for russia, the russians also used this moment to take the same routes to try and sneak their drones in right now, a ukrainian drone attack on russia is underway. so they've been forbidden, even if they could, to fire. each night they watch russian drones weave their complex way out of their tiny range when the defenses fail the icy silence breaks moscow pummeling the border town sumy. here with a cluster munition missile that killed 12 in an apartment block. because ukraine is still inside russia, holding positions in kursk this thermal drone image shows just hours earlier, the dawn's fight in kursk for alexander group a contact robert saleh joe tague shtula. in the positions

they've hit. no sign of the north korean troops meant to be in kursk. instead chechens, even african mercenaries. but above all endless waves of russians limit night time army to the west. his humvee is a mess. he hasn't slept for three days and shelling has damaged his hearing. but he knows what he'd say to president-elect donald trump when ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in the 90s, we were promised protection we don't believe that that is just ed lavandera sima merick anjali rao samuel luiz

confident they can hold out in kursk less confident of how long the west expects them to. anderson, you heard about north korean troops there? well, there have been suggestions that they have, in fact, been integrated into russian units and indeed ukraine's president volodymyr zelenskyy said at the weekend that some have been killed in the fighting. meanwhile, today the german chancellor, olaf scholz in kyiv, he's been criticized for a phone call to vladimir putin some weeks ago, ending the kremlin heads isolation. but here in kyiv, he promised more air defense for ukraine so urgently needs. anderson nick paton walsh thanks. >> the news continues right here on cnn outfront next, the breaking news, a putin ally under assault. >> the situation on the ground changing by the hour, rebels seizing the second biggest city as a top russian oligarch threatens all out nuclear war. plus, biden defiant, pardoning his own son even as his own party has been turning on him over it. new details tonight that hunter biden pled guilty only because he expected a

pardon. and the tweet. trump's new press secretary didn't want anybody to see, especially trump. but guess what? they file on earth. then let's go out front and good evening. i'm erin burnett. outfront tonight, the breaking news a major putin ally tonight under assault at this hour. the second biggest city in syria is now in the hands of rebels for the first time since the war began, a decade ago. as its dictator putin's close ally, bashar al assad, backed by russian forces is clinging to power. the situation there is changing by the hour the rebels surprising both putin and assad. storming aleppo, toppling statues of assad's family. overnight putin's air force reportedly carrying out strikes in syria in response, the crisis in syria for putin tonight, coming as another one of his allies is in serious trouble. let me just show you the images out of georgia tonight protesters furious after georgia's putin supported government decided to postpone

talks to join the eu. it has led to mayhem and protests on the streets. that move, of course, by the government, one that putin was celebrating and supporting but the overwhelming uprising that we are witnessing in these past days, these images you see on the streets of georgia are adding to a perilous moment for putin who today approved a budget spending a third of russia's entire national budget on the military. in fact, increasing the size of his standing military for only the third time since putin invaded ukraine, something that appears to be a sign that whatever peace deal is eventually negotiated, putin's goals remain unchanged. and tonight, a russian oligarch close to putin telling max seddon at the financial times that putin will reject trump's peace plan the first one that trump's floated there. he said then, quote, the world is on the brink of nuclear war. that oligarch saying that and also adding a specific warning to trump, saying that if trump does not stop u.s. backing for ukraine quote, there will be a

radiation zone. nobody will ever go into in our lifetime. and the war will be over threatening trump with nuclear war if he doesn't stop supporting ukraine. something that putin's state media is betting trump will do thanks to his cabinet choices. so far, according to journalist julia davis, the host of one popular russian state television program, saying overnight, quote what an excellent team is coming along with trump, not with respect to ukraine, but as far as everything else goes. if they're allowed to get in, they will quickly dismantle america brick by brick they are so great. fred pleitgen is out front tonight live in moscow to begin our coverage and fred, obviously an assault on putin backed governments in georgia in syria, nothing, though more precarious than what is happening on the ground in syria tonight yeah, i would absolutely say that it's certainly very precarious for the russians in syria and also for the syrian government as well. >> one of the things that we've

seen over the weekend aaron, is really the syrian government lines all but collapsing in a lot of these areas especially in and around the town of aleppo. >> and one of the things that we have to keep in mind is that the russians, along with the syrians, really fought very hard to take a lot of that territory from the rebels about eight years ago. and there's also a lot of military assets there on the ground that the russians also use as well. in fact, one of the air bases that was now taken by the rebels, the kayrros air base, is one that i personally landed at in a russian government plane about eight years ago as the russians were giving us a military tour of that area. so definitely a very close putin ally, really in a very precarious situation. and the russian air force, the russians are already saying, are already doing some of the heavy lifting to try and win that territory back. here's what we're learning about syria quickly descending back into all out war. president bashar al-assad's army seemingly caught completely off guard retreating as rebel

groups make sweeping advances, taking much of the second largest city, aleppo, and capturing large amounts of arms as they move forward these are the tanks of the regime, this fighter, says. the pigs. this is one, two, three tanks, four tanks of the defense forces and there are their busses syrian leader bashar al-assad calling on his biggest backers, russia and iran, to help bail him out meeting with iran's foreign minister as tehran is already mobilizing regional forces for battle on the syrian government's side the rebels will be confronted. iran's foreign minister said. and i'm confident that this phase, like the previous ones, will also be passed with pride by the government. the people of syria and the syrian army in a show of force assad's military releasing this video claiming to show their counter push in syria's northwest but acknowledging they're relying on russian air power to help their ground forces. the

russians now effectively fighting two major wars in syria and ukraine simultaneously of course, we support bashar al-assad, the kremlin spokesman said. we continue our contacts on the relevant levels. we are analyzing the situation this as fighting in ukraine grinds on at a steep cost in both lives and in money. president vladimir putin signing off on russia's 2025 budget with almost a third of the money now going to defense and military spending and while moscow's troops have been making steady progress in ukraine. hello sir. we're from cnn television. a senior aide to vladimir putin telling me the kremlin hopes the incoming trump administration will end the war on terms favorable for russia kristian white administration. trump administration on ukraine holly wirth conflict in ukraine the new administration

matt brasseaux jelani thurman sarina wiegman pat mcafee ukraine simon stiell. >> shen yun that was russian presidential aide vladimir medinsky speaking to me earlier today here in moscow. >> and just to give you an idea just how important the situation in syria is erin, for the russian president, he actually had a phone call earlier today with the president of iran masoud pezeshkian. of course, iran also heavily invested in syria as well. and of course, syria was the main topic of that. and according to the russian readout of that call, the russians were saying that they were offering unconditional solidarity to what they call the legitimate authorities of the syrian arab republic. erin. >> all right. thank you very much. fred pleitgen, live in moscow tonight. and let's go now to general mark hertling, along with seth jones, national security expert, who, of course, has been on the ground in syria, as well as the other

places we're talking about here. general, right now you're looking at a crucial moment for vladimir putin, and it comes as the financial times is reporting, you know, that oligarch and his inner circle is outright rejecting even trump's offer for a peace deal. you hear what's happening in georgia. what's happening in syria as putin is trying to send this massive increase in his armed forces, how crucial is this moment? >> we have to put it in perspective. you just named some of the things aaron but russia's military is in disarray. they are spread across a bunch of continents not just syria and ukraine their economy is in freefall as fred just mentioned. they face some threats on their on several fronts and decreased assistance from a bunch of allies that are having problems themselves. so we're seeing, you know, as calm as putin is and as his spokesman may appear to be they don't have reason to to feel very good about what's going on. they're facing dynamics on

every single one of their fronts, which could could cause increasing problems putin is not in a good place right now, and i hope that, you know, based on our our approach toward the ukrainian war, we take advantage of that. >> well, seth, that's the crucial question. and the russian oligarch who threatened that nuclear weapon, you know, that no one would go in in our lifetimes in that zone again, and the war would be over. he also added after rejecting what they say is trump's potential peace deal, that zelenskyy needed to be removed from power, that trump needed to do that. if trump wanted to end the war. and i'm just curious seth, what you think about that in the context of what we heard from joe rogan, who obviously supported trump for president joe rogan implied that he turned down an interview with zelenskyy, where, of course, zelenskyy would have come on his show to make his case about the war. but seth, do you think it's it's that that's an actual question out there that trump would try to remove zelenskyy from power. >> well, erin i was in ukraine

somewhat recently. >> i don't think there's any indication that the ukrainians want zelenskyy to step down. i don't think there's any interest from zelenskyy to step down. and i think this this is really the challenge, right now that the incoming trump administration has. there is a huge gap right now between the ukrainians and the russians on what they're actually willing to negotiate. the russians want a weak ukraine right now. they certainly don't want it. as a member of nato. and i'm sure they want zelenskyy to step down. and the ukrainians want the opposite, which is they want to build up their conventional weapons. they want to be a member of nato, and they want to keep a strong government led by zelenskyy in. this is why it's going to be difficult, i think, to, to to get a cease fire negotiation in place. >> and i should point out the biden administration tonight signing a $775 billion additional supplemental package for ukraine. obviously in the scheme of the money that's gone in, it's it's de minimis. but it's still important.

it's a signal. they want to get in as much as they can prior to a change in administrations. general i am curious about the impact here of what is happening in syria. right. as you point out, the putin's air force was crucial in assad maintaining power but now aleppo has fallen for the first time since the civil war began a war where bashar al-assad had been out on the public stage, right at international meetings, you know, sort of back back. i don't want to say business as usual, but this is this, this sort of seemed to stun, not just putin, but assad. how much of this do you think stems from putin being overextended? >> i think all of it does, erin. and one of the things we have to mention is we're watching the attacks in aleppo and hamas and seeing the kind of tactical action on the ground. we also have to remember that vladimir putin loves syria, and he only loves it for one reason. he has a major naval base at tartus. he has a major air force base at a place called jenin, and both of

those bases give him access to the mediterranean. once he loses that because of a potential overthrow of assad, he has lost his capability to influence in the med. he is somewhat lost. his influence to influence in the influence in the black sea. based on the war with ukraine and his naval bases in the baltics. at kaliningrad, are also threatened so you're seeing putin really being tossed into a corner. these bases are all critical for their military presence in these areas. and increased rebel activity in northern syria and turkish and the turkish incursions have heightened concerns about the russian supply routes, even into the area. assad is saying russian is. russia is bombing in the area and they're helping counter the rebels. yeah, they're not bombing with much because they don't have much to bomb with. they've lost a lot of aircraft in ukraine and they're like i said, a minute ago, they're in very bad states and getting anything. and i just comment on your statement about the russian ministry

saying that they wanted zelenskyy removed. that's been the objective of putin since day one, in february of 2022, to get putin and his or excuse me, to get zelenskyy and his government out of ukraine so they would meet their strategic objective if they could do that. >> and seth, you know putin signing the military budget, a third of the budget going to the military, increasing troops for just the third time since the war began obviously, they've had hundreds of thousands, maybe nearly a million of wounded or killed in action the currency hitting the lowest level that it has since the war, since the invasion of ukraine how how much disarray is there in the russian military? i mean, what's the truth? as you can see it, seth. >> well, look, i think the russian military is trying to push forward in the area of donetsk and luhansk in ukraine. but the reality is that the russians have suffered extraordinary casualties and still are on the front lines. they have not been able to effectively take back the take back the kursk area of russia, that the ukrainians now

control. as we've talked about aaron, the russians have suffered about 4 to 5 times more casualties than in all wars since world war two combined. so that's both the soviet union and and russia itself. now to, to to have to deal with syria right now and hayat tahrir al-sham with really no effective ground force because hezbollah is not going to play a role they did in aleppo when the syrians took it. the iranians had a major ground presence as well qassem suleimani, the former head of the islamic revolutionary guards quds force, actually was in the joint operations center. so the russians are in serious trouble right now on multiple fronts. and i think their military is suffering badly because of it and of course, the crucial question will be what will the trump administration do? >> do they see it as an opportunity in which way? thank you both so very much. and next. hunter biden's get out of jail free card. cnn is learning the president's son only pleaded guilty because he was confident his dad would come to

his rescue. and tonight, we know one of the main reasons for hunter biden's blanket pardon. plus trump's incoming press secretary is an election denier i'm the only candidate in this race to say that president trump won in 2020. but as our kfile found out, she did not always believe that. and then elton john shocking confession the singer telling fans that he has lost his eyesight. what happened if your family is anything like mine, every day brings in dirt and messes a touchdown just sit back, relax and leave the deep cleaning to the pros at bombas, we make absurdly comfortable socks, slippers you'll float in and underwear and tees that feel like clouds.

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to learn more, go to lumi dotcom full stop. >> luther never too much new year's day at eight on cnn and more breaking news tonight. >> president joe biden's pardon of his son hunter, officially filed in court. you see the document there on your screen with the president's signature at the bottom. sources telling cnn that hunter biden would not have pleaded guilty in september to all nine tax charges had he not expected his father to pardon him. after all, it could have come with a jail term of nearly 20 years. but this comes in spite of what biden has said so many times publicly have you ruled out a pardon for your son? >> yes. >> the jury decision. i will do

that. and i will not pardon him. >> there's no ambiguity about that. president biden making the final decision, of course, though, to pardon his son after trump said he'd appoint kash patel to run the fbi. and this is some of what kash patel the man trump just tapped to to lead, that fbi has said about hunter biden i've always said, and i still believe hunter biden is going to be indicted for criminal activity. >> hunter biden is guilty of violating the foreign agents registration act. they know what hunter biden's laptop contained. his laptops are the basis of tremendous amounts of criminal activity. hunter biden will be charged no matter what and patel, soon to be boss pam bondi, has also talked quite a bit about hunter biden hunter biden, his son hunter biden, hunter biden, hunter biden, hunter biden, hunter biden very serious charges against hunter biden, hunter biden hunter biden, hunter biden's dealings and that's just a small

portion. >> there's a lot more where that came from. so look, it's clear that hunter biden is top of mind for trump's incoming team. who would be in charge of prosecutions? as for trump himself tonight he is responding to biden's pardon, writing does the pardon given by joe to hunter include the six hostages who have now been imprisoned for years? such an abuse and miscarriage of justice? of course, the reality of it is, is pardons are often abused by outgoing presidents. we see it all again and again. marc rich. remember trump himself, though, doled out dozens of pardons to his allies and supporters, including 26 in the final hours of his administration. like his daughter's father in law, charles kushner trump. in december 2020 pardoned kushner, who had pled guilty to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations. chris christie, the u.s. attorney for new jersey at the time, called kushner's offenses, quote, one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that i ever prosecuted. you can look up why prostitution is part of it. and now kushner is about to be named trump's ambassador to france. paula reid is out front

even as president biden publicly declared he wouldn't pardon his son. >> i said i abide by the jury decision and i will do that, and i will not pardon him sources tell cnn that people in the west wing and those close to hunter biden believed a pardon was always coming. >> will you testify in june hunter became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime. the jury has found hunter biden, the president's son guilty on all three counts in this case, after three hours of deliberation. >> good morning. >> after that historic conviction on gun charges he faced another federal case in los angeles on tax charges. but just hours before the trial was set to begin, he entered a surprise guilty plea on all of the counts he faced. >> this plea prevents that kind of show trial that would have not provided all the facts or served any real point in justice. >> sources familiar with hunter's legal strategy tell

cnn he would not have pleaded guilty exposing himself to the possibility of 17 years in prison and possibly more than $1 million in fines without the expectation of some form of clemency. and even as the white house repeatedly denied a pardon was on the table, one senior white house official told cnn they felt certain biden would pardon his son before leaving office, saying i know how much he worries about hunter. this tree lighting. then, after the president spent the thanksgiving holiday with hunter, his wife and their son, biden informed his staff about the pardon decision on saturday night. on monday, the white house had no clear explanation for the president's flip flop. i can speak to where we are today and so i can't speak to hypotheticals here where we are today the president made this decision over the weekend. >> he thought about it. he wrestled with it a former white house staffer asks the

question, which is if it was so obvious that the president was going to pardon his son why did he continue to pretend otherwise? >> we do not have an answer for that. but one source does point out that biden allowed david weiss, the u.s. attorney who was investigating hunter biden that began in the trump administration to continue his work throughout his administration and the justice department brought two cases against hunter biden. this source says, look, all this effort that biden has put into allowing the justice department to operate independently shouldn't be undermined by this pardon. but that's not been the official word out of the white house. and their contradicting statements have made this pardon a far greater controversy. erin. all right. >> paula thank you very much. all right. let me start here with former congressman mondaire jones. you worked in the obama justice department. so look, biden said again, and again, and there was no ambiguity. he wasn't going to do this. sources are telling us that hunter biden would not have agreed to plead guilty in september if he didn't think a pardon was coming. so basically, the whole guilty

plea was because i know i'm going to get dad to do this for me. i mean is this the right ending here? >> so i wish the president had never made those commitments publicly. i certainly never expected that he would not pardon his only surviving son for something that there was strong evidence of, that no one else would have been charged with. but for his political connections to the president. i mean, i think there's strong evidence that hunter biden would never have been prosecuted for, even on the tax stuff correct. what happens typically is you pay back the money that you owe with interest and maybe financial penalties but the idea that you would be criminally prosecuted for that, i don't think that would have happened absent the political pressure, which is what you know, led to the special counsel appointment in the first place. i am so tired of people who have been promoting and endorsing unfailingly, really, a president who is now a convicted felon on 34 felony counts and and who had frankly, over 50 other felony counts pending before they were dismissed because of his reelection, saying that all of

a sudden that this shows that it's the democrats who don't care about holding people to the rule of law. that is not what this example is of governor pawlenty well, you know this is a slippery slope. >> and so when you have, for example, hillary clinton mischaracterizing the russia, the research on the dossier as a legal expense when it was really opposition research those cases normally go to the fec and you get a civil penalty when it's donald trump, you get prosecuted criminally for a similar offense, and that's his argument. >> and look, there's a lot of issues here. but this situation with president biden and this particular pardon it is corrosive it is hypocritical. it is self-serving for all the obvious reasons. in your report. but it's one other thing, too, that i think get lost in the overall story this pardon goes back ten years. it goes back to 2014. so if you wanted to pardon him just for the gun charge and just for the related drug charges or even the tax charges, that's one

thing. but when you go all the way back to 2014, you also remove any further criminal scrutiny for the dealings that hunter and maybe joe biden himself had in ukraine, but more specifically, china and i think that is self-serving. it's cynical, and it is really corrosive, referring to chinese business deals that hunter biden was a part of as well as on the board of burisma. >> ryan, it is a sweeping pardon as as governor pawlenty points out, it covers 11 years. it would cover all of those time frames as well. um what do you think? >> so i think that the 11 years is probably drafted in order to protect hunter biden against retributive president and a kind of kash patel fbi director and potentially a pam bondi attorney general. >> that's the design of it. >> that's why it's that sweeping. but at the same time, it doesn't fully explain what happened here. so the timing of the pardon is odd. why are we having a pardon before the sentencing, which was about to occur later in the month? you would think that that would be the appropriate time after the

judges get to weigh in and say what would be the appropriate sentence? and to do that now also is a way of subverting the justice system. so i do think there are many ways in which when president biden first said he would never, ever pardon hunter biden, people talked about that as being righteous because he was respecting the justice system and now he's issued the pardon. i don't think it can be seen as righteous. it really is an injury to the justice system because because of the mistake that you wish he had never said that he wouldn't do it. >> i think because it's that honestly lie. i mean, i don't know what you know, i'm going to call it. that's what it was. it ended up being a lie in retrospect, that he wouldn't do that. >> i mean, look, the press secretary says that he changed his mind. and so under that theory, he didn't lie at the time. he didn't knowingly tell a lie. right. here's the thing, donald trump has pardoned, as you mentioned, 144 people for crimes far worse than this one. wrong doesn't make a right. that's not what i'm saying. but just in the context of this, this idea that somehow the american people are going to say that a president's lawful use of his pardon power

against someone who had never been charged with these crimes in the first place, is somehow showing that he thinks this guy is above the law. i don't think people are buying that. >> there have been a lot of democrats, though, who have criticized this, even in just the past couple of hours. a couple of congressmen were up criticizing to wolf joe manchin, senator and i know obviously, he's had his bones to pick with biden over the years but he has come out and said that biden should now wipe the slate for trump. that's that's that's what the true that's the right thing to do. here's what he just said what i would have done differently, and my recommendations to counsel would have been, why don't you go ahead and pardon donald trump for all his charges and make it, you know, it had been it had gone down a lot, a lot more balanced. >> if you will yeah no, no, i think actually the road to the decline of our institutions is going to be paved by these false equivalencies drawn by people like joe manchin who has done this often, frankly. >> again this is we're talking about someone who lied on his application for a firearm,

about a drug addiction and who didn't pay his taxes. okay. and someone who had never been prosecuted for these things in the first place, as it concerns donald trump, a prolific and career criminal. he already got his pardon when the american people voted for him to return to the white house. all the many charges against him, they have been voluntarily dismissed. he will never be held accountable. sadly, for the harm that he has caused the american people there is no need for for joe biden to pardon him. >> governor well, i think president trump has de facto already been pardoned because those cases have imploded. >> but it would have been a nice gesture notwithstanding that if president biden would have issued a pardon for president trump, would have been a great moment of unification but i will also say, you know, on this issue of president biden being the one who is the protector of democracy and institutions wagging a finger at us lecturing us about those issues, and then instead of just saying, i was a pained dad and doing this as a parent, which is obvious, he then throws his own justice

department under the bus in the press release and criticizes it as political, even though it's his own justice department doing it. and you know pees all over the institutions, which is the exact opposite of what he said we should be doing during the campaign and earlier. so i really think the way he handled this is miserable so, ryan, would you agree just miserable fairly miserable in many respects. and it's in fact part of the reason that i think the special counsel filed briefs today to object to special counsel looking into hunter biden. that's right. and he said, look, i want you to dismiss the case because of the pardon, but please do not expunge the indictment. and he also uses it as an opportunity to say this was not selective prosecution. this was not vindictive prosecution. that was hunter biden's claim in court. and it got rejected. so there is something odd about the president of the united states claiming that his own justice department selectively prosecuted. >> right and there was, of course, a jury. there was a jury, there was a guy. there were others involved. american citizens

colleagues, of course, of hunter biden as we all are on a jury. thank you all very much. i appreciate it. and next, he's written a children's book about the plot against a king. the king was named donald what else are we learning about kash patel, trump's pick for director of the fbi? plus, she praised mike pence for upholding the 2020 election results. what else did trump's new press secretary tweet that she never wanted her boss to see? she deleted them, but our k file found them. he has the reporting times may change, but some things remain timeless. >> i've been using the dove beauty bar for more than 25 years. dove is one quarter moisturizing cream i feel silky smooth if you have high blood pressure or diabetes and get a cough cold, or flu safe, tucson is specially formulated for you powerful, safe and effective cough, cold and flu relief that's formulated so it won't raise your blood pressure or impact your blood sugar. >> play it safe with safe tucson.

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it's kind of the same right, do you notice it? you do? okay. december 7th, paid for by the u.s. department of health and human services. >> i'm natasha bertrand at the pentagon and this is cnn closed captioning brought to you by book.com if you or a loved one have mesothelioma, we'll send you a free book to answer questions you may have. >> call now and we'll come to you. >> 808 two one 4000 tonight, king donald he's a character in a children's book written by kash patel. >> same kash patel that trump has picked to lead the fbi. the title of the book is the plot against the king. patel, casting himself as a wizard cash, the distinguished discoverer selling trump t shirts under the logo cash. so what more do we know about the man who will soon, likely oversee one of the world's

biggest law enforcement agencies tasked with overseeing 30,000 special agents protecting the united states from foreign threats? investigating federal crimes and upholding the constitution. sara murray is out front. >> donald trump's arms donald trump's bombastic pick to run the fbi. the fbi's footprint has gotten so frickin big. >> already has some controversial ideas for overhauling the bureau. >> i'd shut down the fbi. hoover building on day one and reopening the next day as a museum of the deep state and i take the 7000 employees that work in that building and send them across america to chase down criminals. go be cops. you're cops. go be cops. >> in choosing kash patel to lead the law enforcement agency, trump picked a loyal firebrand who has vowed to take on the so-called deep state, which patel claims is made of journalists. big tech elected leaders and senior government bureaucrats. >> and our biggest enemy against that truth is the deep state. and we are on a mission to annihilate the deep state. >> he's also shown a taste for

retribution, including over false claims of 2020 election fraud. >> we will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media. yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about american citizens who helped joe biden rig presidential elections. we're going to come after you, whether it's criminal or civil. we'll figure that out. >> he's been a public defender and a federal prosecutor in the justice department's national security division during the first trump term, he worked on the national security council and then as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary. >> we're blessed by god to have donald trump be our juggernaut of justice, to be our leader, to be our continued warrior in the arena. >> patel defended trump against the charges he faced in the now dropped, classified documents case. >> they can take what they want. you can't be prosecuted for possessing classified documents. >> and while he's claimed violent offenders from january 6th deserve punishment, he's defended others charged in relation to the riot at the u.s. capitol. >> their lives have been destroyed by the justice department because of a political vendetta. they want to enact through the justice

system to take out trump. >> as for his other endeavors, patel has a line of apparel as brash as its creator, with items featuring his signature k dolla sign h. he also penned a children's trilogy apparently dedicated to trump. the quote king of the series the most recent installment describes the tale of the quote maga king and his journey to quote take down kamala, la la and reclaim his throne. patel's book for adults, government gangsters. now, his rallying cry for reform i am going to go on a government gangsters manhunt in washington d.c. for our great president who's coming with me now, even in trump circles kash patel is a controversial pick for this role, but obviously he's going to have to be confirmed by the senate if he is to become the next fbi director. there's also the awkward issue of what to do with the current fbi director. christopher wray is still in the middle of a ten year term designed to insulate the fbi director from politics. so trump is either going to have to fire him, or wray will have to resign. erin. >> all right. sara. thank you

very much. and of course, wray, as we can all just remember, was appointed by trump out front. now, former fbi deputy director andrew mccabe and director, i appreciate your time. so just on the very base of this, sara, going through kash patel, his background, his experience as a prosecutor, do you think he has the qualifications that are required to lead the fbi no, erin, he absolutely does not. >> and that's really by any standard measure. if you look at mr. patel and compare him to any fbi director nominated by any president. he comes up woefully short in the areas of legal expertise uh experience leading an organization, which, by my count, he has absolutely none. and connections to the law enforcement community, which he has none of those either. um, you know, traditionally directors of the fbi come from the federal, the federal bench they served as u.s. attorneys high level positions in the department of justice, served in the fbi, ran

field offices as clarence kelly did so kash patel has done none of those things. he sells t shirts with his name on it. i guess that's terrific. but it doesn't make him qualified to be fbi director. >> and yet it seems everything that you're saying in terms of his not having been in a field office or not having been a u.s. attorney or not in the department of justice, is actually a key part of the reason trump has chosen him. right. and do you think that this is part of of a bigger plan that trump has that, that this is exactly why he has chosen someone like kash patel i absolutely do. >> i think you're right about that i think his lack of qualifications make him, in some ways a better candidate for president elect trump. and, you know, and then, of course put on top of that his undying loyalty for for mr. trump so that's that i'm sure makes him in some ways the ideal candidate. what concerns me, erin, is what it says about donald trump's intentions for the fbi. and you don't have to listen to everything. kash

patel has said he hasn't actually said that much but the comments he's made about what he would do as fbi director some of those that you played in the last piece make it pretty clear that he intends to essentially take the fbi backwards 50 years. we know what the fbi looks like when it is hell bent on pursuing the president's political enemies we know what it looks like when an fbi director takes the awesome power of the agency its investigative authority, its legal authority, and trains that at americans for the purpose of executing political revenge, of collecting political intelligence for the president. we know this because j. edgar hoover did it for 40 years. and in 1975, after the church committee and the pike committee and the post-watergate reformations, we got away from that. so america is familiar with an independent fbi that actually knows how to protect america and uphold the

constitution. my concern is that's what we'll lose. >> now, i want to ask you about something else before you go, director and that is something that trump's former defense secretary mark esper, says about patel. he said that patel made up information in a crucial moment, and you can think of a situation like this. um, you know, this is this is this is about war and peace. so basically, the united states, during a hostage rescue, needed clearance to enter the airspace of another country. patel says that the u.s. has permission. now, it turns out that the united states did not have permission. and esper says and i quote him, by the time mike pompeo and i spoke an hour later, he still didn't have the okay from the remaining country. he also did not know where patel received his information. pompeo never spoke with him. how did we receive the bad information in the first place? pompeo wondered. esper said his team suspected patel may be approval sea story up, but they didn't have all the facts. um, what concerns you the most when you hear a story like this? obviously it appears from what

esper is saying that that no one ever understood exactly what happened. but but what would be the implications if someone were willing to make information like that up and convey it to the defense secretary you know, aaron, i wasn't involved in that situation, but i have been deeply involved in many operations that involve sending fbi personnel and other u.s. >> agency personnel into foreign countries and hostile conditions for the purpose of taking terrorists into custody and bringing them back to the united states to face justice. getting permission or coordination with the host nation is the most basic and single requirement that you must have in place before you put your folks in harm's way, and the idea that he may have somehow uh failed in that respect or the idea that he might have created that information to push the the, the operation forward in a way it shouldn't have gone. it indicates a staggering lack of

judgment right. so the question is, do you want someone who has proven bad judgment to be in charge of an organization that's responsible for sensitive, important investigations and missions? every day i would suggest that the answer is no. >> all right director, i appreciate your time. thank you very much. >> thanks, erin. >> and next, trump's incoming press secretary is known for pushing election lies. but as our kfile uncovered just four years ago, she was saying the exact opposite. and tonight, elton john revealing to fans that he has lost his eyesight rocket man burning out excuse i think you've been harmed by products containing talc. >> you may have the right to vote on the plans of reorganization filed by emery's talc and cyprus mines. it's important because the plans determine how talc claims are treated, which may affect your rights and claims. vote by december 16, 2024 or object by

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praising mike pence for upholding the 2020 election results. andrew kaczynski joins me now. all right andrew, tell me more about what you found. >> well, that's right, we found multiple posts that she had deleted on january 6th. >> in the aftermath of that riot that she had sent. one of them praised vice president mike pence for certifying the election. the other praised a capitol hill police officer. and i want to run people through both of them and talk about the significance of it. now, let's take a look here at this pence one first, where she's retweeting someone. this is on her feet. she took it off. it says, love him or hate him. he kept the wheels of democracy moving and pushed forward to certify his own loss. thank you, mr. vice president. that post also included a video of mike pence certifying the election, calling it a dark day in our nation's history. well, why did she remove that? well, that post essentially admits that donald trump lost the 2020 election, something that he still doesn't admit and something that the entire republican party has been just such a big part of the trump movement. now this other one

that she removed is really interesting. it's a post in which she praised a capitol hill police officer she called him a, quote, hero and what did this, this, this guy do? well this capitol hill police officer, eugene goodman, and there were rioters essentially sort of trailing him up the steps near the entrance to the senate chambers. he made a quick decision, led senators away from the entrance to that chamber. he was credited with saving possibly senators lives she deleted that tweet and you know, essentially that post sort of admits that donald trump was putting people in danger by sending that mob to that capitol. >> both of those are clear and of course, as you point out now deleted, she then ran for congress in new hampshire in 2021, one of the youngest people ever to do that. and you found out she really changed her tune during that campaign. what did you find there? >> yeah. and if you fast forward to that 2022 campaign for congress, she was running in a primary against another candidate she really ran all out as an election denier, she said. in some of these videos

that were viewed, she was the only candidate in the race who would say that donald trump won the 2020 election. she spread false claims that biden didn't win 81 million votes, claims that there were voting irregularities. she vowed that she would get to the bottom of the 2020 election. it's a very big shift from where she was after that, capitol riot. listen to some of those comments i am the only candidate in this race to say that president trump won in 2020, and i will work my hardest every single day to ensure we get to the bottom of it. >> i do believe that if we were to audit all 50 states in this country, there is absolutely no way that we would find that joe biden legitimately won 81 million votes as fundamentally, do not believe that now, we should note that she did go on to lose that congressional race in new hampshire by by ten points in what was a wave year, sort of for republicans. >> now we reached out to the trump transition we asked for comment. and this is what they told us about this. they said caroline was completely correct

in saying there were irregularities or irregularities with the 2020 election and any cases of fraud should be investigated in order to protect and preserve the sanctity of our democracy. uh, she said she will make a wonderful press secretary championing the values and agenda of president trump. and there is nobody better who can articulate that to the public. so going back to those 2020 election lies in that statement, right? >> right and of course, ignoring those tweets that you have unearthed. thank you very much, andrew kaczynski of kfile and next singer elton john, revealing that he has now lost his eyesight after an infection looking like a true survivor feeling like a little kid. >> cnn heroes on all star tribune sunday at eight on cnn customize and save with liberty mutual customize and save. >> and then i wake up. >> is lemieux with you in all your dreams? >> oh, yeah. >> only pay for what you need. >> liberty, liberty liberty, liberty the perfect gift.

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at a gala performance of the devil wears prada in london. >> i've lost my eyesight so it's hard for me to see it, but i'd love to hear it. >> got your car power to play the 77 year old pop superstar wrote the score to the show and thanked his husband, david furnish, for his support during his months long battle with a severe eye infection. and to my husband, who's been my rock because i haven't been able to come to many of the previews, he first spoke publicly about his sight in an instagram post three months ago, saying he was dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye and in an interview last week, the icon said his eye issues have interfered with his ability to work. >> i'm kind of stuck at the moment because i can do something like this, but going into the studio and recording, i don't know. um because i

can't see a lyric for a