Another defendant. Also a Special Counsel named in the hunter biden case with orders to investigate the president s son and others. The question now, who are the others . We are live in maui, where the death toll just rose sharply. Some especially powerful new video is coming in, which we will bring to you, along with exclusive reporting on how hawaiian officials may have missed Key Opportunities to prevent a tragedy like this. Good evening, everyone. John berman here in for anderson. We begin with what we learned today about how judge Tanya Chutkan intends to handle what could be the most important trial this country has ever seen. Someone who is held and right now running to reclaim the highest office in the land. And on top of that, hes donald trump. The venue, as you know, was a hearing on how he and his legal teammate handled evidence, some of it sensitive, that prosecutors will be turning over to them, specifically what they are allowed to make public. And on that, judge chutkan
Gives him the ability to go to other venues. usually special counsel is someone chosen from outside doj, a former dojer because you want the point to be an appearance of impartiality. so, like john durham, who barr installed as a special counsel, weiss is also a current doj employee. so, that s not the normal pick. it s pretty puzzling what s going on. the main reason we were told, at least, why he did it was because david weiss, for the first time, we think, asked for it. evan, you know, president biden is obviously running for re-election right now. how hard is this going to be for him not to address this on the campaign trail? yeah, john, you know, sort of his nature, his habit over the decades has been when he s facing a personal or a political challenge or a setback, he talks about it, talks about it out loud. it s his response to a lot of things. he talks to the public.
Part of hunter biden s team about this potentially ballooning this as goes on. perspective now from evan os knows, author of joe biden: the life, the run, and what matters now. also with us, ashley alison, and defense attorney shan wu. shan, how big is this news, the appointment of the special counsel and maybe even bigger the fact that plea deal negotiations have collapsed? well, you know, substantively, john, it shouldn t change things really. sara has been pointing out, they ve been investigating this case for a half decade. it s hard to imagine there s some surprise that just come up. it is a bit puzzling what garland has done here. he could have appointed special counsel from day one if he wanted to do that. it s just not clear what has changed here. and interestingly, the better designation would have been to make him a special attorney under the doj ranks, which also
Difficult position certainly because it looks like they re amping up potential other charges to try to force him into pleaing. the issue here though is he is begging his defense team seems to want to take a plea deal. and it s just unclear what s really going to be holding that up. so, again, i really think this is an example of doj not having gotten their ducks in order. and they could have done that. evan, how hard will it be, do you think, for the biden team to come up with a strategy to deal with this? you know, part of the reason they re in this moment, in this predicament, is if you go back to the period we re talking about, 2014, 2015, when hunter biden was embarking on these business activities and really, sort of, unraveling personally, that was a time when some of his advisers didn t feel they could talk to the vice president about it. it s a very sensitive issue personally. but that is a different period now. and obviously i think internally, they re going to be having