happening right now, sentencing is under way for oathkeeper s founder stewart rhodes for his part in the capitol riots, and we will find out the time he is going to get for seditious conspiracy. and ron desantis has a huge gap to close against donald trump and we hear about the plan he has to try to close it. and a man is able to walk for the first time in decades, and we have the latest of what is helping him to do it. this is noouz. this is cnn news central. negotiators are working 24/7 to get a deal on the debt limit as the treasury department is warning that the u.s. could default one week from today. this is what house speaker kevin mccarthy said in the last hour. every hour matters, and this is why the white house is meeting on this, and why last night, the team they have is very professional and very bright. they know where the differences are, and how to work on this. as the talks are playing out, the house will recess today and head home for the weekend,
welcome back. this is just in. cnn has a letter written by brian laundry who is the man who is accused of killing gabby petito, and what does the letter say? well, the importance of the letter cannot be underemphasized, because the reason that we have it is because a judge yesterday said that the letter had to be turned over to the petito attorney, and it had to become something of discovery, because it is forming the basis of what their suit is intentional inflection of emotional distress, and the letter is showing that the laundries knew that brian had murdered gabby, and they were not telling any information or communicating and the laundries say that this was written so far
katelyn polantz for that report. as we are waiting to see what sentencing rhodes is going to get, and where do you believe this is going to land today? look, a massive delta between 25 years sought by the prosecutors and the time served by the defense counsel. the judge has a tremendous amount of discretion here, but the prosecution has portrayed this sentencing in particular as a real outlier, and they describe it as unparallel and unprecedent and it defies any comparison because witness after witness spoke about the impact and the trauma that january 6th had on them, but the government is portraying the real victim here as our normal democratic functioning, and the democracy itself which flies off of the
that is a very powerful argument for why this judge should put these defendants away for decades. what the prosecution is really leaning on heavily is, judge, if you allow these people to go away with a slap on the wrist, then who, you know, it is a watershed moment as they put it. we will see an uptick in political violence, and they are saying, judge, you have an opportunity to put an end to it and deter others who would do the same as the oath kooeeepers the so-called oath-breakers as the government called them on january 6th. and the conspiracy charge is going to be part of the big part of it is the part of it and who rhodes is, and what part of the standard is for what it is going to set for the other sentencings
expect this hearing to go on for a little bit of time today, because many things have to happen in a sentencing hearing like this. there are arguments from both sides. we know that the justice department is going to be asking for rhodes to be sentenced to 25 years in prison, and so that is by far the largest sentence any january 6th capitol rioter would be facing if the judge amitt m metawants here. but the other side does not want that much, and looking at the arguments in writing and one of the things is that he should be credited for the amount of leadership that he had in the organization for all of these years and obviously now that is an organization that the justice department said led this conspiracy around the violence of the capitol attack on january 6th and not just rhodes, but many, many members of the oath