. welcome to this special spec edition of hannity . i m kayleigh mcenany, and for sean. and tonight, the white house is eerily quiet. president is long goneth off for yet another vacation. just one day after returningom i from a leisurely christmas trip to camp david. must be niceas. vitamins spend the next week relaxing in sunny st croixd ther in the u.s. virgin islands. here s biden arriving at his beachside vacation . t of f got to be a lot of fun for the president. what we are sufferinesident g he at home. biden has spent approximately 40% of his presidency on vacations. the resultncy ons certainly sigy the time he spent away. here you see hims spen relaxing in the sun seems to be a trend. meanwhilsee, at home, we havecho chaos at our southern border. at ourlook at our screen as we . a massive migrant caravanugh me is traveling north through mexico. already, record numberxis, illegal immigrants are pouring across our border on a daily acs in record numbers. listen to t
ahead. i ll speak with the family of paul weiland, another american, the kremlin has locked up on espionage charges and a group of military families gets the tragic news. nine service members killed when two black hawk choppers crashed. cnn has a crew right near that save. plus tension in the house from paper tossing to hallway shouting in your face. debates are getting heated on the hill. welcome to the lead. i m pamela brown in for jake tapper, and we start today with our world lead. top u . s. officials are strongly criticizing russia after an american reporter was detained on charges of spying. evan gersh covic appeared in a moscow court today accused of trying to steal russian state secrets. his employer, the wall street journal, says it quote vehemently denies those claims. but now gorshkov itch faces up to 20 years in prison. and today , lawmakers on capitol hill are accusing russia of using this journalist as leverage, and the white house is dismissing the charges.
brittney griner and those resources don t exist anymore, and it s not clear whether they ve been able to find new resources that could bring paul home. i think the concern we have right now, obviously with mr gerst ceviches arrest today is that they have not been able to deter the kremlin from arresting more americans and charging them with espionage. and so certainly my hope is tinged by that. all right, david whelan. thank you. and best of luck to you and your family. i hope that you hear from paul soon. i want to bring in to russia. experts evelyn farkas is the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for russia , ukraine and eurasia and tom firestone, who served as a legal advisor at the u. s embassy in moscow. evelyn, i want to start with you just to get your reaction of what we just heard from david whelan. yeah i mean, pamela, i m afraid that this is extortion. as he said the russian government is looking to make a swap. probably we know that very recently, one of their spie