very good to be with you. i m alex witt in for katy tur. what jack smith s case, that is the question being batted around before judge aileen cannon in court today as major questions about her own role in the trial hang over proceedings. there is still no trial date in sight. instead, to the frustration of many, cannon is hearing out what several legal experts have called another long shot argument to dismiss charges against the former president. yesterday, the new york times reported cannon rejected urges from two federal judges that she not take the case when it was firsthanded to her last june. the question is why, when a huge chunk of her rulings have drawn criticism from the prosecution and legal scholars. is it inexperience, she was only on the bench just over a year. is it potential bias? she has shown unusual favor to trump by intervening in the mar-a-lago investigation before he was indicted or is it simply judge cannon s way of proceeding over such a high stakes h
All the big moments and the networks new mission. Welcome back to early start. Im dave briggs. Im christine romans. It is tuesday, august 21st. 5 00 a. M. In the east. Lets start with the latest. Conservative think tanks in the u. S. Senate. United States Senate the latest targets of hackers linked to military intelligence. Microsoft stopped the attack last week. The company took control of six web sites operated by the same group behind the 2016 dnc hack. Lets bring in fred pleitgen. Reporter the organization that were talking about, the Hacking Group, called fancy bear. That is the group that hacked into the dnc and Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. U. S. Intelligence highly likely believes this group is linked and possibly directed by Russian Military intelligence known as the gru. As far as the organizations and groups targeted by the attack, apparently, parts of the senate and then two think tanks. Hudson institute and International Republican institute. Both critical of President
itreat them all as if, they are hot and energized. stay away from any downed wire, call 911 and call pg&e right after so we can both respond out and keep the public safe. 15 democratic hopefuls are vying to take on president trump next november. but one democrat polling best in head-to-head matchups against him. here to break down the numbers, cnn politics senior writer and analyst ho, ho, ho, merry christmas. how are you, my friend? what you got for us? let s see what i have in my gift basket. okey-dokie. this is the 2020 general election. harry s average of the 2020 december live interview polls. all the democrats are leading trump but biden clearly has the
the lip biter i ve got to go with my own? this is not bad form. i would say looking at the other polling numbers joe biden is the most popular candidate among nondemocratic primary voters. so joe biden is muscling up. that means that somebody told him you need to muscle up before this debate. what do you think right now with him and the rest of the democrat snz. take a look at this. this is rather interesting thing. i took an average of the live interview polls and broke it down just immediately following the first debate and then over the last few weeks. we see joe biden actually recovering. remember he dropped off after that first debate. he dropped off 30% of the national democratic poll average and basically you have this three way tie for second place. 14% for sanders, 12% for harris. we ve seen that biden has been able to recover some of that ground. you know what i want to watch as we go forward, every time the president inflames the national
him you need to muscle up before this debate. what do you think right now with him and the rest of the democrats? take a look at this. this is rather interesting thing. i took an average of the live interview polls and broke it down just immediately following the first debate and then over the last few weeks. we see joe biden actually recovering. remember he dropped off after that first debate. he s recovered somewhat. he dropped off 30% of the national democratic poll average and basically you have this three-way tie for second place. 16% for warren. 14% for sanders, 12% for harris. we ve seen that biden has been able to recover some of that ground. you ll see a lot of democrats go after him in that debate. what i want to watch as we go forward, every time the president inflames the national dialogue and pushes division, it will be interesting to see if these numbers go down and this one goes up. because that will be a direct metric for them to say, i need to beat this president.