it's wednesday, the justice department is investigating a potential bribery scheme in the ask of a presidential pardon. but no government officials were apparentlily probed. sources tell nbc news that president trump has been discussing parts of another nature for his family members and close associates. plus, the fight on capitol hill over covid relief could now collide with the battle to avoid a government shutdown. as mitch mcconnell looks at ways to step up pressure on congressional democrats for a much smaller relief package.

and the first vaccine is approved in the uk as the cdc decides who in the u.s. should be first in line foor a vaccine here. welcome to wednesday. it is meet the press daily and i'm chuck todd. president trump appears to be leaving washington the same way he has governed it, chaotically. the uncertainty has only complicated talk necessary capitol hill where a group of bipartisan lawmakers yesterday unveiled a compromise package regarding nearly $1 trillion. but mitch mcconnell is signaling it's a nonstarter because he thinks the president wouldn't sign it. so now we're facing the collision of a must pass government funding bill with the chaos and drama of emergency relief, a bunch of which expires

this calendar year all with the backdrop of a worsening pandemic. on top of all that, the president is now threatening to veto funding for the u.s. military. this is the second veto threat for the same bill that he's issued, by the way, but this time he says he's vetoing it unless lawmakers soften protections for social media companies which has some bipartisan support. but before he had threatened to veto that same bill over the decision to rename military bases that were named for confederate military generals. but wait, there's more. president trump has been discussing the possibility of pardons for his family members and some close associates in recent days. one source says this is the musings of a president who feels embattled and his conversations are reportedly within that context and not because he believes he or his family members have actually committed any crimes. the white house so far has not commented on that story.

on the fopic of presidential parts, if justice department released that they've been investigating a bribery scheme. and as the president rages against republicans who won't indulge his attempts to overturn the election results, attorney general bill barr has come out to say he has not seen any evidence of widespread election fraud that would somehow alter the results of the election. a run official meanwhile is now publicly warning that someone is going to get killed because of all the inflammatory rhetoric after a trump campaign lawyer said an official was shot. i haven't mentioned the president's leaked comments about running in 2024 to investigates the russia probe during the biden presidency.

all of these developments are in the last 24 hours. in some ways, we're numb to this sort of world that trump has created. but right now, it is a striking contrast to joe biden where arguably his biggest controversy involves tweets by his nominee for budget director. so joining me now is monica alba and jill ya angly. these are the three areas where everything resolves today. monica, let me start with you. and i want to get to the nitty-gritty stuff before we get to the pardons. the veto threats, and covid relief, the white house, are they saying anything you publicly about what they feel about covid relief? now mitch mcconnell is claiming he wants to go really, really, really small. what is the truth there and what is the truth on this defense

appropriation bill? which sri foe threat matters, the one on confederate generals or the one on social media companies? you're right. and the president has been on the sidelines for both of these things sort of barking out his preferences without being a part of the direction negotiation, something we've seen as a part over the last few months. but the whiteout hasn't been able to say where they are on these latest negotiations. but there will be a press briefing this afternoon. but you raise the issue of that defense bill. we were told the president wanted to revisit it because of the potential of renaming these bases that were named after confederate war generals. it seems now that is out the window and he's found another issue and something else he wants to get to battle on. but it doesn't address the heart of the matter for both of these

things. there are extremely important things in these measures that are critical to american lives and livelihoods and that's at the center of this. the president is quibbling over these things instead of focussing on the all important issue of defense and coronavirus relief, vfk. >> so separate some fact from fiction stuff for us on this pardon stuff. we know he's musing about it. frankly, i know all of us are prepared for the fact that he could do anything, pardon himself, pardon anybody, who knows. what is the white house indicating to you, monica? >> it seems the president is sort of taking pitches. that's how it's been described to us, chuck, in these conversations with close associates. the president is weighing whom in his inner circle or even outside of it he should use his presidential power for in these last 48 or so days. and we're told among the discussion high on the list is

the potential for him to pardon his three eldest children. that raises all sorts of questions about what crimes they would have potentially committed that he would have to issue a pardon for. of course, he hasn't been willing to answer that yet. to me, it's a signal for a president who has not publicly said he lost this election and he's leaving that of course that's what he is planning for and that's what is at the top of his mind and agenda because he has to do this in the next little bit of time. the other person we've been told has been discussed is rudy giuliani who has reportedly been a part of this in terms of the pardon. he rejects that. he says that's completely false and hasn't taken place yet. we continue, though, to ask the president and the white house, has the legal counsel been a part of this? have they determined whether it's actually possible for the president of the united states to pardon himself? that's not entirely clear yet,

either, chuck, although it may be something he's also considering. exactly. monica, thank you. garrett, i want to start with covid relief first and trying to read the mitch mcconnell tea leaves. there are two schools of thought of what mcconnell was up to yesterday. one is that he's trying to jam the house democrats. he's basically saying, look, this is the deal that you're going to get. take it or leave it. or did he produce a deal that a lot of people like in order to make the bipartisan deal suddenly look like something worth getting on board with? which theory of the case should we be following, garrett? >> i'm focused on that first theory here, the idea of jamming house democrats with a bill that would come out of the republican senate and which mcconnell says the president would sign. i think this is noteworthy and

nobody really speaks for the president on his legislative priorities except for the president when he has legislative priority that's need to be spoken of. if you look at what happened yesterday, mcconnell put out this framework which is all things that republicans have been pushing for all along which he said they consulted with at the white house. there is no reason that framework couldn't have been put out last week or the week before that or the week before that. yesterday wren he receivede knon offer for leadership and perhaps the schools of thought would be mcconnell needs dollars to give his members somewhere to park their support or they were going to flee to this bipartisan measure. but getting inside mcconnell's head on this issue is particularly tough. his brill is just as much

essentially a republican messaging bill as the one he criticizes for the democrats on. so we're at a tricky spot once again. >> mcconnell's bill didn't seem very serious at all compared to what he used to say on this front. let me put up the list of senators behind this compromised bill. it's basically 5d4r. and i guess the question is this. if nancy pelosi came out in favor of this bipartisan bill, what would that do to mcconnell and senate republicans? >> i think it would put pressure on them. a lot of the framework, i should

make that point, there is not legislative text with this yet. that different matters. there is not text yet. and the thing that is a sticking point for republicans still is money for state and local funding in here. but if that were the only game in town or the game in down that has one chamber essentially locked down, that could make a difference. chuck, i think it's one way to look at this bipartisan framework here is it is a bit of an im police it view. this suggests and shows us the frustrate from democratic members that the speaker's approach of trying to do this all or nothing has not worked up to this point and now you've got this bundle up from within the conference to say we've got to say something on this. that strategy has not worked up to this point. >> you've got about a dozen

members of the house that are democrats who just lost. and a lot of them think they lost because they didn't have covid relief. very quickly, i move to julia at justice. section 230. this does have some bipartisan support, what the president wants to do. but is the senate ready? is congress ready to deal with this now or is this something they want to punt until next year? >> it seems like the president is on a very lonely island in terms of trying to force this issue on this bill. the republican chair said don't do this here and that's what a lot of other runs are saying. we hear you, we agree with the issue, but this is not the time or place to have this fight. >> garrett haake, a lot of

maneuvering. it's december in washington which usually is the one month where deals get made. but i have to say, i loved your engineer assic park reference yesterday. now we're back in the car again. good luck with that. >> julia, let's talk pardons. what more have you learned about what was unveiled yesterday? there's a lot we don't know because a lot of it was redacted. but we do know the justice department is investigating some sort of pay for pardons scheme. what more have you learned? >> that's right, chuck. it was heavily redacted. but in just what we could learn, we learned as recently as august 25th and perhaps far before that, there's been an investigation that involves, at least tangentially, prescribes that people were trying to pay to senior white house officials in order to get some kind of pardon.

it's not clear who these people were and what investigation this spun out of, but the chief justice here at the d.c. court, the d.c. federal court said they could no longer protection some of these communication under attorney/client privilege. and as i look further into this, chuck, they have seized terabytes of information off of 50 different digital devices. this is a large seizure which makes me think it is quite a broad investigation. what's critical here is that no one has been named which means there's probably been no one charged or indicted by a grand jury on this and no white house officials are being investigated as part of this. that is what the justice department has said. so it could very well be that they were approached, but it doesn't seem that they have actually come into the crosshairs of the investigators who are leading this case. it came at the end of a very interesting day, the justice department. this is justice department investigators looking into a tie to this white house shortly

after what william barr said which clashed with what the president said on the election fraud. it was the cap at the end of the day to show that this justice department does still have a backbone and will continue these investigations despite things we've seen recently like the pardoning of michael flynn or the dropping of a roger stone prosecution. >> let me ask you about the durham news. did you get a good explanation of why the attorney general chose yesterday as the day to announce his actions from october? we know why they weren't done before october. that's the type of action, if you're appointed special counsel and you're too close to the president, you take action. but he specifically chose yesterday to come out with this. was that a coincidence? >> it seems he had this scheduled interview with the associated press and he chose this time primarily because he

wanted to put out -- he wanted to dispel any myths that said he was letting durham go bigger. he didn't want the news of the special counsel designation to leak out in a way he couldn't control. and he wanted to be very specific that durham is only looking at the origins of the probe, that crossfire hurricane investigation that we know of, meaning fbi officials getting involved. he's not getting into what we think of as the mueller probe. he's really looking at the very early days. and i think that was bar's reason for the interview, for coming out with the news, but then of course he was asked about the election and the interview got even bigger than that. but i think the reason he wanted to talk about durham was so he could say i'm naming him special prosecutor, but i'm not widening his scope. >> what they're investigating has so nothing to do with what actually happened in 2016, it is

just one of these things. it is mind boggling and an abdication of actually justice. thank you all for getting us started up ahead. the uk has just approved the pfizer vaccine and they ordered 40 million doses. some folks out there will get vaccinated as early as next week. will this push the fda and the u.s. to move faster? and later, the coronavirus hot spots face ago patient surge and bracing for even more. i felt like... ...i was just fighting an uphill battle in my career. so when i heard about the applied digital skills courses, i'm thinking i can become more marketable. you don't need to be a computer expert to be great at this. these are skills lots of people can learn. i feel hopeful about the future now. ♪

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learn more at xfinitymobile.com. and right now, it is so important that we recommit ourselves to this mitigation as we now begin to turn the corner with the vaccine. but the reality is december and january and february are going to be rough times. i actually believe they're going to be the most difficult time in the public health history of

this nation. largely because of the stress that is going to put on our health care system. >> robert redfield, cdc director issuing a warning he's been issuing for months about this dark, dark period that we are in just as the light at the end of tunnel of vaccines is coming up. so we are back. that was, are, of course, robert redfield this morning. and the white house task force has issued a dire warning to state officials in its most recent report which isn't made public. it has to be leaked saying the risk to americans is at a historic high and that, quote, we are in a very dangerous place due to the extremely limited -- this document which had to be object stained not shared with the public voluntarily warns about an impending surge after the thanksgiving holiday. this comes as nearly 100,000 people are hospitalized.

it's a grim milestone that we will likely mark and there's a grim milestone that the days ahead of us may likely be the end of the pandemic. the uk has become the first to approve pfizer's vaccine. they have shortened the recommended quarentine period if you've been exposed to the virus but tested negative. let me start with the london news. joining us now is richard engle and richard, with the news in the uk, obviously, this is something, you know, there's a little bit of a which one approves first race or at least that's how the uk and i think

president trump viewed things. what do we know about what has been approved and how quickly it will get distributed there and how many more vaccines they will be approving in the uk? >> so there is obviously a political element to this. prime minister boris johnson just gave a briefing to some of his top advisers. this is a happy day for his government, a happy day for this golf, a happy day for the world opinion but in listening to the details of his press briefing as he was describing how this distribution process would take place in practical terms, it is complicated. the vaccine needs to be kept at ultra low temperatures for storage. that means the distribution is frankly very difficult. that means the vaccines comes in bundles of hundreds of doses and they have the distribution

authority to give them out to people, but they don't exactly have the authorization yet to break up those bundles. so that means they can only stockpile and give out the vaccines in places where they need to give them at hundreds of doses per time. so they're going to start in hospitals which have cold storage facilities. but if you have a pal end with hundreds of vaccines, they don't have the ability to break it apart and go, we're going to send five douses here and ten doses there. at least at first. so the first phase will be prioritizing patients 80 or older in facilities. after that, to care homes and then after going -- then there's a system going down the line where it is given out in batches depending on age group with people over 80 first and then over 75 and over 70 all the way

down to 50. but listening to the statistic yag analysis in this country, they're going to struggle with this. he thinks this is a months long process at the very least, that it's not going to be in pharmacies here until at least january and he's warning people not to think that we're out of the woods yet, that this is going to be a long, slow process. and it probably is going to be even more complicated in the u.s. just given the population, the divisions and the geography, frankly. >> richard, you also talked to the ceo of biontech.

what did they tell you how things stood for them, both in the united states and the uk? >> so the head of -- we call it the pfizer fax even generally. that's how it's referred to in this country, as well. it was developed in partnership with a german pharmaceutical company called biontech. the main scientists at that firm are a husband and wife pair. their turkish origins, muslims, there is a whole issue there for that community, a community that has often faced a lot of communication. he believes this is the beginning of the pandemic. we have a tool, we have a weapon to fight back against covid. but he also said it's going to take a long time.

it's going to take months before enough of the vaccine is out before we start to see our lives return to go normal. so a positive day. but we got a glimpse into the challenges that they're going the face in this country unwrapping the bundles of a vaccine because they have to be kept at a cold temperature and they don't want to waste any of them. so they want to make sure they have them protected, at least in the initial doses to get the most vulnerable people at least over 80 to hospitals and then to care homes. >> richard engle in london for us with that. dr. englesby, based on what you heard there, richard sort of telling us exactly how the uk was explaining the rollout, if it's going to take a country that is a lot smaller than ours months to do this, what does that foretell for us?

>> well, we've been hearing all along that it is going to take us many, many, many months to get vaccine to all americans. i do think we'll be close to the uk in terms of the time that we'll start. it's possible that vaccination will start next week. if the fda moves forward and believes the vaccine is safe and effective. we hope we will have a second vaccine by the end of december. but in the beginning, it will be tens of millions of people, hopefully 21 million people by the end of december. that's ambitious, but that's the hope. and then something more like 30 million a month after that. so if you do the math, that takes a while to get around the country. we're going to start with the highest priority groups and work

from there. >> does it surprise you the uk approved the pfizer vaccine before the fda? >> they do have a history of moving quickly. their process is to review the data as it comes along. so it's a little bit more back and forth. i don't think it's -- in terms of regulatory timelines, the difference of a week i think is very small. i do think by the time they get their vaccination program going, it will be similar in terms of timing. but i think it's a good sign that regulators, it is a good sign for us that our fda will hopefully conclude the same. >> so meanwhile, we got a leaked

dire warning from the task force which to me is just unbelievable that it's not made public. are we living the worst case scenario right now? >> well, i mean, it's difficult to say. it could get worse. it already is among the worst days that we've had since the start of the pandemic. the number of cases is extraordinary. the number of deaths reported in the last 24 hours is close to the highest number we've had since the beginning and we haven't really even experienced the spread of thanksgiving yet in those numbers, which we won't know really for the next couple of weeks. so i think it's likely that things are going to get worse from here and that we will have the worse days in front of us before the country begins to get vaccinated. i say likely because it is to some extent still in our hands. things are moving in the wrong

direction and it's going on take a lot of restraint, a lot of diminished social interaction on all of our parts to be able to bring this under control. otherwise the numbers keep going up. >> the cdc decision to basically cut the quarantine recommendations in half, political decision or scientific decision? >> to me, it seems like a scientific decision. all the data that i've heard, presenting and talking about it, i think it's a practical consideration. i think they're still saying the science hasn't changed, but when you look at the balance of it, i think they've concluded at this point that the chances of spreading the disease between day ten and day 14 is very low, perhaps as low as 1%. so they're willing to trade that with a higher chance of people staying in quarantine and the same is true for the seven day recommendation. there's there's a few period of

people who might go on to be contagious. two weeks in quarantine is exhausting for people. if we could get it back to a week, that will be good. >> come on, america, we've just got a couple more months. thank you. up ahead, the next administration. president-elect joe biden is set to introduce more nominees for more key positions, including those responsible for handling the pandemic. ling the pandemic

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welcome back. president-elect joe biden's transition is in full swing after announcing economic positions on tuesday. nbc news has now learned joe biden could announce his health team as soon as next week. what is the health team? that would include an hhs secretary nominee, a cdc director and a covid czar. president-elect will be participating in a virtual round table of small business owners and workers impacted by the pandemic. nbc news correspondent on all things biden, mr. mike mimely. mike, the thing that jumps out at me the most in this reporting is some jobs are all -- some jobs are forced to be open on january 20th and some jobs, you don't have to vacate on january 20th.

cdc is one of those. but joe biden plans on nominating a new cdc director. that is not always a necessity in that the cdc is kind of like the fbi and cia. they can stay on if they want. >> yeah, that's right. there are a number of positions like that across government. there's a number of them, as well. the "new york times" saying christoph christopher wrey would keep on in that position. biden is coming into this focused so heavily throughout the campaign. he's worked closely during the transition to make sure that's very front of mind. especially with the lack of coordination, it's understandable why the biden team was already considering its own names for that position here. so along with jeff bennet and peter alexander, some of the

names we're hearing at least as far as the hhs secretary, vivac murphy, he was the head and is the head of biden's pandemic task force. also gina ramundo, the governor of rhode island, she's been in the mix for several cabinet jobs that biden considered for that position. and then for this role of koitd czar, we had a lot of czars as you remember in the early days of the obama administration, less so in the early days of the obama administration. but this is one they want to have a person who can work across agents and with the cabinet, as well. that is looking to be jeff saenz. he's heavily involved in the transition. he's one of the top officials in it. but he will be memorable to folks as the person who served in several positions in the obama administration, including the man to come in to fix the healthcare.g

healthcare.gov debacle. >> he is known as one of the fixers, basically like ron complain. my guess is because ron complain has another job, it's why he's not the covid czar. one name you left out that we had been hearing a lot about for these positions, particularly for the health position, the governor of new mexico, michelle luan grisham, what happened there? >> her name, another one of those names who was in the mix there for the vp slot in the summer and somebody who biden has been considering for a number of positions, but we're told that for -- not quiet sure why. it's unclear if that's because there was another position they were hoping she would take or if there are some issues as they continue to do the vetting of everybody involved. but at least for now, hhs, not so much. >> mike, thanks very much.

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i trust 'em. i think you can too. call now! welcome back. a flurry of new reporting the last day has given us a new look at how the white house and trump is facing a new transition. president trump is looking at pardons for his family. we learned yesterday the department of justice has opening an investigation into the potential bribery for pardon schemes, sort of a quid pro quo if you will. while the scheme involves presidential pardons, the heavily redacted documents do not name president trump or any other individual as being involved yet. and a justice department official told nbc news that no government officials are implicated in the filing. also over at the doj, attorney

general bill barr has set up an appointment to outlast his tenure giving special tatus to john durham. both of these stories have raised many legal questions about the scope of presidential power. so we're lunching to our expert on these things. joining me now is ben whittis. ben, i have a whole bunch of pardon questions so i want to get to durham discussion out of the way first, actually. so his status as special counsel, what power does the next attorney general have in overseeing that special counsel investigation? do they get to end it? do they get to neuter it, do they get to shape it or do they have to just deal with this until it's done? >> so probably in practical terms, the latter. the durham appointment as the

special counsel was quite irregular in that the special counsel rules specifically say that the appointment of the special counsel has to come from outside the justice department. and john durham is, of course, inside the justice department. he's the u.s. attorney for connecticut. so what barr did was he appointed him not under those rules, but then applied the other rules to that appointment. so it's a very tricky thing that br barr did and had way he did it may set up an opportunity for his predecessor to say this is inappropriate. i think the political appreciate not to remove the especially prosecutor will be very high. so i think what barr is counting on here is quite apart from whether you could legally get rid of this investigation or narrow it, because the terms of

the appointment order are extremely broad, he's basically saying -- he's basically saying i dare you to try. >> let's go to the pardon situation. and it seems as if there is a lot of questions we don't know the answer to because it's never been tried before, right? so i guess the question is, it doesn't seem as if there's an easy answer on number one, whether the president can pardon himself, and number two, whether he can issue a preemptive pardon not for a future crime, but for maybe future charges. >> well, how would you decipher this? >> one is much clearer than the other. the president certainly can issue a preemptive pardon for

uncharged conduct. that's the nixon pardon, right? nixon had not been charged with anything and gard gerald ford pardons him from any crime he committed while he was in office. that effectively removed the scrutiny of the special prosecutor's office from richard nixon. that is effectively also what the president did for michael flynn the other day. he pardoned him not merely for the done duct for which he was charged but for anything else they might dream about charging him for. now so i don't doubt for a minute that the president could preemptively pardon his kids, his son-in-law and his lawyer. i do think there could be a tacit admission in doing so and in their accepting such a pardon that they had something to fear

from the criminal law, however. >> yeah, well, the pr aspect is one thing. it will be interesting how many of these community chest and chance card he, if you will, of those get of of jail free cards, how many of them will he put in his back pocket. anyway, thank you for your expertise. up next, we're going to check in on one of the country's hardest hit coronavirus hot spots. virus hot spots. ♪ ♪ you're all, you're all i need ♪ ♪ you're all, you're all i need ♪ ♪ as long as i got you then baby ♪ ♪ you know that you've got me, oh! yea...♪ ♪ ♪ you kn[ twig snaps ] got me, oh!stop!..♪

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the latest white house task force is warning of new surging in texas. rates are soaring. on november 22nd report says the state is seeing an unsustainable increase in mitigation measures. but some parts of the state are showing signing of improvement. in el paso the situation is improving but it was after weeks of hospitalizations. doctors warn that a uptick in cases could soon surge. dr. edward michael sop son at t tech. just paint a picture for us. what are you dealing with right now, your hospital system, how

importantly how about staffing, how is jr. staff holding up. >> chuck, thank you for having me on. we are see m sog improvement, thank goodness, here in el paso. i think we hit our peak about a month ago. that 1100 included patients in about of 00 additional beds that we created in our hospital system over the last five to six weeks. so we just about hit the peek. >> what is typical. right now, if it were not for the pandemic, what would be a typical amount of beds that would be full this time of year versus what the pandemic has

added to the load. >> typical numbers for us now are probably more like 500 to 600 patients rather than 850. another number that concerns me is icu patients. we're around 300 patients hospitalized with covid-19 in icu and about 200 of those are on ventilators. that is an extrod gnarly high number. the other is the big decline in emergency room events. they're staying away and i think they're staying away because frankly they afraid to come to the hospital because of the covid patients. >> dr., i will tell you as somebody who is having a battle with kidney stones about a month ago, i normally would have gone to the emergency room and i

didn't do it. i cuttgutted it out for that re. i wasn't in a life threatening mode, but i get that. let me ask about your staffing. you talk about having extra beds you had to create. how thin is jr. staffing ranks and how concerned are you making it to the end of the year? >> it is one thing to have beds, another thing to have the staff to work those beds. we have birdie fortunate in el paso. i'm thankful that the surge came sooner than other cities. we have been the recipient of 1300 to 1400 traveling nurses, respiratory therapists, that all came to help us staff those beds. >> i'm very curious, have you got a briefing? are you going to be a place that is mopg the hospitaamong those

receive a vaccine? >> i hope so. i will be one of the first to receive the vaccine. i want all of my crew, nurses, physicians, residents to be among the first. we have to be healthy to take care of everyone else into we have plans in place to get everybody safe. >> you think we may have passed your peak, are you confident of that given thanksgiving? >> thanksgiving is the big wild card, not only thanksgiving, but also black friday. black friday could end up with a whole new meaning this year depending on the number of cases we see in the next week to 10 days. i hope our numbers continue to go down. the number of people testing positive is also on the decline.

it is as high as 24% just a few weeks ago. i'm really hoping that people do the right thing over the holidays, that they maintain their social distancing so we don't see a new rise on top of the surge going forward. >> it certainly shows you where we are when we're celebrating a 13% positivity rate. that used to freak us out. we appreciate you coming out and sharing your perspective with us. >> you got it, we have more "meet the press daily." katy tur is after the break. katy tur is after the break. so when i heard about the applied digital skills courses, i'm thinking i can become more marketable.

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