i m victor blackwell. welcome to cnn newsroom. we re hours away from president biden s state of the union address tonight, his first to a divided congress. instead of nancy pelosi over the president s left shoulder, it will be speaker kevin mccarthy. the speech is expected to draw the largest television audience for the president this year. americans will hear biden lay out why he believes the state of the union is strong as he said last week. he s expected to talk about lowering inflation, improving infrastructure and getting past the worst of the pandemic. he s also expected to talk about america s stand against china. of course just days after an american fighter jet shot down one of its supply balloons. the president will likely increase the urgency for congress to act on policing reform and an adult weapons band. all of it will be a test run for his re-election bid. phil mattingly is with us now. what more should we expect from the president tonight? you know, vict
is the same treasurer. so there s a lot of questions. santos is trying to distance himself from this saying he had nothing to do with the fec complaints. this treasurer, nancy marks resigned at the end of last month. so there s some rift here which makes it interesting from an investigative perspective. she s been in campaign finance for a long time. she s worked with zeldin, she worked for santos. and this santos work put her under the spotlight. we reached out to her multiple times. she has not responded for comment. very interesting common denominator there. thank you. in the alex murdoch first-degree murderer trial, the disgraced lawyers allege financial kcrimes are staking center stage as the prosecution tries to carve out a motive. we re live outside the courthouse.
now we re going to georgia where 11 white jurors and one black juror are deliberating the case against the three white men accused of killing ahmaud arbery. the panel must decide if the 25-year-old jogger s death was self-defense during a citizens arrest or whether he was murdered. cnn s sara sidner has the latest on the argument the jurors heard. when three people chase an unarmed man in two pickup trucks in order to violate his personal liberty, who gets to claim i m not really responsible for that? under the law in georgia, no one gets to say that. reporter: the prosecution getting the last word in the murderer trial of three men for the killing of ahmaud arbery. arbery was jogging in february 2020 when he was chased down by gregory mcmichael, travis mcmichael and william bryan jr. in their trucks. they thought arbery committed burglary and they were planning to make a citizens arrest. but travis mcmichael ended up shooting arbery to death. where is the empathy?