starts right now. michelle obama s as she is terrified about what 2024 election results will bring. the lead starts now. a crucial week before the caucuses in iowa and trump is not there. he is in court. he is falsely calling january 6 criminals hostages. plus, a cnn correspondent embedded with migrants trying to get across the u.s. border from mexico, a desperate journey but they are not from latin america. these migrants are from china. and it could be the smoking gun in the investigation as to what went wrong in a the alaska airlines flight. a missing door found in an alaska backyard. welcome to the lead. i am jake tapper. only seven days until the first of voters get their say in the 2024 election. next monday republicans will gather across iowa and they will caucus for their favorite candidates. the latest contenders, once again, they are off the campaign trail because of his legal issues. trump is expected to be in court as his lawyers face off against special couns
the trump campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. he is willing to sacrifice democracy. put himself in power. reporter: while he is using campaign rallies to call for january 6 riders to be released. they ought to release the hostages. host begin today in south carolina as he looks to strengthen his support with lack of voters, a key piece of his coalition, is delivering a different message about the attack on the capital. the same movement, they are not just trying to rewrite history. there trying to erase history. and your future. reporter: today we are reminded of the unavoidable impact of weather on the iowa campaign.
development as the investigation into how this happened is just beginning. from inside the damaged airliner to a portland backyard, the investigation into the hole violently ripped in an alaska ar lines airlines flight has a new smoking gun. the national transportation safety board said there was a part of a fuselage that ejected six minutes after flight 82 took off friday. the piece tumbled 16,000 feet only to be discovered two days later by a school teacher named bob. i am excited to announce that we found the door plug. thank you, bob. investigators are matching the door plug to the structure of the plane to provide key clues about why it came off. the size of a refrigerator and weighing 63 pounds, the force of the rupture was strong enough to open the cockpit door 26 rows up. the noise of 400-mile-per-hour