the major breaking news this morning, donald trump has been notified that he is a target of the special counsel s probe surrounding january 6th. this is the investigation focusing on trump s alleged efforts to overturn his election loss. the letter offers him four days there to respond to the letter, and it is widely expected that he will decline to testify. and you are hearing reaction from the democrats and republicans, and what are you hearing from the folks on capitol hill, manu? a similar pattern from the previous two trump indictments. republicans in the house quick to rush to donald trump s defense, and the senate republicans for the most part have been quiet. the senate does not come in until later this afternoon, and we will see what the leadership
capitol hill still staying silent, including the senate republican leader, mcconnell, who would not answer questions about this as he walk onto the senate floor. also, the speaker of the house, it s much different than the speaker of the house, who came out and aggressively defended the former president in the immediate aftermath of the news, showing the divisions that continue to persist on capitol hill and within the republican party over how to deal with the former president and the charges that could be coming any day. we re bracing for that. we ll see what happens. manu raju on capitol hill, thank you. we re following the breaking news right now. a potential second indictment of former president donald trump by the special counsel, jack smith. we ll talk about those cases and his other legal issues right after a quick break. what do we always say, son?
the speaker himself, making it clear that they believe that donald trump is the unfair victim of this investigation without seeing any evidence so far. guys? manu raju on capitol hill, and much more coming from there to be sure. bringing in evan perez, this case is posing risks not only for trump, but jack smith who is handling other trump case, and there has to be several attorneys on this. yeah, absolutely, sara. we have, and we know that there are separate teams in the special counsel s office that have been focused on the for instance the documents case, and a separate trial team solely focused on that, including the lawyers out of the formerly based out of the general attorney s office in south miami, and solely a team going into the grand jury trying to
january 20th to continue to make that case, trying to figure out how to make this case that he was being defrauded. so that is posing a big risk for the justice department, because we don t know what charges we are expecting to see exactly being brought against the former president if they do indeed bring them, but we know that obstruction of a public proceeding or congressional proceeding is one of the most common charges that we have seen in the january 6th investigation. we have seen defrauding united states as a potential charge. those are a couple of the charges that, you know, again, raises the question of whether the former president s political speech is being prosecuted. it is incumbent on jack smith and the prosecutors to lay out what they have ahead of this conspiracy. guys. evan perez, thank you for that, and our thanks to manu as well.
like, she declined to comment. manu raju on capitol hill, thank you. let s get some reaction, we re joined by democratic congressman, josh gottheimer of new jersey, the cochair of the bipartisan problem solver s caucus in the house. thanks so much for joining us. i know you and dozens of fellow democrats have released this letter calling congresswoman jayapal s comments unacceptable. have you actually spoken with the congresswoman, and do you accept her apology? our group, there s a group of us who authored the statement. we ve been in touch with her the last couple of days. you know, i wish she was more unequivocal in her statement, you know, both about walking back the comments about what she said about israel, and of course wish she was more unequivocal in her apology. what s most important this week as far as i m concerned is that we re moving forward. you ve got the president of israel coming on wednesday, as you know. i think what you ll see in this chamber is strong bipartis