♪♪ hi, everyone, i'm kate snow. >> and i'm aaron gilchrist. "nbc news daily" starts right now. ♪♪ >> today, monday, october 31, 2022. breaking news, prosecutors file criminal charges against the man accused of attacking house speaker nancy pelosi's husband. the crimes he's accused of and what we know about paul pelosi's recovery. nation in mourning. more than 150 people are dead after a crowd crush in seoul, south korea. among them, two american students. what police say went wrong.

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ben collins. maura, walk us through these newly filed charges and his condition too. >> reporter: yeah, aaron, the doj just filed these charges, department of justice, just before we came on the air. i'm going to read directly from the release. the suspect, david depape, is charged with one count of assault of an immediate family member of an official. one count of attempted kidnapping of a u.s. official and that carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. and so, this is just a first round of charges we're expecting to see from the federal level and we're expecting to see some other state charges from the san francisco d.a. as well later this afternoon. now, the charging documents here from the fbi as well as the department of justice detail some new things we didn't know before about the attack. we knew that the attacker had broken in from a rear window, wednesday up the stairs into mr. pelosi's bedroom when he was able to call 911. police arrived just minutes

later to find the two men struggling over a single hammer, but after they detained mr. depape, officials did say that pelosi appeared unconscious because depape had swung at him at least once with that hammer. they go on to say that officers secured a roll of tape, white rope, a second hammer, a pair of rubber and cloth gloves as well as zip ties on the scene. mr. pelosi is recovering in the icu, suffering a fractured skull as well as serious injuries to his arm and hands. >> maura, thank you. ben, i want to ask you, there's already been a lot of disinformation, misinformation out there about the suspect. making its way through the internet. what are some of the false claims and what do we know? >> reporter: yeah, what we know is completely the opposite of the false claims pushed by people like elon musk, who owns twitter, in the replies to hillary clinton over the weekend. this charging document should do a little bit of work in dispelling these rumors. the charging document lays out very clearly what looks to be a

kidnapping plot of a man who was trying to kidnap nancy pelosi and/or her husband. the rumors on the internet are the complete opposite, basically an elaborate conspiracy theory about, you know, like a sex ploy or some ridiculous thing that was pushed by elon musk. that was also pushed by donald trump jr. and marjorie taylor greene. so, that's what's going around the far-right spaces. that's viewed as truth, even though these charging documents show a completely different story. >> ben collins, appreciate you clarifying that. so important to get the facts out there. we're also learning new details about the deadly crowd surge in south korea. the death toll has now risen to 154 people. that chaotic scene unfolded on saturday during halloween celebrations in a neighborhood that's popular for its night life. two americans are among the victims here, steven blesi and anne gieske were both college students. joining us now is journalist and former cnbc tokyo bureau chief kaori.

what exactly are authorities saying at this point about the police response there in seoul and what might have led to this stampede? >> reporter: well, aaron, the chief of police apologizing today, saying that the officers who were on the scene did not realize that the crowd had gotten so large and instead of focusing on crowd control, their primary focus was trying to prevent crime. he said that 130 police were there but that doesn't seem like a whole lot for a crowd size of 100,000 people. you know, south korea has so many political protests and rallies are extremely well organized and managed, but for these kinds of gatherings, you're required to register ahead, but that didn't happen on saturday. and the police say there was just no playbook to guide them through that process. still, many are saying that after two years of very strict covid restrictions, they could have guessed that it would be a halloween like no other, aaron. >> wow. just an incredible crowd size

for sure. you know, this happened in an area of seoul that we know is popular with tourists in particular, people from japan, australia, france and the u.s. all died in this incident, kaori. what are we learning about those people? >> reporter: yeah. for decades, itaewon has been the place to go at night for locals and tourists at night. 26 foreigners were among the victims of saturday's tragedy. two from the u.s., as you mentioned, but two also from japan here, including a woman named may tomikawa. she had been studying in korea since june, and she liked it so much there, she planned to stay there and work there. her father heard the news over the weekend, has been flown to seoul to retrieve her body today. he described calling his daughter's mobile over and over again until hours later it was picked up by a policeman. it's a story that many parents are talking about over the weekend and the anguish is just unimaginable, aaron. >> just heartbreaking and so many levels. kaori enjoji, thank you. the midterm elections are

just eight days away, and president biden is trying to rally democrats. he's set to speak this afternoon about a key issue for voters, gas prices. the president is scheduled to visit four states over the next week. one is pennsylvania, where he'll appear with former president barack obama on saturday. let's bring in nbc news white house correspondent mike memoli. what do we expect to hear from president biden when he speaks later today about gas prices? >> well, kate, this speech by the president was not on his original public schedule for the day. it was added early this morning, but it's notable in that we know gas prices and prices overall are one of the most important issues in the midterm elections. what the president is going to do is draw attention to the fact that oil companies continue to make record profits, even as we've seen gas prices at all-time highs. he's going to call on those gas companies to take the profits and put them into either lowering prices for consumers or expanding production of oil, and if not, he's going to call on congress to consider potentially a windfall tax on the oil

companies as a way to deter them from doing this. this shows how even when the president's not on the campaign trail, he's going to be talking about important issues. wednday, he'll do the same on infrastructure cases. >> president biden and former president obama, they're going to make a joint appearance on the campaign trail in philadelphia on saturday, a key senate race there. we've mentioned this before, but democratic leaders, we reported, are anxious about this race. is that why they're going to pennsylvania? >> absolutely. there's no formula for democrats where they hold on to control, that 50/50 split in the senate with the vice president as the tiebreaker without winning pennsylvania because they're expecting to lose democrat-held seats elsewhere. pennsylvania is a republican-held seat. we've seen president biden, former president obama fanning out the different spots in the country but this is notable, the first time we'll see them on the campaign trail together since late in 2020. of course, when they joined forces for former vice president joe biden's late stage of his campaign. pennsylvania is a state that

president biden has visited more than any other since taking office. >> mike memoli for us. thank you. the supreme court is hearing a case that could dramatically reshape higher education in this country. it focuses on whether colleges can use race as a factor in admissions. it's a policy many refer to as affirmative action in those institutions. nbc news washington correspondent yamiche alcindor is outside the supreme court for us today. yamiche, the court is hearing challenges from two universities, right? talk to us about the distinction here. why these two challenges? >> reporter: well, it's a critical question, and of course, a big day at the supreme court where oral arguments just wrapped. what we're seeing here is that a student group that was against affirmative action, students for fair admissions, they sued both harvard university, a private school, and the university of north carolina, a public school, both saying they were discriminating against students because they were taking race into consideration as they were looking to admit their students. now, the reason why they were at first going to be together, the supreme urt wanted to sort of

consolidate things and have them argued at the same time, but then the new judge, justice ketanji brown jackson, during her confirmation hearings, she said she would recuse herself from the harvard dispute because at one point, she was part of the harvard leadership as well as being a graduate of harvard university and harvard law school. the supreme court ended up splitting these two cases so ketanji brown jackson could hear the first part with unc, and w eight justices for the harvard portion. >> and yamiche, i understand that there were some students who were waiting outside this court, really for days, to hear today's arguments. have we had a chance to hear from any of them? >> reporter: yes, and it's been really a mood of anticipation with a lot of people gathering here. there were some students who waited hours and hours to get into those oral arguments, and there are people on both sides with passionate views about this. take a listen to what some of them told us. >> there are a lot of reasons why people don't get opportunities to go to universities.