bret: let s all have town hall. vivek is going to be on this show little bit later. beers and town hall. thanks, jesse. bret: good evening, welcome to des moines iowa, i m bret baier. five days away from the first in the nation iowa caucuses. tonight at 9:00 p.m., we will hold the third of this week s candidate town hall meetings right here and our guest tonight on this stage former president donald trump. we ll have more on that in just a moment. but, we are following two major stories at this hour. hunter biden makes a surprise appearance at the congressional hearing today up on capitol hill on whether he should be charged with contempt of congress. but we begin with a late afternoon surprise. this one in the 2024 campaign. republican presidential candidate chris christie is suspending his campaign and is dropping out of this race. christie making that announcement just minutes ago. you saw it live on the five. congressional correspondent aishah hasnie is here in de
our weather team times it all out. linsey: also tonight, the midair emergency. what caused the accident on an alaska airlines jet? the faa now grounding certain boeing 737 max 9s after a piece of the fuselage was lost, and where did that piece end up? linsey: our abc news exclusive. new details from sources familiar with the special counsel s probe with president trump s refusing for hours to help stop the violence on january 6th. with eight days left until the iowa caucuses, the former president is raising eyebrows over what he said about the civil war and abraham lincoln. linsey: plus, the push to contain the war in gaza. the secretary of state s urgent mission to the middle east as israel faces new attacks from lebanon. the pressure mounting for congress to approve new funding for israel and ukraine. linsey: new questions tonight as we learn the white house was unaware for days that defense secretary lloyd austin had been hospitalized in intensive care. president b
why not give it a try? good to be with you. i m katy tur. president biden once again today said donald trump is a threat to democracy. calling him a, quote, loser who tried to violate the constitution to stay in power. biden speaking at mother emanuel in charleston, south carolina, said a lot of the same things liz cheney said over the weekend in new hampshire. that donald trump is a want to be authoritarian, don t take that chance. he won t leave office, cheney warned. quote, i think there s a lot of living in a fantasy world that s going on with republicans telling themselves, look, we ll vote for him. it won t be so bad. it may well be the last real vote you ll ever get to cast. it will be that bad, and cheney says, the message is urgent. iowa is just one week away. and if you don t believe the urgency, abc news citing unnamed sources is reporting jack smith has yet another trump aide saying the former president didn t want to leave office. this time, it s dan scavino, t
hand will be scanned digitally, not the more familiar fingerprinting with actual ink. and donald trump will be joined in court by his attorneys, former federal prosecutor todd blanche and the solicitor general chris kise. they spent the last day or so interviewing local florida attorneys, but so far have not found any to join the former president s legal team. and as we wait for donald trump to make his way to the courthouse, we re keeping a close eye on the scene outside. we have not yet seen anywhere near the kind of huge crowds that miami police were bracing for. though that could change as we get closer to the arraignment. no sign of it yet. trump was asked on monday if he had a message for his supporters and here s what he said. just stay strong, stay very, very strong and we re going to bring it back and we re going to win in a landslide. i believe it will be one of the greatest wins ever, much bigger than the other way, because they ve done so poorly. we re going t
smoke because of canadian wildfires. 75 million americans under air quality alert. when will the smoke clear? plus amanda gorman has her book pulled from a miami area grade school because one parent complained. turns out the parent never actually read the book. we begin with the growing legal jeopardy that former president trump faces in the federal documents investigation. a letter from the justice department to the former president s attorneys saying he is a target in a federal investigation. it s often but not always a strong sign that the person in question will be indicted. it is hard to overstate the unprecedented nature of this latest development. kaitlan collins joins us now with what we know. what is the latest on this letter and what is the trump team reaction? we haven t gotten a formal reaction from the trump legal team so far. we do know that justice department prosecutors did inform the former president s legal team that he is a target in that federal inve