Our special breaking News Coverage continues now of the third, he has a third, criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump. Im laura coates. Remember. Not the news tonight, still stunning, even though people expect an indictment to come right now it is here. We have believed it sink in. The 45th president indicted by a grand jury and jack smiths investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And its not lost on anyone that, while trump is facing charges over the last election, he is, of course, in the middle of his reelection campaign, flora. This is the third time, the third time that donald trump has been criminally indicted informants at this point . Special counsel jack smith charged him in the classified documents probe in june, and the Manhattan Grand Jury charge of the former president for Business Fraud back in march and just listen to what Special Counsel jack smith had to say tonight. The attack on our nations capital, on january six 2021, was an unprecede
Happening in terms of whether or not trump is going to be able to build a defense, really, in this case. so you ve got to his allies in congress rushing to his defense, as you well know, but his lawyer was actually on with kaitlan collins earlier and, well, listen what he had to say about the first amendment issues. the ultimate request that mr. trump made to vice president pence was paused the vote counting. allow the states to weigh in ultimately and audit or re-certify. and under article two, section one, clause two. the actual responsibility for qualifying electors is in the state legislatures. mr. trump had the advice of counsel. mr. eastman, who is one of the most respected constitutional scholars in the united states. giving him advice and guidance. that is pure politics. what do you think? the idea, talking to lawyers
It and then sanctions. he certified twice and declined to re-certify in october and i don t expect he will again. he s continued to keep the u.s. in the deal thus far to see if a follow-on agreement with the european nations is possible and in the january statement i referenced he said that s the deadline and this is the next time the waivers come up and i want to see something concrete before that date. the president also offered a warning to iran, if they start a nuclear problem, and in that statement, the statement also seems to acknowledge that it has worked and does the president need to acknowledge that? is that what he s said. they ve denied that they had a nuclear program beyond, and on the one hand they said they ve never worked on a nuclear weapon and if the united states gets out of the iran deal we ll
Qatar. but i also wanted to go back to richard for a question on the iran deal. because, yes, what is happening in iran is different right now and not germane, necessarily, to what happened with the iran deal, but the president faces a decision coming in january whether to go ahead and re-certify again that iran is complying with that agreement and whether to issue a waiver for those sanctions. if we see what is happening here, we support what is happening in iran with the people rising up, why would we go ahead and try to do again what the president said he wanted to, do which is to blow up this deal? well, on that, heidi, actually, i wouldn t mix the two issues. the nuclear agreement is widely popular in iran. we want to introduce new sanctions because of human rights violations, we can do that. i would keep the two issues distinct. on pakistan, this is a country
Security of the united states. he has no choice but to de-certify it if he is to be truthful. sandra: that can be very confusing. we ve heard general dunford and national security advisor, they ve said it is in the best interests of national security to stay in this deal. they ve looked at it and said re-certify, stay in the deal. first of all they work for donald trump and one of the problems has been his national security team has not been providing him the options on iran that he wanted. he is very upset about that. second of all they aren t saying that the iran deal is a good thing and that they support the iran deal. what they point out is the obama administration intentionally tied the hands of the trump administration when it did this deal. what they did was front loaded all the sanctions relief. so immediately before iran did anything to earn it, they gave them $150 billion in sanction relief. the obama administration sent a