♪ >> good evening. on "the newshour" tonight, former president trump faces additional charges for allegedly trying to delete security camera footage in the mar-a-lago classified documents case. a prominent hong kong dissident and pro-democracy activists in exile describes the chinese government's crackdown on dissent. >> they never had the support of the people. they have hijacked all the human rights and democracy from the chinese people and hong kong. >> and a complex and opaque supply chain for prescription drugs puts increasing pressure on local pharmacies.

>> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions and friends of "the newshour" including jim and nancy build there and kathy and paul anderson. >> the john s. and james l.net foundation, fostering an informed and engaged communities. more at kf.org. -- the john s. and james l. knight foundation. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of "the newshour." this program was made possible by the corporation for public

broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> here are the latest headlines . new economic numbers today are the latest to show inflation in the u.s. is easing. the government gauge that is closely watched by the federal reserve finds consumer prices rose 3% in june from a year earlier, the smallest annual increase in more than two years. in niger, soldiers declared an army general to be the new head of state today after ousting the democratically elected president this week. that came hours after the general addressed the nation, saying the civilian government failed to protect the country against islamist insurgents. >> the current security approach has failed to secure our country. we can no longer continue with the same approaches. at the risk of witnessing the gradual and inevitable disappearance of our country.

>> the u.s. has about 1000 troops in niger, and it is unclear how the coup will affect that partnership. the u.s. secretary aimed tough talk at china over its aggressive moves in the pacific. he was in australia for talks on submarines powered by u.s. technology. he said directly it is aimed at countering beijing, officially the people's republic of china. >> we have seen troubling prc tours from the east china sea to the south china sea. we will continue to support our allies and partners as they defend themselves from bullying behavior. >> today, the united states announced it will provide taiwan with up to $345 million of military assistance. the package will include firearms and missiles, highly portable air defense systems, and training for the taiwanese. meantime, japan released a defense analysis that warns of

the most serious security threat since world war ii. it cites actions by china, north korea, and russia and calls for a japanese military buildup in response. the u.s. house and senate now face tough negotiations over an annual defense policy bill. the senate passed its version last night. it includes big 5.2% pay raise for the military, but unlike the house version, it does not curve access to gender affirming care and abortion. that leaves lawmakers to work out a compromise bill. mitch mcconnell facing questions about his health and future after the kentucky senator froze up during a news conference this week. in a new statement, his office says, leader macconnell appreciates the continued support of his colleagues and plans to continue to serve his full term in the job he was elected to do. ford is recalling almost 900,000

f1 50 pickup trucks because the parking brakes can activate unexpectedly. f-series pickups are the top-selling vehicle in the u.s. the recall covers certain trucks in model years 2021 to 2023. affected vehicles have a higher risk of a crash. ford will begin notifying owners in september. still to come, a podcast examines the legal pitfalls victims of domestic violence face when they defend themselves. jonathan capehart and gary abernathy weigh in on the week's political headlines. a black-owned brewery in california bucks industry trends while fostering community. >> this is "the pbs newshour" from weta studios in washington and in the west from walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. >> fishel counsel jack smith

expanded his classified documents case against former president trump with three new felony charges, including claims mr. trump asked an employee of his mar-a-lago club to delete security footage sought by the grand jury investigating the mishandling of government records. prosecutors added a third defendant to the case, a worker at mar-a-lago, who is accused of joining donald trump and walt nauta in instructing the investigation by attempting to destroy the security footage. a former u.s. attorney and senior fbi official joins us now. thank you so much for coming in. these new charges were presented in what is known as a superseding indictment handed out by the grand jury in florida yesterday. how do these new charges illustrate the depth and breadth of the legal jeopardy in which donald trump now finds himself? >> they add to our knowledge of the obstruction. why is that important? the obstruction of justice in

the first delay had to do with mr. trump using his attorneys to try and conceal information that had been subpoenaed from the government. now we see a second aspect. mr. trump using employees to try to delete security camera footage. why is that important? because obstruction helps the government prove intent. it helps them argue to the jury that by trying to obstruct investigation, hide documents, destroy security camera footage, mr. trump is demonstrating that he did something wrong and wanted to conceal it. it helps the government's case significantly. >> the new indictment alleges the mar-a-lago worker told another trump employee that "the boss" wanted a server deleted, and the employee, according to the indictment, responded that he did not know how to do that and did not know if he had the

rights to do that. the specificity of this indictment suggests this other trump employee, employee number four, is cooperating. is that how you see it? >> it is how i see it and suggests, too, that he would be a very important witness. i'm confident the fbi spoke to many if not most if not all of the employees. most i don't doubt told the truth. sounds like employee number four told the truth. others have a choice to make. we know in january of this year, this worker was questioned by the fbi in his home. he had two paths you could take. he could tell the truth. he chose not to. he lied and was charged with it, but it sounds like employee number four told the truth and by telling the truth, he buttresses the government's case, and he stays out of trouble. >> why was a superseding indictment necessary in this case? why couldn't these charges be included in the initial indictment back in june? >> that is a great question and

one i have wondered about. normally, the government would have preferred to bring all of its charges and defendants in one case at one time. sometimes, there are pieces that are lingering that they have not quite yet resolved. it is possible also they learned new information after the original indictment was filed, so i don't know which of those things happened. i know the preference is to bring it all at once in one charging instrument. it is entirely possible, too, that they were hoping he would tell the truth and would cooperate and would be a witness at trial and that he chose a different path, having chosen a different path, they had little option but to indict him. >> we should say, mr. trump has denied any wrongdoing, and he was talking about this case today in a conversation on conservative talk radio. >> it is meant to intimidate people, so they have to lie to get out of a problem, but these are two wonderful employees.

they have been with me for an long time, and they are great people. >> he is saying the special counsel intimidated the witnesses and that the witnesses lied. how do the former president's public statements, locate his legal case? >> many of his public statements contradict evidence that will be introduced in the case. if he chooses to take the stand in his own trial, in his him defense, which is an optn, not a requirement, he will be confronted with lots of things that he has said, and it's going to be very difficult, even for mr. trump, in a court of law, under oath, under questioning by experienced federal prosecutors, to weave his way through that. by the way, his two employees may have been wonderful and may have been great people. i will accept that at face value, but that's not inconsistent with the fact they committed crimes. if they were wonderful employees, it is an odd way for

mr. trump to treat them, because he has put them in great jeopardy. >> could this new information delay the start of this trial, which right now is slated for may 2024? >> that is about 10 months out. i come from the district of eastern virginia. in my mind, 10 months is a trinity. that date should hold. it may not. the defense will use the fact to argue for more time. it is up to the judge ultimately. i think that they can hold. i think it should hold. if it does hold or not, we shall see. >> thanks so much for coming in. >> my pleasure. >> for over 20 years, it was understood that hong kong was part of china, but it ran its

own affairs under what was known as one country two systems. hong kong residents had many freedoms that mainland chinese did not. that all started to change 4 years ago as beijing cracked down pro-democracy activists. now they once freewheeling capitalist haven visible a police state run by the communist party. as john yang tells us, beijing is trying to extend that crackdown overseas. >> for several years now, hong kong has been cracking down on dissent at home. the strict new security law was implement it in 2020 after nearly a year of pro-democracy protests. since then, more than 260 people have been arrested. nearly all independent media shut down. opposition candidates disqualified from elections. now china is trying to extend the reach of its oppression by targeting critics living in exile. they have issued arrest warrants for scholars, pro-democracy activists, and former lawmakers no longer living in hong kong.

a hong kong businessman turned online commentator no living in the united states is named in one of those warrants. the government accuses you of subversion, colluding with law enforcement, and they have put out a six-figure reward for your arrest. how do you react to that? >> i think i'm very happy because it means i really touch on their nerve, the weakest point. the whole thing about the communist party is they claim that they represent all the people, and now, i am trying to form a elected hong kong parliament outside of hong kong, and this is making them very nervous because it is really the power of the people organized. they never had the support of the people. in fact, they have hijacked all

the human rights and democracy from the chinese people and hong kong people. >> why do you think they are going after people overseas, exiles? >> they are trying to reach out, but they don't have the control, so the result is they want to scare us, and they do this kind of tactic all the time. now only now are people starting to pay attention. >> on that point, i know the hong kong police have detained members of your family. i believe your daughter and son. what is your response to that? >> again, they are trying to scare me. totally illegal. in fact, what i'm doing is based on the universal declaration of independence. we have the right to elect, to vote, and it is also in the chinese constitution and hong

kong basic law. this is all rights given to us to form our own government and autonomy. they tried to detain my kids, tried to scare me and get me to stop. i would not be surprised if they detain them for a longer period of time. >> i have seen reports that quote your daughter-in-law speaking publicly that she no longer speaks to you. >> i think she has to say anything just to be able to leave hong kong. otherwise, hong kong and china is one big prison. they don't allow people to leave. there are a lot of people that don't have freedom even to leave hong kong. >> earlier today, i hong kong court rejected the government's

request to been glory to hong kong, which has become a protest and them. were you surprised by that? >> quite surprised. it seems like they don't have total control of the judiciary system. the judges, most of them are foreign, and they still like to rule by law, but on the other hand, the u.s. congress has been threatening sanction on those national security judges, so that's why they may be scared. >> do you think this could be a sign that these judges will defy the government in other areas? >> i think they have to choose, either they resign or they rule according to the law. because the whole world is watching how they rule, and i believe that now they have to consider, and it looks like there is some recovery because

they understand this cannot go on. i think even xi jinping understands it cannot go on. it is really hurting the hong kong economy. we supply 70% of their foreign income. >> you spoke earlier about forming a parliament in exile. how is that effort going? what are you doing to do that? >> we are forming a hong kong parliament. we have invented a mobile, online voting system, very secure, so that people even in hong kong or outside hong kong can vote online without being detected or traced. we are doing quite well. we hope to have an election by the end of the year and elect our first member of parliament, and that first duty will be to draft a constitution for hong kong. >> do you have a way to communicate with not only your family but other people in hong

kong who may be sympathetic to your position? >> most of the phone calls are tapped, so i communicate mostly with hong kong verse -- hong kongers outside of hong kong. >> i'm wondering if you have any sense of what life in hong kong is like now. >> i'm very aware. all the news is censored and controlled by the communists. all the media in hong kong if it's tv or newspaper or magazines, but we have friends traveling back and forth. a lot of people are still traveling, and i meet them all over the world. sydney, and cooper, san francisco, everywhere, so i am very up-to-date. it is like a free state, and this national security law is more or less like national -- martial law.

>> thank. >> thank you for your interview. >> the supply chain that brings pharmaceutical drugs from the factory to the pharmacy is long, complex, and many experts say opaque. congress and several state legislatures have proposed or enacted laws to bring more transparency and curb soaring drug prices. special correspondent reports many small or independent pharmacies report that those high prices in many cases actually hurt them. >> this story began on a personal note. i recently went to refill a prescription at my neighborhood pharmacy and assumed my $500 co-pay was bringing a reasonable profit to the store. much to my surprise, a few months ago, the folks at st.

paul asked if i could take my money elsewhere because they were losing money filling this prescription. >> you pay $578 for something, and you only take in $500, that is not a sustainable model. >> he is not sure how long he will be able to hang on. >> they are literally sucking the financial life of my business. >> the "they" he is referring to are three principal links in a complex supply chain -- drug manufacturers, wholesale distributors, and he says his most immediate existential threat, pharmacy benefit managers. so-called middlemen companies that determine what drugs are covered by insurance, the price he is paid, and the co-pays required of patients.

they began to grow rapidly in the 1980's and 1990's as the pharmaceutical pipeline began swelling with new drugs, statins to lower cholesterol, antidepressants and acid reducers. health insurers had to keep up. >> it did not take long for the insurance side to say if you want to manage this stuff for us, great. it was a reasonable thing to simple if i -- simplify the management of prescription drugs. >> they were hired by insurance companies to manage cost by establishing and maintaining formularies, a list of what drugs will and will not be covered. over time, they have evolved into a multibillion-dollar business themselves. >> they literally are taking money from every aspect of pharmacy distribution. >> they demand extensive documentation, tying reimbursements to elaborate metrics of quality, and yet, he

complains, reimburse him far less than it costs to fill a for scription, far less than they build client health plans for the same prescription. >> it may cost $40, and they pay me seven dollars. people ask where does the $33 go? to the pbm. all the things that you see advertised on tv -- those are all essentially not available at my pharmacy. they have been classified by the pharmacy benefit manager industry as specialty drugs, and what is special about them is that they can make a lot of money off them. >> nothing beyond your expertise? >> correct. they are supposed to be negotiating lower prices for consumers, but they are actually doing the opposite. >> the simple pharmacist has an unlikely advocate in the head of

a trade group of large drug manufacturers. >> they are buying pharmacies. they are buying health care providers, and they are steering patients to the providers that they own. >> he notes that the three top pharmacy benefit companies are now owned by large insurance companies and control nearly 80% of the market. a key source of revenue are rebates they negotiate from drug manufacturers. a company must agree to these price discounts to have its product instead of a competitor's covered by insurance plans. the amount of the rebates is not publicly disclosed for proprietary reasons, they say, but instead of bidding down drug prices, they do the opposite. >> they actually make more money off a higher priced drug. our members now capture less than $.50 on the dollar of the list price of a medicine. >> that in turn forces drug companies to raise list prices, he says.

pbm's have gone public. >> big drug companies are setting the price of pharmaceuticals out of reach. >> jc scott, who heads the trade association of pbm companies, says things would be a lot worse without his members. >> the pharmacy benefit companies have largely been successful in helping mitigate the net cost of prescription drugs and provide access for millions of americans. >> scott argues his members' entire focus is on high quality and lower in cost and in providing cost-saving options to patients. the pbm group accuses drug companies of raising prices and gaming patent laws to preserve high prices. he cites insulin, a diabetes drug, whose prices were cut first by one and then the two other leading makers amid widespread criticism of sharp price increases over recent decades. >> they use their discretionary power to cut the price of those

drugs. they were not prevented by the rebates. it was a good thing and in fact, we continue to encourage pharma companies to cut the price of their drug. >> i'm sorry. this medicine isn't covered by your insurance. >> as congress and state legislatures debate reforms, pharma has its own ad campaign. they seize the insulin example to make a counterpoint. when prices began to fall, many pbm's continue to require that their patients remain on brands that had not yet dropped prices, sticking patients with higher copayments. >> because they made more money as a percentage off the higher priced drug. to me, it is a poster child for why the system needs to be changed. >> the system is so complex, i don't think there are even 50 people in the u.s. who understand the full thing. >> a hematologist at the mayo clinic says despite various

bipartisan efforts to bring more transparency and the inflation reduction act which will allow medicare to begin negotiating prices of drugs, comprehensive reform is difficult and complex. >> there's a blame game where pharmaceutical companies say it is not us. pbm's essay it is not us, it is them. we are caught between two people who are both profiting. >> what do you see emerging in the next few years? >> i don't even think it is right to say what the market will bear. it is what outrage will bear. >> insulin remains a rare example of a price drop, he says, one at least partly responsible from outrage. >> the outrage caused by families with children with type one diabetes to high prices of insulin. the outrage caused by citizens

in the u.s. finding they could go to canada and find the same drug at 1/10 the price led to this movement of advocacy. that advocacy lead to action. >> what does all this mean for the corner drugstore? >> i get letters every month from one of the major chains to purchase my prescription records, my files, and basically buy me out. >> his response is to bide time and sell new things. nutritional supplements and vaccination services, hoping reforms at the state and federal level somehow bring relief. although his store is so busy they are not accepting new patients, he says there's a good chance the ones he has will soon have to go to those chain stores, and this drugstore, like 1/3 of independent pharmacies in minnesota, will go the way of the soda fountain.

>> more than two dozen states around the country have a version of self-defense laws, sometimes known as stand your ground laws. they allow for the use of force -- even deadly force -- when someone feels threatened in their home or other locations, but a new podcast and investigation details how women, especially women of color who try to use self-defense laws don't always get the same protections, especially in cases of domestic violence. >> this podcast tells how in 2017 a 25-year-old black woman named devon gray shot and killed her white boyfriend during what she said was a violent night at their home in rural shelby county in alabama. over the course of their relationship, gray had been repeatedly and violently abused by vance.

>> i saw the knife and i saw him point the gun, and i was just like, i had enough of this. >>ray's stand your ground defense was rejected, so she took what is known as a blind plea where you plead guilty, in her case to manslaughter, but you don't know what your punishment is. she was sentenced to 15 years. her story is that focus of a new podcast called blind plea. journalist and author liz flock is the host and i'm happy to say former "newshour" colleague. before we get to her legal situation, which is so well-documented in your podcast, can you tell us a little bit about her and her relationship with her boyfriend? >> devon gray was a young woman from upstate new york. she met her boyfriend john vance there. their mothers lived diagonally from each other.

she found him charismatic and handy. they fell in love as she followed him or rather john took her to rural alabama to his family land. although he had gotten violent with her before, as often is the case in domestic abusive situations, once she was more isolated, things escalated from there. all of our reporting, which comes from thousands of text messages and interviews with john's family show he was severely physically and emotionally abusive over six years' time they were living in this rural, rundown trailer, incredibly isolated. he monitored her phone, and they had a child together, so she felt like she could not leave. >> as you document in your podcast, violence escalates and in this one night, it rubs in a terrible circumstance where she shoots and kills him. on its surface, it seems like a textbook case of self-defense, but as you report, it does not

turn out that way. >> i have been covering cases of women who kill their abusers for years now, and one thing i say -- i see again and again is that women do not often fight back in the precise moment of violence. often in a domestic abuse situation, things will estimate -- escalate for years and by the time the woman decides to defend themselves, their often will be a break in the violence. in devon's case, that night in particular, crime scene photos and her testimony suggest that she was pistol whipped. he shot at her, broke bones in her face, but by the time she shot him, it was after several minutes had passed that she got the gun and he was on their pullout couch. you can see why in our criminal legal system we would say that's not self-defense, but as advocates have told me, a woman who is in aid to mystic abusive situation is always in fear for her life, so i think a lot of

those folks are looking for a change to the criminal legal system where we expand our notion of self defense to better expand the dynamics of domestic abuse. >> in these cases, you report how in particular they tend to go against women and women of color in particular. >> yeah. there's actually a lot of research to document this, that women are trice -- twice as likely to be convicted as men when citing self-defense in their home and that black people who use the stand your are almost 15% more likely to lose their hearings. it is basically that the stand your ground law is being applied unequally. one thing experts have told me is that self defense laws come with a lot of masculine assumptions, like that it is two people of equal size to get into a fight in a bar, but that is not the case in domestic abuse situations. it is often someone of a larger size. a woman might not be able to defend herself with her fists,

let's say, so she might use a weapon. i think that all shows that there is something that needs to change in our understanding of our application of self-defense laws and stand your ground laws in particular. >> as you report, she tries this self-defense case that is rejected. she is charged with murder. she then takes this blind plea. can you help us understand why she did that, why she accepted a plea not really knowing what the punishment would be? >> yeah, so, when our team started looking into this, we were really amazed at the lack of research around this thing called a blind plea. we know that in america, 90% of cases are actually adjudicated through plea bargain. that's how they finish. most people do not go to trial, but a lot of people had not heard this thing called blind plea, which is a type of leave bargain where you basically say i'm pleading guilty to this

lesser charge. in a devon's case, it was manslaughter instead of murder. but i'm kind of leaving it up to the judge to decide my fate and rolling the dice here. she did not know if she would get 10 years or 20 years. ultimately, she got 15, but i think what we found disturbing about blind please is it is often dependent on their lawyer sort of knowing the judge. it feels almost like a good old boys club where it's like, i think this judge will do me a solid and give you a lesser sentence. >> so devon gets sentenced to 15 years. she has recently gotten out because of good behavior and she was a model citizen. she in your final episode, the epilogue episode of your podcast, talks about how she wants other victims of domestic violence to think of themselves and to be seen in society. >> i also want people who are in

those relationships or have been in those relationships to understand that they are not alone and they should not feel like they are less than or that they are stupid. i still kick myself and feel that kind of way, but i just want to make the world more aware of problems. >> it sounds like on some level -- she's got a job -- she sounds like she is doing pretty well. is that the case? >> she is out now and speaking a lot about domestic abuse and how complicated it is, but every day is a struggle. just because she is free from prison does not mean things would magically back to normal. she spent five and a half years away from her daughter and prison is not a place for rehabilitation in many states, and especially not for people who have dealt with domestic abuse, so i think she really feels like she is beginning her

journey towards healing now. when you get out of prison, you don't have even an id. she has to get an apartment. she just got a job, but every day is a sort of step-by-step. >> the podcast is blind plea. i cannot recommend it highly enough. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> to dive deeper into the repercussions of donald trump's latest legal troubles and more, we turn to the analysis tonight of capehart and abernathy. that's jonathan capehart, associate editor for "the washington post" and gary abernathy, also a "washington post" contributor. david brooks is away. special counsel jack smith leveled new charges against donald trump this week,

including the allegation that trump and others sought to delete security video of rooms in which boxes of classified documents were kept. how do these additional charges change or expand our understanding of this case? >> what's interesting is when i talked to a lot of trump supporters about this, they were very disappointed to hear this. of all the things in this document case, the cover-up is going to be the worst. this is -- i question if a lot of these things are going to be or should be pursued, but if they get one of these people to turn on him and say, yeah, he told me to cover up this, that's going to be very bad for him. his opponents looking at this politically, need to actually quit resorting to defending him if they want to make any headway against him and start saying, look, this is a cover-up. as your earlier guest said today

on the show, this is evidence of doing something wrong. having said that, it is an opportunity to separate trump from his supporters, but to do that, the doj also needs to realize we've got two parallel things going on here, and we cannot seem to have a double standard. you had a week where the president's son was in court trying to do a sweetheart deal, plead to two misdemeanors and, he thought, be exempted from any other crimes he may have committed whereas on the other hand, the president's probable opponent for november is all full barrels, let's keep in dieting more and more people around him to get them to flip and see if they will say trump told me to do this. you've got to not have an excuse for trump supporters to say we've got a double standard going on here.

>> how do you see it? what do you make of that parallel between -- >> there's no parallel. there is no parallel between the legal troubles involving the president's son and the mountain of legal problems facing the former president of the united states. the cover-up that is alleged in the superseding indictment is damming -- damning, but so is the original indictment. we are talking about a former president of the united states who cut classified documents despite the fact that he no longer had legal access to them once he was no longer president of the united states and in the initial indictment, we saw how the boxes were being moved around, but the superseding indictment shows that the boss wanted the tapes destroyed, was moving boxes himself, was even going through the boxes and picking things out and shoving

other boxes elsewhere and then lying to his lawyers. if trump supporters are disappointed by the cover-up, that's on them. what the american people are learning is that the former president of the united states looks even worse now after the superseding indictment then he did with the original indictment. as we are waiting for a possible indictment in the other jack smith investigation. >> and i agree with everything you said. there's no excuse for this. i have said from the beginning trump is his own worst enemy. trump should have given these documents back the minute he was asked to give them back, but let's not pretend there's not a public perception element of this, too, that's going to be very important to successfully prosecute trump. you need more of the public to weigh in and say this is the right thing to do, and to do that, you did the confidence that the doj plays it straight down the middle on high-profile

cases, both involving the president's likely opponent in november and the president's son. >> we have a new poll that does not ask that question but asks a similar one and looks at how trump's legal troubles are resonating among the electorate, and 51% of those responding to the poll say they believe trump has done something illegal. 20% say he has done something unethical but not illegal and 19% say he has done nothing wrong. this was conducted as you see therebetween july 24 and july 27. what do you make of those results? >> i take solace in the fact that a majority of the country views what the former president did as illegal. if you add the 27% who think what he did was unethical but maybe not illegal, i'll take that, too. you add those together, if my math is wrong, actually 78% of the country thinks he is shady. that tells me that the

investigations and the impact of what we are learning is having an impact on the way people are viewing the former president, and i think rightly. the 19% have viewed him as having done nothing wrong -- that is not surprising. >> when you take that middle result and group it with the others that say we don't think it is illegal, you've got a group that about half say it is not illegal. >> it is not about half. it is 46%. just less than half. >> when is 46% not about half? >> 151% say he has done something. we'll table that for now. what are we to make of donald hardwired fixation with hillary clinton's email server during the campaign, and email investigation that ended without charges? the "lock her up" chants. it was a call and response at

all those rallies. i was covering it. now donald trump is accused of trying to wipe a server that had video footage of the mishandling of classified documents. >> are you saying that perhaps we will get the same result with the trump case as we got from the hillary case, which was no charges? that's the problem that a lot of the country has with what they see. that's why they bring up hillary clinton. hillary clinton, as you point out. no charges. no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges. famous quote from fbi director james comey. a lot of people never bought that, so they are going to question why is trump being treated differently. >> donald trump is being treated different because he had classified documents that were about nuclear secrets, preparedness of america's allies, and to your original question, if we have learned anything from the four years of donald trump's presidency and his campaign leading up to it and the campaign to get

reelected, he's the master of projection. anything that he accuses someone else of doing, if it's hillary clinton, barack obama, you name them, he has either done it himself for real or would really like to do it. what we are discovering now is that he has done all of the things he has accused hillary clinton of doing -- actually done. the emails they found on secretary clinton's server, and a lot of them had to do with cooking recipes and appointments. none had to do with nuclear secrets and secrets about our allies. you just can't -- there's no parallel. there is no synergy. there's no similarity at all. >> actually, director comey pointed out that a lot of things that they found on her server were classified and probably were classified by -- probably were accessed by foreign agents.

we don't know if they were nuclear secrets. of course, we don't know about all the ones that were deleted before anyone got to see them. >> if they were nuclear secrets, we would have known. under trump's doj? come on. >> i want to talk about something else that happened this past week. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell was giving a press conference and suddenly stopped speaking. it was difficult to watch. he stopped speaking for about 19 seconds. as you see there. one of the senators to his left stepped in. later, they said he was feeling lightheaded, and yesterday, senator dianne feinstein appeared confused during a vote on a defense bill, pumping a fellow democrat to step in. >> just say aye. just aye. >> aye. >> what are we to make of the geruntocracy that runs

washington? >> it is concerning. i think it plays to why people have these concerns. the mitch mcconnell thing was disturbing to watch. it was uncomfortable for everybody. it makes you really say we hope he is ok, you know? we say a little prayer for him and hope that his health is really ok, but it raises disturbing questions, and there's no way to come back if they try to whitewash it a little bit and say he is fine. he is clearly not fine. >> the republican leader says he is going to serve out the remainder of his term, another 17 months. we should say that senator feinstein's office said that was a very chaotic -- they were in a markup session, a business meeting of that committee and she was not fully aware of what was happening. >> this is the difference between the health conversation and age conversation we are having at the presidential level and the conversation we are having now because of what happened between -- with

senators feinstein and mcconnell. they have demonstrable and reported health difficulties. for them to hang on for so long is what is giving certainly democrats and republicans and lot of concern. i do think what is happening with them is going to lead to a conversation that i think we should have in the country about how long is too long? how old is too old? and then if you want to serve even longer, beyond the age of 75 or 77, what are the things you have to do to demonstrate to the american people that you should be entrusted with an elected position? how much more transparent must you be or should you be if you want to serve beyond a certain age? i think those are reasonable questions to debate.

>> what about that? as you know, seniority accounts for a lot in congress. plum committee assignments, fundraising. there are prerogatives and positions that come with continuous terms. i mean, over decades. >> i have never been a fan of term limits. even though republicans are the ones that push them over the years by a large, they complain about the deep state and leaving the bureaucrats in control of things, that's what is going to happen when you have term limits and people have to come and go and only the bureaucrats get to stay. but i don't like an age limit. i don't like saying 80 is the ho are 75 is, but i do think testing or something like that is not unreasonable, especially when you see what we have seen today. >> the key thing you lose with term limits is expertise, and that is worth keeping. >> great to see you both. take care. >> thank you.

>> a new craft beer company in the bay area is on a mission to diversify the brewing industry and create change in its local community. >> here in wine country, craft beer breaking barriers. the first black-owned brewery in oakland, california, and one of the fewer than 1% of black-owned breweries nationwide. community, equity, and of course, a shared love of good beer are at the heart of the business for the founders. the pair turned their homebrewing hobby into a business in 2020. >> we kind of had a competition between each other. we also always had this entrepreneurial spirit between each other. one day, we are brewing

together, homebrewing, and kind of brainstorming. i'm like, we are doing this right here. we are making beer. it is fun. it is enjoyable. we love the craft. why don't we try to make a brewery together? >> that meant breaking into a space where 90% of brewery owners are white, according to a 2021 survey. >> some of the breweries we go to, sometimes the beer is great that the energy did not feel as receptive. we were like the very few and far between as far as who we see not only as a consumer but as who will be represented front of house, who is serving. that's when we realized that there is a sense of community, but there needs to be some improvement, and we need to be -- we need to disrupt what essentially the beer drinker looks like. >> their beer is born out of simple ingredients -- grain, hops, water, and yeast. but timing, temperature, and fine details make every pint

unique. >> these right here are the fermentation tanks. >> this takes patience. it can takes -- it can take weeks to finish one batch. >> when the beer goes through the fermentation process, what happens? >> the yeast converts the sugar into alcohol. >> through every step, benjamin and hubbard look to highlight their oakland roots, looking to represent their community in flavor, name, and design. >> this is our latest release we did, shout out to the oakland a's, and this is the one we did for black history month and women's appreciation month. >> called 3900 to infinity, this beer pays respect to a long history of black female brewers that goes back years. >> it was 3900 bc in mesopotamia where the first beer recipe is supposed to be conceived by a

black woman, just kind of to knock down those barriers of folks thinking that it is just, like, german and european, and we want to make sure people know the real history of it. it is not just about black history month and beer, but also like, yo, we do this, we have been doing this and we are going to continue to do it. >> they are also looking to the future to build generational wealth for their kids and equity for black business owners like the designer behind many of their bright, bold labels that evoke black culture. >> it was literally just making beer at home. >> right now, they are renting space in a tavern downtown but hoping to one day open a brick-and-mortar that can be more than just a spot to grab a drink. >> what we want to do is be the creators of that space, create something where folks in our community, allies also, can come to and feel welcome and can be their true, authentic self in a brewery, and one thing we want to do in our space is to not

only make it inclusive, but we also want to make it a place where people can come in, learn about beer, have different beer styles, but at the same time have guest speakers, artists, have art on the wall that is representing the community and highlight organizations, nonprofits, initiatives that's really resonating not only to us, but the community in general. >> come on in. >> at sonoma county's craft beer festival, they are again serving to a largely white clientele flanked by white brewers, but customers showed an appreciation for the flavors. >> it is good. it is very refreshing and not to citrusy, but it's nice. >> and the message. >> the only black brewery in this place, you should check them out, and they're like, say less, i'm there.

>> and remember, there's much more online, including a story about black residents in a st. louis neighborhood still dealing with the consequences of their families being displaced by development projects back in the 1960's. that's at pbsnews.org. for more analysis of the fallout from former president trump and hunter biden's legal challenges, "washington week" is later tonight on pbs. that is "the newshour" for tonight. have a great weekend. >> major funding for "the pbs newshour" has been provided by -- ♪

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>> legal clouds and heat>> there so they make up lies about me. i did nothing wrong. >> orma president donald trump statements after he is facing more charges. judges trying to hold off a second indictment for january 6 election interference. plus. >> is there any possibility that the president would change this? >> help was here. we are going to make it available to anyone who needs it. >> the nation boils under a ht