a very good tuesday morning to all of you. i am alex witt witness here in new york. we are juggling several breaking stories, including a major sign of relief for your wallet.

a new report out shows inflation slowed again last month and at a faster rate than expected. in the last few minutes, president biden took a victory lap. >> it's going to take time to get inflation back to normal levels as we make the transition to a more stable and steady growth, but we can see setbacks along the way as well. we shouldn't take anything for granted. what is clear is my economic plan is working and we're just getting started. >> this moment, what the report means for the federal reserve as they meet tomorrow to weigh another hike in interest rates. and then the hearing on the collapse of cryptocurrency giant, ftx, but the man that is supposed to be front and center is not there, and instead sam bankman-fried is appearing in

the bahamian courtroom after he was indicted on eight counts including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. i will speak with a man that interviewed him just before his arrest. plus, the department of energy announced scientists have achieved the so-called holy grail of clean energy. >> scientists at the national ignition facility achieved fusion ignition, simply put, this is one of the most impress impressive scientific feats of the 21st century. >> and we will get to that. but we begin with the breaking news, a fall from grace for the so-called king of crypto. sam bankman-fried, the founder of ftx is expected to appear in

a bahamian courtroom after the u.s. filed criminal charges. sam bankman-fried was oerg straighting a massive year's long fraud diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform's customer funds to help grow his crypto empire. with me, nbc's tom winter outside the attorney general's office in new york, and also the reporter that recently interviewed sam bankman-fried. tom, what do we know about what is going to happen in the bahamian courtroom? and then the new indictment from the southern district of new york? >> reporter: he is expected to be in the bahamian court where there will be an extradition

hearing, and if he doesn't fight extradition or if they rule he should come to new york to face the charges perhaps as soon as this afternoon in this court house or one of the ones behind me, he will be here and will have an opportunity to be before a judge and they will decide if he should be released on bail or not. that could happen as soon as today, and it could not happen until tomorrow or a few days after that. we will have to see how things proceed in the courtroom in bahamas. eight counts tied to money laundering, and conspiracy dealing with stocks and a civil complaint that says that they found sam bankman-fried may have commingled funds belonging to people that put funds into ftx, and some of those funds could have been put in the campaign coffers of several politicians,

and that's something that could be more in garrett's world and something he will have to deal with as the day progresses. back to the charges here, basically the prosecutors and sec saying this guy took a ton of money from people that invested in the company and invested in what they thought they were buying into, different types of cryptocurrency, and instead of the money going there some of the funds went into, allegedly, according to the indictment in the sec complaint, went into a company called alameda, which was a private hedge fund controlled by sam bankman-fried, which goes against what he stated, that he did not have direct control over all this, and that they put their money into highly liquid assets when those prices became depressed, and they had effectively a run on the bank and it would be just this simple, and it would be like if

you and i put our money into a bank that garrett owned and instead of garrett owning that money, he put it into other things invested in, and other personal expenditures, and it's a long-winded way of saying they are calling him and the entire company effectively a scam -- >> garrett, spf was supposed to testify before the financial -- >> i can't believe tom would call out my lavish real estate holdings. he has been open about his views on what went wrong, including taking some culpability for it

in the interviews, in some cases against the advice of his council, and now the current ceo is at the hearing, john ray, and he was from the enron scandal, and he was brought in after the fact to try and clean things up and he testified to the fact that what he found there was a disaster of corporate government -- governance. here's what he said about the private hedge fund when he became part of the company. >> the operations of the ftx group were not segregated, and it was operated as one company. as a result, there's no distinction virtually between the operations of the company and who controlled those operations. >> reporter: so we're getting into more of the fact finding

here about what ray found when he took over as ceo, kind of the state of the play and the state of the books at ftx. and to tom's other point, the long political coattails to the scandal, and ftx was a major campaign donator to democrats, and they don't want to be associated with ftx or sam bankman-fried, but we certainly have not heard the last of the political implications of the scandal, particularly with the republicans taking over at the beginning of the year. >> yeah. thank you for that. steven, you just spoke with sam bankman-fried yesterday, and huh have a draft of what he planned to say, and he said, while ftx international had a team dedicated to financials, it did

not have a team for risk management or user monitoring. having obtained his planned testimony, what else was he planning to say? >> right, alex, and thank you for having me. it's hard to imagine that a company like ftx that operates in the industry as volatile and unrelated as crypto did not have a strong in-house team, and he spent zero time on risk management is at the very least a dare election of duty. a lot of what else he was going to say is really blaming a lot of other people for the predicament he finds himself in, while at the same time trying to take responsibilities and split hairs there. he claims he was pressured into

filing for bankruptcy, for resigning as ceo, that that was not necessarily the right move for the company, which is something that mr. ray is saying this morning in front of the financial services committee, and he believes the umbrellas are fully solvent and would be able to redeem all customer liabilities tomorrow, if they could. and something else i found in the draft testimony that i found was pretty fascinating, is he claims to have multiple signed letters of intent from perspective investors that would recap and that money would go to customers, but he claims he has one. one other thing, too, that i did find kind of interesting, just near the end he talks a little

bit how all this impacted him personally. he has been on anti-depressants for years, and despite his world-wide profile and his strong media public relations campaign, he seems to be a sad and isolated individual, which is something there as well. >> on a level of incompetentcy, he said he f'd up. >> i am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice but i have to imagine the sec and scc and snyd are not going to accept the

oops, i made a mistake and wish i had done better defense. millions of customers have been affected and i can't imagine that would be acceptable. >> and the allegations of moving that currency. thank you. and we just got the report from the government, the report that is used to track inflation, and it shows inflation cooled coming in at 7.1% in november. and the fed is meeting, and stocks this morning are rallying on the news of the lighter than expected report. let's take a look right now where the dow stands. here we are, an hour and a half and change in the trading day, and maybe we don't need to see -- oh, there we are. that's good. up 236 points. and we have morgan brennan and ben white.

thank you for joining us. morgan, walk us through these numbers. 7.1 is still a high figure. we know that. what does it mean for our wallets? >> 7.1 is still a high figure. the way i put this is the war against inflation continues to be waged and certainly has not been won, and the offensive launched is beginning to have an impact. the fact that this is a second straight month where you see the pace of inflation growth begin to moderate, and 7.1 is still incredibly high, but we saw energy prices fall, and gasoline prices fell 2% in november, and that more than offset of what we saw rising food costs with food costs up 10.5%, versus a year ago. things like used vehicles where we saw huge price spikes because of the pandemic-induced supply

chain disruptions, but where the bankers are focused, they are meeting for the next two days, and that has been harder in terms of prices starting to moderate and come down. housing, shelter costs, which is a big part of cpi registered and increased in this report, and we are seeing rent prices start to come off. the one good thing i would say for workers, you saw wage gains fall short of the pace of inflation, and what is good for workers may not be so good from a policy maker standpoint, and central bankers are going to be focused on that now. >> i know you say that, and that stands true, and from the wage workers, they are thinking it's good for me and i don't know how

it's bad for everybody else, but let's go to that, and let's take a listen to the president's remarks on inflation. >> when do you expect prices to get back to normal, mr. president? >> i hope by the end of next year, and i can't make that prediction. i am convinced they are not going to go up. >> to get there where does the inflation number need to be for things to start to feel normal again? >> yeah, it's interesting to hear a president issue his inflation prediction. obviously he wants it to come down and it's not a traditional question a president will answer because they obviously don't have any idea. where it needs to get, it was a narrow summary on where we are, and 7.1 is still high and troubling to people, and it needs to get to the fed around 2% annually is their target and we are nowhere close to that.

this gives room to the fed to say we can go to a smaller cut tomorrow, and they announce it at 50 basis points, and then 25 and then a few more after that and then get close to normal. their path is what biden has in mind, and it's wages, really. that's the problem. it's great that wages are going up, and we need more people go into the labor force to get wages going up in a sustainable way and not inflationary way. >> you can say we expect more in 2023. let me get more to housing and the rental is sky high, and when do you expect relief to come here and will that impact the fed's decision tomorrow? >> yeah, no, i mean, they are still high. we are seeing signals as you mentioned in the report that they are going down. the housing market is feeling the weight of the fed's hikes, and so housing in general is

going down and rents will see some relief going forward. it's going to take more time. these hikes, alex, take a long time to work through the system. the fed is thinking about next year, now, and what the impact of all the hikes will be, and we have not seen the full impact yet, but it's coming. so i would expect a few more hikes so we don't get in recession. >> thank you so much. coming up, new moves from the special council investigating former president trump. what we are learning about the subpoenas from his office. and then what is being called the holy grail of energy. and then where folks are digging out and where more heavy snow and even tornadoes could be on the way. >> going to hunker down and pray

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well, this morning the energy department is talking about a major break through that is quote, the holy grail of clean energy. second granholm confirmed for the first time, a net energy gain, so that means it creates more energy than it takes to produce it. the break through technology uses powerful lasers to fuse hydrogen atoms together, and this means we could be just decades away from an unlimited power source that uses zero fossil fuels, at least that is what scientists are hoping.

this is a big deal, josh. talk about what we are learning about and what it could mean politically speaking for one of the president's biggest priorities, which is tackling climate change? >> it took billions of dollars and decades of research, but scientists were finally able to accomplish the nuclear fusion. it took place a week ago monday, just after 1:00 a.m. at the lawrence livermore national laboratory out in california, and when you zoom back to what this could potentially mean in the future, we're already moving to take all of the things that we do in our life from heating our homes to powering our cars and move them to electricity, rather than burning things like gasoline, and if we can derive that electricity, we could power all of our human needs using this source of energy that,

again, does not create the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to the warming of the planet. energy secretary, jennifer granholm, calling it a bfd as she announced this the morning and what made it possible. >> today we tell the world america has achieved a tremendous scientific break through, one that happened because we invested in our national labs, and we invested in fundamental research. >> so here the big grain of salt, and scientists were able to do it for a tiny fraction of a second and they can only use that laser once per day, and in order to scale this up into a situation that could power our human needs is likely to take decades of more research, and officials saying we are talking about decades, but not five or six decades, so more than years

but less than a century until we can see this as a plausible source of energy for all our human needs. >> let alone the money it will take, and can you understand why scientists are so excited right now? >> well, the thing really is, they have been trying -- we have been trying to do this since the 1950s, right. we only learned how the sun generates energy somewhere back in the 1930s, that basically you are taking light elements like hydrogen and using the sun's enormous gravitational force to squeeze them together, and fuse them together and create helium and so in the '50s people started to talk about this would be a great way to generate

energy on earth and they have been trying every since then, and there is a joke in science, fusion, it's 20 years away. the amazing thing about this announcement is we have done it, human beings have actually re-created on earth the energy generation mechanism that occurs in the sun, and we are tapping cosmic forces to generate energy. turning that into a electricity generating station, we are a long way from that, but as you said, this is the threshold you have to cross in order to make fusion occur in the laboratory in a sustainable way. that was the thing people couldn't do, so this was a milestone that we achieved today. >> they put up the formula to do it, and not withstanding the money it will take, adam, what are the hurdles to get to where

we could power entire cities with this at some point? >> yeah, yeah. listen, once we get to the generator stage, that's it for fossil fuels. once we can generate an energy, we will have all the energy we need and more that is absolutely, you know, no pollution and completely sustainable. so to get there now is really an engineering problem. it will take a considerable amount of work. we proved you can do it. now doing it in a way that you can generate -- you can build a generating station and use this, there's an enormous amount of engineering to get there, and a lot of scientific problems to solve. the important part is that it could be done. >> sounds like all systems are go, though. big green light on this one. thanks, guys. up next, millions of americans spent the morning shoveling and shivering, and we

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a massesive storm system continues its march across the country impacting millions of americans. the powerful storm is right now hammering the midwest with snow, slick roads causing vehicles to overturn in north dakota, and then in the south, tornadoes destroyed homes and knocked out power. the storm system is pushing east. joining me now, nbc's maggi vesspa from minneapolis and our chief meteorologist, bill karins. >> reporter: you can see behind me we are basically in a salt and sand yard. the mountain of salt and sand is getting ready to go out on the streets, and i want to take you now south to the biggest headlines to emerge from the storm system this morning. we are seeing reports of tornadoes and damage from the

tornadoes in oklahoma and in texas. some of the video of damage especially striking this morning. we had a shelter in place alert go out at dallas fort worth airport earlier today, just speaking to the strength of the storm. and all the way north up to the dakotas, we had icy streets and cars overturning, and then in utah we saw a bus crash, this probably won't surprise a lot of people these days, and this is wreaking havoc with air travel in the u.s. 1,300 -- more than 1,300 delays this morning, nationwide, and hundreds of cancelations. we saw similar numbers yesterday, which was day two of that chaos in cities across the country. state officials asking people, even if you are used to winter

storms, take this one seriously and depending on where you live, potentially be prepared to hunker down at home. >> i heard one man say being out on the roads was like driving on a ice rink. it was horrible. bill, what about you? >> today it has been an overachiever with the damage in wayne, oklahoma, and then the blizzard will develop and get to its peak later this afternoon. the tornadoes, we had two reports, one in wayne, oklahoma, and one near dallas, forth worth. anywhere that is the pinkish area, from texarkana through waco, these storms are east of sherman. you notice that line. dallas, you are in the clear now

and the storms are well to your east, but this will roll along interstate 30, and large hail, and damaging winds and isolated tornadoes. 17 million people are at risk, and this afternoon is our chance of getting strong tornadoes and it's the area of the orange inside the yellow that is the greatest risk, all the way through jackson mississippi. a lot of this will occur after dark, so nocturnal tornadoes are very dangerous and scary and that will be happening this evening. at the same time, everywhere in blue here, you have blizzard warnings, and winds are gusting up to 50 miles per hour in nebraska with heavy snow, and then an ice storm warning, and so as far as the snow goes, we expect one to two feet in areas of the dakotas and nebraska. finally, alex, looks like we are on track for a nor'easter thursday into friday, still a

rain event for big events, and some areas will deal with ice around west virginia and northern virginia. we have 3 1/2 days, alex, of very dangerous weather. >> grateful for the heads up so we can prepare properly. thank you both. the special council appointed at the doj to investigate former president trump is turning up with new subpoenas. raffensperger said he received a subpoena dated december 9th, and it asks the top official in georgia to provide documents. and nbc confirmed last month owe officials in clark county, nevada, were to provide documents to the fbi. joining me now, msnbc legal

analysts, lisa ruben, and carol. donald trump called raffensperger demanding to find votes to reverse the biden win. >> alex, i think what's really important about these subpoenas and these requests for records and or testimony is twofold. first, obviously the special council is digging in to getting the records and communications of the fake elector scheme for donald trump and his allies, and this has been an inquiry for a large part of the year. what we could see it began in earnest early in 2022. a review of this information,

subpoenaed testimony, and here the special counsel is saying i want all of the baseline information about what happened in terms of communications with key officials in swing states that donald trump targeted -- personally targeted as places where he could try and claim fraud on the election and therefore block the actual certification of joe biden as the president-elect and the next president of the united states. the second important thing about these requests is they come, like, literally days after a special counsel, jack smith, was named to this office, so as attorney general merrick garland pledged, jack smith is wasting no time trying to dig into this matter. he's not reading a bunch of briefs and figuring out what should i do and scratching his chin? his office and team still forming and building up and are

already in the trenches hunting for that material. >> he's living up to his reputation. that's for sure. and clark county, the subpoenaed communications between june of 2020 and january of 2021, and demanding records related to 19 trump allies, and they include rudy giuliani and sidney powell and eastman. >> i am reading that, alex, as the special counsel and his staff are trying to collect more evidence of potentially two crimes or more. and one is the conspiracy to defraud the united states, and the other is conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, and that's the vote count on january 6th. one way we know they tried to accomplish this already is by acting the alternate slate of

electors to meet and send fake certifications to the national archives and congress. another way they tried to achieve their objectives was to contact officials in various states and counties where donald trump thought that he could claim fraud and or move the margin of victory, as he told brad raffensperger on that infamous call, all i need is 11,700 votes. and then they are all attorneys acting in a volunteered capacity for the trump campaign, with one exception, bill stepien, who was the political director of the white house, and all the other names on that list, i recognize from other states or e-mails we have seen before. >> okay. this next question has a big wind-up, but we are talking about talking points memo, which this morning obtained text

messages turned over to the house committee earlier this year by mark heados. they showed meadows in conversations with 34 members of congress with plans to overturn the election, and these texts have not yet been verified by nbc news, and they could be missing context, and nbc reached out and has not heard back. that said, in one text sent to meadows after the insurrection, days before biden's inauguration, and one says our last hope is invoking martial law. meadows did respond to andy biggs, who is running for house speaker in the next congress, and what should we expect from

the final report next week from the committee? >> what i think is most intriguing. we have been interested, of course, in the texts from the former chief of staff to donald trump was sending in a flury before january 6th, two to three weeks before the rally, and then the day of and the days after. the days before are so compelling in this little tranche because they are about members of congress who were trying to help donald trump continue to spread the big lie, which was completely baseless, that there was fraud in the election. everyone should keep in mind the attorney general that donald trump trusted with his future, with his political fortunes, bill barr, cautioned donald trump every investigation they had done look into fraud was bologna, that none of it was true, and all of the claims of

fraud were false, and none of the instances of fraud would have changed the actual margin of victory, as you said earlier, before, would not have changed the results, and biden was the clear winner barr told trump multiple times. and republicans are engaging with the white house on how they can help block the peaceful transfer of power. and then norman misspells martial law in a dramatic way, and that was a claim that mike flynn, the former national security adviser urged the president to take, and he said we could rerun the election in swing states, and seize the voting machines after martial law, and that's not how it takes place, and that is what was being pushed. these communications may form

the basis for a very imbariousing sub chapter, essentially, alex, that explains how republican members of congress participated in undermining peoples' faith in democracy, and also basically riled up a crowd that became violent and attacked the capitol. >> taking it all in. it's stunning the way you put it. i will have to let you go, and with my apologies, i had to dot every i and dot ever t in that last question. can congress come to a short term deal to keep the government funded past friday? the latest on the negotiations and whether they can work out a long-term plan before the holidays. ♪ ♪

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the protection of marriage rights. president biden will sign the respect for marriage into law. it codifies recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages. clarence thomas openly questioned the law that legalized same-sex marriage. and joining me is mike memoli. i understand you are learning new details about the ceremony today. what can you tell us? >> this will be one of the larger bill signing events at the white house, and think of the big crowds we saw for the infrastructure law signing or inflation reduction act. the white house feels this is just as significant of an event as they mark the celebration, a commemorations, and there's a

recognition that needs to be more work to be done, and to help highlight that fact will be the owner of club q, and one of the recent episodes we have seen at violence directed at the lgbtq community. what we learned president biden in his remarks today will be highlighting his own role in getting us to this point of marriage equality. think back ten years ago on "meet the press" when then vice president biden got ahead of his boss. >> this is a simple proposition. who do you love? who do you love? will you be loyal to the person you love? that's what people are finding out, what all marriages at the root are about. >> and the real rapid acceleration, and think back ten years ago when so many states banned same-sex marriage, and biden was chairman of the

judiciary committee in the 80s, and that led to a decision in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. another interesting sub plot we are learning about, senator sinema, she is going to be at the white house today. interesting optics as we see the president with her for the first time since that big announcement. >> to be a fly on the wall. and then staring down a friday deadline to pass funding the government. of course time is running out. now majority leader, chuck schumer, is putting members on notice to put together a one-week stop gap bill for funding for the full year. and let's go to ali vitali from

the hill. >> here's how senator mcconnell put it. watch. >> we need to fully fund our national defense at the level written into the nda without -- without lavishing extra funding -- >> you hear him there saying without, and that's because the republican view on this is that democrats already did a lot of domestic policy priorities through the inflation reduction act that's why we're hearing ths 26 billion dollar number as the sticking point between both parties. so what we're seeing now in these waning days until friday,

that technical data when government funding would run out, is the machinations are happening for them to do a one-week stopgap measure. give themselves a little bit more time. we're hearing optimism out of the talks, at the same time, what are the top line number, committees don't know what they're trying to count up to in terms of budgeting and funding. so they're still kind of in the early stages of this. even as they try to haggle down to what this could actually look like. nevertheless, all the jokes about sunny christmas in the capital get a little more serious as each day goes by, alex. >> but a few christmas eve, new year's eve in the capital. thank you so much, ali vitale. hopefully not for you. coming up. with just a few hours away from kickoff in the world cup semifinal between argentina and croatia. we're gonna take you to doha to preview the big game next. w the big game nt.ex derate to severe eczema still disrupts my skin. despite treatment it disrupts my skin with itch. it disrupts my skin with rash. but now, i can disrupt eczema with rinvoq.

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if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, or if you have kidney or liver problems, including hepatitis. if you have hepatitis b, do not stop taking biktarvy without talking to your doctor. common side effects were diarrhea, nausea, and headache. if you're living with hiv, keep loving who you are. and ask your doctor if biktarvy is right for you. you might take something for your heart... your joints... or your digestion... so why wouldn't you take something for the most important part of you... your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. >> down to the final four. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. we're just about two hours or so away from the first semifinal match one of the most

unpredictable world cups ever. this afternoon, croatia, the 2018 runners sub, taken lionel messi in argentina. we're going straight nbc's megan fitzgerald in doha, qatar. where the excitement is building. look, megan, both sides have to be pretty exciting getting to the match today. there is a lot on the line for superstar lionel messi. >> absolutely. look, both teams fired, operated go, at their final practices ahead of tonight's game. they're gonna be taking the page, as you said, in just a matter of two hours. but yeah, a lot of pressure on lionel messi. will he be able to lead argentina to that world cup title? at 35 years old. there is some speculation, will this be the last time we see him at a world cup tournament? of course, the next one in 2026. you take a look at argentina. they were one of the team's favorite to win all. they came through this world cup tournament with this massive upset with saudi arabia. saudi arabia defeating argentina. one of the biggest upsets we've

ever seen in world cup history. then they narrowly beat the netherlands to advance to the semifinals. that's a game that came out to -- came down to penalty kicks. then you look at croatia. a team who didn't expect to be here. they thought that it would be not really likely that they would beat brazil. they pulled out an upset. fans are pretty pumped. the team is pumped up. what we know for sure in this game and this tournament is that anything is possible. as you said. it's so unpredictable. what we know is that this is probably gonna be really good game tonight. >> yeah, no doubt. he didn't even get to tomorrow with france and morocco. come on. it has been really just a stunner. >> exactly. >> so much to look forward to. keeping you on the job. you are stuck there in doha for a while. thank you so much, megan fitzgerald. and that does it for me this hour. you can always catch me weekend starting at noon eastern. meantime, andrea mitchell reports as of next. with her interview, her exit interview with the one and only doctor anthony fauci.

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interdimensional ports, text messages from house republicans to trump's chief of staff, mark meadows. pushing extreme plots including martial law. to keep president trump in the white house. uncovered by talking points memo. we'll have the details. today's inflation report showing prices rising less than expected. signaling the fed might slow the rate hikes. >> make no mistake. prices are