challenging the to remove him from the primary pal lot in maine based on the 14th amendment s insurrectionist ban. we ll speak live with maine s secretary of state, shen that bellows, in just a few moments. first are cnn s chief legal affairs correspondent, paula reid. what is trump s team arguing, and what happens next? reporter: now it s up to the main maine courts. the trump team is asking the court to overturn the decision by maine s secretary of state of c maine, shenthat bellows. she opted to remove trump from the ballot. if you don t like what the secretary of state says about your ballot eligibility, you can appeal that to the court system, which is what they ve done here, asking them to overturn her decision. trump s team arguing, the secretary was a biased decisionmaker who should have recused herself and had no local
legal affairs commentator areva martin. we knew these two roads would be intersecti intersecting, and now we have specifics of that. we have trial date of march 4 in the federal election subversion case. what did you make of the judge s decision to set the trial date for that day? it is a big victory for the prosecution. we know jack smith s team argued had they would be ready in january. donald trump s team had requested the trial date be extended out until april of 2026. so the march date obviously is a lot closer to the original date requested by the prosecution. and you have trump s team arguing that they need all of this additional time because there are so much documents and so much witnesses and it would it would be a miscarriage of justice for the trial to proceed on that calendar.
election and their efforts to try to flip the results. so that means efforts to pressure election officials, that means the fake electors scheme. that means the efforts to breach the voting system in coffey county, georgia. and sources tell us that there are people involved in all of those efforts who are concerned and believe that t among those who are facing charges next week. and, erin, of course, as you know and we have reported, donald trump also expects that he is going to face charges in this fulton county investigation. of course all that from your reporting, sara, thank you very much. i want to go now to katelyn polantz. katelyn, you have been closely following the two federal indictments, obviously, the election interference with jack smith and mar-a-lago documents case. you ve got developments on both. so, let s start with mar-a-lago. trump s team arguing that he should be able to go, you know, near his home to discuss classified documents. what are you learning about this
request to limit what the former president can say about the case against him. now accusing federal prosecutors of trying to restrict trump s first amendment rights. do they have a case on this at all? trump s former white house lawyer ty cobb will be with me. plus, a deadly strike. russia ramping up attacks on civilian targets. we are learning tonight of a russian plot to assassinate the ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy. and an alarming scene as a massive brawl breaks out between a black man and a group of white voters in montgomery, alabama. and tonight police are vowing to make arrests. let s go outfront. good evening. i m erin burnett. outfront tonight, team trump s response. the former president s legal team just now responding to a request from the special counsel that came after trump posted if you go after me, i m coming after you. all caps. trump s team arguing that his ability to share information in the january 6th case is covered by the first amendment.
president. as the president might put it, there is an element of hope and history rhyming. this is taking place in a federal courthouse named for j. caleb boggs. boggs was the sitting u.s. senator in 1972 when joe biden won his first u.s. senate election beginning the first of seven terms that ultimately led him to the white house, ana. mike, there was also this confusion on the 1 yard line so to speak. can you break down this dispute between hunter biden s team and the house republicans and how that could affect today s proceedings? reporter: well, as we know, house republicans, republicans across the country, have been arguing that the president s son is getting special treatment here, that there should have been more severe charges being sought by the government in this case. in the last days, we saw an amicus brief filed by jason smith, a congressman from missouri, in which some personally identifying information that hunter biden s legal team felt should not have been included