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
Depends how things play out. kaitlan, i want to go back to this day job comment when judge chutkan said running for president is donald trump s day job. she also said to the defense counsel, you are conflating what your client needs to do to defend himself and what he wants to do politically. so, do you think that and his defense team, that they understand and/or care about that decision? i think the point of frustration that we saw from john lauro, trump s defense attorney, was over mike pence. obviously he s at the center of the january 6th investigation. and john lauro, kind of, raised this idea of mike pence being on the debate stage and trump defending himself. the judge dismissed that. she did not say that that was she said it was giving her more concern that she was raising that kind of a point than it was alleviating her of her concerns. i think that is something you could potentially see. and going back to, you know, what information does he learn from these documents, t
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.
Prosecutor who s been investigating the president s son. he got a new title, special counsel david weiss. what s more, quite literally, he asked for it. here to explain, cnn s sara murray. sara, what more do we know about what attorney general garland decided to elevate david weiss to special counsel. there aren t a lot of straight answers on this right now. we saw merrick garland give the press conference where he cited the extraordinary circumstances under this case. of course the president s son being investigated is extraordinary. this has been going on for five years. he said david weiss just came to him earlier this week and requested this special counsel designation. we saw a couple weeks ago there was a plea deal were hunter biden that went sideways where he was going to get slapped with tax misdemeanor charges that he would plead guilty to. that still doesn t fully explain why at this point in the game weiss wants the full powers of a special counsel, although it
Intimidation or revealing information, which is clearly confidential and the defendant knows that it s confidential, that s pretty serious. that affects the integrity of the process. what the judge is trying to do here, i think, is balance mr. trump s rights as a defendant and every defendant has the same rights to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. she s trying to balance those rights against the need for the integrity of the process and prevent things like confidential information being leaked, jury pools being tainted, witnesses being dissuaded or intimidated. that s the balance she s trying to strike. so, if a defendant does something that s particularly egregious, or if they do things over and over again that are clearly prohibited, the judge has the option to impose sanctions. sanctions could be a fine. the most extreme sanction could be revocation of release. the defendant could go to jail. i think the chance of that happening are very remote at this point, but it