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
as i read the affidavit i see a conspiracy, this is a big case. what s the next domino to fall. plus, pack on the trail. the maga republic don t just threaten our personal they re a threat to our very democracy. president biden ramps up his rhetoric ahead of the midterms as republican campaign woes persist, are democrats gaining momentum? and promise kept. the president promised some forgiveness. he follows through on a campaign pledge to forgive student loans, is it a lifeline for republicans hoping to ride the red wavesome. if you are that slacker been arista, joe biden just gave you $20,000. inside politics, the stories sources by the best reporters now. hello, and welcome to inside politics sunday, i m abby phillip. the more that emerges the worse it looks for former president donald trump. according to the newly released affidavit before the search of mar-a-lago earlier this month the fbi believed trump held onto highly classified documents rela
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
Carrie cordero, melanie zanona and alex burns of the new york times. carrie, there s a lot in the affidavit that fills in some blanks about what was going on leading up to this search of the former president s residence. but what might actually loom over all of this is the part about obstruction. here s what the new york times writes about that. but some measures the crime of obstruction is is as or even more serious a threat to mr. trump or his close associates. to convict someone of obstruction prosecutors need to prove two things, that a defendant knowingly concealed or destroyed documents and that he did so to impede the official work of of any federal agency. the maximum penalty is 20 years in prison, twice as long as the penalty under the espionage act. as you ve noted, the fact that these documents were classified is important. but not essential to what the federal the federal investigators are looking at here. well, so they had to recover the documents because they we