a legal limbo has been hellish for kate. her life is on the line, she's been in and out of the emergency room and she couldn't wait any longer, that's why she left the state and moments ago, wolf, the texas supreme court issued a ruling that was put in by ken paxton and requested by ken paxton last friday and essentially what this boils down to is that if kate cox had stayed here in texas, the supreme court was going to rule that they were going to overturn the legal permission she got from the state judge on thursday. so the bottom line is if she wanted this abortion, she had no choice but to leave the state of texas. >> thank you very much. interviewers, thanks for watching. erin burnett out front starts right now. outfront next, stopping

putin, zelenskyy on his way to the u.s. to make a last-ditch appeal for aid as putin's top critic is now missing. what happened to him and what could new billboards popping up have to do with his disappearance. the supreme court moving fast after the special counsel asked the justices to rule on one of trump's main defenses. a hypocrite? reporting reveals audio of the house speaker slamming the same impeachment strategy he is now pursuing against biden. crucial vote is scheduled for tomorrow. let's go out front. good evening. outfront tonight, russia is celebrating, laughing at the united states, putin is watching the united states fight over funding ukraine and just look at russian state television to see the celebration. >> what's happening in the u.s., is beneficial for us. >> ukraine is losing, russia is winning. this is it. they are funding and weapons

came to an end. >> well done, republicans, they are standing firm, that's good for us. even mitch mcconnell, well done . >> well done, gramps, russia is winning, you say. the fact is this. if washington cuts ukraine eight off, that's huge. it's absolutely huge for putin and will be a huge win for russia. zelenskyy could be at the end of the road in that case which is why he is in washington to make a desperate plea for aid. putin appeared in zero degree temperatures, to show off two new nuclear submarines. they launch one of the biggest attacks on ukraine's capital. there are 18 drones that we are aware of. it follows russia's plans to include for illegally occupied regions of ukraine in their next presidential election. i hate to use the word as

annette election, it's propaganda, any real opposition to putin has already been destroyed. literally so in some cases. look at alexei navalny, his spokesperson said the opposition leader is now missing and he failed to show up at a hearing today. of course, navalny has being held at one of russia's penal colonies. even there, he's been able at times to send out messages which include details about his treatment. most recently, they posted that he's being tortured with his hands twisted behind his back as he is dragged around the prison. and every day, i undergo investigative procedures. but tonight, he is now missing from ik letter six. the facility known as a special

regime penal colony was where he was headed for all we know is he missed a court appearance today. his lawyers have been denied visits and the russian government will not answer any questions. his team said they checked with the special raising connie, but he is not there. now he could be at one of the other reported 30 special regime colonies, some much further way but russia is not saying and a navalny spokesperson is now tonight saying this, the fact that we cannot find him is alarming because last week he became ill in his cell. he became dizzy and laid down on the floor. staff came running, laid alexei down and put him on an iv. in a moment i will speak to maria, who was part of navalny's inner circle. she will share the latest here. new details. but first peyton walsh is outfront live, he's in central ukraine. the president of course headed to the united states to make the final plea for aid. what is the latest where you are? >> make or break really, trying

to get aid flowing again and a palpable sense of anger among troops. this is life and death, not political bargaining. if they don't get aid, their friends will die, their families may live under rock russian occupation. now, with russians on the other side of the river, yes, ukraine we saw how intense likely ones l the selling is on civilian areas. a ghost town, frankly. ukrainian forces using remarkable ingenuity to make up

between the gap of what they thought they would get from the west, and what they can lay their hands on right now but there is a cost there, and it's one that putin is making a great advantage of. here's what we saw in the recent days. out of for sun city, past the bridge, the russians invaded and have hope and anxiety in this work, down on the war. they are making rare advances into russian occupied lands but it's tiny tools, donated drones and small gains. the u.s. is stalling on the big money that ukraine means. i got 10 minutes rest between flights. i never imagined this would be my war. it's the playstation generation directing single use drones.

>> you saying the weather has cleared up and the russians are very aware of this threat and you can see them now. >> this keeps the russians off the road by day and helps ukraine take ground. now, they maneuver towards a russian checkpoint, killing hair, somehow remote. it also, intimate. another price target emerges, their drone units hiding in the red roofed house. the first, taken out by jamming. the second, picks it up. at night, another unit, elsewhere near the city, takes over. thermal imaging helps them find

russians hiding in the woods across the river. a village where ukraine has a valuable foothold. this unit, too, were hunted and uses a cheap device to spot the frequency used by a russian drone. this operator dons a new cloaked as he launches a new drone off the roof. see how it reduces his heat signature, probably invisible to the russians above. the night, the city is no respite for civilians. sirens, yes, but also, a series of russian attack drones. they close on us, it passes over our heads.

antiaircraft guns pierced the blackout. >> erin, the noise, the shelling, picked up again this morning, when we were there and an intensity you would normally hear if two rival armies were duking it out for control of the town but the russians are on the other side of the bank. the town itself, though, ghostly, the maternity hospital, moving underground to keep it's one patient or two patient safe. people constantly looking for ways to fortify their homes, leaving their playgrounds surrounded by barriers. that is the kind of life essentially that ukrainians are looking forward to, if indeed they find themselves living so close to russian occupied forces. fred, we were talking about alexei navalny in the context of those regions . navalny is the chief opposition leader,

and he's been in a penal colony and the team says they don't know where he is. is there any information coming out at all about his whereabouts tonight, fred? >> reporter: you know, erin, there isn't, and one of the things we have to make our viewers aware of is just the difficulties that alexei navalny's, that they are dealing with, because you mentioned that he was supposed to appear at a hearing today in front of a court from the penal colony that he had been an and so far he just didn't show up. the lawyers were told that there was simply a power failure in the jail that he was in but they kept asking questions and in the end, finally the staff of the jail said well he's actually not even on the list anymore as being one of the inmates of this prison and that's when the legal team called around to other colonies like for example the ik-7, which is even harsher and could be one of the places that navalny is supposed to get transferred to and none of them said that alexei navalny was there. of course all of this is cause for grave concern among the people from the anticorruption

foundation it's because he's had those health issues over the past couple of weeks, because they say he fainted in his cell and had to get an iv. there could be several reasons for what is going on right now. one of them, is that it's not unheard of for prisoners as they get transferred, to be out of communication for a while but of course this also coincides, with putin, announcing that he is running for president again on march 17th, and there was action by the anticorruption foundation where they put up billboards trying to dissuade russians from voting for vladimir putin. >> those billboards, obviously caught a lot of attention. thank you so much, fred. maria as part of alexei navalny's inner circle. she helped him uncover who had

poisoned him, as we saw in the documentary, navalny, she has headed negotiations and maria, we so much appreciate your time tonight. so we were just talking about those billboards. do you think navalny disappearance has anything to do with them, and with putin's reelection effort? >> i think so. it's a very likely scenario, if you just look into the timing, he disappeared on tuesday last week and the official elections were announced on thursday and this was also the day when we announced our campaign, our anti-putin campaign and these lovely billboards that say, russia, you can scan the qr code, you will get to our website and this was our fund projects. so of course, putin wants his reelection to be as smooth as possible. he likes his opponents to be

silenced. i think there is a possibility to connect his disappearance to that. >> how is it possible even to get those billboards up? >> that's going to remain our little secret. okay, i will share a little bit, so essentially, we pretended that we are advertising something else and the billboard literally just says russia and some of them say russia, happy new year and there's a qr code and when we submitted them for review, the qr code had a link to one website and when they were actually up and when we are ready to announce, we substituted the link and the link led to a completely different you know, website, and so just a little trick that we played and installed those billboards and a few major

russian cities. >> obviously the creativity that you have long employed to be able to get your message out at all inside russia, maria, do you -- what you think is happening to alexei navalny right now? you talk about him being missing for a week. do you have any sense of where he might be or what might be happening to him, anything at all? >> to be frank, erin, we have no idea and that is the scariest thing about it. there's no way to know that. we had a very good system of at least being able to check on his life on an almost daily basis because he was scheduled to appear in court. his lawyers would visit him and since last tuesday, he stopped showing up in court, and the administration would say that they can't establish a video

link because of the power cut because there is apparently some problems with electricity in the penal colony on the day after, the same thing happen, electricity problems again down the lawyers weren't allowed to come in, they were told to wait in the freezing cold for hours and hours, and at the end of the day they were told that the visiting hours are over and they should come tomorrow. so they waited and waited again, and today was another court hearing where navalny was supposed to be there, and we heard the same story about the power. so this is when we realized that things are serious, and that he has been missing for almost a week. but as i said, the most frightening part of this entire situation is that we have no way of locating him. we have no way of knowing where he is, how he feels, and for that matter, whether he is alive or not. >> which of course is the most difficult question but i have to ask you, do you have any visibility on that? obviously they have put him

through some horrific situations and the penal colony he's already been in, and on top of that, that's a week before, he has gone missing, so two weeks ago, he had health- related situations, and we know the doctors have been called in and they have given him some medication, some treatment an iv. i think we are not allowed to know what exactly happened but we know that it was health- related, and a few days later, he goes missing. and it goes without saying that navalny's life is in great risk. >> maria, thank you very much for taking the time to share all of this with us, thank you. next, the breaking news, a supreme court moving very fast, special counsel smith asked the justices to weigh in on one of

trump's defenses. plus new filing that the house speaker mike johnson, is now moving ahead with an appeasement strategy that he once railed against. >> they openly said and wrote about and spoke about how it might be irreparable damage to the country. new video of north korean leader kim jong un mopped by a group of children. we will tell you what's goining on..

breaking news, the supreme court moving fast saying it would quickly decide if, about whether former president trump can be prosecuted over alleged crimes he committed in august. it comes after special counsel smith requested an expedited hearing by the court. the extraordinary request as smith called it was made after trump argue that his alleged attempt to subvert the election results was that of his official duties as president. the special counsel, really wants to keep the trial date on schedule and in doing that, he wanted to begin in less than three months. that's why he asked the court to resolve this. ty cobb is out right now. special counsel bypassing the

appeals process, asking the supreme court to weigh in on trump's historic prosecution for the first time, they quickly agreed to consider it. they could have taken a lot longer as to whether or not they would even look at it. what does that tell you? >> well, so, i think jack smith has made an argument that has to clear two hurdles. it's got to demonstrate, you know, compelling national interest and it has to be urgent. they are requiring trump to respond by next wednesday, suggest that he has cleared the urgency hurdle, and i think that, i think that is to the credit of the supreme court. i don't think there have been

many cases, where this has been sought that are really more urgent to the nation and certainly, to the constitution than this case. >> so, there is also a new filing from jack smith that we just found out about. in all this, he reveals that his team got access to trump's cell phone. the cell phone he used while at the white house. trump is never to have known from his -- texted from his cell phone. and smith may use data from the phone to show jurors went trump was using twitter on january 6th and the aftermath of the election. we have not known that smith had trump's cell phone data. what do you think about it. how significant is it? >> so, it may or may not be

significant, but the fact that he put it in his filing and put the court on notice, it suggests that he thinks that it's significant. and likely well demonstrate you know, who, if anyone, trump was talking to, who, if anyone he was messaging, and from where in the white house. i think the where is important because remember there's a lot of testimony that he was locked in the dining room base who basically, watching everything unfold on tv. so this would buttress that if it aligns. >> right, and of course, you know, it'll be fascinating to see if he thinks that it is significant. we will find out i suppose. trump declined today at the very last minute to testify in his civil fraud trial in new york. you were someone who said that maybe he wouldn't. you went against conventional

wisdom and you question whether or not he would take the stand. his lawyers said that he would be subject to eviscerating cross-examination. you were right. he didn't do it. but you weren't sure if he would listen to his lawyers and why do you think he did not testify? >> i think, i think, it appears to me that his lawyers, you know kept pounding away on the cost-benefit analysis of him testifying. he really has nothing to add to the evidentiary pile, in this case, at this stage in the game. he's already testified and in an unhinged manner, he made multiple, multiple admissions that severely damaged this case. he was not an effective witness, no matter you know, what the pr is from the other side. certainly, as a legal matter.

and, and, as i said, i think last week, the reality is that if he testifies, he's not going to get cross-examined much on what he's going to say, he will get taken through a litany of all the lies that he's told during the relevant period for this trial and subsequently. and you know, you could do that for days but i'm sure they would probably take the top 40 hits and expose him as someone with no credibility, and that doesn't help him politically. >> it certainly doesn't. he's been using this trial as a political megaphone, showing up when he's not even testifying to get those few seconds outside to talk to the cameras. thanks so much. >> always a pleasure, thank you, erin. uncovering audio from before mike johnson was speaker, when he was slamming what is now his impeachment

strategy. >> the founders were afraid that if politicians ever weaponized that function in the congress, then you would open a pandora's box that couldn't be close. >> plus the israeli prime minister facing questions about whether he allowed hamas to get millions of dollars in donations for r yeyears. it's's a cnn specicial report.t.

tonight, impeaching biden, a key house committee voting on an inquiry against president biden tomorrow. house speaker johnson is moving ahead with votes despite new reporting from cnn's ettore k

file uncovering that johnson once warned that this exact same impeachment strategy, the one that he is now championing, good cause, quote, irreparable damage to the country. so here's johnson, talking about democrats push to impeach a then president trump back in 2019. >> the founding fathers warned us i mean, they feared a single party impeachment, and the reason they said that is because they knew that it would bitterly divide the country, and they openly said and wrote about and spoke about how it might be irreparable damage to the country. the founders were afraid that if politicians ever weaponized that function in the congress, then you would open a pandora's box that couldn't be closed. >> andrew, it's clear how he felt but he didn't just say it

one time, he said it again and again when he was making the argument against the democrats. >> you heard him right there, it would cause irreparable damage the country and four years ago, he was attacking democrats for opening and impeachment inquiry into trump along party lines, with just democratic votes and so close, just 11 months to an election, and that is the exact scenario that he finds himself in right now, as he's pushing ahead with all of this. you heard him say in the clips where he warned about this pandora's box scenario that he said would happen where essentially, you would have this -for-tat , where every opposing party in the house was now going to be impeaching the president, and this could happen now, and the only reason that can happen is because of mike johnson, so this nightmare scenario that he warned about, he is essentially bringing to fruition. i want people to listen a little bit more of what he said in 2019 about this. >> if you are the majority party in the house, and you don't like the president of

another party, you think his policies are wrong or you don't like the way he communicates or whatever it is, you can manufacture charges and try to remove him. but that's not how are the public was designed to work. there is a check on the president called the next election cycle. the voters get to decide that and we have an election coming up in this country in 11 months, let the people decide on donald trump. >> you heard him right there, but let the people decide and 11 months from now and that's the same distance we are from the 2024 election. >> it's literally apples and apples. you spoke to a lot of people about trump's impeachment then, and the possible impeachment hearings for biden now, what did they tell you. weeks -- >> we spoke to five and one of the things that johnson said was that democrats were using what he called gerrymandered

facts to impeach trump. they said they were doing this solely for this predetermined political outcome in which they were just impeaching trump to undermine his political standing as we move into the next election and many of the experts that we spoke to said, that's exactly what they think johnson is doing right now. one of them, who we spoke to, they all noted this case is a lot weaker and one of them we spoke to said this is built on disjointed theories based on scraps of evidence that don't even directly implicate the president. so we went to johnson's office and we asked them about all of this and they essentially told us, with this impeachment inquiry, they will follow the facts and they will only pursue it if they think the evidence warrants impeachment. of course, we will see how that goes. i want to go now to the republican, smith ken buck, he's on the house judiciary and foreign affairs committee. i want to ask you about andrew's latest reporting hair .

but first, how do you plan to vote on this impeachment inquiry into president biden if the house rules committee does move it forward tomorrow? >> erin, i'm struggling right now, i have to tell you. on the one hand i have come out strongly and so there's no direct evidence linking president biden into the activities of hunter biden. and at the same time, the white house recently sent a letter after these committees issued subpoenas to the white house, the white house sent a letter back and said you haven't held and impeachment inquiry vote yet and we are not going to give you any records until you pass and impeachment inquiry. i believe that is an absolutely wrong decision and it's a delay tactic which would necessitate congress going to the courts and having the courts enforce

the subpoena. so i wish the white house hadn't done that. i don't think there's direct evidence. i'm struggling and i want to read the resolution before making a final decision on whether to vote for it or not. >> so, it's interesting because i understand what you're talking about, focusing in on the facts, at this point you say you haven't seen any evidence that would link those two things together. a week ago, the speaker, made clear that he is all in on moving forward with the impeachment inquiry, perfect -- because of the facts. here's what he said. >> the facts, are so clear for everyone to see. the evidence is so clear you can't look away and the constitution requires the house to follow the truth where it leads. we have a duty to do this. we cannot stop the process. >> of course, he can stop it, he is the speaker, but what he's doing as andrew pointed out is exactly what he said in 2019 with president trump, that it was such a threat to the entire country. let me just replay that. >> what happens a few years from now, or 10 years from now,

you have a democrat in the white house and you have a republican majority in the house, they're going to demand that they be impeached because you have now set the bar so low that we are going into tribal politics right now. if you think politics were divided before this, heaven help us. >> obviously, not 10 to 20 years, just four years. so, what do you say to speaker johnson about the argument that he's making. he's basing it on the facts, and he is now supporting the very thing that he said was so terrible a few years ago. >> he was absolutely right in 2019. this is not the way to run a congress and not the way to run a house. we should not be engaging in retribution politics and retribution impeachment. i believed and voted against the first impeachment, both impeachments of president trump but particularly the first impeachment. i didn't think it was there and i thought it was wrong for

speaker pelosi to bring that. i also think the evidence does not warrant and impeachment at this point. we are talking about and impeachment inquiry, and that is a more formal way of beginning the process. i still have reservations about that until you have some evidence that links joe biden's actions with the money that hunter biden received. >> it does seem that you end up in a cycle where one party gets power and they impeach the other. that seems to be the only way that anybody would be spending their time which of course is not good for the country. thank you congressman, i appreciate your time. always good to talk to you. next, as israel intensifies its strikes on gaza, mr. benjamin netanyahu who's under fire for actually helping prop up hamas with millions of dollars. a cnn special report is next. where is kim jong un getting all of that money to pay for all of the satellites

and d such, hehere is a spspecial repoport. you u will see.

brutal battles raging across gaza, israel intensifying its attacks on hamas and their remaining strongholds. we have struck more than 250

targets in just one day. those are their own numbers. it comes as the fate of 137 known remain -- remaining hostages. all of this as we are learning the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu may have been propping up hamas, with millions of dollars, out front. >> israel's morning continues even as benjamin netanyahu grows. in a series of interviews with key israeli players, cnn and the israeli platform or told how benjamin netanyahu allow cash donations to hamas for years without supervision. despite concerns from within his own government. >> $360 million. simple mathematics. >> it's a lot of money.

>> the dollar in gaza is like $20 in the u.s. for them, it was like oxygen. can you live without oxygen, no. it's a historic mistake. >> former defense minister bennett said he was among those repeatedly raising concerns to benjamin netanyahu. when bennett became prime minister in 2021, he put a stop to the suitcases of cash to hamas, moving the transfer of financial support from cash to a un mechanism. >> i stopped the cash suitcases because i believed it was a horrendous mistake to allow hamas to have all of the suitcases full of cash that goes directly to rearm themselves against israelis. why would we feed them cash to kill us? >> the cast deliveries were supposed to help among other humanitarian needs, pay causes civil servants and pictures in 2018 showed workers lining up

to receive $100 bills. israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in august 2018, during a previous benjamin netanyahu tenure as per mr. and an israeli official defended the decision telling cnn, successive israeli governments enabled money to go to gaza, not in order to strengthen hamas but to prevent a humanitarian crisis. that's true, but no one else approved it in cash. former minister bennett said that benjamin netanyahu underestimated hamas. >> i think the approach towards hamas was one of sort of a lucid type terror organization that can shoot rockets, can cause a bit of havoc here and there but not much more than that. >> so underestimated. >> absolutely.

and in that sense, we've learned a lesson. we have to believe our enemies. >> this lesson has become a turning point for israel. one, even longtime benjamin netanyahu ally like speaker hauser, acknowledged. >> that was a strategic lesson for the society that you can talk a lot about peace and do a lot of things, you can come to the white house and get some nobel prizes, but in some point, enough is enough, and if you ask me, what symbolized october seventh? it mostly symbolized that the society no more take risks. >> heating the toll of human suffering and international calls to slow the pummeling of gaza, before israel is satisfied hamas has been destroyed. whatever the cost. and that clamor to course

correct is not just the message. many international observers have been telling us that they are worried that this pressure on benjamin netanyahu to be seen to correct his mistake could be impacting the willingness of those in israel's government to take into account the real concerns over the loss of civilian lives, erin? >> thank you, next north korea's kim jong un mobbed by a horde of hysterical children. what is going on here? all that touching is unusual plus steven spielberg talking about the october seventnth terror a attack in i israel.

all right. we've o got some new video. this is the north korean leader, kim jong-un, surrounded by adoring children, hugging their dear leader. you see him there, smiling, all-in. this was at north korea's fifth national conference of mothers.

much of the loyalty kim demands is rooted in his promises to destroy the west, with his nuclear arsenal that was funded by billions of dollars -- billion of dollars -- in stolen crypto. will ripley is "out front." >> reporter: every north korean missile test, every satellite launch, every nuclear test cost kim jong-un millions of dollars. how does kim's regime evade heavy sanctions. >> we certainly believe that north korean hacking of cryptocurrency around infrastructure around the world is a major source of revenue for the regime. >> reporter: a staggering more than $3 billion in stolen crypto over the past five years, u.s. lawmakers say. >> so, where does that money go? straight into north korea's illegal nuclear program. >> reporter: an underground pipeline of elicit wealth,

fuelling kim's nuclear ambitions, pumping paymenting into pyongyang from places like russia, china, hong kong, singapore, and vietnam. >> does that pose a threat to our national security? >> it does, senator. >> reporter: the u.s. believes north korea has a global shadow army, secret operatives posing as i.t. officials, even hiring westerners to hide their connection to pyongyang. spanish police arrested this man earlier this month, known as a special delegate for north korea. he posted a message on x, formerly known as twitter, saying, there is no extradition. the u.s. accusation, besides being false, does not exist in spain. blacklisted by the u.s. as modern day digital pirates, linked to ransomware attacks, targeted online gaming, banking industries, even american hospitals. north korea exploiting online vulnerabilities, using stolen

money to mass produce missiles, funding the kim family's lavish lifestyle, palaces, planes, yachts, and this armored security limousine. the latest breach from north korea's notorious hacking group, targeting south korean defense groups and others. a year long investigation by south korean police and the fbi exposing gray vulnerabilities in seoul's cyber security defenses. around 250 sensitive files, terabytes of data stolen, a crime concealed through rented servers, leading straight to the north korean capital, breaching borders, defying digital defenses, threatening global stability. >> will, it's amazing to see these numbers. and bitcoin now has posted steepest drop in about hour months today. the value of it down dramatically over the past couple of years. crypto overawl has taken a huge

hit. the context of all these billions of dollars coming in, how is kim still making money off of this stolen currency? >> you're right, erin. it has fluctuated so much. in 2020, it was down to 4,000. in 2021, up to 69,000, as you know. but north korea took the bitcoin and laundered the money. they learned how to invest it in businesses in friendly countries, like russia or china. so, it's a really complex financial web that's making money for north korea, those investments from bitcoin, and it's very difficult to trace. now, north korea's also making a lot of money by doing something called bitcoin mining, where they verify transactions, like solving mathematical equations. guess what, erin. because north korea can't export its coal, they use that coal, they burn it, to create the energy to do bitcoin mining, even though the nation is notorious for blackouts for most of the population most of the time. >> wow, that is amazing. thank you very much, will

ripley. next, steven spielberg, the oscar winning director of "schindler's list" speaking out for the first time a about the october r 7th terroror attack o israelel.

first time i connected with kim, she told me that her husband had passed. and that he took care of all of the internet connected devices in the home. i told her, “i'm here to take care of you.” connecting with kim... made me reconnect with my mom. it's very important to keep loved ones close. we know that creating memories with loved ones brings so much joy to your life. a family trip to the team usa training facility.

i don't know how to thank you. i'm here to thank you. tonight, steven spielberg breaking his silence after the october 7th terror attack in israel. spielberg, who directed the oscar winning holocaust film, "schindler's list" saying, quote, i never imagined i would see such unspeakable barbarity against the jews in my lifetime. -- will now also be collecting accounts from people who survived the october 7th attacks. thank you very much for watching. watching. it's time now for "ac 360." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com tonight on "360," breaking news on two fronts. special counsel jack smith