bret: good evening, welcome to washington i m bret baier and two big stories featuring big numbers. customs and border protection say within 300,000 people illegal immigrants and countered by border patrol attempting to enter the u.s. illegally across the southern border and just the month of december. we will head to the border to report on the major showdown between texas and the biden administration. but first the other big numbers tonight. we begin in new york, a jury or during former president donald trump to pay more than $83 million in a defamation lawsuit brought by e. jean carroll. a jury found previously sexually assaulted by a trump in the 1990s. the former president vigorously denied the allegations and wondered how he did that is the subject of the defamation case. alexis mcadams outside of the federal courthouse in manhattan with the latest tonight. good evening, alexis. good evening, bret. huge numbers in the courtroom in manhattan. e.g. harrell said dona
i m maria bartiromo. today invasion at the southern border. 371,000 migrant encounters nationwide in the month of december alone. compare that to the entire final year of the trump administration in 2020 with where they had 405,000 for the whole year. something if former director of national intelligence john ratcliffe warned us about in the first three months of the biden administration, right here. we didn t have a problem four months ago. we had no national security issue like we have down there right now. now. this was a situation where the biden administration was so eager to want to declare trump policy cruel at the border that they, that they took away policies that were clearly working, and they reversed agreements that we had with with guatemala, honduras and el salvador and with mexico to stop the traffic at mexico s southern border. and they invited this crisis, they created this crisis. and so i think it s important know that they own this crisis. this was tot
explaining why he allowed the uk to take part in military action in yemen without first holding a commons debate. rishi sunak has faced criticism for not allowing mps to hold a discussion before britainjoined the us in bombing raids on houthi rebels who have been targeting commercial shipping in the red sea. our political correspondent leila nathoo has the story. rishi sunak has made his case that joining us air strikes on houthi targets in yemen on thursday night was an act of self defence to protect global shipping, that britain could not stand by while fighters defied warnings to stop their attacks on commercial vessels in the red sea, like this one they filmed. there has been broad political support for this limited action, but today mps will get their first chance to question the prime minister about his decision and what happens next. he ll have to address concerns about the escalation of tensions in the region, about the uk being drawn into a longer military campaign a
it s 4:00 in the east. big day of news today. on capitol hill today a brutal collision between reality and delusion, a republican effort to whitewash the ex-president s ties for russia culminating in a veteran prosecutor under oath seemingly unwilling to acknowledge basic facts in service of republican conspiracy theories. just a few weeks after releasing a 300-page report after an investigation that went on for four years, cost the taxpayers $6.5 million, a report the washington post described this way as, quote, landing with a thud resulting in no new charges and none of the widespread abuses trump and his allies have alleged for years now. special counsel john durham testified today before the house judiciary committee. now, despite all those facts durham described his findings sobering and it was left to it democrats on the committee to point out the truth of his own investigation, an investigation that trump and his hand picked attorney general bill barr setup to inves
welcome to the beat. i m ari melber. we are tracking several stories tonight, including another supreme court ethics scandal, tying gop appointee samuel alito to another billionaire on a fishing trip. we ll get into that later. it s a big story. but our news program begins tonight with not only the criminal trial of donald trump, now slated to begin on august 14th buck the broader ongoing threat of right wing individual lantyism and authoritarianism. tonight we begin with a special report on that very challenge, and trump s efforts to hijack the criminal justice system that now is trying to potentially hold him accountable. we re talking about a range of actions that has prompted already fear of violence over the violent rhetoric and whether that could turn to action. we re about one week out from the federal arraignment that trump did try to prevent. we remember he was forced to sit silently in that miami courtroom. outside cameras showed a very small crowd. the scene was