what you experienced can apply more broadly? >> absolutely. and for us, it was we had to operate that way. it wasn't just life or death. it was also being successful in our missions, when we would make mistakes or have problems, or things didn't appear the way they were supposed to when you got to space. everything was a little bit different. so, you would reach out and get that help and they were a world away. the same rules apply on earth. we have to operate that way to be successful, but it's a good way to operate as well in our professional lives and personal lives. i think a lot of that came up with the pandemic as well, when we were away from each other, but we were still there. we just had to reach out. >> i think a lot of people could realize now this seems to be -- i don't know, the pandemic over and still an epidemic maybe worse than ever of loneliness. >> everyone is still there. reach out to mission control. >> all right, mike. great to see you. >> oh, thanks for having me on. >> have a wonderful weekend. >> have a wonderful weekend. it's time now for "ac 360."

-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com tonight on "360," a jury puts a price on rudy giuliani's election lies and the two lives he ruined with them. the question now, will shaye moss and ruby freeman ever see a dime of the 148 million plus dollars he's been ordered to pay. we now know what killed actor matthew perry, after taking a large amount of ketamine. dr. sanjay gupta joins us with details. good evening. thanks for joining us. we begin with the steepest plunge yet for the man whose fall from grace rivals that of anyone in modern memory. 22 years ago, this was rudy giuliani, then mayor of new york and "time" magazine's 2001 person of the year, america's mayor some called him. former crime busting u.s. attorney. looking like a man on top of it. tonight after years of working for and lying for a man he'd likely have prosecuted in his former life, he learned the price to be paid for just a fraction of those lies, namely

the ones he told about shaye moss and ruby freeman. two 2020 georgia election workers he defamed again and again, including outside his civil trial earlier this week and again today after the jury awarded moss and freeman $148 million in damages. that includes more than $16 million each for defamation, $20 million each for the emotional distress he caused them by upending their lives, and punitive damages totaling $75 million. >> the flame that giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives. our homes, our family, our work, our sense of safety, our mental health. and we're still working to rebuild. >> for now, i want people to understand this. money will never solve all of my problems. i can never move back into the

house that i called home. i will always have to be careful about where i go and who i choose to share my name with. i miss my home. i miss my neighbors. and i miss my name. >> afterwards, vowing to appeal and reaffirming the lies he told. >> do you still believe that what you said about these two women in the wake of the 2020 election was truthful? >> i have -- i have no doubt -- i have no doubt that my comments were made and they were supportable and are supportable today. i just did not have an opportunity to present the evidence that we offered. did you notice we were not allowed to put in one piece of evidence in defense? >> that is not true in the slightest. he was expected to testify yesterday. and in fact at the last second chose not too, wisely, probably.

that was his choice. the evidence he says he has to prove he wasn't lying about ms. moss and freeman, do you really think if he had any evidence after three years of his bs about a stolen election he would be keeping it close to his very large vest? it's ridiculous. as you heard, he once again reaffirmed the defamatory claims he made about these two. which shouldn't be surprising. after all, it's how he began the week. >> of course i don't regret it. i told the truth. they were engaged in changing votes. >> joining us now is merrill conan ga vern ski, one of the attorneys for ruby freeman and shaye moss. do either of your clients believe they'll receive any money from rudy giuliani. >> thanks for having me here tonight, anderson. we are willing to follow mr. giuliani to the end of the earth to help our clients recover the money that they deserve, as lady ruby said

during her press conference, no amount of money can ever, ever begin to fix what mr. giuliani caused these two amazing, brave heroes. but we will do absolutely everything we can to give them -- to track the money down and try to enforce this judgment as best we can. >> do you know at this stage, i mean, how much money rudy giuliani actually has? i know he's being sued for more than $1 million in unpaid bills by his previous legal team. he owed $60,000 in -- apartment is for sale, sitting on the market for a while now. i know before today's judgment, he owed your clients $200,000 in court ordered sanctions related to legal fees. how do you try to collect $148 million from someone like that? >> it's interesting something you said in the lead-in. mr. giuliani had the opportunity to present the evidence and he never did. it's the same story with regard

to his financials. out of court, he has repeatedly claimed he is unable to pay. and every time throughout this entire litigation, the court has held him to produce records, to show that, to substantiate that, he hasn't done it. so, i am quite skeptical of what he says publicly, because he's had the opportunity to produce the records and he hasn't. so, i think, you know, at this point, the jury is still out as to whether there's any truth to his claims of not being able to afford a judgment. so, we look forward to the next phase. >> if he's lying about your clients, which clearly he has -- why wouldn't he lie about the money as well? if he declared bankruptcy, though, would he be able to use that to escape paying? >> i'm not a bankruptcy attorney, but my understanding is because these are willful tortes and the court has already found he acted in a willful manner, that those are not dischargeable. so, this will be a debt that he owes for the rest of his life.

and we had keep going after him for the rest of his life until our clients receive the money they deserve. >> outside the courtroom, giuliani suggested he would likely move for a new trial or appeal this verdict. do you see any grounds for that? >> well, no. i mean, he defaulted. he had, you know, judge -- i was on with you this summer, anderson, and the judge in this case gave him opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to comply with the rules of civil discovery, to produce records. and she found that he failed to preserve. he failed to keep records that this civil rules of discovery require that he preserve. he is an attorney who has practiced law for decades. he knew what the rules required, and he failed to comply with them. so, you know, he -- he can claim that he wants to appeal. but his failure to engage in the actual process will make it incredibly hard. so, we are very confident in our

judgment. and, you know, of course we'll continue fighting for our amazing hero clients. but i'm not too worried about our odds of defending this judgment. >> i really appreciate it. thank you. i want to get perspective from karen freedman agnifilo, covered rudy giuliani since his days as mayor, kaitlan collins, who anchors "the source" at the top of the hour, and van jones. karen, first of all, just the magnitude of these damages, and do you think these two women who, i mean, have just clearly been defamed and had their lives completely upended, do you think they will get money? >> i think they will get money. i think that rudy giuliani will not be able to hide all of his assets, nor will this be excused the way they just said because it was an intentional torte. so, even if he goes to bankruptcy, he will have to still have this. look, they can go after it, they

can follow it, and they can actually -- >> so, bankruptcy doesn't wash it away? >> not when it's an intentional torte like this. >> an intentional torte meaning what? that he was intentional in his lies? >> yes, exactly, that he harmed him, he caused -- he defamed them intentionally. he caused emotional distress intentionally. this wasn't an accident, for example. this was something intentional. >> from a legal standpoint, the fact that he continues to do this in every statement he's made, does that -- i mean, i'm just, sort of, stunned by that. >> it's cruel. i mean, any human being who would sit in court like rudy giuliani did and listen to what ms. freeman and ms. moss testified to about what this did to their lives and that there were people saying these racist comments, that they wanted to hear their neck snap, horrendous, horrendous things, what this did to their lives for him to walk out of court and to

say he doesn't regrit and to say he still believes it, it's cruelty at this point. go ahead. >> van jones, him spouting this racist bs, comparing them to drug dealers, i mean, it's -- the brazenness of it is extraordinary. >> well, it's just despicable because you've got to remember these are black women in the south working to help people vote. >> one of them was volunteering. she was doing civil service. >> yeah. literally doing what we need to make democracy work. and, you know, we lost martyrs. there are people who are dead and gone so that we could have this right to vote. and we ask people to go vote and we ask people to help people vote. and for someone to be doing that noble work and to have this despicable piece of dirt come down from god knows where and just ruin their lives, and pursuant, by the way, of a crazy theory that somehow trump was

being robbed of the election by these two black women, and then put their lives at risk. and then go shuffling and shambling around saying the same stuff against them, even today. i mean, this guy is a sociopath. and it makes me wonder all those years that he was admired as america's mayor, when he was a prosecutor, was he a sociopath then? what kinds of other horrible things has he been doing his whole life to get him to the point he thinks he can ruin these women for his own scheme and never even apologize when the courts he supposedly served call him what he is, which is a despicable lawyer who owes them more than he could ever pay. >> i want to play some of what he said back in 2020 about these women. >> how can they say there's no fraud? look at that woman. look at them scurrying about with the ballots. nobody in the room, hiding around. they look like they're passing out dope, not just ballots. >> scurrying around, passing out

dope. i mean, it's extraordinary. errol, you've covered this guy for a long time. to van's question, i don't know if he's a sociopath or not, but whatever he is, has he always been this way? >> he's always colored outside the lines. he's always been very tough. he's always said things that others thought were a little bit crazy. more often than not, days at le unusual lines of attack that proved themselves out when he was in the justice department. but it was always in service to some higher good. in this case we can't tell what the higher good. he's an unpaid client of donald trump, i guess, which is the capacity in che started making this stuff up. it feels like he wanted to be relevant. he wanted to be on the public stage. he wanted to be part of the trump phenomenon. >> which was always the wrap on him, even back then. one of his innovations was using rico against the mob. >> exactly.

>> he never shied away from a camera. he liked that. and the more he had it, clearly the more he liked it. and your notion of him wanting to stay relevant makes sense. >> absolutely. in some of those cases, especially some of the wall street cases, he, kind of, overstated it. he walked people out in front of all their colleagues, and later those cases fell apart in some cases. he was always pushy. he was always aggressive. he wasn't always as scrupulous to the particular facts or the harm he would have caused inadvertently as some would have liked. but everybody understood there needed to be a crackdown on walt wall street. you needed to go after the families. he served a function and people went along with it. this is a whole other kind of category. this is simple bullying. this is simple cruelty. to go out and defile them all over again gives rise to new liability. >> to anyone looks at him talking to the cameras on the

street thinks sad for him or poor guy, he's treated a lot of people terribly for a very long period of time. some of them are awful people and some of them were -- he was self-engrandizing and making a name for himself. how do you think trump world perceives this? >> i think everyone who worked in the trump white house is very familiar of this version of rudy giuliani. this is who they worked with on a daily basis. on election night 2020, people thought he was drinking when he was advising the president. that's in congressional testimony. but what i'm struck by, watching him come out of the courthouse now, doing what he's doing now, this is someone who thought he was going to be in donald trump's cabinet. he was angling for that position back in 2016 and was gravely devastated when he didn't get that. someone who kept trying to inject himself into trump's world. he was always at the hotel in washington. i encountered him in front of the white house more times than i can really count. he was always there, kind of,

hanging around. and just to think of how close he was to the levers of power. i'm sure trump will distance himself. he already had refused to pay his legal fees. >> he did have this fund-raiser for him, didn't he? >> it's because he essentially was not going to pay for his legal fees. >> i'll throw a party for you -- >> and use my influence to try to help you raise money. those were dinners that i believe ten people and each plate was worth $100,000. that's still just a drop in the bucket of what he owes. he's not destitute when we talk about how he has no money. he flew on a private plane to georgia. his attorneys wouldn't tell us whose plane that was. an attorney who sued rudy giuliani because he could not pay him for his legal fees. it speaks to the level of where he is. these are all lies he told for the man on the right there. >> merrill, he had a company that was supposedly a security company. >> that's right. >> and then after a while he was doing, i think, ads for lifelock

or something. did he make money? >> he had a very powerful brand, and he had a very lucrative brand. giuliani partners signed all kinds of contracts with foreign governments and agencies all over the country. sterling reputation, best selling book. he had a ton of money from a lot of different sources. and little by little, it all, sort of, kind of, went away. there was more hype to it than people realize. you can't go to mexico city and solve crime there, although you can take a lot of money to pretend to show them magical techniques being imported from new york. after a while, that consulting firm, sort of, died down. his partnership with the brace well firm, braes well giuliani, that, kind of, went away. little by little, that all, sort of, departed, especially after that disastrous run for president that did not work out for him at all. he got nowhere. he got no delegates. he got no real action there. then it comes to this, where in a bid to get back into the spotlight, he apprentices himself. he gives himself over to the

trump white house. and, you know, in the end, as we've seen from a lot of testimony from the january 6th committee, the way to get ahead with trump after he lost was to come out, come up with the most outlandish, most hardline arguments that no, no, no, we're going to argue this to the end, in spite of all facts, law, and everything else. >> that's incredible. thank you. kaitlan collins as well. van jones. kaitlan is back at 9:00 with "the source." joining us now is jamie raskin, former member of the house january 6th select committee which brought national attention to shaye moss and ruby freeman's truthful accounting. what's your reaction to this verdict? >> well, i like the fact that a lot of these people are finally getting their come upance. it's nice to see fox news pay

out to dominion voting systems, to see shaye moss and ruby freeman who were defamed by rj get an award for $148 million. it's no substitute for actually having your reputation intact and for having safety in your home. but at least it puts the justice system on the side of the people defending democracy. and, you know, shaye moss and ruby freeman should be proud that they will be role models for everybody going into the 2024 election, the election workers, the poll workers, the election judges, everybody standing up for the actual infrastructure of political democracy, which the republicans have declared war on. >> that's interesting. you think it sends an inspiring message to people who volunteer, people who work for not very much money in these essential jobs on election day. >> yeah, i mean, donald trump and his authoritarian cronies

would invite us to believe that democracy is just some word they toss around every once in a while when they're trying to whitewash their complicity with vladimir putin and his savage assault on ukraine or president xi or whatever. democracy's actually a real system of government that requires tens of thousands of people to go out, to educate voters, to register voters, to count people's ballots. and we saw in 2020 how trump and giuliani and steve bannon and dinesh da souza and michael flynn, all of them set themselves at war against people who actually make democracy work. that's why i think this beautiful mother/daughter team is such an amazing exemplar for people around the country who do this tireless and not well compensated work. in a lot of places, you could be a poll worker for 12 or 14 hours on election day and make, like,

10 bucks an hour. >> do you think regardless of who's on the ballot in 2024 that enough has been done by state and federal officials to protect election workers in this country. i was talking to adam kinzinger last night and he expressed concern about people not wanting to volunteer to be poll workers because of what happened to ruby freeman and shaye moss. >> as you know, under the system of american federalism, it's decentralized and there are different things going on state by state. and you've got to get involved in your state to make sure there's sufficient people who are volunteering or who are involved in working at the polls. that's just the beginning. then we have to prevent it from being stolen by donald trump. you know, hillary clinton beat him by 2.5 million votes. joe biden beat him by more than 7 million votes. and the difference between 2020 and 2024 is 10 or 15 million new young people coming out to the polls. and as long as the democratic party can keep the young people

engaged and behind us as the party of democracy and freedom, then it will be a gigantic distance between the democrats and republicans, which means they know their job with their bag of dirty tricks is to disqualify voters, to force people to cast challenge ballots and so on. so, it's going to be, you know, a struggle all the way down to election day. and as we saw in 2020 with january 6th through election day because of the electoral college system. so, we're going to make sure that we have lawyered up at every point to defend the real democratic process such as it is against the republicans who understand that they have to act like autocrats. >> congressman raskin. i appreciate it your time. thank you. coming up next, numbers on just how far rudy giuliani has falling in the public eye. later we'll talk to dr. sanjay gupta on the role the drug ketamine played in the death of actor matthew perry.

it's hard to overstate just how far the man once known as america's mayor and "time" magazine's person of the year has fallen. in one measure, it can be measured. how does rudy giuliani's favorability now compared to when he was mayor. >> in the aftermath of 9/11, he

was a national hero. his favorability rating, 76% nationally. this past year, just 16%. that is a 60-point decline. i'm not sure i have ever seen a decline of that much pretty much ever. and this, to me, is a story of a man who's disgraced. >> it seems high to me. how does that break down within political parties? >> yeah. if you look within political parties, what do you see? he used to have bipartisan support. republicans liked him. look at his support among republicans. 71%. just 3% today. i'm not sure i know those 3%, but that gives you an idea. even republicans, support dropped from 80s well into the 30s. >> is his favorability geographic at all? >> think about the northeast urban corridor, america's mayor, most popular. look at the urban areas in the northeast. his favorable rating today, 14%.

his unfavorable rating, up to 64%. a guy who was so popular 20 years ago, his popularity, he wasted all away like he wasted away his sense of self. >> appreciate it. just to remind people how he got to this point, which again was entirely by choice, here's cnn's jessica schneider. >> it's disgraceful what happened. >> reporter: rudy giuliani spent the days after the 2020 election traveling state to state falsely insisting the results were rigged. >> i don't have to be a genius to figure out that those votes are not legitimate votes. >> reporter: in georgia, he focused his fire on two unsuspecting election workers in fulton county. >> there's a tape earlier in the day of ruby freeman and shay freeman moss and one other gentleman. they should have been questioned already. their places of work, their homes should have been searched for evidence of ballots, for evidence of usb ports, voter fraud.

>> reporter: shaye moss told the january 6th committee her life changed forever the day giuliani publicly spread lies about her. angry election deniers showed up at her home. and ruby freeman was forced into hiding. >> i've lost my name and i've lost my reputation. i've lost my sense of security all because a group of people starting with number 45 and his ally, rudy giuliani, decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen. >> i second guess everything that i do. it's affect my life in a major way, in every way, all because of lies. >> reporter: giuliani claimed moss and freeman plotted to kick

ballot watchers out of fulton county. he also pushed the false narrative that they had brought in suitcases filled with fake ballots for biden and scanned them into the system multiple times. and giuliani described surveillance video from that day he claimed showed ruby and her daughter exchanges usb memory sticks containing a fraudulent vote count. >> when you look at what you saw on the video, which, to me, was a smoking gun, powerful smoking gun -- quite obviously surreptitiously passing around ballots as if they're viles of cocaine. you don't put votes under a table. wait until you throw the opposition out and in the middle of the night count them. we would have to be fools to think that. >> none of that was true, was it? >> none of it. >> congressman adam schiff asked shaye if giuliani accurately described what your mom was passing under the table.

>> what was your mom handing you on that video? >> a ginger mint. coming up next, reaction from israel after the idf said it maistakenly shot and killed three israeli hostages in gaza. plus the autopsy results for actor matthew perry. dr. sanjay gupta joins us with that.

an unbearable tragedy. that's what israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu is calling the deaths of three israeli hostages in northern gaza, who were killed by israeli troops. according to israeli defense forces, the three were shot and killed after they were mistakenly identified as a threat. alex marquardt joins us from tel

aviv. what are israeli authorities saying about the incident? >> reporter: well, anderson, it was the idf that announced it because it was the soldiers who killed these three hostages. they said this was a sad and painful incident and that the idf bears full responsibility. they said they are now investigating the deaths of these three men, yotam haim, 28-year-old, alon shimriz, 26-year-old, and samer talalka, who's 25 years old. there aren't a lot of details, but we know this happened in the shejaiya neighborhood in gaza. these men were spotted by soldiers. they were perceived to be terrorist militant threat, and they were shot and killed. when the bodies looked suspicious, they sent those bodies back to israel for confirmation. and it was confirmed they were indeed hostages. there are a lot of questions, of course. daniel ha gary was asked whether these men spoke hebrew, whether

they had their hands up. there are a lot of militants in civilian clothing, rpg teams that are wearing civilian clegts that are suicide bombers that don't have weapons. the idf was raising the possibility that these men had escape frd captivity or perhaps had been left behind, as the militants fled from the fighting. so, anderson, it's heartbreaking to think these three men were on the cusp of escaping, being freed after more than two months in captivity, and instead they were gunned down by their fellow countrymen. >> what sort of reaction have you seen in israel? >> reporter: shock, sadness, anger. as soon as this news broke, the families of the hostages called for an immediate rally. we went out there and started where the defense ministry is based. it's the equivalent of israel's pentagon. these marchers marched through the streets for some three hours demanding that everyone come home now. they kept chanting, everyone

now. i spoke with one man who knew the hostages had been killed. he wants the government to do absolutely everything they can to bring the hostages home. i spoke to a retired general who's considered a hero on october 7th. he told me tonight was supposed to be a night of celebration. they were supposed to be marking these three hostages being freed. instead, everyone in israel is crying. the netanyahu government has to prioritize this. this has to be the number one priority because the time is running out. a deal, he says, needs to be struck with the devil, meaning hamas. and he said, he's ready to pay a very high price. >> alex marquardt, thank you. back in the u.s., los angeles medical examiners office has released the autopsy report for actor matthew perry. the "friends" star died of the acute effects of ketamine and subsequent effects of drowning. he was found in october in the pool of his malibu home. the report says perry was,

quote, reported to be receiving ketamine infusion therapy for depression and anxiety. dr. sanjay gupta joins us now. sanjay, i appreciate you being with us. this is confusing. first of all, the fact he's receiving ketamine therapy, that seems separate from the ketamine that was in his system when he died. >> yeah. that's right. i mean, this is just such a sad story. but it does sound like he was being treated for depression, anxiety separately with ketamine. and then they make a point of saying, this was an acute ketamine intoxication, meaning something that was more recent. and they also state later in this 30-page report that there were trace amounts found in his stomach. so, ketamine is something that can be injected, as with infusion therapy. it can be snorted. and it can be swallowed. so, this sounds like this is something he swallowed. when i read the report, it made the case, if he swallowed this, it can take half an hour for an

hour for it to take effect before you start having the symptoms associated with ketamine. and at some point he got into the swimming pool while on the ketamine. and this dissociative effect of the ketamine probably set in and is what led to his drowning, anderson. >> so, he was taking -- separate from this therapy, he was likely taking ketamine either recreationally or self-medicating with ketamine. people can buy it online with a prescription. and that actually -- because he became dissociated, he then drowned. >> yeah. i think so. you know, i mean, the coroner's report -- and i think a lot of the headlines are just going to say, ketamine was the cause of death. and the fact is that even at pretty high levels -- and he had pretty high levels. we can show you the levels that were in his blood. they were in the 3,000 nanograms per milliliter sort of level. anesthesia can sometimes be given at those levels.

but even despite that, it very rarely would actually lead to someone dying. >> so, the ketamine -- it's not that he took ketamine and that stopped his heart. it's that he took ketamine, became confused, and drowned, you think? >> that's really what it sounds like putting this all together. in part because it is rare for ketamine alone to actually cause death in this manner. but the idea that someone could become very dissociated because of the ketamine and was in a pool, that was the contributing factor. one of the medical examiners we talked to, anderson, put it this way. he said, the ketamine likely did not kill him but made it more possible for him to drown. had it not been that he was in a pool, he likely would not have died of this, anderson. >> sanjay, thank you again. really sad news. appreciate it. coming up next, a sprawling cnn investigation revealing a binder with highly classified russian intelligence disappeared at the end of the former

president's administration. plus melania trump has been largely absent from the public eye e since leavining the e whi house. totoday she mamade a rare appeae and d speech. details ahahead.

a new cnn investigation raising alarm over intelligence that went missing during the former president's administration. cnn was first to report that a binder containing highly classified information related to russian election meddling

disappeared during the former president's chaotic final days in office. in the nearly three years since it has gone missing, it has not been found. evan perez joins us now with more information. walk us through your reporting. what was in this binder? >> and rson, this was information that the intelligence committee gathered to bolster or to back up their assessment they had that vladimir putin wanted donald trump to win the 2016 election. that's the basis for making that finding. and it contained some of the most sensitive intelligence information in possession of the intelligence community. this is sources and methods. this is stuff not only from the u.s. intelligence agencies but also from some of our closest nato allies. so, there was a lot of concern when donald trump and his allies and certainly mark meadows, the chief of staff, wanted to gather all of this stuff. because the intent of the former president was to release it. he viewed obviously the entire

investigation to be a hoax, and he wanted to put it out there. and of course there was a lot of concern in the intelligence community that people would get killed if some of this information actually got out. sources and methods, again, needed to be protected. so, we know that in the closing very chaotic days of the trump administration, they gathered all this information in a binder. mark meadows and others were going through it. and the purpose was to try to declassify it and release it. they obviously in the end ran out of time. they were not able to release that information before they did. but we don't know what happened to it after that. so, one of -- there's a lot of theories. and one of them came from cassidy hutchinson, who wrote about this in her book. listen to what she had to say. >> i watched him climb into the limo, noticing the original crossfire hurricane binder tucked under his arm. i did not have time to ask what he planned to do with it as he drove away. what the hell is mark doing with the unredacted crossfire

hurricane binder? >> and anderson, we know, again, that mark meadows did manage to turn over some documents to the justice department at the end of the administration, in the closing minutes just before joe biden was inaugurated. we don't know what happened with the binder, however, with these unredacted documents. >> so, mark meadows hasn't said what he'd do with it. >> we reached out to his attorney. he pushed back strongly that he had anything to do with these missing binders. i'll tell you what he said. he said, mr. meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to proper handling of materials. any suggestion he is responsible for any missing binder or any other classified information is wrong. so, that's very strong pushback from mark meadows. i'll tell you also, anderson, that this was -- the fact that this was missing came up in a

briefing to senate intelligence committee leaders just last year. and again, the concern was that this information could get into the wrong hands, anderson. >> evan perez, thank you. meanwhile, former first lady melania trump made a rare appearance, sharing her experience becoming a u.s. citizen. >> it is my privilege to share this great nation, america, with you. throughout our lives, we cross thresholds. and often obstacles stand in the way of our goals. my personal experience of traversing the challenges of the immigration process opened my eyes to the harsh reality these people face, including you, who try to become u.s. citizens. >> the former first lady has mostly been absent from public

view, though she did attend the funeral for rosalynn carter, along with other first ladies. >> i think part of the beauty is that mystery. >> reporter: that's former president donald trump on megyn kelly's podcast attempting to explain his wife and former first lady melania trump's absence. >> she's introspective and she's confident. she doesn't need to be out there. she's got confidence. she's got a lot of self-confidence. >> when donald trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign at mar-a-lago last year, melania was there. but largely she's been laying low. she has yet to show up on the campaign trail either, with a month to go before the iowa caucuses. her absence hasn't gone unnoticed. in iowa this fall, missing flyers were handed out, featuring melania as a missing

person. in september on nbc's "meet the press," trump also tried to de diffuse speculation about his wife's whereabouts. >> she's a private person, great person, and she loves our country very much. she'll be -- at the appropriate time, she'll be out there. >> so, where has melania been? she's been spending time at various trump properties, though reportedly rarely mixes with club members. she's mainly focused on their son, barron, now 17, and getting him ready for college. melania made a handful of appearances last year that earned her about half a million dollars. for both the log cabin republicans and a group called fix california. just last month, another rare appearance at a memorial service in atlanta for former first lady rosalynn carter. behind closed doors, she's been working on her business venture, digital artworks purchased through cryptocurrency.

this one is titled "melania's vision" and comes with a drawing as well as this recorded audio message. >> my vision is, look forward with inspiration, strength, and courage. >> reporter: she occasionally posts on social media, writing last month, happy thanksgiving. and when the wildfires tore through maui and floods ravaged her home country, melania posted, mother nature consistently reminds us of her dominance. flooding in beautiful slovenia. a spokesperson for the trump campaign told "the washington post" last month, mrs. trump has always been and will always be focused on her family, as it is her number one priority. any reports claiming to have insight into her life should be read with caution. melania's last television interview was back in may on fox. despite her pursuit of privacy, she happily teased a possible trourn the white house. >> never say never.

>> reporter: randi kaye, cnn, palm beach, florida. >> randi, thanks. coming up next, saying thanks to a true original. we'll be right back.

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wireless that works for you. it's not just possible, it's happening. before we go tonight, i want to say thank you to a friend and a colleague, phil littleton, who's just announced he's retiring. phil is one of the best photojournalists i've ever worked with. our first assignment together

was in sri lanka in 2005 after the tsunami hit. his knack for being in the right place at the right time and getting exactly the right shot was immediately obvious. so, from then on, my team and i tried to make sure he travelled with us wherever we went, which meant mumt pl assignments in afghanistan, sleeping on the floor at u.s. combat outposts, talking to village elders, military leaders. we crisscrossed the country together. we went to the amazon, brazil to report on the destruction of the rain forest. we were in cambodia together, thailand, rwanda, the democratic republic of congo, greenland, south africa, and countless spots in the u.s. so, as you might imagine, i got to know phil pretty well. he was always a bit of a rogue character in the best possible sense. i knew i liked him when early on, i could tell that his old friend christian am pour was somewhat suspicious of him. they would both chuckle about an inside joke that i've been sworn

to secrecy not to reveal. phil wasn't reckless, and he was tireless. it was like time zones didn't really seem to affect him, which, kind of, made sense. phil, a native of south africa was really never bound to one place. it may sound a little corny, but he always struck me as a citizen of the world rather than any particular country. he was always willing to stay on the move, to work, and to shoot great pictures. but now he is tapping it o. he's moving to an undisclosed location, wearing his sari no doubt, and i bet scaring the neighbors. thanks for everything, phil. we will miss you. that does it for us. "the source" with kaitlan collins is next. have a great weekend.

-- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com tonight straight from "the source," rudy giuliani learning the price of lying for donald trump. $148 million for defaming two former election workers. but he's still pushing those lies on his way out of court. plus, israeli forces mistakenly killing three hostages after the troops

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