Hi everyone, happy Friday. It's 4 o'clock in New York. He has held no press conferences,

done no interviews that we know about. He's elusive. The inner workings of his highly sensitive

assignment remain a bit of a mystery to the viewing public outside of what some journalists

have worked to uncover. So when it comes to the enigmatic special counsel Jack Smith

and his federal investigations plural into Donald J. Trump, it takes an ear to the ground,

both adept and trained to know when real progress is being made. This afternoon trusted voices

suggest it is time to buckle up. Here's why in the days since the federal appeals court

in Washington rejected the ex-presidents bid to block former staffers from testifying

in the January 6 investigation, ex-AIDS have paraded in and out of depositions without fig

leaf protections of executive and attorney client privilege. On Tuesday, as we reported

here, it was ex speech writer Stephen Miller. Late yesterday, it was former DNI John Ratcliffe.

And very soon, it could be the star witness Donald Trump's former vice president Mike Pence

himself. Last week, an adviser to Pence said he would not appeal a court order to testify.

Today, though, an update and his attorneys this morning asked a federal appeals court to

take, quote, immediate action to block Pence's testimony. We'll monitor that decision for

you. It could come down in a matter of days judging by how quickly other such judgments

in this case have been reached so far. But the broader reading of Jack Smith's investigation

remains from the New York Times reporting on this, quote, while questions linger over pending

appeals and potential efforts by some of the witnesses to delay things further by invoking

the Fifth Amendment, the development suggests that Smith is close to finishing the fact-finding

phase of his work and moving closer to a decision about seeking charges against Trump and others.

A potential new stage in the federal investigations into Donald Trump's conduct before, during

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