soledar is important more than anything as a symbolic victory after months of defeats in and around kyiv, kharkiv region, and kherson as well. so for them, after suffering these defeats to take soledar would be a victory, a symbolic, if not strategic victory. ben wedeman, thank you very much. appreciate that. cnn this morning continues right now. lisa marie presley, good morning, everyone, friday, january 13th and we are remembering lisa marie presley. looking back at the life of elvis only daughter. she was so young. we ll look at her life. also a special counsel now appointed to investigate joe biden s classified document scandal. who is robert hur and what does this mean for the president? in just a few moments senate majority leader, chuck schumer is going to join us at the desk. what he thinks of the president s handling of classified materials. we begin with more than 30 tornados have torn through the south with georgia and alabama hit the hardest
remembering legendary actor james caan this is nbc nightly news with lester holt. good evening, everyone a guilty plea today in a russian court from brittney griner, the american basketball star the biden administration says has been unlawfully held griner admitting to carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil into russia her lawyer saying she did so accidentally, hoping griner s contrition will lead to a lenient sentence. as it stands, a conviction carries a possible maximum sentence of ten years in prison. today s development also being seen in this country as potentially the first step in a delicate diplomatic dance to win her release in a prisoner swap. the wnba standout the wnba standout also receiving a letter today from president biden in response to her plea not to be forgotten. andrea mitchell has details. reporter: on just the second day of her trial, wnba superstar brittney griner, handcuffed and carrying a photo of her wife, cherelle, pleading guilt
the region, and we had worked on this case when we were working on griner and trevor reed, mentioning it at high levels in moscow. but this was more rural grassroots, the attorneys that helped us in kalinigrad. this was a unique effort that resulted not in a prisoner exchange. right. it was just a deportation. so i don t think the russians necessarily are changing their mode, but different cases require different approaches. i ask you, ambassador, because we all remember when brittney griner came home and the president said, for some reason, and i m paraphrasing, essentially russia is unwilling to make a similar deal for paul
effort resulted in deportation and we were able to bring him home. the good news is that it shows that the russians, on some of these humanitarian cases like the trevor reed case, like griner, now with taylor, and hopefully with wheland, that they re ready to negotiate, they re ready to deal with these issues. i think that s the good news. and they deserve credit for turning taylor over to us yesterday without much incident. you were there on the ground, on the border with his mother. how is he doing? what is his health, how is his condition, how is he mentally processing this? he s doing well. it was a very traumatic moment with shelly, his mother, watching him cross almost like the bridge of spies movie process, the walk. he s a very nice young man.
was detained by border patrol after crossing in kalinigrad. this morning, he is home. joining me, one of the people who negotiated his release, former u.s. ambassador to the united nations, bill richardson. you literally just two hours ago got back, so thank you very much for joining us. well, thank you. this was a good news event, we brought back taylor dudley, the hostage. his mother went with us to the russia/poland border. this is not a high-profile case. it wasn t like the griner case, the taylor reed case. but the good news is through local efforts with local russian officials in, a grassroots