it comes but once a year for politics junkies, it is the christmas and new year s and arbor day and obscure state specific holiday you can t really remember the reason for rolled into one. it is state of the union night, and we are so happy that you re here with us for it. here s a live look at the u.s. capital tonight. members of both chambers of congress, guess, supreme court justices, cabot secretaries, admirals, ambassadors, they re all gathering to hear this big heavy on the pomp and circumstance annual address the president of the united states. on the other end of pennsylvania avenue of the white house, we are watching for president biden to part from the white house for the capital. the is expected shortly. i am rachel maddow here at msnbc headquarters. joined by my colleagues of chris hayes, joy reid, nicole wallace, alex wagner and ari melber. i also do mean it when i say thank you for being home with us. we know you had every choice in the world were to watch thi
happy friday it s 4:00 in new york. he has held no press conferences, done no interviews that we know about he is elusive. the inner workings of his highly sensitive assignment a bit of a mystery outside of what some journalists worked to uncover. when it comes to the special counsel jack smith and his federal investigations, plural, into donald j. trump it takes an ear to the ground adept and trained to know when progress is being made this afternoon trusted voices suggest it is time to buckle up. here s why in dates since the federal appeals court in washington rejected the ex-president s bid to block former staffers from testifying in the january 6th investigation, ex-aides have paraded in and out of depositions without fig leaf protections of executive an attorney-client privilege. on tuesday it was stephen miller late yesterday it was former dni john ratcliffe soon it could be the star witness, donald trump s former vice president mike pence himself. last week an advisor
That argue before the court, keeping justices off the court and putting other justices on the court has a material role in thomas life disclose it. why does justice roberts continue to do nothing i think the formal answer is there s nothing he can really do he is not the boss of the other justices the boss of the institution he could demand an ethics let s be honest about codes of conduct. they look like something more than nothing. the most striking example that i have seen that a chief justice can do a lot if he wants to put the interests of the institution above the prorocky yal interests is the oust of fortest. that is with the nixon white house driving it a liberal pushing a liberal off
Shouting at president obama during one of his state of the union addresses. i think that is correct. that was president obama attacking the citizens united ruling, and alito saying, no exaggeratedly. it sets the context for what president biden might say tonight about the court at large. and we were talking about the court before, but the other thing going on is unpopular decisions, and also some of this pile public dialogue between justice kagan and miss roberts there, competing events. they ve talked about the perceived legitimacy of the court, and then the very difficult public recording about ethics issues, just for justice thomas, in terms of not recusing from cases in which his wife was playing a material role, but also recently about justice roberts. his wife, having a job in which effectively the first lady, jill biden, trying to take her seat in the visiting box that
That feels responsible. this feels like an irresponsible action by trey gowdy. i think you cannot look at the release of the i.g. report on the hillary clinton investigation that mentions all of this and say that the fbi and not just about trump but about hillary clinton, this report was savage about james comey, the head of the fbi, and his conduct in the hillary clinton investigation, whether or not that had a material role in changing the results of the election. so what this goes to why isn t james comey up here today. he should be. he has been, hasn t he? because the new news but my point is if it s about that, then it s the wrong person. the new news in the i.g. report was the discovery of these texts that mysteriously never made it to congress. congress had subpoenaed and had gotten all this information on what was going on in the midyear exam, which was the hillary term, and the operation grey