good evening, i m erin burnett. out front tonight, the horror. ukraine s ministry of defense releasing these jarring and grotesque images. this is before and after. the soldier here is ukrainian. the image on the left is him taken during the siege of the azostal steel plant. that is when they were hunkered down not getting the full food and water that they needed. but there he was fighting. and on the right four months later, that is him now, starved, deformed. it is not even possible to imagine what happened to that man. and yet that picture is the reality. it is how russia is treating human beings. and you can t look the other way when you see that. it comes as putin has taken the war to a whole new level today running a sham election in parts of ukraine that are kind of under russian control. i ll show you the ballot. it reads just one question. the wording varies depending on the region. are you in favor of seceding from ukraine and joining the russian federation? and dow
witnesses from a criminal grand jury. and hurricane fiona takes aim at canada while another storm takes forms and could be headed for the united states. welcome to the lead, i m pamela brown in for jake tapper on this day. we stop with a secret court battle be waged by donald trump s lawyers. sources are saying the attorneys for the former president are fighting to keep witnesses from testifying before a federal grand jury about trump s te tee attempts to overturn the election. our reporters, evan and caitlin, broke this story today. tell us more about this legal fight. what exactly are trump s lawyers arguing here? because it s secret right now, we don t know exactly what they re going to be arguing, but it is a fight that is before a judge in the federal court in d.c. it is because there are grand jury proceedings where they re trying to get information close to trump, things that happened in the white house, say, on january 6th or before them, maybe things that att
years amid fears that the country is heading into a recession. it s a challenge for president biden as he attends a dnc event and tries to sharpen his midterm message. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. we begin our coverage tonight in ukraine where bogus referendums are under way as moscow tries to solidify its hold on occupied territory. our senior international correspondent ben wedeman is on the ground for us. ben, is this so-called voting essentially happening at gunpoint? reporter: basically it is, wolf. we re seeing video and hearing reports of election workers going house to house, door to door, with ballot boxes, accompanied by armed men, in some cases armed men wearing balance cla vas. we re wear the election workers are going door to door. people are locking their doors and simply not answering to avoid voting. in fact, the ukrainian authorities have urged residents of the occupied t
tonight, there s late word that the intelligence community has resumed its damage assessment of classified documents seized from mar-a-lago, after getting the green light from a new appeals court ruling. stand by for more on that. but right now, i want to get to cnn s exclusive new reporting, our senior crime and justice reporter, katelyn polantz is joining us right now. so what are you learning about this secret court battle that s being waged right now by the trump team? it is, indeed, a secret court ba battle, a closed proceeding. we only know about it because three lawyers related to january 6th were coming out of court yesterday, we caught them on camera, and what this is about, what we ve been able to conform, evan perez and zack cohen and i, this is about witnesses and whether or not witnesses can be blocked by donald trump from testifying or turning over documents to the federal grand jury that is investigating bringing possible cases against people potentially arou
Is emblematic of the situation he faces. and the lack of will to fight. and all he s going to do is generate more cannon fodder for the ukrainians. so it s not going to have any impact. but this is illustrative, when you consider where he was seven months ago, where he thought this would be a romp, and now he s having to do a partial mobilization and quickly stage these sham referenda and try to intimidate the west with the threat of nuclear weapons, i think are indicative he s in a bad place and he knows it. and he sees these demonstrations on the streets of moscow at the same time. james clapper, thank you so much for joining us. coming up, a cnn exclusive report. donald trump s secret court fight to block a grand jury from talking to his inner circle about attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. plus, the u.s. could be in line for its first major