welcome back to the cnn newsroom. i m jim acosta in washington. just minutes from now former president donald trump will be less than ten miles from the u.s. capitol, addressing a crowd of his adoring supporters as for all intents and purposes the front-runner for the 2024 gop nomination. despite his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, trump has been loading in several polls of republican voters as he delivers the keynote address at the annual cpac gathering later on this afternoon, even though other gop contenders are warning the party to move on from trump. his maga faithful have come to dominate the republicans long-time event. at any moment they will release the results of their straw poll. trump has won the last two with florida governor ron desantis coming in second. both times desantis has not formally announced for 2024 and is skipping this gathering. kristen holmes joins us from cpac where they re gathering in maryland just outside the nation s capital. kristen,
duties? this is what happened with representative perry and lindsey graham. the courts said only a very narrow subsection of your testimony is protected. that which applies to actual legitimate congressional duties. all the other stuff is in play and i think we ll get a similar response here with mike pence. and obviously these are delay tactics on the part of the former president. you and i have talked about this a gazillion times, this is what he does. doesn t this complicate matters, though, for the special counsel, jack smith, if trump and pence can continue to just lay out one delay tactic after another to the point, and elie, this is the big question i have in my mind. might you have a possibility, a scenario in which the former president is indicted while we re in the thick of a re-election campaign where you have joe biden announcing he s running for re-election and we re just into the campaign season, because it s taken this long it does have that sort of i
all right. first, though, big news today. the trial of the accused underwear bomber begins this morning with earnest with opens statements at the federal courthouse in droit. umar farouk abdulmutallab is charged with trying to blow up a flight on christmas day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underwear. the defendant is acting as his own attorney. cnn s deb feyerick in live in detroit, where you were the night this all developed and christmas day 2009. deb, what is the situation? reporter: well, ali, christine and carol, we can tell you that he is facing eight charges today. it carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. the charges against him, attempted murder, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and also conspiracy toy commit terrorism. the nigerian grat witt student turned accused suits bomber is acteding as his own attorney and umar farouk abdulmutallab shown he is defind. during jury selection he invoked his meant, jihad mentor, recently killed in an air