welcome to inside politics. i m john king in washington. thank you for sharing this important news day with us. target trump, the former president s legal team gets official notice he could face charges in the federal investigation over classified documents. this is an unprecedented legal and political moment as one piece of the special counsel investigation nears its end just as trump s 2024 comeback bid gears up. plus new cnn reporting on a critical building block of the case. a career government expert interviewed by prosecutors detailed exactly what trump knew and was told about the classification rules. and the political impact of trump being named a target, the former president rolls out a familiar playbook, where he s a victim and lies are plentiful. his 2024 rivals now must decide what to say. this as mike pence s cautious choice. if that is something that investigators see as possible, even enough potentially to indict the former president, do you think that
$150 million in damages to two georgia election workers he defamed. we re breaking down the huge verdict against the former trump lawyer tied to his lies about the 2020 presidential election. i ll speak live to an attorney for the two election workers this hour. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in in the situation room. announcer: this is cnn breaking news. and we begin this hour with a major breaking story. the former trump lawyer, rudy giuliani, ordered to pay an enormous price for falsely accusing two georgia election workers of fraud. jessica schneider is outside the courthouse here in washington. jessica, this nearly $150 million verdict is vastly more than the attorneys for the election workers even asked for. it is, wolf. it s about $100 million more than their attorneys asked for. $75 million in punitive damages, essentially to punish rudy giuliani for those statements he made against ruby freeman and
by hamas. the lead starts right now. three hostages shot and killed today. tragic news, plus, verdict watch at a dc courthouse that any moment we expect the jury will return a verdict, one that could cost and cnn exclusive. the case of the missing classified binder. once in the hands of donald trump, how did this notebook with top secret material on russia just vanish? poof. in the final hours of the trump presidency, and could the information now be in the wrong hands? welcome to the lead. we start this hour with an exclusive from a team of cnn journalists that report a binder containing highly classified intelligence on russia s attempts to in the election, disappeared in the final days of donald trump s presidency. there s many theories of where it might be. and who may have taken it. one theory is from cassidy hutchison. who wrote about mark meadows taking the file in her book. i watched him climb into the limo, noticing the binder tucked under his arm. it s a
hostages as a threat and shot and killed them during combaera. very heavy fighting between israel and hamas over the course of the last week. two of the three hostages have been identified. one of the families of the one of the deceased hostages asked their name not be broadcast, but the two that we can tell you are your time high and the summer is summer who was kidnapped from kibbutz near also on october 7th. israeli military effectively recovered the bodies in gaza, moved them to israel where they were taken to a forensic center, and then subsequently positively identified as the bodies of three hostages who have been kidnapped by hamas on october 7th. we should note amid all of this that it comes as the israeli military had loosened its rules of engagement as it began this war in gaza following the october 7th attacks. allowing israeli soldiers to fire up on suspected terrorists while kidnapped-ing fewer checks than they normally would have. the israeli military we ar
the u.s. inching closer to running out of money to pay its debts. a deadline is as close as 12 days away, but the high-stakes negotiations between the white house and republicans have collapsed and it is not clear when face to face talks will resume. meanwhile, president biden will cut short his asia trip to address the debt crisis. before heading home tomorrow from the g-7 summit in japan, biden will meet with ukraine s president. president zelenskyy is making a dramatic appearance at the gathering to ask world leaders for help in the war against russia. russia claims a major victory in ukraine. today the head of the mercenary wagner group says his fighters have captured bakhmut after months of brutal fighting, but ukraine says it still holds a small portion of the city. cnn s phil mattingly is at the summit in japan. let s begin with the debt crisis. a u.s. default would of course hurt economies around the world. so what is the level of concern there and where do things sta