the lead starts right now. new witness tran scripts released from the january 6th committee, including one from donald trump s own son, and an unusual request from one sitting gop senator. then, officials are calling it the largest russian missile strike since the war began. ukrainians say it could have been so much worse. plus, some signs of relief on the horizon for tens of thousands of southwest pas passengers who have been stuck in the airline s meltdown for now eight days. welcome to the lead, i m phil mattingly. and we begin with our politics lead and new insight into the january 6th investigation. the committee released more testimony transcripts from 19 witnesses, including trump s son donald trump jr., trump attorney christina bobb, kimberly guilfoyle, stephen miller and former white house press secretary stephanie grisham. there s one key thing that sticks out, and that s the role of mark meadows. he was, of course, trump s chief of staff on january 6th an
doing their business. this might actually start on time. mike pompeo doesn t get enough attention. there is two scenarios, he was helping to orchestrate the off book political campaign run by donald trump and rudy giuliani, or he was oblivious to what was being done to all of his employees. he was asked repeatedly to defend her, and we have on the record in testimony a call from the state department to yovanovitch at 1:00 in the morning where they say we need to get you out on the next plane. what did he do? i think the fact pattern is just as par real for mike cpompeo as trump. we know that mike pompeo was listening in on the phone call of which donald trump said of that former ambassador.
that bad woman, bad things are going to happen to her and her former boss, secretary pompeo didn t do anything. lisa, you work at the state department for a republican administration. what impact does this have on the state department today and in the future. i agree with nicole that i
Donald Trump will headline his eighth campaign event in Iowa in a little more than a month on Sunday as part of the former president’s accelerated fall schedule
Election fraud. tell me more about what we saw here. yeah, i think we knew after the election that lindsey graham was trying to help the trump team. he made calls in georgia, for instance, but this transcript and it s from christina bobb sheds more insight into it. h she s recounting he said, just give me five dead voters. just give me a very small snapshot that i can take and senator. he s not saying, show me the evidence you have that there was so much fraud that the election actually could have been swayed in donald trump s favor. he s saying, give me a couple of examples so i can go out there and be a champion for donald trump and claim that he won. now, phil, of course, as you know, after the rioters broke into the capitol, lindsey graham backed off this election challenge and voted to certify the election results. i think you have a lot more reading to do, sara murray, you and the team. thank you so much. let s bring in the former principle deputy assistant attorney general t
not on track to win in two years. i want to turn to the latest transcripts and nicholas, i want to get to you in a second, you are my cliffsnotes on twitter. margaret, with the testimony from former white house aid step stephanie grisham, she said, he was kind of reveling in the fact that pithese people were fighti for them. he didn t like how they looked. he said they looked very trashy but look at what fighters they are. we should point out that grisham herd heard this second-hand, not from trump directly. it sounds exactly what you would expect donald trump to say. what s important is the report is already out, but you do get a little bit more grand ewe lairty of all the conversations. don jr., where did the money go? i don t know. if you were still giving to donald trump by the end of his presidency and you thought where he knew where the money was going, wow. what s surprising is how much it