addresses posted on a far right website. growing concerns about what might happen next. also he promised a big press conference two days ago claiming he'd finally blow the lid off 2020 election fraud. more signs tonight he was, no surprise, just blowing smoke. and hawaii with a thousand people still unaccounted for a cnn investigation into why maui's emergency sirens stayed deadly silent. good evening and thanks so much for joining us. we begin with breaking news. the former president's attorneys have weighed in with what they want the trial date to be in the federal election sub version case. it is a long way off. the justice department had proposed january of 2024. the former president's attorneys now say the trial should not start until april, 2026. that is more than 2 1/2 years from now. if mr. trump is elected president again, it is effectively never. the lawyers in their filings saying the justice department's proposed date denies them the ability to prepare for trial. joining us now cnn's legal analyst and former manhattan chief assistant district attorney. what do you make of this proposed start day by the former president's attorneys? >> so he has been in all his cases essentially saying delay, delay, delay. that is his number one thing and judges have gotten wind of that. he did write a lot in this motion i think this 16-page motion his lawyers submitted where they talked about how much discovery which is the documents the government has to hand over there are so many and they even had a drawing in there where they stacked them up and showed if you were to stack them all it is much higher than the statue of liberty and empire state building trying to show it is so much we can't possibly be ready. you know, at the same time he also puts in there, we have so many other court cases and i have to deal with those and can't do this one. he is saying in all his court cases i can't be ready on that so i want the other one. he doesn't really want any to go and the judges will see that. when you cry wolf at a certain point because this is what he does in all his cases i don't know the judges will let them get away with it. in the mar-a-lago case he also indicated the discovery was so much we can't possibly be ready but the government said there as large number but so much are things like e-mail headers or things that are irrelevant that really aren't the meat and potatoes and the government is handing over a road map to the discovery saying this is what is important and where you find it. there is really no reason why one defendant, four count indictment, can't be ready in january when jack smith asked for january 2nd. this is not a 2 1/2-year case. >> in the filing the attorneys say the government's objective is clear to deny president trump and his counsel a fair ability to prepare for trial. i mean, do you know a lot of cases that need nearly three years of prep? what sort of case would? >> yeah. if you had a, say 19 defendant case with 41 charges, that is a big case with a lot of defendants and information that could take time. this is really one defendant, four charges, and so much of what is in there trump has already litigated in 60 court cases across the united states, right? he has been litigating these issues for the last two and a half years. he has prepped to handle all of these issues. there could be very complicated cases that require much more time but i don't think this is one of them. this is a very streamlined case and jack did that deliberately. four charges. that's it. >> appreciate it. thank you. we've learned more details about the alleged death threat against judge chutkan. a texas woman is in custody charged with leaving a racist and bigoted voicemail message threatening to kill her. the charging document includes a transcript the defendant calling judge chutkan a, quote, stupid slave and then the "n" word and warning her, quote, if trump doesn't get elected in 2024 we are coming to kill you so tread lightly and saying bitch. she also allegedly said you are in our sights. we want to kill you. the woman is being held pending trial. we've learned the fbi atlanta office is now helping the fulton county sheriff's office after threats of violence to unspecified county officials. the sheriff's office is also working in their words to track down the origins of threats against the grand jurors who voted monday to indict the former president. the threats coming after their names and addresses showed up on various online platforms frequented by the far right. joining me now is the cnn chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst john miller and also a former agent. how much of the former president's rhetoric plays into this? would this woman have known judge chutkan's name had the former president not been talking about her so much? >> i don't think you can separate the former president's rhetoric or the style of it, which is he has called the judge in new york names. he has criticized the judge in washington personally. he has gone after the district attorneys in both cities to the point that threats follow that where they've had to increase their security details and now they're having to provide police protection around the homes of grand jurors. so i don't think you can disconnect it. >> do you think grand jurors should have police protection in this case in fulton county? and also i mean, should their names be public? >> here is the thing. historically they've made the names public but now with the way things are where this is happening, the taking of people's personal information and putting it out there making it public, you are putting these people in danger. how long can you give them protection? the resources and man power it entails. do they have the ability? when the trial is over what happens? this stuff doesn't go away. it is not just the physical security you're concerned with but the harassment, the cyber attacks, these other things that come into it as well as their extended family and their lives. this really, something should be shifted because we are in an environment right now where it is not just the physical security, our information is out there. these people's information is out there. >> john, if you want to destroy the system of justice we have in this country, you essentially we're seeing an all out assault on it from a variety of ways and one is intimidating people who would, might serve on a jury. these are people doing an incredibly important civic job. >> it is really interesting distinction because everything you say is correct but there is a certain professional code that threats come with being a prosecutor, come with being an agent, come with being a judge even. that is why there is a system built to protect them around them. that is why they're court officers and u.s. marshals. a grand juror, that does not come with the territory. they are citizens, independent citizens doing their civic duty which is why under title 16 i think it is chapter 20 in the georgia state law. they have a very strong statute that says if you threaten or try and impede or intimidate a juror or a grand juror on account of a verdict or indictment, that is a 20-year count with a $5,000 fine. the key here is if they catch the threats on the internet and we do have the capabilities in law enforcement, we did a lot of it in new york city, you traced them back to the origins. you interview those people, you present those cases to the prosecutors, and you make some examples. >> if you were providing protection for the judge chutkan for instance how closely would you be following the former president's remarks about her? i mean, it is something we're living in a world where a former president of the united states is going after, you know, calling judges on trials he is facing these names. >> it is so interesting because here it is on the flip side. in the secret service we were typically concerned about dialogue and things said about people we protected. a president. chief of staff. whoever we were protecting. now it is the flip side and it is someone who is in a very influential position and your worth impacts people. when we would see people who had we would call them special interests and someone we were protecting you are also dealing with people who have mental health issues, you're dealing with people who are not of strong mind. so your words may impact these individuals in such a way to cause them to do harm. we would see that all the time in the u.s. secret service and get a ton of threats in. it was what is serious, what is not? what is someone saying here? does this person need help? sometimes we'd have people committed who we thought were a danger to themselves or someone we were protecting. as you are saying before they are core lated. >> this topsy-turvy world where we have a former president, former mayor of new york, who reach down and target jurors to campaign workers. >> election workers. >> ruby freeman. it is extraordinary that this is just, and it seems normal now. >> i think the flipside argument is bizarre because you have someone in the person of a former president who has secret service protection, driving the language that is driving the threats to people who have no protection. >> thanks so much. appreciate it. we are also learning more tonight about the judge who will preside over the fulton county trail. >> reporter: this is scott mcphee superior court judge in fulton county, georgia. >> welcome back everybody. >> reporter: presiding over a recent murder case seen on courthouse video. >> and so to that end, i believe the state did prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there was sufficient evidence to convict on each of the charges in this case. >> reporter: judge mcafee randomly assigned to a different legal scenario. he is 34 years old and was appointed to his seat just six months ago by georgia's republican governor kemp to fill a vacancy. before that he served as state inspector general and both a state and federal prosecutor after graduating from the university of georgia law school in 2013. classmates and professional acquaintances say he is politically conservative. notably, mcafee was a state prosecutor in the complex trial division in fulton county which was led at the time by the woman who is now the fulton county da fani willis. a democratic georgia state representative and defense lawyer who handled two cases where mcafee was the prosecutor. >> in the cases i had with him he made reasonable decisions related to pleas or discovery requests and he was fair. politics never came into it. >> reporter: university of georgia records show he was the treasurer of the law republicans a group that serves libertarian members of the law school community and provide support for republican political candidates. he was also treasurer of the law school's federalist society, an influential conservative and libertarian organization in the u.s. just a few months ago he presided over a case involving an outspoken trump supporting conspiracy touting lawyer >> i have political views. i believe our country has been taken over by communism. >> reporter: this case, though, did not directly involve politics or trump. it was a contempt case for allegedly making derogatory comments about his former legal associates. >> that is where i am. tell me why i'm wrong. >> reporter: judge mcafee held wood in contempt and leveled fines against him. scott mcafee has only been on the fulton county superior court bench for a few short months but is now dealing with a case that could be one for the ages. gary tuchman, cnn, atlanta. >> more now on the challenges facing this judge and every judge in charge of trying to -- trying the former president. joining me is now former federal judge -- thank you very much for joining us. i want to see if you have a thought about the trump legal team asking for a date of april 2026. >> it kind of made me chuckle but that is in the election fraud case, the federal case. >> yeah. >> obviously he would like it to be as long as possible in delay taking forever but there is no need for that in that case. that is a straight forward case and should be tried soon. >> and the judge is the one who makes the decision on that. >> absolutely. the government has asked for january. january 24th. so i think it is going to go this spring. >> you've heard about the death threat against judge chutkan. judges have been threatened before. targeting a judge, having the former president, you know, talking about her and calling her racist, all sorts of things. when you hear that, i think so many people, this seems normal. should it be normal? >> it is certainly not normal for a judge to be threatened but not unheard of in high profile cases because there are people out there who are not mentally together. in any high profile case a judge can get threatening letters, threatening phone calls, and the u.s. marshals are very aware of that and they take care of that. unfortunately, there have been a couple judges who have actually been killed. a couple federal judges and some state judges so it is taken very seriously by the marshals. >> putting the names of grand jurors online, targeting jurors, that does hurt the -- i can't help but believe that would hurt a person's willingness to serve on a jury. >> absolutely. when i've had high profile criminal cases i've had anonymous juries. you might remember on the e. jean carroll case the jury was anonymous and remained so. publishing the names of these grand jurors and addresses is a terrible thing in my opinion. >> does having them anonymous affect the trial in any way? >> well, i think the jurors know there must be a reason that their names aren't being given out. so they are aware it is certainly high profile but they knew that anyway. i don't think it affects the justice process. >> in the fulton county case the judge as we were showing is relatively new to the bench. this is going to be an incredibly difficult trial for any incredibly experienced judge. >> exactly right. no matter how experienced you are if you have 19 defendants and 41 counts it is going to be a very complex trial. a rico, big rico count and many other counts. it is a tough case to try. i think it is going to take six months or more to try. somebody out of law school for ten years, has been on the bench for six to eight months, probably never had to control a courtroom which is not easy, there are a lot of lawyers jumping up and down making a lot of motions. it is not going to be easy for a new judge to do that. >> we hear about that so often like the importance of the judge controlling the courtroom. how does a judge set down the marker early on i am in charge? >> force of personality is my opinion. >> i sense you were very good at that >> i think i was. absolutely. you just make rulings firmly, you don't take further argument after you've ruled. you say sit down if somebody keeps talking. i've heard enough. thank you very much. you have to be tough. you have to be decisive. you have to be quick. that takes experience. >> do you think the date that the da willis has proposed, march 24, is realistic? >> absolutely not. >> do you believe there will still be -- it seems unlikely there will be 19 defendants when it goes to trial. it seems some of those are low hanging fruit. >> of course. some are going to plead out. some are going to cooperate which is always the big risk. rushing in who is going to be first to turn and cooperate and become the state's witness? so it won't be 19 but i bet it'll be double digits if it is not part of it in federal court. that is an interesting question that is pending right now. >> judge, so great to talk to you. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. up next what we just now learned was an empty promise by the former president to publicly expose election fraud in georgia, which there was not, at a big press conference on monday and the very latest from hawaii where the death toll is still climbing. a big question is why didn't the statewide disaster alarm system sound the alarm? why didn't we do this last year? before you were preventing migraine with qulipta®? remember the pain? cancelled plans? the worry? that was then. and look at me now. you'll never truly forget migraine. but qulipta® reduces attacks, making zero-migraine days possible. it's the only pill of its kind that blocks cgrp - and is approved to prevent migraine of any frequency. to help give you that forget-you-get migraine feeling. don't take if allergic to qulipta®. most common side effects are nausea, constipation, and sleepiness. learn how abbvie could help you save. qulipta®. the forget-you-get migraine medicine™. may lead to severe vision loss and if you're taking a multi-vitamin alone, you may be missing a critical piece... preservision. preservision areds 2 contains the only clinically proven nutrient formula recommended by the national eye institute to help reduce the risk of moderate to advanced amd progression. preservision is backed by 20 years of clinical studies. so ask your doctor about adding preservision and fill in a missing piece of your plan. like i did with preservision. now with ocusorb better absorbing nutrients. breaking news that is not exactly breaking news if you are aware of the former president's public statements. tuesday night he was promising to expose the very same nonexistent georgia election fraud he promised to expose for three years since he lost the election. this was the time he was finally going to do it. just moments ago he broke the promise quoting from his social media post, rather than releasing the report on the rigged and stolen georgia 2020 presidential election on monday my lawyers would prefer putting this, i believe irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of election fraud and irregularities in formal legal filings as we fight to dismiss this disgraceful indictment by a publicity and campaign finance seeking da who sadly presides over a record breaking murder and violent crime area, atlanta. therefore the news conference is no longer necessary. cnn anchor and chief correspondent kaitlan collins. >> a lot to read. >> i mean, of course we all saw this coming. of course there is no evidence so therefore there wasn't going to be anything. what is the back story on this? do you know? >> he announced this. i think the minute anyone saw it they did not believe it was likely going to happen or if it was no one believed he was going to show up almost three years after the election with this irrefutable proof of election fraud he hasn't been able to come up with or present in court for two and a half years now. but it was a surprise to a lot of his advisers when he posted. it was really specific. he said next monday 11:00 a.m. -- >> a lot of his advisers were posted that. >> they saw it when we saw it. it wasn't a well coordinated or thought out strategy. >> that really surprises me this guy would not have a well thought out or coordinated strategy. >> unusual. it wasn't something he consulted his attorneys on. they are the ones who put the damper on this. i was told by todd blanche one of the main attorneys handling a lot of his cases they were essentially making the argument, you can't always just go to him and say don't do this. it is not always effective but arguing twa is not going to help his ongoing investigations into claims of election fraud and trying to overturn the election. he is saying tonight they're going to put it in formal legal filings. it is not my sense of the arguments his team is going to be making in court but we had heard rumblings today that this was likely not going to materialize. don't make any trips to go to bedminster. >> i don't have anybody who was seriously thinking this was real. >> he did have an aide, communications aide also referenced in one of the other indictments, the document indictment actually compiled some kind of report document. it isn't totally clear what was in there but someone who promoted his election lies. >> he had some aide making some sort of copies of things to pitch. >> yeah. >> wow. that must be a great job. imagine that task. kaitlan, stand by. i want to bring karen back in. the former president has been posting about these cases on true social for months now. is there a different legal risk associated with speaking on camera at a news conference that goes beyond the scope of online posts? >> yes. one of the conditions of release in his cases is that he not interfere with the trial or jurors. part of that judges need to protect the integrity of the trial and the jurors so there is not, just because he says things doesn't mean it will be admissible in court. the fear is that he is going to taint a future jury pool by putting out all of this inadmissible information because of course there is no document with irrefutable proof of a stolen election so that would never come in at trial because it doesn't exist and so he is going to put it out there and say i wanted to show you but my lawyers told me not to. he wants to be able to thread that needle and i think that is the concern here is you cannot taint a jury pool. >> he is now saying his attorneys will put his arguments in court filings instead of the press conference. i mean, that seems ridiculous, highly unlikely. i mean, they are not going to use this trial to relitigate the election lies of 2020 are they? >> certainly the pretrial motions which are the motions his attorneys will be making between now and the trial wouldn't be strategic or appropriate to put your defense in there at that time. clearly this is what he is now saying his defense is. so the time to put on a defense is at a trial. so hopefully we'll actually have a trial where he can put all his defenses out there and probably try to relitigate these issues. you know, that will be what his defense is. >> kaitlan, do you have a sense of what spurred him to do this initially? to make this announcement? do we know? >> he was angry he was indicted in georgia for why he was indicted in georgia. not just him obviously. 18 others. he has continued. it is the same thing when you talk to people like bill barr what was happening and when bill barr described it once as whackable in the days after the election. they'd get alerted of one claim of fraud and another while still chasing down this one and having investigators interview this truck driver they claimed drove all these ballots to pennsylvania. it just kind of was this never ending, exhausting, none of them turned out to be true kind of situations and that is still something to this day that trump talks to people who were in his ear pushing these claims that he himself pushes obviously and it is more of that. this wasn't some kine of legal strategy. the attorneys who were actually handling this are not making these arguments in court, not going to court and saying actually he did win the election so that is why he shouldn't be charge here. in his mind though i think he continues to push it and his lies about election fraud on the campaign trail and obviously, you know, canceling this there is no proof. it is not surprising but predictable. >> as far as avoiding talking about these cases goes it seems like the, likely the former president will skip the first primary next week. he is still campaigning to be president giving peaches and holding rallies. is it only a matter of time before he says something publicly that is incriminating? anything he says publicly on the campaign trail possibly could be used against him. >> absolutely. he has to be careful about that. he has to be careful of a couple of things. he has to be careful about statements that he is going to say that will either lock him into a particular story or things that could be used against him that are potentially incriminating. he also has to be careful because he is going to, for example, mike pence is running against him and he is going to want to say things about mike pence but he has to walk a fine line and not intimidate a witness against him since mike pence is one of the main witnesses against him in jack smith's january 6th case. that is going to be a dance that would be hard for anyone to do. he is not careful. so it'll be interesting to see how the judges, how the courts will deal with that sort of intimidation of a witness. >> appreciate it. we'll see kaitlan again on "the source" in about a half hour. coming up as hawaii's death toll reaches 111 with perhaps more than a thousand people still unaccounted for, we'll focus on the conflicting answers officials have given for why they didn't use the loud all hazard sirens that covered much of maui but did not warn of this oncoming fire. tens of thousands of customers wrote about carvana being easy in their five star reviews, including eric. the whole process was really simple and easy, and this is my third time selling to carvana. so i can practically do it from memory now. you just enter your license plate or your vin, answer a few questions. boom, you get a real offer. true story. it's still shocking how easy it was to sell my car to carvana. sell your car to carvana today. tv: try tide power pods with 85% more tide in every pod. who needs that much more tide? (crashing sounds) everyone's gonna need more tide. it's a mess out there. that's why there's 85% more tide in every power pod. -see? -baby: ah. wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. it's to die for. and it's all right here. streaming was never this easy, you know. this is the way. you really went all out didn't you? um, it's called commitment. could you turn down the volume? here, you can try. get way more into what your into when you stream on the xfinity 10g network. good news out of hawaii as the death toll rises to at least 111 people. the fbi is asking family members of those unaccounted for to provide dna samples to help in the identification of the wildfire victims. the governor has said there could be more than a thousand people unaccounted for right now. many areas still need to be searched. according to the police chief search crews coming through the debris field are at the same time having to work through their own grief. the chief said, quote, responders going out there recovering their loved ones and members of their families. bill weir joins us from maui tonight. you've been there now for a week surveying the damage and talking to people on the ground. what are you seeing today? >> reporter: well, anderson, people are starting to get their first looks at the devastation even those whose homes survived seeing what happened to their neighbors is gutting. the psychological toll and the trauma will be with these folks for quite a while. i am speaking to a specialist about that shortly. we spent some time today with cadaver dog teams and we'll bring it to you tomorrow night. along the way we met a veteran fema urban search-and-rescue officer who has seen so many disasters, more than 90 in his career, but he says this is unlike anything else. take a listen. what are the particular challenges on this site compared to all the experience you have? >> i have been to a number of hurricanes and tornadoes and what is so unique is we are not looking at a street, not looking at a block. what we're looking at is the whole community and again it isn't a few houses tipped over, a few structures leaning this way. what we are looking at is it is just gone burned to the ground and the heat and intensity and the speed makes it a lot more complicated and we have to consider the responders and k-9 safety. i can't simply go into that structure anymore. now i have to make sure it is safe. the technical piece to this, where we have to delay things and search. we can get that accountability. it slows down the project but that is why we brought in so many teams from the united states and so many dogs through the fema search-and-rescue program to do that as fast as we can given this is such a complex technical problem. >> yeah. >> they are looking for people literally on the granular level. imagine the complexity as the trade winds are kicking up as well but it is that number of the missing, unaccounted for, that just sticks with you because we've had phone communications get better and better and the power is on for most of the island now so you'd think if someone was missing and then there is the worry about the children. the stories that so many kids were at home either with the grandparents while the parents were at work, so much concern. so much concern. and people may not know for weeks, months, maybe not ever. >> yeah. appreciate your reporting. thank you. questions continue about why the state's much vaunted alarm system designed to alert residents of tsunami was not used to warn them of the rapidly spreading fires. according to an official for the state emergency management agency who spoke with cnn last friday, quote, nobody at the state and nobody at the county attempted to activate the vierns based on our records. >> so many of us residents felt we had absolutely no warning. >> reporter: hawaii has one of the largest public safety outdoor siren warning systems in the world. sirens that were silent as wildfires raged. the question is, why? first it was this. >> it would not have saved those people on the side. >> do you regret not sounding the sirens? >> i do not. the sirens as i mentioned earlier is used primarily for tsunamis. >> that is what the head of maui's emergency management agency said wednesday but even before that press conference ended, his reason had changed. this time suggesting the sirens weren't used because people wouldn't have been able to hear the warning. >> it is an outdoor siren so a lot of people indoors, air conditioning on, they are not going to hear a siren. plus the winds were very gusty and everything. i heard it was very loud. so they wouldn't have heard the sirens. >> reporter: same story with hawaii's governor. first this. >> sirens were typically used for tsunamis or hurricanes. to my knowledge at least i never experienced them in use for fires. >> reporter: then minutes later another explanation. this time the governor suggested at least some of the sirens were broken. >> the sirens were essentially immobilized we believe. we believe. by the extreme heat that came through. some were broken and we're investigating that. >> reporter: yet that doesn't all track with the county's own web page maui sirens.com. which clearly states how the siren system is capable of alerting residents to multiple disasters, including wildfires. >> emergency alert. >> reporter: we also found this explainer about the sirens' uses on hawaii's emergency management agency web page. >> we also use sirens for hurricanes, flash fires, flooding, lava, hazmat conditions, or even a terrorist event. >> reporter: this map also from the county page shows where the warning sirens are located. according to the state there are about 400 sirens statewide including 80 on maui. in the historic town of lahaina where more than 100 people were killed in the flames, there are five sirens. five sirens that were not used to warn those in grave danger. instead, officials say they chose to send alerts by text message to cell phones as well as alerts on land lines and through tv and radio. >> it is our practice to use the most effective means of conveying an emergency message to the public during a wildland fire. >> reporter: while that may have worked in some cases the wildfire moved so swiftly it knocked out power and cell service so how were residents supposed to receive those warnings? >> no warning at all. there is not a siren, not a phone alert, not a -- nothing. not a call. >> anderson, hawaii has had issues with its warning system before. in 2018 actually a cell phone alert mistakenly went out warning of an incoming missile attack. of course you can imagine that was, that caused widespread panic among residents across the hawaiian islands. in 1960 this has been going on for decades, in 1960 there was actually a tsunami that hit an area known as hilo, hawaii. and the people there didn't know what the warning siren meant. they didn't know what to do. so instead of running up into the mountain side for safety they ran into the ocean. 61 people died. so certainly some problems with these sirens and these warning systems in the past. >> appreciate it. thank you. up next the first republican presidential debate is days away. what could be ron desantis' de debate strategy as posted online? we'll talk it over with republican strategist mark mckinnon in a moment. e and parent full-time. (lyn's husband) we will be reclined until further nonotice. (andi) it''s our right to let the dishes soak overnight. (robob) and to mow the lawn... tomorrow-ish. (ben) we proudly declare that yes, we are still watching that. (ariel) and no, we won't be cooking tonight. (damon) we, the lazy, are taking back lazy... (doreen) ...by getting comfy on our la-z-boy furniture. (vo) la-z-boy. long live the lazy. i will be a travel influencer... hey, i thought you were on vacation? it's too expensive. use priceline, they've got deals no one else has. what about work? i got you. lookingreat you guys! ♪ go to your happy price ♪ ♪ priceline ♪ she found it. the feeling of finding the psoriasis treatment she's been looking for. sotyktu is the first-of-its-kind, once-daily pill for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis for the chance at clear or almost clear skin. it's like the feeling of finding your back... is back. or finding psoriasis can't deny the splendor of these thighs. once-daily sotyktu is proven to get more people clearer skin than the leading pill. don't take if you're allergic to sotyktu; serious reactions can occur. sotyktu can lower your ability to fight infections including tb. serious infections, cancers including lymphoma, muscle problems, and changes in certain labs have occurred. tell your doctor if you have an infection, liver or kidney problems, high triglycerides, or had a vaccine or plan to. sotyktu is a tyk2 inhibitor. tyk2 is part of the jak family. it's not known if sotyktu has the same risks as jak inhibitors. find what plaque psoriasis has been hiding. ask your dermatologist about sotyktu for clearer skin. so clearly you. sotyktu. ♪ ♪ wake up, gotta go! c'mon, c'mon. -gracie, c'mon. let's go! guys, c'mon! mom, c'mon! mia! [ engine revving ] ♪ ♪ my favorite color is... because, it's like a family thing! [ engine revving ] ♪ ♪ made it! mom! leave running behind, behind. the new turbocharged volkswagen atlas. does life beautifully. how's the chicken? the prawns are delicious. oh, i have a shellfish allergy. one prawn. very good. did i say chicken wrong? tired of people not listening to what you want? it's truffle season! ah that's okay... never enough truffles. how much are they? it's a lot. oh okay - i'm good, that - it's like a priceless piece of art. enjoy. or when they sell you what they want? yeah. the more we understand you, the better we can help you. that's what u.s. bank is for. huge relief. yeah... ♪ we are less than a week from the first presidential debate and tonight a super pac supporting ron desantis' campaign is facing questions after the apparent attempt to provide potential debate talking points to the candidate. according to the "new york times" one memo included four basic must dos and referred to the governor with his initials grd. the must dos were, one, attack joe biden and the media three to five times. two, state grd's positive vision two to three times. three, hammer vivek ramaswamy in response and defend donald trump in abs tentia in response to a chris christie attack. the campaign says they weren't aware of this prior to the article. before we get into the substance of what was said was this just an error by the pac or an attempt to get around rules that prevent the super pac from giving private information to the candidate? >> this is pretty shocking, anderson. for your viewers just so they understand, when you set up a pac for a campaign there are these archaic weird finance campaign rules that separate the way you can communicate with the campaign. and so often what a pac will do is put out something publicly or even on a website like put up an ad so the campaign knows what you're doing but the notion that you put up publicly a strategic memo designed to give the candidate insights into what they do at debate and make it public is insane. the last thing you want to do is telegraph to anybody much less your opposition what you are going to do in the debate because now when anybody watches the debate as soon as he does any one of those things, most of those are pretty smart, what i would recommend he do, but when he does them they'll be seen as entirely inauthentic, campaign tested and recommended by some campaign consultant. >> right. it even suggested a potential kind of tag line attack on vivek ramaswamy. i don't please be if he would would silly enough to use that given everyone knows this was formulated by a super pac. why does it make sense for him to go after ramaswamy? >> well i just wrote a column for "vanity fair" which suggests that the, of all the candidates in the debate the person most likely to have a breakout moment is vivek ramaswamy for a couple reasons. one, he is enormously talented and he's got sort of fundamental skills that will do well in a debate. he's got the most important thing which is an incredible sense of confidence which is the most important thing you need in a debate. and he is, listen shall the other thing is that debates are all about expectations. desantis has very high expectations, a lot of name i.d., a lot of money. everybody thought he'd be doing well by now. nobody knew who vivek ramaswamy was. increasingly they do now but his expectations are low so he is very likely to exceed expectations. the other thing is that now in many polls in the last couple days he has surpassed ron desantis in some of the national polls and is running second. >> former president trump today said the future of the gop hinges on how forcibly republicans attack the indictments he is facing. i want to play a clip of that. >> it is a disgraceful thing and republicans can't let them get away it. republicans have to be tough. the republicans are great in many ways but they don't fight as hard for this and have to get a lot tougher and if they don't they won't have much of a republican party. >> it is interesting he says they not we talking about republicans. is there any reason to think the republicans are suddenly going to get tired of defending him and rush to support another candidate? >> no. there is not except increasingly i think what's happening, anderson, and we're seeing it increasingly in polls, this is another article i wrote for "vanity fair" about a week ago talking about ghost voters for trump who appear to be able to disappear. as soon as the weight of the legal challenges begins to set in the problem for trump isn't so much the indictments themselves but the extent to which republican primary voters increasingly begin to see general election polls where he is losing to biden and those polls are getting worse and worse by the day as the legal problems stack up so the issue really now is trump is increasingly seen as a loser which psychologically he hates and gets under his skin but tactically and strategically is smart and you've seen desantis start to poke that bear to say listen, the problem is, yes. he is being attacked unfairly by the democrats but at end of the day he is not going to be the best nominee for the republicans to go up against biden. >> according to the super pac they are saying that desantis should not go after the former president. they're saying at least he should, desantis should defend him if and inevitably when chris christie attacks the former president. >> well, that is a little bit of a nuance there but an important one. chris christie is the, you know, primary attack dog on donald trump and a lot of, you know, sort of median democrats love him for that. the reality is that and he is kind of poking through new hampshire a little bit, but he's not very popular, certainly among the republican bases specially really most demographic groups not particularly seen as a, with a lot of favorable impressions. but it is easy to go after christie. rather than going after trump you go after the really unpopular guy whose chris christie for attacking the party. >> mark mckinnon, great to have you on. thank you so much. just add social media disinformation and we'll have an exclusive report on a republican who had no idea she had become the face after popular fake left wing account on twitter since taken down. here's how tommy lost 30 lbs on noom weight. i'm tom. noom helped him use psychology to lose weight. the mindful aspect made me feel more conscious about what i was eing and why i s eating it. it's actually working. lose weight d make it last with noom weight. young lady who was, mid 30s, couple of kids, recently went through a divorce. she had a lot of questions when she came in. i watched my mother go through being a single mom. at the end of the day, my mom raised three children, including myself. and so once the client knew that she was heard. we were able to help her move forward. your client won't care how much you know until they know how much you care. ♪ so, you've got the power of xfinity at home. now take it outside with xfinity mobile. like speed? it's the fastest mobile service around. with the best price for two lines of unlimited. only $30 bucks a line per month. that's hundreds in savings a year when you wave bye to the other guys. all on the most reliable 5g network nationwide. you really shouldn't walk out the front door without it. switch today at xfinitymobile.com. touching again on one of our top stories tonight. the reported names, photos, and addresses on the trump indictment were circulated online and led to threats around them. that's one example of how everyday americans can be victimized from social media. we've seen disinformation campaigns and fake images generated with ai. isabella -- has -- once popular but fake far left political account on twitter. >> erica marsh. >> erica. >> erica marsh. >> reporter: erica marsh quickly rose as a viral left wing voice on social media. her tweets ultraliberal and politically charged through millions of views and the ire of republicans. tweets like, do you agree drag story hour should be mandated. and, why does it seem like most republicans are pedophiles. the account had nearly 130,000 followers. marsha's top tweet viewed -- it was a fake, but the photos were not. now cnn exclusively shares the real face that's on the notorious account. >> are you erica marsh? >> no. >> but that's your face. >> seems to be. >> why are you talking to us? >> i want to tell the world that that's not me. my name is not erica marsh. i am kourtney. >> reporter: she lives in a rural part of the tampa bay area in florida. she showed cnn her original photos, nearly a decade old. she says they were stolen from her facebook page by whoever or whatever is behind this account. the photos on the account are from when kourtney was still a teenager. she's since gotten married and had children. >> let me read you erica marsh's most popular tweet. it got over 27 million views. and then tell me what you think about it. today's supreme court decision is a direct attack on black people. no black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system. >> and what do you think? >> i'm speechless. >> reporter: speechless, because while this viral fake account shares kourtney's face, they do not share the same politics. >> are you liberal? >> no, ma'am. no. >> you're a republican? >> yes, ma'am. >> can i ask you which way you voted in the last presidential election? >> of course i voted for trump. >> so, you since the irony here, right? >> yes. >> reporter: some people thought this was an ai-generated image. >> yeah. when i saw that, that was -- also made me laugh. i was, like, they don't even think i'm real? >> reporter: it was her friends who first alerted her. >> hey, like, there's this twitter account. is it yours? they're posting crazy things. >> reporter: over months, marsh only grew more popular. >> i think there was even an elected representative that interacted with the account with my face. so, that is shocking. >> reporter: but kourtney only grew more concerned about its message. twitter has a policy against impersonation. once the erica marsh account was removed, kourtney felt relieved but not safe. >> i don't want to be out in public and someone notice my picture that was on the account, approach me, approach my family. who knows what someone would do that didn't agree with what erica marsh was saying. >> whoever is running this account knows what people like and knows how to get attention. >> reporter: a professor at clemson university studies disinformation and trolling. >> what is erica marsh? is it a parody? is it a troll? is it a disinformation campaign? what is she? >> erica marsh is a fake online influencer. she isn't a troll in the way that a lot of viewers may think of a troll. >> reporter: he believes this was the work of a professional. >> this is not an amateur, no. it would be very hard for an amateur to get to well over 100,000 followers in such a short amount of time. >> reporter: and kourtney's pictures plucked on purpose. >> she looks all american. she looks friendly. but ultimately, it's about influence. it's meant to engage with a very specific audience and to get people a little bit angry. >> reporter: whether the goal of the account was to generate money or sow division. the real owner of erica marsh is still likely operating on the platform. >> is there any way to tell who's responsible for erica marsh or where they come from? >> it's just fake. it's just fake. the whole thing was fake. >> and on the profile, it says erica marsh worked on the biden/obama campaign. i assume that was fake as well. >> anderson, it was all made up, and quite sophisticated there. experts tell us this easily could have been the work of a foreign government or even a ploy to make money from the clicks and attention that erica marsh was getting. either way, there is a real concern about these sorts of fake accounts and the influence they could have leading up to the 2024 election. >> it also had a blue check on the account. what does x say about this? >> twitter rarely responds to comment. twitter and facebook have recently laid off hundreds of people, including the very staff whose job it was to tackle disinformation and these sorts of fake accounts. so, it really points to making it harder to police these sorts of fake influencers. >> isabella row zaless, thanks so much. the entire city of yellow night, canada, is rushing to evacuate, as a massive wildfire threatens their community. it's not easy to get out of harms way. ♪ this just in ♪ ♪ got the keys s to what you want and what you need ♪ ♪ something new somethining sweet ♪ ♪ moving to a different beat ♪ ♪ okay now (what?) ♪ ♪ can i get a (get a) drumroll? ♪ ♪ (what?) can i get a drumroll drumroll? ♪ ♪ (what?) ♪ ♪ can i get a can i get a drumroll please (oohh) ♪ ♪ that's nice (yahh) ♪ ♪ ♪ ya, can i get a drumroll, can i get a drum- ♪ ♪ that's nice ♪ ♪ (cheery music) - they get it. they know how it works... and more importantly... it works for them. - i don't have any anxiety about money anymore. - i don't have to worry about a mortgage payment every month. - it allowed me to live in my home... and not have to pay payments. - [narrator] if you're 62 or older and own your home, you could access your equity to improve your lifestyle. a reverse mortgage loan eliminates your monthly mortgage payments and puts tax-free cash in your pocket. call the number on your screen. - it was the best thing i've ever done, and- - really? - yes, without a doubt! - just like these folks, aag can show you how a reverse mortgage loan uses your built-up home equity to give you tax-free cash. - it's a good thing. - why don't you get the facts? like these folks did. - [narrator] call right now to receive your free, no-obligation info kit. call the number on your screen. (man) what if my type 2 diabetes takes over? (woman) what if all i do isn't enough? or what if i can do diabetes differently? (avo) now you can with once-weekly mounjaro. mounjaro helps your body regulate blood sugar, and mounjaro can help decrease how much food you eat. 3 out of 4 people reached an a1c of less than 7%. plus people taking mounjaro lost up to 25 pounds. mounjaro is not for people with type 1 diabetes or children. don't take mounjaro, if you're allergic to it, you or your family have medullary thyroid cancer, or multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. stop mounjaro, and call your doctor right away, if you have an allergic reaction, a lump or swelling in your neck, severe stomach pain, vision changes, or diabetic retinopathy. serious side effects may include pancreatitis and gallbladder problems. taking mounjaro with sulfonylurea or insulin raises low blood sugar risk. tell your doctor if you're nursing, pregnant, or plan to be. side effects include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea which can cause dehydration and may worsen kidney problems. (woman) i can do diabetes differently with mounjaro. (avo) ask your doctor about once-weekly mounjaro. it is not just hawaii. hundreds of wildfires are burning in canada. and one of the hardest hit areas is yellow night, the capital of the northwest territories. that's where about 20,000 residents under order to evacuate the city by friday. one fire has already burned 600,000 square miles, about the liez of alaska. residents fleeing the flames are having a hard time. one woman leaving with four friends and their dogs took this video showing the thick smoke. they could not see the lines in the road for 45 minutes while they were driving. they could hardly breathe, but they did make it to their destination. that's it for us. "the source" with kaitlan "the source" with kaitlan collins starts now. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com tonight, straight from the source, donald trump firing back at the special counsel's request for a