Good morning, everyone. So glad youre with us. It is a tuesday, full of news. Victor blackwell by my side. Good morning. Good to be back. Good to have you. Here all week. Five things to know for this tuesday, august 8th. New this morning, the east coast cleaning up after deadly storms, trees are down, roads are blocked. Hundreds of thousands of people without power. Already more than 300 flights cancelled. Happening today, the police chief in montgomery, alabama, is expected to reveal more information about that brawl that broke out on the citys river front. It started after a black dock worker was attacked by a group of white people. So far no arrests. But four warrants have been issued. Right now, Los Angeles City workers are on a 24hour strike. 11,000 workers including Sanitation Workers, engineers, life guards, all headed for the picket lines. They say its a fight for fair contracts. This hour, polls open in ohio as Voters Decide whether to make it harder to amend their state constitution. It is part of a real Proxy Fight Over Abortion Rights in the state. Early voting turnout has been huge. More than half a million votes already cast. You feeling lucky . I know its early, but you know, check the gauge. The drawing for the largest Mega Millions jackpot in history is tonight. A little more than 1. 5 billion is the jackpot. Cnn this morning starts right now. Did you buy your Lottery Ticket . I was in a pool for the last drawing for Mega Millions, but yeah ill get in this one. Yeah. That would make for a good week in new york. Yeah. Its worth it. Well get to the lottery in a moment. We do begin this morning with the powerful and deadly storms that moved across the united states. They killed at least two people. Today Hundreds Of Thousands are waking up in the dark. Oh my god. That is a tree snapped in half by the wind in moorsville, North Carolina. Residents in indianas Orange County are digging out after tornado pummelled grainerries, ripped off roofs there. Look at that. Nearly 400,000 people are without power from North Carolina to tennessee. Maryland state police say 47 people were rescued after being trapped in their vehicles for hours when those strong winds downed the power lines. Now, its just about 6 00 a. M. On the east coast here. Already more than 300 flights have been cancelled. More than 700 delayed. Lets go to Meteorologist Derek Van Dam now in the weather center. When you look at some of these pictures and the Cell Phone Video coming in, you can understand how this has been so challenging for people and there is more coming. Yeah, victor, poppy, after yesterdays hurricane forced wind gusts and softball sized hail that fell from the sky, today will feel like A Walk In The Park for the areas impacted most by the storm system. But the Severe Weather threat not done just yet. Its all part of the larger storm system that rocked the Eastern Sea Board yesterday. Take a listen. Reporter with wind gusts estimated over 75 miles per hour, the impact was immediate. Oh my god. Holy [ bleep ]. Reporter in moorsville, North Carolina, tyson winter captured this video of a Tree Snapping in half and falling to the ground near an apartment complex. Heavy rain, thunder around violent winds hammered cities and towns east of the mississippi river. By monday night, there had been more than 400 reports of strong winds across the region. And more than a million customers were without power across 11 states. In states like North Carolina, pennsylvania, georgia and maryland, according to power outage. U. S. Mondays Severe Weather is impacting around 120 Million People along the eastern u. S. , from downed trees in hartford county, maryland, to widespread damage, to holmes and public buildings upstate new york down to alabama, causing a lot of mess and spreading hazards along the way. In washington, d. C. , cnn captured this video of a man removing a large branch from a city street. This photo shows downed power lines littering a roadway in carol county, maryland, after a storm passed through the area. Another driver captured the chaos caused by those Electric Poles in westminster on route 140. More than 30 vehicles were stuck in the incident, but no injuries were reported. In many parts, the storm caused extreme low visibility. In downtown philadelphia, a Live Tower Camera showed the magnitude of the weather conditions. In victory gardens, new jersey, several residents displaced after a tree fell on a home, bringing down power lines and crashing cars. According to cnn affiliate wabc, the house was occupied at the time but there were no injuries reported. The storms caused major Travel Disruptions in the skies on monday. According to data from flight aware, more than 10,000 u. S. Flights were impacted by the severe storms on monday. More than 1,700 cancelled. All this as new Weather Threats are expected to develop for tuesday afternoon with risk of severe thunderstorms in several southern states. The Severe Weather threat along the i95 corridor has largely come to an end except for greater metro region in boston. Slight risk across the gulf coast state and also across the Central Plains today. With these temperatures being so hot across the south doesnt take much for the severe thunderstorms to bubble over and cause some of these damaging winds and large hail we saw yesterday. Victor, poppy . No question about it. Those pictures really speak 1,000 words. Derek, we appreciate it. Thank you. Just hours from now donald trump is set to hit the Campaign Trail as he faces a whirlwind of developments in multiple criminal cases against him. Hell be speaking in new hampshire, while his Defense Team Battles with Special Counsel jack smith over a protective order in the Election Interference Case. Smith is trying to block trump from disclosing evidence to the public before the trial. Hes accusing trump and his lawyer of wanting to try the case in the media instead of the courtroom, but trumps team says smith is trying to restrict his free speech rights. The judge says shes going to order a hearing this week as she prepares to decide. Cnn exclusively reported that trumps ally and former new York City Police commissioner met with the Special Counsel investigators yesterday and the focus was trumps alleged coconspirator, Rudy Giuliani. Meanwhile, in atlanta, new signs indictments could be imminent for the alleged scheme to reject the results of the election. The states exLieutenant Governor, contributor to cnn, you see him on this program a lot, jeff duncan has been subpoenaed to testify to the Fulton County grand jury. Ill keep the details to myself to protect the integrity of the investigation, but theres a very clear subpoena that was delivered to us late last week and we will certainly answer the questions that theyve got before us and answer their call to show up for the grand jury. Also the trumpappointed judge overseeing the maralago classified documents probe, new developments there. That Judge Questioning why the Justice Department used an out of State Grand Jury in washington, d. C. To bring the indictment. Lets bring cnn Kaittelyn Polan in for more. What can you tell us . Reporter well, this january 6th federal case. Lets look at that. Thats where there have been five filings from the Justice Department and trumps Team Together since friday. Thats a lot of stuff that anyone would be filing in court. And the judge there has already signaled she is not going to be interested in much like these shenanigans when theyre debating back and forth. The debate is about pretrial publicity. How much can donald trump and his team talk publicly about the information theyre getting from the Justice Department as they work towards trial. And so the Justice Department has to turn over Information Evidence to donald trump and his team that they dont have at this time. Theres all kinds of stuff thats out there thats public that donald trump would have access to. Theres his own information that he and his team have collected as the January 6th Investigation has unfurled. But in this situation, theres specific information that they havent seen yet. And so the debate legally right now is that the Justice Department wants all of that to be locked down so that donald trump and others cant talk about it publicly or release it before a trial and possibly infringe upon his ability to have a fair trial. Trumps team is saying, free speech. We should be able to talk about this. We should be able to only have a small subset of that under a court order that would say you cant disclose it before trial. Thats whats before the judge right now. The Justice Department came back last night in a filing and essentially said, theres no law or even purpose for donald trump to be out there wanting to talk about evidence before trial that he hasnt seen yet. But, you know, this has been a lot of discussion back and forth where theyre sharing each others social media posts, theyre talking about politics. So the judge stepped in last night and said, were going to have a hearing. Were going to have it before friday. Lets figure out a time and date to do that. And so, were going to have to wait and see what the judge does here, but she is not playing around here. She does want to get this settled pretty quickly. Lets talk about this Cnn Exclusive Reporting that bernie kark met with the Special Counsel for five hours yesterday. What do we know about that, what theyre trying to learn from him . Yeah. So, his attorney was actually quite clear about what bernie kerik was asked about when he met with the Special Counsels office for an interview over at their offices. His attorney came out of the Special Counsels office alongside bernie kerik and said they were discussing what the Giuliani Team was doing. What Rudy Giuliani and others whom bernie kerik was working with after the 2020 election to find evidence of fraud which they couldnt find what they were doing between election day on 2020 and january 6th. The reason this matters is twofold, this is the first time we have seen investigative activity really after that indictment of donald trump last week. And on top of that, were seeing investigative activity on a particular lane about Rudy Giuliani and what Rudy Giuliani is doing. Hes one of those conspirators uncharged in the trump indictment, but theres a lot of stuff to still watch including whether grand jury activity will pick up again. Katelyn polantz for the reporting. Thank you so much. Lets talk about all these headlines, Jessica Washington is with us, john avlon and elie honig. Good morning, guys. Good morning. Elie, i think your take on what the trump team is asking for in their new filing is really interesting and important. You think what theyre saying is reasonable to say you cant totally limit you cant muzzle our client. There is some middle ground here. So this happens sometimes in Court Blessedly where both sides are being quite reasonable. Doj is saying we dont want donald trump to be able to take any of the Discovery Materials that we turn over, witness statements, evidence, and bring those public. Donald trumps team didnt say, no, we should use all of it. How about we limit that to sensitive materials and well let you, doj, decide in the first instance whats sensitive and whats not. Doj came back and said the purpose of discovery is not to enable your pr efforts. Its to inform you and let you prepare for trial. So all of those are good points. And judge chutkan will have to sort through them. Look, i suspect shes going to try to find some middle ground here because while there have to be some limits on what you can say publicly, you cant cross the line into Jury Tampering or Witness Tampering or intimidation, you do have as a defendant, the right, you can criticize the judge and the case against you and criticize the prosecution. Okay. But just it is a matter of how you read something then i guess because what the trump team is saying when trump put on truth social, you come after me, ill go after you. That was political not going after Special Counsel or anyone here. Yeah. Thats a bit of a separate issue. His statements, his inflammatory statements are separate from this protective order. The question for this protective order, what can he do with the evidence. Theres a fine line that needs to be walked here. Donald trump is masterful at saying things that give him plausible deniability. We all know and more than people at this table understand what he means. Thats the overlap. Legal is political, political is legal for trumps strategy. Does that make sense from a political perspective that the Trump Campaign says dont keep everything from us. Just the sensitive elements. Well to your Point Blurring of the political and the legal. Trump is willing to weaponize whatever he can get his hands on. Thats why i think the context of trumps statements matters. He has a history of using threats and intimidation. Now, whether that crosses over into Witness Temperatures becomes a question for the judge. Thats that gray area. But theres every reason to question how they will use this information in the court of Public Opinion because that always seems to be Donald Trumps first instinct. What is the significance of judge alean cannon, overseeing the maralago documents probe, questioning whether it was legal to use a d. C. Grand jury as part of this probe. Right . They had a grand jury in Southern Florida and one in d. C. Explain why that matters given the optics of some prior decisions she had made that were in trumps favor earlier, way earlier on and all of this after the fbi searched maralago. Explain why people are questioning this. Yeah. I think there have been a lot of eyes on this judge. For one, shes a trumpappointed judge. Im not saying that makes her biassed in any way, thats the perception perhaps. Then you also think about the fact that she ruled in a way that was favorability to trump that got overturned to the point of unanimously overturned. Unanimously overturn and specifically said this does not have any legal precedent. So you have a judge that has been seen repeatedly to be favorable to trump and now once again in the spotlight in this major way. Every single decision she makes, particularly decisions that are favorable to trump or that could delay this trial until after the election is going to be in the spotlight. Elie, just two weeks ago, right, that the fani willis in Fulton County said that the work is accomplished in that investigation. Right. Now weve learned that the Georgia FormerLieutenant Governor jeff duncan is subpoenaed in the Election Interference Case there. So which is it . Why is he now being asked to come and answer questions . Work is done apparently not. If jeff duncan, our colleague just got a subpoena. Yes, its not quite done yet. This could be the final stage. Maybe she wasnt speaking quite literally done done done. But this could be a finishing touch. I was trying to think about what former Lieutenant Governor duncan would have to say. Remember, as Lieutenant Governor in georgia he was in charge of the senate. That was one of his state constitutional duties. There was false testimony by Rudy Giuliani given to the senate. He could be a capstone witness. I agree. I still expect her to indictment very, very shortly. I dont think this is some unexpected speed bump that will push the timelin