Ukraines counteroffensive and sobering new assessment. And now it is time to set the rule of the road as they head to the trial, and trumps team is saying that the prosecutors are going after his First Amendment rights now. And 40 Million People are under severe threats today after the extreme storms have battered the United States over night. Im omar jimenez with kate bolduan and john berman. This is cnn news central. We have brandnew reporting this morning on ukraines counteroffensive in russia. Weeks into the fight, the reports from the battlefield are increasingly sobering. Specifically, concerns of the ability to retake specific territory. The National Security correspondent and the awardwinning author jim sciutto broke this reporting, and now he heard the reporting, and this is a marked change in weeks to folks in the u. S. And europe and the military and diplomacy and also lawmakers and there is a consistent read of the intelligence assessments here, and that is the counter offe
cnn s jamie gangel, who broke the story, joins us in the moment. first, though, the irony of classified documents ending up where they did, of all places. did you take any classified documents with you from the white house? i did not. do you see any reason for anyone to take classified documents with them leaving the white house? well, there would be no reason to have classified documents, particularly if they were in an unprotected area. so that was the former vice president in november talking about the former president, saying there is no reason for anyone to take classified documents with them after leaving office. here he is three days after the first batch of biden documents was reported suggesting that he knew how to handle such things. and then vice president did not. the handling of classified materials and the nation s secret is a very serious matter, and as a former vice president of the united states, i can speak from personal experience about the atte
of everything nefarious, as willfully taking them are obstructing their efforts to restrict that of course is in stark contrast with the mar-a-lago documents, former president posting this on his social media site today. mike pence is an innocent man, did not do anything knowingly dishonest in his life, leave him alone. he certainly not saying the same about president biden, newer will james calmer, the new oversight chairman backing off of his investigation with the president. saying today, former vice president pence s transparency stands in contrast to white house staff who continue to withhold information from congress and the american people. this is the same comer in that last week said that investigating the president would the would not be a priority for his committee. the news today helped blur with the real distinctions are between former presidents case and apparently the other two. an opportunity to blame the system, but instead as a member of the house intell
significant territory gains are falling. unlikely to make significant gains at this point. jim, it is notable that you are hearing this from a variety of uniformed reaction. any consensus on what could change the scenario? yeah. well, there is certainly consensus that there is no magic bullet here, one weapon that could change the dynamic on the battlefield, and by the way, it is impossible to do that, because you have to inttrain up the systems, and look at the abrams systems, and they are not going to arrive in the fall to train up on the ukrainian forces and train up properly in the field, and f-16s for instance, and there is increasing power that you are continuing to break through the russian lines without much air cover and the russians keep the advantage
we have that discussion with everything and tanks are no different. we have talked about the fact that the abrams are an incredibly capable system, but it s a very spiff system to operate and to maintain. it has a jet engine. that doesn t mean that the ukrainians can t learn it. it just means that we have to factor all that stuff in with any system that we re going to potentially provide to them. you may not want to go into this level of detail, but given the complexity of the abrams systems, does that limit its potential use in ukraine as a theater of war? in terms of supply lines, getting spare parts to it, does it have to stay closer to kyiv? is it limited in how it could be used? again, without getting ahead of any decision that hasn t been spoken to yet, i would just tell you that, again, with any advanced system, you have to factor in things like supply chain and maintenance time. and how often can you keep them operational, and how do you use them effectively. and should the