It. Thats above and beyond. When you do cable news all day, you dont have to consume any of it. Sometimes you dont want anymore. Thats true. But i mean, also, the contrar contrary, the nonworrying interpretation of this series of facts, is that the president has come up with all of these things, all of these as you put it,ess sew terik ideas about afghanistan and montenegro and belarus and poland and all of these things on his own, without any input from the kremlin. And that just seems so unbelievably improbable. I dont think thats true. Anyway. Someone. Someone is talking to him. Someone. Thank you, my friend. Much appreciated. And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Happy to have you here this fine friday night. Cnns excellent legal reporter Katelyn Polantz was first to report today that the grand jury that has been impanelled in washington, d. C. To hear evidence and issue indictments in conjunction with the special counsels investigation under robert mueller, that grand jury has just had its term extended. Remember when the president s lawyers kept insisting to reporters that they were totally sure the whole mueller thing was going to be over by thanksgiving, by last thanksgiving in 2017 . Yeah, it turns out it is not over. We think of a jury as, you know, the kind of jury that sits in a courtroom during a trial, hearing from witnesses, maybe hearing from the defendant, in front of a judge, and there is members of the public or even reporters sitting back there in the back of the courtroom. Thats what we think of when we think of jury. A grand jury is not like that. A grand jury is not the same as the 12person jury that sits in on a public trial. For one thing, a grand jury holds its proceedings in secret. They also dont sit every day. They meet behind closed doors, often one day a week. There are up to 23 people on a grand jury. Prosecutors bring witnesses before the grand jury. Again, behind closed doors. Those witnesses give the grand jury sworn testimony. Prosecutors also bring them documentary evidence they have obtained as part of an investigation. The role of the grand jurors is to look at all that evidence, weigh all that testimony, weigh all of these things that prosecutors bring them to consider, and then the grand jury has to decide if, considering all this evidence prosecutors have assembled enough of a case to justify bringing charges against a defendant. So the whole point of a grand jury is that they need to sign off if prosecutors want to bring an indictment against somebody. Once a grand jury signs off on an indictment, thats when a person can be charged. Thats when the person gets put on trial. Thats when a regular jury is convened to sit there in the courtroom and decide if the defendant is guilty or not guilty of those charges. But it is the secretive and i think sort of hard to imagine role of the grand jury that allows people to get charged, to get indicted in the first place. And the special Counsel Robert Mueller has charged a lot of people in the russia investigation thus far, and he has been working with a grand jury that was impanelled, that came into being in the summer of 2017, specifically on july 5th, 2017. Under court rules, a grand jury can serve for up to 18 months, but then if a judge believes its in the Public Interest to keep that grand jury on the job for even longer than 18 months, a judge does have the opportunity to approve an extension for that grand jury of up to six more months. So that is what has just happened today with Robert Muellers grand jury. It was due to expire 18 months after it was first impanelled, which i think means it was due to expire this weekend. The chief judge of the federal court in d. C. Has now as of today granted an extension to that grand jury. That grand jury extension can be up to six months. It doesnt necessarily have to be for that long. But we shall see. There are 23 presumably grand jurors out there among our fellow citizens who have been following along for 18 months now with the special counsel every step of the way as he has put together all of these indictments, seen all of this evidence, heard all of this testimony. Those 23 americans on that grand jury have had a really fascinating last 18 months, but theyre going to be doing this work for a little longer yet. I will say presumably, if the special counsel continues to need more work from a grand jury, even after six more months have gone by, at that point i dont think this existing grand jury could be extended any further. At that point, i think a whole new grand jury would need to be impanelled in d. C. Then that new grand jury, of course, would need to be brought up to speed by muellers prosecutors so they could then start weighing more evidence and more potential indictments. Whatever this means for the overall polite of the Trump Administration and the president and his campaign and everybody else whos adjacent to the mueller investigation, the only definite thing we can say based on this news is that its not over. And everybody who has told you that it is over, everybody whose been selling this horse hockey for the past year and a half that oh, this whole thing is definitely about to be over, you should not believe those people. You should not believe those people when they try to sell you the next line item in their bill of goods. That said, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of u. S. Courts, spokesman basically for the u. S. Federal judiciary gave word today that the american federal judiciary is about to run out of money to keep operating as of one week from today. The federal government is in its 14th day of a shutdown. As of today, the longest federal shutdown on record is 21 days, which means were closing in on the record. The court system says they can piece together enough money from here and there to keep things running for about 21 days for about the length of the longest shutdown on record. That means theyve got enough money to piece things together in the court system until next friday, until january 11th. But after that, individual courts and individual judges will have to figure out what theyre going to do without money to try to keep the u. S. Federal judicial system running. As its first order of business, the new democratic majority in the house of representatives last night passed two bills that would end the federal Government Shutdown, would open up the agencies that have been shut down now for the past two weeks. Those two bills that the democrats passed last night, they cover those bills cover absolutely no new ground. They make no new policy. They make no new prioritizing decisions about funding some stuff and not funding some other stuff. Those two bills that the new house of representatives passed last night under the leadership of nancy pelosi, those were very simple technocratic bills that punted all of these important decisions about priorities and things you might want to fund and might not want to fund, they punted all those decisions. All those bills would do is reopen the government at the funding levels all the agencies were operating at before the shutdown started. Thats all they will do. And those bills, incidentally, the ones that nancy pelosi and her new majority in the house passed last night, those bills were exactly the same bills that were passed unanimously by the Republicancontrolled Senate to keep the government funded before President Trump insisted that he wanted everything shut down because he no longer wants mexico to pay for the wall, he wants u. S. Taxpayers to pay for it, and he wants democrats to vote for it because he thinks this is awesome politics somehow to keep the government shut down. He said today it could be for years, and he seemed delighted by that prospect. That said, some republicans in congress are already peeling off from this white house strategy. Republicans can afford to lose some republican votes on this in the house. So a handful of republicans voted with democrats last night in the house to reopen the government and deal with the whole wall stunt some other way. The bigger problem for republicans and the white house is that republicans only have a teeny tiny little majority in the u. S. Senate, and theyre starting to lose republican senators on this issue as well. And if enough republican senators peel off on this, then, well, we will see. But at this point, i think everybody in the country is having sort of the same feeling, that the president fantasizing out loud today about a federal Government Shutdown that goes on for years, maybe that had a Little Something to do with his personal fantasy that that would end the federal Law Enforcement and counterintelligence investigations into him and his business and his campaign. But Law Enforcement does not work that way. Thats no way to end this thing. Even if the courts have to triage, you cannot just dissolve Law Enforcement this way. Theyre not going away, and that includes the special counsel. But you know who is going away . You know the big other thing that is happening right now in u. S. Politics . Well, the democrats take over in congress and the republicans start to freak out about the shutdown that the president is so happy and gleeful about, the other thing going on right now in u. S. Politics, which is going to mean big change for americans all across the country, potential lifesaving changes for americans in some parts of the country, the other big thing going on right this second in american politics right now, the big changeover thats happening this week is that guys like this are also hitting the bricks. I got a bill in to the legislature right now to take the traffickers. Now the traffickers, these arent people that take drugs. These are guys that are named dmoney, smoothie, shifty, these type of guys come from connecticut, new york. They come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is the real sad thing because then we have another issue that we got to deal with down the road. Maines republican Governor Paul Lepage lamenting the impregnation of white girls by drug traffickers named dmoney and smoothie. Its a real sad thing, see, because its the white girls. After making those public remarks, the governor decided to clarify what he meant by that. He was sorry. Well, to be clear, he was not sorry, but he did have more to say on the subject. I was going impromptu and my brain didnt catch up to my mouth. Instead of saying maine women, i said white women. And im not going to apologize to the maine women for that, because if you go to maine, you will see that were essentially 95 white. Were white people. So, like, whose offended, right . Maine . Maine is white, all right . What . He also said anybody implying there was anything creepy or remotely racist about those remarks was fake news making it up. If you want to make it racist, go right ahead. Do whatever you want. I didnt say anything about black. You said dmoney, smoothie yeah, what are they, black . I dont know who they are. I just read the names. I dont see them because i read your newspapers. I get a report and his name is street name dmoney, street name smoothie. I dont know where theyre from. I know where theyre from, i dont know if theyre white, black, asian, i dont know. It wasnt intended to be race. I doesnt say you where did you get that, you terrible reporters . This is why i dont read your newspapers. The governor then put out an official statement saying, quote, the governor is not making comments about race. Race is irrelevant. This the governor of the state. Maybe this was kind of a mixup. Maybe he had been up all night. Maybe it was i dont know. Actually, yeah, we do know. Everybody knows because he couldnt stop himself. Couldnt leave it there. We got a few more drug agents, but what do i have to do . I had to go screaming the top of my lungs about black dealers coming in and doing the things that theyre doing to our state. Had to start screaming about the black dealers. Remember, i thought you didnt say black. Let me tell you something. Black people come up the highway and they kill mainers. You ought to look into that. Governor, were not trying to get into a battle. We just you make me so sick. When you go to war, if you know the enemy, the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, you shoot at red, dont you . Ken . Youve been in uniform. You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy. And the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of hispanic origin. Its the people of color, the people of hispanic origin. Thats how you can identify the enemy. I mean, they come in here, you shoot them. I also suggested cutting off their heads. Bring back the guillotine. Cut off their heads before they impregnate a white girl. This is the governor of the state of maine. This has been the governor of the state of maine, until a couple of nights ago. And paul lepage has been a number of things during his tenure as that states republican governor. For one thing, he was the occasion for the states largest newspaper to issue a remarkable apology basically for his existence to the rest of america. Message to america, sorry we gave you lepage. The planned or press herald published this after lepage could not stop himself from wanting to shoot black and hispanic people since thats who he was sure needed to be shot, because theyre the enemy and can be recognized that way as if they were wearing a uniform. They needed to be shot or beheaded in his state. But its interesting. That ongoing very racially specific eruption from that republican governor, that was all supposedly about his vitriolic, almost uncontrollable rage about Drug Trafficking, right . Thats what all of this stuff was about, wanting to kill drug traffickers, these black dealers, these hispanic dealers and drug traffickers that come to maine and impregnate white girls, because were all white up here. He wanted the Death Penalty for drug traffickers. No, he said actually the Death Penalty was too good for them. He specifically wanted them beheaded. He said he wanted people in maine taking bets on which hole their heads would roll into after he cut their heads off. Because he was so wound up, so upset, so determined to stop Drug Trafficking in his state. Nothing could be spared to stop Drug Trafficking in his state. If he had to spout off like an unbelievable racist in order to get this point across, he was willing to do it. At least wasnt willing to stop himself because he was so passionate about drugs. As one of paul lepages last acts of governor this week, as governor, as he left this week, one of the last things he did as governor was that he issued a pardon to a man convicted of felony Drug Trafficking, a republican state representative who had been a paul lepage loyalist throughout his time in the legislature. For some reason, paul lepage looks at him and does not want to behead him. The state rep not only had had the felony Drug Trafficking conviction, since that conviction, he hats admitted to using firearms multiple times. Which as a felon was additional felony. He has had multiple misdemeanor offenses since his felony, but paul lepage on his way out of office pardoned him. Today we learned that paul lepage pardoned him despite the direct recommendation from the states clemency board that this guy should not get a pardon. We learned that today from the Portland Press herald. For context sake, in one of the most high profile pardon issues ever in the state of maine, this mom in waterville, maine, lost her husband and her kids lost their father after a man who had lived in maine for 25 years, who had been married here, had a beautiful family here, had kids here, run a very successful business here, he got deported away from his family by the Trump Administration because of an old felony drug conviction for which he served time more than a decade ago, and he has never been in trouble since. Heres his family and his neighbors and his Business Partners begging for help in his case. Paul lepage refused to pardon him or to commute his sentence, and so his wife and kids are in maine now without him because hes been shipped off to haiti. This guy, though, with the active investigation for also being a gun felon and his other misdemeanors and the overt recommendation from the clemency board that he should not be pardoned. Hmm, its weird, he got cleared as paul lepages last act on his way out the door. But paul lepage is gone now. He has been replaced by a new democratic woman governor, janet mills. She is the first woman governor maine has ever had because of the slick that paul lepage left behind him as he slithered out the door and announced immediately that he was moving to florida. See ya, suckers because of what paul lepage left in his wake in maine, the new governor janet mills as one of the first thing she has to think about, she may need to change the pardon laws in her state because of what paul lepage decided to do with them for one of his buddies on the way out the door. But governor mills has been pretty busy without that. As her very first order of business, as executive order number one with the stroke of a pen, she restored Health Insurance to 70,000 people in maine. 70,000 people in maine who currently dont have Health Insurance who now will get it. More than a year ago, maine voters, clearly by 18 points, in a landslide vote more than a year ago, maine declared at the ballot box that they wanted to expand medicaid so tens of thousands of people in that state could get Health Insurance who dont otherwise have it. Maine voters passed it. It became law. But republican Governor Paul Lepage blocked it anyway for more than a year. He just would not let it happen. But wednesday night, he left office, and thursday Morning Bright and early, there is janet mills, former lieutenant governor, making it happen. Quote, mainers who think theyre eligible for cov