Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melbert. We have a big show tonight, and we got a lot to get to.

One thing that we know now is Donald Trump has drawn his first official competitor in this primary

election. Nikki Haley is in running against Trump, and in a way, running against her past. Later tonight,

I can tell you, Neil DeGrasse Tyson is here live.

We are definitely going to get into the talk of UFOs, plus what we can learn from science and the

stars. We begin right now with a story that I've told you before is super important, even if you

are accustomed and even somewhat tired of hearing so much about how Mike Pence and Donald Trump are almost maybe somewhat in

trouble. We're talking about special counsel Jack Smith subpoena in the criminal Trump coup probe. Pence

was pressured to steal the election. Now he's using a legal argument to try to get away from having to go under oath.

Politico, breaking the story. Pence, using the Constitution's

speech or debate clause with shields members of Congress from law enforcement scrutiny over,

very specifically, when they speak or debate. Now, Pence was vice president, so he had that

ceremonial role to break the tie in the Senate. It's a ceremonial thing

because he's not a senator. The speech or debate clause bluntly states that it has a protection

for senators and representatives. Now, it's some uncharted legal territory. Many legal experts

say that this argument could succeed. It really depends. There are questions about how far the

protection will extend. He might have a legal claim on speech or debate on the actual time that he was on the floor,

which, of course, was quite limited. Conversations and meetings prior to Jan 6, though,

would obviously not seemingly be protected legally if, again, you're not speaking or debating

on the floor of the Congress. Now, Lindsey Graham had something similar, you might recall.

He was trying to duck testimony in the Georgia criminal probe

about related election interference, including plots that led up to this.

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