Phil Brucker News Today

Now, i kind of think that if youre going to get paid 250,000 for a speech, it must be a brilliant speech. [ cheers and applause ] it must be an earthshattering speech. Written in shakespearean prose. [ cheers and applause ] [ crowd chanting bernie ] and if that speech is so great, i think the American People have the right to hear it. [ cheers and applause ] whoa. Um. Mika, what a massive crowd in new york city last night. Something that Hillary Clinton is going to have to get used to seeing ove...

Shellers for evacuees. An this is moving so slowly if at all. The winds have dropped to 65 Miles Per Hour but residents need to stay alert. Dont take the eye off the ball about their safety because of rising waters that could lead to catastrophic flooding. And if that wasnt enough, the National Hurricane center is warning folks along the coast, the tornados could happen, jut take a look. Footage from last hour of a tornado forming right outside of houston. Were told that more could be forming ov...

And order testaments an american pate row ott and one of the reasons according to white house officials why the president has been so determined over many months to try to help him and prevent him from serving any jail time. >> phil, in your report you spoke with robert bower who is a former white house counsel with the obama administration. bower said he just wanted to kill the prosecution off. he couldnt do it one way so he ended up doing it the other way. this is just another vivid demonstrat...

So i dont know the answer to that. but i know he immediately accepted the appeal. he actually got a call a couple of weeks ago from the white house counsel office asking him if the president were to issue a pardon, would you accept it. and arpaio told the white house, yes, he would accept it. and there is one interesting thing that joe arpaio told us, he had a warninger not president, take a lesson with what is happening in arizona with regard to the russia probe and if they do it to me, meaning...

Vice president cheney. and again and again, it is in very much an organized process. donald trump comes along, shows he has this instinct for autocratic and authoritarian practice and do this without any consideration and the way that he asked jeff sessions if he could kill the case, is of course, as phil noted in the story, very reminiscent of when he asked jim kobe, the fbi director, hey, could you go easy on michael flynn. so people are now pointing to the arpaio pardon as maybe being a precu...

Thank you. >> thank you so much. have a good night. >> i want to bring in analyst david corn. so david, when you hear phil and allens reporting for the washington post, does any of that surprise you, that there were seeds planted very early on? >> i wish i could say something about donald trump surprised me but not the pardon and the way he went about doing it. ive written about -- and have covered pardons for years now. i wont say how many and there is a very, very detailed organized process wi...

And arpaio, i interviewed him this morning and he told me that he never once asked the white house for a pardon. but i did obtain a letter that his lawyer sent to the white house counsel don mcgahn on friday morning, so yesterday morning in which he -- he really impressed upon the white house how important it was for arpaio to get this pardon as soon as possible because they wanted it to be processed through the court system before there was any sentencing in october. so to prevent arpaio from h...

Government to drop the criminal case against arpaio. trump was advised that would be inappropriate and after talking to segs trump decided to let the case go to trial and if arpaio was convicted, as he was, the president could then grant clemency with the pardon. >> and phil, you go into details of their kind of sim bionic relationship going back to birtherism. >> that is right. these were the faces of the birther movement back in 2011 and 2012 and trump actually admired what arpaio was doing in...

We have breaking news that just dropped before the hour coming from the washington post, they are reporting that president trump asked the attorney general jeff sessions to close a case against former arizona sheriff joe arpaio who president trump eventually pardoned. that just happened friday night. last night. all of this while the country was pretty much laser focused on what was happening to texas. i want to bring in now -- who broke this story, phil brucker of the washington post. and phil,...