years amid fears that the country is heading into a recession. it s a challenge for president biden as he attends a dnc event and tries to sharpen his midterm message. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin our coverage tonight in ukraine where bogus referendums are under way as moscow tries to solidify its hold on occupied territory. our senior international correspondent ben wedeman is on the ground for us. ben, is this so-called voting essentially happening at gunpoint? reporter: basically it is, wolf. we re seeing video and hearing reports of election workers going house to house, door to door, with ballot boxes, accompanied by armed men, in some cases armed men wearing balance cla vas. we re wear the election workers are going door to door. people are locking their doors and simply not answering to avoid voting. in fact, the ukrainian authorities have urged residents of the occupied t
information, which suggests officials believe trump knew he had classified documents and released allegedly intentionally did not return them. justice department prosecutors made the case for secrecy warning, quote, evidence might be destroyed. even saying the affidavit would provide a road map as well to the investigation. that does not appear to be resonating with the judge, who set in motion the possibility at least of releasing a redacted version of that affidavit, something that could happen as early as next week. and in a cnn exclusive report, some former trump allies are calling the president s claims that he had a standing order to declassify documents, quote, i ll paraphrase, bs. cnn watched out to 18 former top administration officials from the trump years and all of them told us they never heard of any such order, issued during their time, in the trump administration. but, first, a critical deadline for fulton county, georgia, prosecutors, just expired. they had un
and she broke barriers as the youngest woman in congress. now, almost three decades after she left public office, this fighter wants to get back in the political arena. welcome to the lead. i m kasie hunt in for jake tapper. we start with our politics lead and another major development in what has been a monumental week for january 6th investigators. the latest twists, more missing text messages from the period leading up to the capitol attack. according to the washington post , texts from donald trump s acting homeland security chief, todd wolf, and ken cuccinelli, or m.i.a. department of homeland security said texts were lost in a reset of their government phones at the end of the trump administration. today a source tells cnn that the january 6th committee did interview chad wolf several months ago the same time they met with cuccinelli. that was before they learned of the possible deletion of records. these revelations come on the heels of exclusive cnn reporting that
i ll speak to kentucky governor. welcome to the viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin this hour with exclusive new reporting. multiple sources are telling cnn the top watchdog over department of homeland security learned about missing u.s. secret service text messages months earlier than previously known. let s get to ryan nobles. what are you learning about the missing texts? reporter: the timeline outlined by the inspector general of the department of homeland security just doesn t match up with exactly how it played out. that according to reporting. according to the reporters learned is that he was notified as early as may of 2021, a couple months after the text mebsz ands were deleted and did not inform members of the january 6 select committee and the other oversight committees. this raises serious questions about the timeline of events and when he took action to try to retrieve the messages.
smuggling the precious resource back to russia to finance its invasion of ukraine. welcome to our viewers here in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room . let s begin our coverage tonight on capitol hill with new details on the insurrection investigation. we have exclusive new information about when the inspector general over at the department of homeland security first learned of those missing secret service text messages. but first our chief congressional correspondent manu raju is joining us with other news on the january 6th probe. manu, i understand you pressed gop leader mccarthy today on a key conversation with former white house aide cassidy hutchinson. what did he tell you? more importantly, maybe what didn t he tell you? reporter: he said he didn t recall. this is one of the key moments of that testimony that cassidy hutchinson whether she went before the january 6th committee about the concerns and the efforts to s