it's okay to feel stressed, anxious, worried, or frustrated. it's normal. with calhope's free and secure mental health resources, it's easy to get the help you and your loved ones need when you need it the most. call our warm line at (833) 317-4673 or live chat at calhope.org today. hello, everyone, i'm alisyn camerota, welcome to cnn newsroom. >> i'm victor blackwell. moments ago attorney general

merrick garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into president pieden's classified documents that were found. >> on january 5th, 2023, mr. laush briefed me and advised me that further investigation by a special counsel was warranted. earlier today i signed an order appointing robert hur as special counsel for the matter i just described. the document authorizes him to investigate whether any person or entity violated the law in connection with this matter. the special counsel will not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the department. >> earlier president biden confirmed that more classified documents from his time as vice president were discovered in a second location at his wilmington, delaware, home. the president said the materials were in his locked garage. >> his lawyers said another document was found in a room in

the house. just days ago the white house revealed the first case. the president's attorneys found classified documents in a d.c. office building that biden had had used with his work with the university from 2017 to 2019. republicans are now calling for investigations. of course they equate biden's document case with that of former president trump's. a separate special counsel is overseeing the criminal probe of more than 200 classified documents that were stored at donald trump's florida estate. let's bring in cnn's manu raju on capitol hill, phil mattingly is at the white house but woe begin with evan perez. tell us about the timing of this announcement by the attorney general. >> reporter: allison and victor, the new special counsel investigating the biden documents is robert hur. he is a former u.s. attorney in maryland and someone who served under the trump administration. the attorney general making it clear that part of the reason

here to do this was because of the regulations in the justice department which require for an investigation like this to at least show that it was being handled independently. of course we know there is an ongoing investigation of the former president, donald trump, and his handling of classified documents. i'll run you through just a bit of the timeline. we got a lot of new information from the attorney general in that press announcement just in the last hour. this all began according to him on november 4th when the archives notified the justice department that these documents had been turned over, that they had been found a couple of days earlier by joe biden's legal team. and josh laush, who is a trump appointee, was brought in just a few days later to do an initial review of these documents. according to the attorney general on december 20th, the biden legal team notified the

justice department that they had found another set of documents that appears to be documents that were found at the wilmington home of the president. and then on january 5th is when laush concludes the initial part of his review and he recommends that a special counsel be appointed, which is what the attorney general has now done. it appears, by the way, victor and allison, there was another document that was found and was turned over today, according to the attorney general. again, this is an investigation that is now going to be looking at any criminal laws were broken and what the special counsel is authorized to do. he is going to be looking into the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents and other records and any other crimes that may have arisen as a result of the handling of these documents. allison and victor. >> let's go to the white house now and felphil mattingly, i

understand you've getting reaction from the white house. what do they say? >> reporter: we're just getting the first statement from the white house counsel's office, special counsel for president biden who's been the one delivering statements -- the course of the last four days. the president has made it clear repeatedly that he takes this issue very seriously, but it also says we have cooperated closely with the justice department throughout its review and we will continue that cooperation with the special counsel. we are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake. key elements there are saying they will continue their coope cooperation, which was expected. they have cooperated with the justice department and the u.s. attorney who's been reviewing this issue for several months pretty much across the board, whether it was in terms of flagging when they found documents, including interviews we are told with certain

individuals who may have had access to the process and packing of sending those away and individuals who had access in the wake of those since he was vice president. that will continue with the special counsel' office but framing this very explicitly as a mistake, something that was inadvertent. something you've heard officials say privately over the course of the last several days, very much so saying it explicitly as we've talked about the last several days. there have just been a significant number of unanswered questions. the answers were because this review was under way. the special counsel is here and i think evan has run through the timeline in terms of the public perception and knowledge. very clearly the president has said repeatedly and his team says just now they will continue to cooperate. the president and his team over monday and tuesday made public statements talking about a very

specific set of documents even though they had known nearly a month prior to that that there was an additional set which we reported on last night. this drip, tdrip has put the white house in a very difficult position, a perception problem to some degree as well. the sense from some white house officials is if there is any positive way to spin this, and most white houses that have dealt with a special counsel would have a difficult time reaching that assumptiones that this is now in a special counsel's hands and perhaps that will move a little bit faster and they will come out of this with a definitive answer one way or another. one in which they say they don't believe they did anything wrong. we'll see how that plays out. certainly this week hasn't gone in any way how they expected it to, guys. >> i think that is fair to say, phil. so manu, what has the republican reaction on capitol hill been to all of this? >> reporter: we haven't heard from kevin mccarthy or mitch

mcconnell about the attorney general's decision to appoint a special counsel. lindsey graham was calling for a special counsel so undoubtedly they'll be supported by r republicans who planned to probe this issue. james comer said he does plan to have hearings. he has sent letters to the white house asking for a number of documents, including the documents that were removed, the classified documents, have them turned over by later this month. we'll see how the white house decides whether or not to cooperate on that issue. when mccarthy spoke to reporters earlier today, he was asked directly about that and he took aim at the president and his handling of this issue. >> here's an individual that sat on "60 minutes" that was so concerned about president trump's documents locked and now we find as a vice president keeping it for years out in the open in different locations. i do not think any american

believes that justice should not be equal to all. >> reporter: mccarthy did indicate that would be some sort how fast investigation into this matter. there's a new committee created just this week to investigate the justice department. it's expected to look into its efforts to look into donald trump, the investigation into donald trump and his handling of this matter. the questions will also include a look into the investigation into joe biden, all of which is giving republicans an opportunity to push ahead on this issue. democrats themselves have said very little about this. many of them drawing a enclosure distinction between donald trump trying to obstruct the investigation going forward, joe biden trying to cooperate with the investigation. they're showing some distinction there but not saying a whole lot, including hakeem jeffries only saying that he has confidence in joe biden but not saying much more other than that. >> manu, evan, phil, stay with us. let's bring in cnn political commentator alyssa farrah

griffin and elie honig. elie, let me start with you. manu laid out some distinctions between the trump documents or the pibiden document. what do you think about this call? >> it's the right call. it's the only call i think merrick garland could have made. the hallmark of a special prosecutor is conflict of interest. if a reasonable member of the public would look at a situation and say, gee, there's some crossed wires there, let's start with the fact that there already is a special counsel investigating donald trump. i think the potential conflict of interest is obvious. hence, there is going to be a conflict of interest, probably even more so when you're talking about merrick garland and his doj investigating his own boss joe biden. i see no daylight between donald trump's situation and joe biden's situation when it comes to conflict of interest. if there's a conflict of interest to donald trump, there absolutely is a conflict of

interest when it comes to joe biden and there had to be a special counsel. >> alyssa, when we played out the differences the way the biden team handled this and the trump team has handled this, my assumption is those distinctions are not -- >> it's rich f folks who did not criticize the former president for egregiously mishandling classified documents and now want to look into joe biden's mishandling. but this is a terrible fact pattern for the president. i'm actually stunned for like what is a highly professional team around him, just the errors that they made along the way. first and foremost the mishandling of the information, where it was improperly stored. but then the fact days before the midterms they knew this information, didn't share it with the public. >> would that have been realistic? >> transparency is the best thing. even further, in december they

knew about this second tranche that's in his garage, in his personal home. it's always better to rip off the band-aid and get ahead of it than have it leak, leak ac, lea out. >> when they acknowledged the first batch, they could have said everything they knew at the time. >> it undermines prior statements and the really strong condem nation the president made about the former president knowing that he himself had done very similarly frankly. the big difference of course, which you can't say enough, is trump also obstructed. he continues to obstruct so the fact paetterns are different. but what is being investigated is the mishandling of classified information. in that regard they're very similar. >> and that's the law. it's about the mishandling, it's about the possession of classified information. when we hear from evan and manu, there's an investigation into whether a crime was committed, how could it not have been committed? they were not where they were supposed to be. >> there is no one neat law that

handles mishandling classified documents. in the mar-a-lago search warrant justice department cites two different laws related to mishandling or taking or destruction of sensitive government documents. so we'll start with that. but how could there be a crime or not be a crime? the key things for any prosecutor are always going to be knowledge and intent. you have to show any person you're going to charge with a crime, first of all, knew about the documents. if a person legitimately had no idea, there's no crime. you can't charge a crime. you also have to show that the person had some sort of criminal intent, some sort of intent that was against the law. the obvious example in these hypothetical scenarios was if they were disseminating this information, selling it, giving it to either. that doesn't appear to be the case either with trump and biden but that's the touchstone the prosecutors will be looking for, both trump and biden, knowledge and intent. >> evan, we have plenty of recent examples of how a special

counsel investigation can start on one element and then the scope expands, broadens over time, and we could be looking at different things very soon. >> reporter: yeah, you know, that's the problem with special counsels and why certainly i think throughout the history in this building, there's a resistance to doing it. i think merrick garland is very, very cognizant of that. he was reluctant to do the first one, jack smith, and i'm sure probably felt the same way. but once he had done the first one, he absolutely knew he had to do the second one, which is rob hur. i will say, though, that there is an effort here to make clear in the appointment document, which the attorney general announced, in which he specifies what specific crime is being looked at. there is, of course, language that says any additional matters or krcrimes that may arise,

especially if somebody was trying to obstruct or anything like that. one of the copkey parts of this going to be the personal documents found alongside the president -- the classified documents, right? one of the things that we heard in the last few days from officials is that these documents were found with purely personal things having to do with the vice president's family and so on. the question is the dates of those documents, right? they're going to want to know -- the fbi will want to know how far back are those documents that might indicate an intent to try to conceal the classified documents. those are the things that are going to be key here. the co-mingling of the personal with the classified documents is going to be a key part of this investigation going forward and i think that's where we might see, you know, the direction of this investigation. of course one of the complications here that we all have to talk about is the fact that we have a sitting president who is being investigated and

under regulations from the justice department, a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime. so that's another complication that rob hur is going to have to deal with. >> obviously this stuff found at mar-a-lago was also intermingled with personal stuff, clothing items, pictures, et cetera. manu, republicans have been saying since they took control of the house that they're going to be calling for lots more investigations. they're getting their wish. though i would think that investigating a dozen, as we now know, of the biden documents would be a shorter investigation if that's all there proves to be than the almost 300 documents by donald trump. either way, they're getting their term off to a rolicking start here. >> reporter: they are focused on the investigations going forward. republicans had planned to look at a wide range of other issues, but the main focus of the house oversight committee is to look into biden's family finances, hunter biden's overseas business

transactions, try to connect that to joe biden. that will still be a focus going ahead. now with this news, it's giving them a new area to push ahead which is why we expect a lot of effort going forward. the question will be how the white house responds to all these requests for records. does the white house cooperate with james comer's request to provide this information by january 24th, including communications between white house aides, the records themselves, a whole slew of documents, or do they fight the republicans in the house and does that lead to a subpoena fight, a loegal fight, things w saw during the trump administration. there's no clear answer at this point but that's undoubtedly how they plan to pursue it. there are democrats who have questions, including mark warner. he wants a briefing, a damage assessment about what these documents are and the impact it had on national security. in talking to a number of democrats, they want to know more information which is why the democrats have not been very

vocal on this because there are a lot of questions they don't have answers to yet. >> elie, to you, and the question of intent. m.j. lee at the white house just got a statement from the white house counsel there and he says that we are confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced. how much does that matter there? >> he's thinking the same thing i was talking about, knowledge and intent. if it turns out this was inadvertent or donald trump's situation was inadvertent there's not going to be a crime. now, as you and alyssa were discussing, the credibility of this spokesperson is not 100% because we now know that three days ago when they told us documents were discovered, they also knew there were documents at the president's home in wilmington but didn't tell us that. so that's a statement from joe biden's people, we can take it for what it's worth, but that lawyer is keyed into the key

issue here which is knowledge and intent. >> by the way, for what it's worth, i think donald trump will be following to how joe biden responds to this very carefully and probably using some of the same arguments. he tested the waters with i don't pack my own boxes, it was staff, i wasn't aware. i think this is something he'll pay close attention and modeling responses accordingly. >> for a while it was i declassified them magically and people were like you can't do that. so now he's looking for another one. >> because the intent part of it is going to be hard to prove. unless there's a witness there or something in writing that suggests a reason that you took something. so long as he's satisying i havt packed a box in ten years, that's a pretty strong case that he can make and it seems that's what biden is leaning into as well. >> there's an interesting difference here. joe biden continues to deny that he knew anything. no knowledge. knowledge is easier than intent.

donald trump has acknowledged publicly that he knew, right. he offered up they're my documents. i mentally declassified them, it's my stuff. but what trump is banking on which is the next step. yes, i know those documents were in my resort but i had no criminal intent. so trump has conceded step one. biden has not conceded that. they may be well different fact patterns. >> thank you all, really appreciate it. we'll continue to follow this breaking news. the white house press secretary is expected to take questions from reporters soon, so of course we'll bring you that. more republicans are calling on congressman george santos to resign, but he is defiant and just spoke out about why he will not step down. we'll bring you those comments just ahead. and we're following breaking news out of selma, alabama. the mayor there says there's significant damage from a tornado. we have a live update, next. old. but he knew w carvana had his back.

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news is out of alabama. the mayor of selma says there is significant damage from a tornado. several southern states are currently under tornado threats. >> let's bring in jennifer kgra.

what's going on? >> fast-moving storms currently moving through the southeast. watch the afternoon and early evening hours. here's the line of showers and storms pushing across alabama and georgia and across the southeast. this tornado that impacted selma basically an hour ago, these storms are now on the move. selma is past the danger zone, we should say, but these storms are still very powerful and potentially tornado producing. you can see that hot pink box right there, that's a tornado warning. that is from the same storm that impacted selma an hour ago. so these are very dangerous. if you live in this area, definitely get to your safe zone right now and be weather aware as we go throughout the afternoon. these are going to impact some big cities. atlanta possibly during the rush hour we could see these line of showers and storms push through. you can see we have a tornado warning there on the west side of macon as well so this is a very dire situation.

here's the warning area that we're looking at for this afternoon with the greatest potential for tornados, very strong winds and large hail. that does include montgomery, atlanta throughout the day today. as we put the storms in motion, you can see heading through atlanta this afternoon, 3:00 to 5:00, even 6:00, and it pushes to the east by 6:30. these storms are going to be very powerful and finally dying down as they make their way off the coast through the overnight. so the next couple of hours really crucial with these storms. very powerful tornado-producing storms. >> everybody in those areas, make sure you pay attention to your local news there. they will let you know if there's something coming. jennifer gray, thank you. despite admitting that he lied about significant parts of his resume and life experience, republican congressman george santos says he has no plans to resign. >> i wish well all of their opinions, but i was elected by 142,000 people. until those same 142,000 people tell me they don't want me,

we'll find out in two years. i've worked my entire life. i've lived an honest life. i've never been accused of any bad doing. >> okay. >> that's not true. >> so far at least six republicans have called on santos to step down. cnn's jessica dean joins us now. jessica, give us the lawmakers who are calling for santos to resign. >> right. so we are now hearing from a handful of house republicans, victor and alisyn, these are republicans in his home state and they're joining with people like nancy mace, who's from south carolina. but we continue to hear more and more from them. so we heard from more today calling on george santos to resign. but as you heard there, he is resolute. he does not feel like he needs to step down. he is doubling, tripling down in this case. continues to either ignore us or say he has no plans to step down

any time soon. now, he also said that the constituents elected him and that he's just following what they want. that is a bit in line with what we heard from house speaker kevin mccarthy on this issue today. i'll let you listen to that. >> i don't see any way that he's going to have top secret -- if you're referring to george santos. he has a long way to go to earn trust. the one thing i do know, you apply the constitution equal to all americans. the voters of his district have elected him. he is seated. he is part of the republican conference. there are concerns, so he will go before ethics. if anything is found to be wrong, he will be held accountable. >> reporter: so we know that two new york democrats have filed a former house ethics complaint against anesantos. they want they should look into his financial disclosures. but a couple of things remain true. number one, he was elected, but we now know that he sold voters

a pbill of lies with his resume. there are so many things that are untrue on that and also discrepancies in there as well. additionally, we also know that let's say george santos is expelled from the house. they're going to have to have a special election. it's possible democrats could pick up the seat. the political reality is, remember, kevin mccarthy is working with a tiny, tiny majority which we saw on full display last week. only seats he can afford to lose. if democrats picks that up, it makes that even slim are and that is just the pletolitical reality. so the word from republicans is let this play out. we'll see what happens with house ethics but this will just play out. >> joining us again is cnn political commentator alyssa farrah griffin. he says i've lived an honest life and never been accused of anything. not true. he is charged with check forgery and theft, i think in, brazil. that's just one.

i could go on. but how uncomfortable is this for republicans? are they as accepting of the process as kevin mccarthy is pretending to be? >> this is a real challenge specifically for kevin mccarthy. both kevin mccarthy and george santos are standing by this line 142,000 people elected me. well, no, they elected an mba candidate from nyu who worked at goldman sachs and lost his grandparents in the holocaust, all fabrications. not this person. we don't know some basic things about his background and rez mae other than things like the check fraud in brazil and the fact that he's under dueling investigations. this is something i think kevin mccarthy has to keep on lock. to jessica's point he can't afford to lose votes. but it would require a super majority of the house, so democrats and a large number of republicans to expel hem from the conference. of course that would trigger a special election. this is a district that biden won. and there's a fear with a lot of

republicans that it would flip that seat and make them lose that very slim majority. >> so beyond the biographical lies, this is what he said about the $700,000 he loaned his campaign. listen. >> it's the equity of my hard working self. i've invested inside of me. it didn't come from ukraine, russia, china, unlike some folks that we all know that get money from those sources. >> candidly he comes off like a con artist. that's not an answer. he's not answering where the money came from. when he was challenged about his finance background, he said it would be too complicated for the american public to understand. just tell us, where did the money come from, what have you done, what is your experience? his voters deserve to know. unfortunately i think he'll continue to be a huge headache for the confidence. i give a lot of credit to the six republicans who have called for his resignation.

i think that number will grow. we're only going to find out more. >> alyssa, thank you. attorney general merrick garland just appointing a special counsel to investigate president biden's handling of classified documents. we have much more on this breaking news, next. was hiring local talent. if i knew about upwork. i would have hired acactually talented people from all over the world. instead ofof talentless people from all over my house. we all need fiber for our digestive health, but less than 10% of us get enough each day. good thing metamucil gummies are an easy way to get prebiotic, plant-basefiber. with the same amount of fiber as 2 cups of broccoli. tamucil gummies the easy way to get your daily fiber.

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in a few minutes, white house press secretary karine jean-pierre will take questions about attorney general merrick garland now appointing a special counsel to investigate president biden's handling of classified documents. >> let's bring in arlette saenz,

alyssa farrah griffin, el elie honig and john miller with us as well. let's start, if we have john -- we'll hold off on john. elie, to you. the question of -- i mean this is kind of a thousand foot question here. the appointment of a special counsel versus the appointment of someone else, specifically the powers that come with this office as relates to this investigation. >> to start at 30,000 feet, if i may, how remarkable is it, it's almost surreal that at this moment right now we have a special counsel, a criminal prosecutor, investigating the sitting president and a separate special counsel investigating the former president who is in all likelihood going to be running against the current president for the next presidency. now, that's very important to understand what exactly is a special counsel? the most important thing that a special counsel has is the same powers that any federal prourt has. you can issue subpoenas, you can

investigate, you can do search warrants, you can indict, you can try cases, all the way through. what makes a special counsel different is that special counsel has a bit more distance, separation, independence, from the attorney general. that's why you go with a special counsel. for example, the regulations say that special counsel is not subject to the day-to-day supervision of the attorney general. the regulations say that a decision whether to charge a case or not starts with the special counsel. ultimately has to go to the a.g., but the a.g. has to give great weight to whatever the special counsel wants to do. and if the attorney general overrules the special counsel, disagrees with him, then a report has to be filed with congress. and the last thing that really distinguishes a special counsel is at the end, special counsel has to file some sort of written report, which we remember from the mueller report. so it's a federal prosecutor with a bit more independence. >> john miller, you have new information about the investigation. so just tell us what you've

learned about the decision-making here. >> well, the decision-making process unfolded with -- as elie says, it starts with the u.s. attorney in chicago, laush, who was a holdover for the trump administration specifically to continue an investigation he was conducting into political corruption in illinois. and he got this moved very quickly to look into it. on january 5th in his conversations with the attorney general recommends that there should be a special counsel. a, he's leaving the department of justice, b, there's more to be done and he said that's the appropriate way to go. so essentially the decision to have a special counsel, something that's been batted back and forth over the last couple of days on the air waves and in the political discussion was made on january 5th. the hard part was figuring out who that person would be. the regulations, as elie said,

have two key components among the many regulations about a special counsel. number one is does the thing merit investigation? how did classified documents get into the president's garage, into an off-site office, at a time when he wasn't serving in office merits investigation. the second component that's critical is are there extraordinary circumstances that would make it difficult for a regular prosecutor to do that case. and in this case, the extraordinary circumstances that the target of the investigation would be the sitting president of the united states, which brings other complications. so those were the components where the justice department had to decide do we keep this in-house, because we already have a preliminary job done by a u.s. attorney, or do we have to go through too many ways to explain why we didn't go with a special counsel. tough decision, but they made the call even before this announcement today.

>> alyssa, what's likely changing from the white house perspective? this is now maybe a different footing, different posture for this administration. they're being investigated by the special counsel. >> well, of course the biden white house was preparing for a ton of congressional oversight so they have staffed up with attorneys and with communications teams internally to be able to respond to oversight requests. i imagine the press secretary is working with white house counsel and the president's team to basically not offer any new information. that would be my recommendation as a comms professional who dealt with many crises in the former white house. keeping it tight to what they said and not introducing any few facts. i think you'll hear a lot referring to the department of justice and not commenting on an open investigation. when we're talking about investigations into classified information, we keep kind of hearing we need to know what's in these documents or know more about them. the public never know in all likelihood what's in the documents other than the classification and that is to

protect national security. so it's going to rely on this prosecutor and the officials doing the review to determine what level of threat was posed, what intent potentially was. but we're really as the general public not going to know much other than what is determined by the doj. >> let's go to arlette saenz. people are calling into question the timeline here appeared the dis disclosure from the white house, why the public didn't know about this sooner now that we know that the national archives was informed starting on december 4th. some republicans point out that was before the midterms. i don't know anybody on either side of the aisle who would voluntarily disclose this before the midterms. but november 9th, 14th, 20th where they could have said something so what was the thought process and how are they explaining it from the white house? >> reporter: that is really one of the complicating issues in all of this is that they now have this messaging challenge where they have had this steady

dr drip, drip, drip of information that they have released that really when a lot of this played out much, much earlier and ko been disclosed earlier. what officials here have said is they are very limited in what they can say as the justice department review is under way, but they're also trying to in recent statements just make clear that they are cooperating in every manner possible. there was a statement released by the white house counsel a few moments ago where he said that they have been complying with the national archives. they have complied with the justice department and that ultimately they believe this review will show that these documents were, quote, inadvertently misplaced but they're trying to stress that they understand the importance of classified information and certainly the president understands that. but look, this is a huge headache from the white house. they are now facing this special counsel probe. it's opening up a line of attack for republicans. and there are questions about

why they haven't released more information as this all played out behind the scenes and the type of communication or information that they have been sharing. yesterday at the white house press briefing, white house press secretary karine jean-pierre was very limited in what she said. she referred back to the justice department but really wasn't sharing much more. as alyssa noted, it's likely that they will hue very closely to the statements that have been released by the counsel. president biden himself stayed very close to that except when he made mention of the corvette. this is the first time we'll be hearing from the white house press secretary in just a few moments. >> john miller, alyssa farrah griffin, arlette saenz, stand by. >> we're also following breaking news out of alabama. tornados already being reported in several cities throughout the south. we'll speak with an official from one of those impacted communities. stay close.

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back now to our breaking news. attorney general merrick garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the classified documents found at president biden's home and former office. >> that's not the only special counsel investigation right now. jack smith has been appointed to look into former president trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and the documents at the mar-a-lago estate. we've seen several of these now. how common are these special counsel investigations? >> they seem to be coming more common, right? let's look through history and look at some key runs that have occurred. the most infamous one is the watergate special counsel during the nixon administration. this was looking at

breakthroughs at the headquarters. nixon fired the special counsel and ultimately of course, nixon from the presidency, he resigned. also i think this is another one people think about. it looked into the selling of arms to iran and in nicaragua. what was the result of that? it was the prosecution of several administrative -- several administration officials. not reagan though although it did bring down his approval rating and hurt his presidency. whitewater is not necessarily one that a lot of folks might think of, especially the younger folks in our audience, but it led to the impeachment of bill clinton and the independent counsel kenneth starr was looking at the impeachment of clinton relating to the lewinsky affair, and the more modern one, the mueller investigation, right? looking into trump's 2016 links with russia. it led to the persecution -- prosecution of several

administration officials, but trump himself was not charged. now, of course, all of this i should point out, comes at a cost to the taxpayers. so let's take a look at these costs of the special counsel investigations. $57 million, and $101 million. $37 million. at the end of the day, this is a small drop in the bucket compared to what the federal government spends at large. they've spent $907 billion this fiscal year. it comes at a cost to the taxpayer, but the business of government has to be the business of government. guys? >> thank you. >> thank you. >> we are expecting to hear from the white house at any moment on the appointment of that special counsel to investigate president biden's handling of classified documents. stay with us. - how'd d you get here? - kayak! they compared hundrereds of travel sites to find a great deal on my flight, car and hotel. [h[hissing] - kayak. search one and done..

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we've got breaking news out of alabama. emergency response teams are there providing assistance in selma after a tornado caused significant damage to the city. several buildings have been

damaged and some injuries have been reported, there due to the severe weather. in decatur, alabama, this ss semi turned onto its side. let's go to ricky adams. thank you for your time. let me start with life, any injuries. can you ntell me about casualtis topotentially and reports you a receiving? >> we're receiving reports from across the state, but no reports of fatalities at this time. however, the counties and the state are still assessing the damage, and the weather service is on scene in selma looking at that damage. >> where is it worst? >> well, it's a relative statement, but it's worse in the selma area and the western parts of the state right now, but again, it's still early and we're still assessing. >> yeah, i know you're just --

your crews across the state and local fire rescue, they're getting to these places, but what can you tell us about what is in selma and the damage reports you're hearing? >> the damage reports we have thus far from the county is structural damage, trees down, power lines down, and the area is very difficult to access due to debris. so the information is going to be a little slow coming out, but they are working house to house and area to area looking for people who may be entrapped and those who are injured. >> they're going house to house now, and you're saying because of these downed trees, it's going to take some time to get to these people who are making calls? is that right? >> yes. it slows the process down as they try to navigate the debris and downed tree. >> how crucial is it to get to these areas before the sun goes down, before things go dark? >> regardless of the hour of the day, it's important to get to those areas as quickly as we can. we're in life safety mode, and

that's the purpose to try to find as many people as we can. >> is the threat over? >> no. the threat is not over for the state of alabama. in fact, that same weather system is still moving through the central part of the state, and still moving east. so it is still a very significant weather kday for us >> rick y adams, thank you for your time and thank you for what you are doing. >> thank you very much. the white house is about to take questions on the announcement of a special counsel. now investigating president biden's handling of the classified documents. we will bring you there live. but with upwork... with upwork the hiring process is fast and flexible. behold... all that talent! ♪ this is how we work now ♪

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it's the top of the hour on "cnn newsroom." i'm victor blackwell. >> i'm alisyn camerota. merrick garland appointed a special counsel to investigate classified documents found on mr. biden's property. merrick garland said an initial investigation determined this move is necessary. the special counsel is named robert