is trying to get back in trump s good graces. who needs more out of this relationship? would it be trump or mckarthy? it s a mutually beneficial relationship. every now and then in politics they say what they think and when they think about what they said they have to do a cleanup on aisle 4. someone as the speaker of the house that wasn t a bash on trump, but it was more he s not going to take sides in a primary, but anything short of a full-throated endorsement for donald trump is critical. in terms of the backlash of this, speaking with many people in the house, it s more in the media and the talking class, because, look, the house caucus is similar to republicans across
room. you have information about just how far mccarthy will try to appease trump. we now know that speaker mccarthy called trump after the interview essentially apologizing to him saying the reporters took his words out of context. this was a live video that he made these remarks on. we also know that he heaped effusive praise on the former president in terms of an exclusive interview with a conservative outlet and he also did this, he put out a fund-raising e-mail where he said trump is the strongest opponent to biden. clearly here treeing to counter that narrative. some of trump s advisors are very happy with this public praise of the former president, but others are wary. you have to remember this is not the first time that mccarthy has said something that sparked ire in trump world. we have a photo. this was an infamous photo at