the beat with ari melber starts right now. welcome to the beat with ari melber. we have a great show for you tonight wednesday, december 27th. we look at jack smith s big coup case against donald trump which faces a key appeal in january. how will smith draw his past experience? that s where we begin tonight. he s a tough, but low-profile prosecutor with a very long record. he led difficult and victorious cases including the prosecution of new york police officer justin volpe who tortured lima, smith was a younger federal prosecutor then and went on to develop something of an expertise in the hard cases that other lawyers sometimes duck. the kind of cases that go at the powerful in government or police, senators, heads of state. he developed experience for the pressures of those specific kind of cases a something of a reputation as the kind of prosecutor you actually pick up and call with a tough case like that. smith did stints in federal and local prosecutor s
4:00 in new york. today, monumental breakthrough in the sometimes frustrating pursuit and pace of accountability and justice. the aftermath of the deadly attack on the u.s. capitol. in the 785 days since the insurrection he incited, donald trump has managed to squirm his way through an impeachment, wiggle past the bipartisan congressional investigation, stretching presidential immunity to great effect so far. now the justice department says in a brand-new court filing, such immunity should not shield donald trump from multiple civil suits brought by police officers and members of congress. in that new filing, in the course of urging an appeals court to reject trump s immunity claim, the justice department was very careful to avoid taking a position on whether trump is actually liable for causing the riot. the new action does open new doors of potential accountability for him. doj s essentially telling the court it does not believe trump can use immunity to avoid civil litigat
the 11th hour is underway on this tuesday night. good evening, once again i am stephanie coming to you live from our nation s capital were former president trumps number two has lost his bid to testify under oath. a federal judge has now ordered mike pence to appear before the grand jury investigating henry six. mike pence has been fighting the subpoena, he argued his role has president of the senate shielded him from testimony but the judge said he can be questioned about a legend illegality on trump s part. tonight mike pence hinted that this is not over. i have nothing to hide, i have a constitution to uphold. i upheld the constitution on january 6, i believe we did our duty that day under the constitution of the u.s., we are currently speaking to our attorneys about the proper way forward. as i said we will have a decision in the coming days. i appreciate the former vp has nothing to hide. if he is watching he is welcome to join me any night of the week. at the same
derailment have been prevented? if so, how? the answer to that question will eventually come from the ntsb, which is currently investigating the crash, but we can and should take a look at the conditions of rail freight across this country and the allegations that across the industry safety is being sacrificed for profit. we spoke with one 40-plus year veteran railroader and certified accident investigator who told us what happened in east palestine was the logical outcome of precision schedules railroading. and that without change it will happen again. we re going to explain what that means in a moment with greg reagan, the president of the transportation trades department of aflcio. it s important to understand the operating conditions because the crash itself is becoming a political football. donald trump is touring the derailment site, and the mayor of east palestine who told us on this show the other day that he didn t want president biden to visit because the security d