Questions about race that is elected republican senators or house members on the same ballots overseen by the same poll workers and the same secretaries of state. The Justice Department top elections crime prosecutor resigned in protest after bill barr told attorneys to investigate to investigate any allegations of irregularities in the vote. As each day goes by president elect bidens Transition Team says it is losing valuable time. The camp is considering legal action if the Trump Administration continues to stall. There are many had a headlines to get to this morning. Lets begin with evan perez on the top doj prosecutor resigning in protest. I think its important aswe look at this memo from barr what it said, im quoting, investigations may be conducted if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities, important word, that if true could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state. Saying you can investigate any irregularities but does still have to meet the standard of potentially overturning things. Is that right . Thats right. I mean, the interesting thing about this memo is that you dont have to tell prosecutors that they should be looking into vote fraud claims. This is something that is routine, part of their job under every administration. So the interesting thing about sending this memo as it did, it comes after days and days during which the Trump Campaign and the lawyers were having press conferences, filing some of these frivolous lawsuits claiming that there was widespread massive fraud that cost the president the election, when they have had theyve presented no proof of that. So what appears to be happening from this memo that bill barr sent yesterday was giving the green light to prosecutors who want to take action, perhaps bring charges, before states certify the elections and thats the reason why Richard Pilger who is the top vote fraud prosecutor here in this building, jim, thats why he sent an email last night to his colleagues saying he was resigning, he was passing on the memo from the attorney general and took the opportunity to say that it was abrogating a 40 year policy of not interfering in the process before states certified their results. Thats the key difference here in this memo. I will read you just a part of what bill barr says in his own memo, it says, quote, while most allegations of purported election misconduct are of such a scale that they would not impact the outcome of an election and thus investigation can appropriately be deferred, that is not always the case. You see what the attorney general seems to be doing is raising the spectre that any of these recounts, any of these allegations of fraud that are being brought forth are going to change what is really over 100,000 votes, right, that separate the two candidates right now over several states. Evan, the prosecutor that resigned, citing 40 years of precedent, led what is known as the election crimes section, right . And what barr did here is something that would normally always have to go through that section for a green light, right . Right. Exactly. And i think thats thats a very big reason why he resigned. Normally if prosecutors want to take action like this its not necessarily prohibited, what they do is they have to go through the process, go upstairs in this building to get permission from the Public Integrity section which oversees all of these types of investigations and what bill barr says in his new memo is that you dont have to do that. And what this opens the door, poppy, to is the fact that, you know, obviously theres 93 u. S. Prosecutors, u. S. Attorneys in this country and it gives a green light to one of them who is willing to put their careers, their public reputations on the line to go ahead and file Something Like this in the coming weeks before states have a chance to certify their elections. Their Election Results. And thereby give the president and his Campaign Something to hang their hat on which they so far dont have to try to make these claims that the election was stolen. Again, there is no proof of that, no information that any of these allegations will overturn tuns of thousands of votes that make the difference between these two candidates in several states. It doesnt give state legislatures something to hang their hat on, whatever the basis and therefore not certify. Listen, its remarkable. Evan perez, thanks very much. Lets go to the president elect and there is a president elect to his transition fight. Jessica dean is tracking the new pressure now coming from joe bidens team. Jessica, weve heard the prospect of legal action by the biden team. What specifically is that . Well, at this point were still waiting to find out exactly how they would do that, jim and poppy. Look, they are facing a far more contentious battle than they thought they would have to endure once this was all said and done. Joe biden himself telling his allies over the weekend he wanted to give republicans and President Trump some time to accept the results of this election, but now here we are on tuesday and the General Services administration, which is responsible for whats called ascertainment, its essentially validating that joe biden is the president elect, has so far refused to do that and instead is comparing this election to the 2000 election and specifically florida where bush and gore were deadlocked there. Thats triggered some worry in the biden team. Let me read you a quick statement from one biden official, they said, this is not 2000 by any stretch. That involved one state that had a 500 vote plus margin that had a number of different lines of contention of ballots that would have altered the outcome of that election and therefore the entire Electoral College vote. The biden Transition Team making the case this is actually nothing like that. Whats at stake here is because they havent ascertained this election so far, the official transition process has not been triggered. Poppy and jim, as you said, that has implications for national security, for what theyre trying to do with the coronavirus pandemic, theyre not allowed to get access to the funds that they need to run the transition process. Joe biden not getting his daily security highly classified security briefings. Intelligence briefings. All of this coming together and now they know that theyre going to have to put intense pressure on that and that could be in the form of a legal battle. So we will have to see what today brings and the next day. Wow. Potentially another legal battle on something that has such big implications for how this country operates. Jess, thanks for the reporting. The other turmoil in the administration is the defense secretary mark esper is out. Fired by the president. And it may not stop there. Lets get to our john harwood he joins us this morning at the white house. Good morning to you, john. So now there are questions about the fate of gina haspel and fbi director Christopher Wray. What we know, poppy, is that these two officials, gina haspel and Christopher Wray have upset the president for the same reason that mark esper upset the president , they have resisted his attempts to corrupt their agencies to his personal benefit. So no one will be surprised if five minutes from now or five hours from now the president tweets that he has fired those officials. We know after the impeachment trial he purged a series of officials who had told the truth about his conduct. Hes already started doing that in the u. S. Government right now. Aside from mark esper he has fired a utility regulator who had called for renewable energy, he has fired a climate official who had talked about the seriousness of climate change. He has fired the person and head in charge of the Nuclear Weapons stockpile. The president is transactional. We dont know if he is getting some benefit from those actions or whether that is just a fit of peak, but what we do know is that this president while he is stewing in the white house, embarrassed by his ee connection defeat, trying to resist it and get the Republican Party to stand behind him, he is determined to break important parts of the u. S. Government on his way out of office and hes already started. John harwood, thanks very much. With us is larry sabato and carrie cordaro. Thanks to both of you guys, its good to have you on this morning. Larry, if i could begin with you, i dont want to over or understate whats happening here and how it might affect the election. On the one hand im curious what these investigations could do to state legislatures certifying the results because all states theyve chosen to choose their electors by popular vote. Thats baked in. But can conceivably open Justice Department investigations give them legal cause to somehow not certify or is that a fools errand . Well, i dont think its a question of legality, jim, i think its a question of political preference. Legislatures do what they want to do, they have independent elected authority to do that. It would of course be incredibly controversial and i would assume in the long run cost some of them their elected positions, but for the short term if theyre looking for a reason to overturn the popular will, the frightening part of this is it might work. I personally dont think it will because it is so outrageous, its beyond outrageous. We dont just have a close winner here. We have somebody who when all the votes are counted is going to be well over 5 million vote majority here. Not to mention a substantial Electoral College majority. So this is this is going well beyond what any state has ever considered other than the Republican Legislature in florida in 2000. If there had been a total deadlock the Republican Legislature had been discussing sending the republican electoral slate to congress. Carrie, you were a senior official at the Justice Department and i just wonder what you make of bill barrs memo saying you are free to investigate this stuff, despite the margins that larry is so rightly talking about here. Could you just speak to the significance of him doing that. Sure. Poppy, weve heard a lot throughout the Trump Presidency about the institutions. Are our Institutions Holding up . Can they push back . Can they withstand the political pressure that the president places on them . Because throughout his presidency he has overtly indicated a desire to use the Justice Department in particular to achieve his political objectives. So what this is is this is the attorney general allowing the Justice Department to appear as if it is assisting the president politically. I agree with larry that as a practical matter it will not likely change the actual outcome, but what the attorney general has done is he has reversed what is the norm, what is the policy of the Justice Department, which is that it would not take an investigative step that could impact the outcome of an election during the course of the election being resolved. So thats the difference. He has said that there have been to be substantial allegations, but the fact that he has changed that policy and it has caused a senior election doj management person to relinquish their management position indicates that he has he is causing the appearance of politicization. Its not the first time, right, where folks in very senior positions in the Justice Department have resigned as a result of his decisions. Larry, i just want to dig down a little bit deeper on this, again, just gaming this out. Lets say that legislatures which we have seen do some pretty remarkable things already, if they were to attempt to do that, to in effect overrule the popular vote in their state and send a Trump Victory, certified Trump Victory as opposed to a biden one as reflected in the popular vote, that would, i imagine, be challenged in the Supreme Court, right, and on what basis would the Supreme Court judge that, right . I mean, is there a constitutional right to change the rules at this stage of the game . Well, as always, jim, it will be up to the nine members of the Supreme Court and we all know that President Trump has three appointees on the court and the conservatives have a 63 majority. Thats not to say they will vote along party lines, although bush v. Gore isnt encouraging. That 54 decision pretty much went according to party lines and it became apparent in the years after bush v. Gore that at least some of the members of the court were clearly rooting for the candidate of their party. So, you know, they used to say the Supreme Court reads the election returns. Well, if they do then theres no chance at all that biden will lose because he won convincingly. But the question is do they still read the election returns and do they care . So good to have you both. Larry, carrie, thank you very much. A fierce fight in georgia as two Republican Senate candidates are calling for the republican secretary of state to resign after he said there was no evidence of voter fraud. Also dr. Anthony fauci says, quote, help is on the way with pfizers announcement of a promising Coronavirus Vaccine. There are some key challenges, though, and we will talk about them. Moments from now another big Supreme Court case, the court will hear arguments on the future of obamacare, health care for tens of millions of americans now hangs in the balance. Something to watch. Before discovering nexium 24hr to treat her frequent heartburn, marie could only imagine enjoying freshly squeezed orange juice. Now no fruit is forbidden. Nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for allday, allnight protection. Can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn . Ithe first full prescriptionis pstrength nonsteroidal antiinflammatory gel. Available over the counter. Voltaren is powerful arthritis pain relief in a gel. Voltaren. The joy of movement. This morning the nations top Infectious Disease dr. Anthony fauci says it is, quote, very likely that people could start taking a Coronavirus Vaccine by the end of this year. This follows drug giant pfizers announcement that its vaccine appears to be more than 90 effective. Lets get straight to our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen with the latest. Good morning. Good morning, poppy. Lets talk next steps as jim just said this looks like a very effective vaccine so what happens next . Well, first data will have to be sent to the food and Drug Administration and we will see if they approve it and theres good reason to think that they would give it emergency use authorization, but then comes, well, then comes the hard part. States will have to administer the distribution of this vaccine and you might think, well, i get a flu shot every year, thats no big deal, you go to your pharmacy or doctors office. It is not going to work that way because this is the most fragile vaccine in use in the united states. Lets take a look at exactly what i mean by fragile. So this is a vaccine pfizers vaccine, that has to be kept at minus 75 degrees centigrade, the equivalent of 103 degrees fahrenhe fahrenheit. That is 50 degrees colder than any vaccine currently in use in the united states. Doctors offices and pharmacies do not have freezers that go anywhere close to that low. So weve been speaking with state Health Officials and they said that they feel overwhelmed and daunted by the prospect of distributing this vaccine because it is so fragile. One state official telling me she was on a webinar where she was being given all of the state officials were being given instructions on how to handle this vaccine, store it and all of that and she texted a friend who was on the call and said how are we going to do this . And that colleague just sent back an exploding head emoji. Jim, poppy. Yikes. Sometimes emojis say it all, thanks very much. Right. Exactly. Joining us now is dr. Mark mcclellin director of the Duke Margolis center for Health Policy and former commissioner of the fda. Its very good to have you. The headlines are good out of pfizer, right, and its an independent body that uncovered the data, looked at it and said here is where we are at. Are there any red flags for you, though . Not that im seeing so far, poppy. As you just heard, there will be some challenges with distributing the vaccine but even before that we need to make sure it really works so the data that pfizer talked about needs to be put together with more data on the safety of the vaccine, they will follow people who were in the trial for the next few weeks to see how that goes. It will go to the fda, there will be an independent review with public participation. So a chance for the public to see exactly whats there before that approval comes. So all very promising and youre right, it is going to be a challenging administration problem, but id rather have that kind of problem than no treatments available. There is a lot of work going on to get refrigerated trucks and distribution in place so that the highest risk people could potentially start getting vaccinated by the end of the year. So there are other vaccines in the pipeline that are making progress, too, for instance, moderna, the one done in conjunction with the nih which dont re