americans only finding out about this now? plus republican congressman jarj santos even more scrutiny tonight over a mysterious $700,000 contribution to his campaign concerns about how, where it was spent and where did it go. in a story you ll see first outfront russians speaking out against putin s war, one calling it a terrible mess, complete chaos. all of this on camera to cnn. you ll see it first here. let s go out front. and good evening. i m erin burnett. out front tonight on the defensive. more classified documents and a special counsel. president biden says he does want to tell the american people everything he knows. let me i m going to get a chance to speak on all of this, god willing, soon. he says he wants to speak but right now the white house isphasying a barrage of questions over the classified documents and so far the administration is speaking very little. but, again, i m just not going to go beyond what the president said. i m just not going to go
The white house statement that came out only acknowledged those documents even though they were well aware other documents were found in the garage. it took the news media a couple days, that comes out and here we are. we don t know why they didn t say anything contemporaneously or while the news just broke. look, it s easier to draw parallels when there s less transparency even though the situations are not the same. even though from the little we do know, we do know of significant differences, biden had what s described now as a small number in two locations. trump had 200. biden s attorneys found them, handed them over immediately, notified the archives. doj was notified. trump, of course, as you know only returned some documents after a request was made by the national archives, didn t reveal them all even after a subpoena and fbi search. and finally the biden team is cooperating while trump is now under investigation. so let s begin with evan perez out front live in washington
Spokesman writing the january 6th unselect committee held show trials by never trump partisans who are a stain on this country s history. well, the committee is meeting on monday to present its findings and recommended referrals. and throughout the committee investigation we ve heard from multiple witnesses that trump was heavily engaged in every aspect of the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and while these referrals against trump they don t carry any legal weight, they do send a powerful message that a congressional committee believes the former president committed multiple crimes. so let s go straight to evan perez out front live in washington for us tonight. so evan, what more can you tell us about the january 6th committee s plans here? pamela, you re right. this is a powerful message from a bipartisan committee that has interviewed hundreds and hundreds of witnesses. they ve got thousands and thousands of hours of testimony from people who were there. they wer