ex-president it all but ensures that special counsel jack smith will hear from the key witness who none of the other investigations into the trump cou plot not the fulton county d.a. has ever heard from under oath we re, of course, talking about mike pence a ruling handed down wednesday night by a federal appeals court rejects an emergency request by trump to block mike pence s testimony. new york times reports this, quote, the 11th hour ruling by the u.s. court of appeals for the district of colombia paves the way for mr. pence to appear before the federal grand jury as early as this week the ex-president has a few legal options left including an appeal to the supreme court but as nbc news reports, quote, in previous instances, where appeals sent senior aides must testify, his legal team has opted no the to fight the decision further and those witnesses have quickly appeared before the grand jury and trump s argument that executive privilege prevents pence or any of his ai
Egregiousness of the crimes? he plotted an insurrection in which hanging mike pence was the mission statement and hoarded classified documents in the mueller investigation, the obstruction prosecutors went after it as hard as they could they had a real time cooperator in the white house who was providing them with element real time readouts of what trump was saying, including in what is probably the closest obstructive act trump took i don t know, but the fact that trump was in the white house and controlled the justice department and so openly discussed firing people in the justice department including mueller. including mueller for going into areas that he did not want him to go into
right. you laid out so clearly, as you know better than most, our em supreme court cases that are fundamentally close calls. that s why they re at the court. hearing you break it down at this stage, maybe not the inception, but at this stage with what s going on and how they ve really owned their own rationale, it doesn t look like a close case any more. john roberts would never put it this way, but d.j. khalid would tell the trump lawyers here, you played yourselves and it s zbam over. neal, good to see you. thank you, sir. if you want to see this and other neal katyal break downs, it s our dedicated page. there is a lot of stuff including stuff that is relevant, including mueller preview stuff. neal also gave us, you can check that out online. now, up ahead, we have a lot to get to, including something that is roiling the trump administration because they are tied to hedge fund king pen jeffrey epstein who stands accused today on new charges of sex trafficking. sex traffickin
Countervailing potential in the mueller report. they basically just to appear to conclude that it was, without saying it. barr is clearly frustrated that mueller did not deal with that piece of it. barr has argued that it was within mueller s purview, mueller has explained why. i m not a doj official and not equipped to say which is more right on the law. but with that summary, when thinking that the president didn t commit obstruction and here s why is not going to leave a clear impression. what the president has done every single time when there is a videocassette you meacuum, he fill it. that s what he s done in the 30 years we ve all been watching him publicly. a lot of other people, including mueller, have been playing by known processes that have been followed a known processes. speaking of a vacuum and rushing in to fill it. now the president today is announcing this 5% tariff hike on products from mexico, our largest trading partner. and i think this is interesting, because h
Refused to carry out his orders, even some of them threatening to quit. reporter: david, i count seven senior advisers or aides to the president who refused to do things that could have obstructed could have obstructed justice. the bottom line is that these people very close to the president could have saved him from himself by declining to follow his orders. the president, though, is offering no apologies whatsoever, in fact, look at what he just tweeted from air force one. i had the right to end the whole witch hunt if i wanted. i could have fired everyone, including mueller, if i wanted. i chose not to. and then he added, i had the right to use executive privilege. i didn t. so, the president adamant that he could have obstructed the investigation if he d like to, he could have ended it by firing everybody. doubling down, saying he could fire mueller. all right, jon karl, thank you. tonight, democrats on the hill are furious, arguing that the mueller report is far more d