who are celebrating. amal evolve she. we begin this hour wit confirmation of one of the man major lies that the former president told the america people this time regarding his taxes. following a years-long legal and political saga be house weight and mean committee was finally able t secure donald trump s ta returns. they voted to release them t the american public this pas week despite his insistent ally s donald trump s tax returns wer not under audit when he ran fo president the first time the irs did not audit th personal tax returns of donald trump during his first two years in office. this is an important point it s interesting because besid being one of the forme presidents publicly stated reasons for not releasing hi tax returns. the irs has a program mandatin the quote mandatory review o the presidents individual ta returns. that protocol was followed for presidents barack obama and jo biden. dir us did finally follow it own rules of the forme presidents third year
americans believe donald trump should face criminal charges for his part in the capitol riot. on tuesday the house select committee investigating the capitol insurrection will begin its third week of hearings. this time the panel plans to focus on former president trump s efforts to pressure state officials to overturn the 2020 presidential election. georgia elections officials are expected to testify at tuesday s hearing along with arizona house speaker rusty bowers. our justice and crime reporter is joining us. what can we expect from tuesday s hearings? reporter: we re going to see another aspect of donald trump trying to manipulate the laws to take the election in 2020. this tuesday the public hearing before the house select committee is going to focus on the states, specifically battle ground states like arizona and georgia where trump and the lawyers were trying to get people to change the outcome of the votes in the states. those were states that trump lost. so we kn
donald trump there doing what he can to flip the script in response to the recent january 6th hearings. we ll have more from his first public appearance since they began, and what we can expect next in the next round. and colombia is poised to lead latin america s green energy initiative. we ll tell you how politics are getting in the way of that. we begin in ukraine, which has just cleared the first hurdle on a path to join the european union. ukrainian and eu flags flew side by side after recommending they be given candidate status. vladimir putin is okay with that because the eu isn t a military alliance like nato. boris johnson made a surprise visit. he offered ukraine a major military training program he said would fundamentally change the equation of the war. and new videos of the wars appeared on pro-russian sites that appear to show two u.s. volunteers missing in ukraine. this is a photo posted earlier. cnn isn t showing the new videos because the men appear to
amid pilot shortages. the efforts under way now to keep travelers moving amid the summer travel spike. hopefully no alarm for you today because it is the weekend. it is saturday, june 18th. thank you for being with us. always great to be with you christi. we begin with new fears that the u.s. economy is headed towards a recession. yesterday marked the end of a rocky week for wall street after the federal reserve announced the largest interest rate hike in decades. the dow closed down yesterday, s&p 500 finished slightly up. still wound up with the worst week since 2020. let s look at the brighter side for a moment. we learned that wages in the u.s. are climbing at their fastest rate since the mid 80s. the push, the inflation has risen so fast that workers, it actually equates to being handed a pay cut because their pay is not matching up with the percentage of inflation that we re feeling and the things that we re buying. let s get a closer look at the political angle
acknowledging that americans are, quote, really, really down right now after this strain of the pandemic. and as they struggle with inflation and rising interest rates. we want to welcome our viewers here this the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin with the first public response by former president trump to the damning evidence and testimony presented by the january 6th select committee. cnn s jessica schneider is following all the new developments in the investigation. i never called mike pence a wimp. i never called him a wimp. mike pence had a chance to be great. he had a chance to be, frankly, historic. but just like bill barr and the rest of these weak people, mike, and i say it sadly, because i like them, but mike did not have the courage to act. former president trump using his platform at a conservative political conference to deny the evidence against him and blast the january 6th committee. they con p