a very good friday. i'm jim sciutto. the u.s. senate is ready to try the president of the united states. right now, lawmakers are back home where they'll face constituents days before the official start of the impeachment trial. and while the capitol may be quiet, the pressure is building over witnesses. will the senate call them. and if so, who?

over new evidence. will the senators consider it? and if so, which new evidence. and from the oval office, president trump is denying that he knows lev parnas, a close associate of his personal attorney rudy giuliani after parnas implicated him in the ukraine scheme. joining me on capitol hill with the latest on impeachment, next step, cnn national correspondent athena jones. where do we go from here? >> well, as you mentioned, jim, the next fight is about the rules. that is what we'll see on tuesday when the senate comes back in. tuesday, 1:00 p.m. after the martin luther king holiday to begin this trial in earnest. that's one of the things they'll be doing. voting on a resolution, laying out the rules of this trial, whether or not and when new evidence and witnesses will be discussed. and hearing from a lot of republicans, folks like senator lindsey graham of south carolina, marsha blackburn of tennessee who said, look, it was the house's job to spell out this case.

it's not the senate's job to allow this new evidence and witnesses and to help the house do the job they should have don comprehensively. that's the argument we're hearing from folks like graham and blackburn and the majority of the republican caucus in the senate. but there are a handful of republican senators to watch. these are moderates. folks like susan collins. and susan collins, interestingly, tweeted out this just in the last couple of days clarifying where she stands on the issue of witnesses. you'll remember, in recent days she said i'm open to witnesses. i just think it should be done later. later stage of the process. so there you have that tweet. her spelling out step-by-step to make it clear where she stands, that she believes in having the clinton model of impeachment in which case both sides make their case. senators get to ask questions, and then the issue of evidence and witnesses is decided. there had been some question that arose because she raised

questions about lev parnas' evidence that she is now presenting and whether it was necessary to hear from that. she's strongly suggesting that she would be one of the folks to back the idea of witnesses and new evidence. we'll have to see if a total of four senators do end up siding with democrats on that issue so that they can get to 54 votes and force it. >> forgive me for being cynical. there may be comfort with the clinton model. at least parts of the clinton model they like and parts they don't like. athena, thank you. growing pressure to allow new evidence and witnesses as lev parnas makes new claims against the president. here he is with anderson cooper. >> to my knowledge, the president fired her at least four times. maybe five times. once in my presence at a private dinner for a superpac in washington, d.c., at the trump

hotel. and the conversation, the subject of ukraine was brought up, and i told the president that our opinion that she is bad mouthing him and that she said that he's going to get impeached, something like that. i donts know if that's word for word. >> you said that at the table where the president was? >> correct. >> and his reaction was, he looked at me like he got very angry and basically turned around to john and said fire her. get rid of her. >> we should be remember in the president's call with the ukrainian president he said yovanovitch was going to go through some things. the president's words. yovanovitch removed in april of last year. in the end, a year after the dinner that parnas described. he also challenged one of president trump's key talking points that he did nothing wrong and that there was no pressure when he asked the ukrainian president to investigate the bidens. >> zelensky himself has come forward and said i didn't feel any pressure. there was no quid pro quo. >> that's a total lie.

>> they are still -- they're still rocked to this day. they've still not recovered and i don't know when they will. >> the president has repeatedly denied knowing parnas at all, though a number of pictures have come up with two of them together. some video as well. parnas is willing to testify if he is subpoenaed during the senate impeachment trial. not clear if either democrats or republicans want that. joining me to discuss, michael gerhardt, professor at the university of north carolina and susan hennessy, former national security attorney. michael, gop senators, marsha blackburn among them, are blaming the house in effect saying, well, the house didn't call these witnesses. the house didn't have these documents. so that was their responsibility. of course, that belied by the fact the white house deliberately blocked witnesses and documents. i wonder if you could make clear to folks given your knowledge the difference with the clinton impeachment trial because going into the trial, those witnesses

and documents were already considered at the time. were already available to the house. >> that's correct. so let's take a step back initially and remember that what senator blackburn said is completely wrong. in the law, we have a word for it. it's called bs. it has nothing to do with actual history. in the history of the house's impeachment, the house has never taken the position it has to do the senate's work for it. the clinton situation where ken starr came in and talked about a lot of evidence he'd taken behind closed doors interviewing, deposing, asking questions of people under oath and that evidence, that referral that he put together was sent to the senate and the senate had witnesses. in the history of the united states senate, no completed impeachment trial has ever happened that lacked witnesses. witnesses have always been called. that's the senate's job, and that's the problem facing republicans. if they take the position of no

witnesses, they have done something historic, and it's not good. >> most republicans seem comfortable with that. at the same time, you have this possibility of how the trial is going to play out. two parts in effect saying, okay, listen. we'll leave that question of witnesses to a later date. let's first consider the arguments here. that seems to be where many republicans are settling right now. do you see that as being somewhat, i guess, misleading or a signal what's going to happen is they'll listen and say there's no reason to call witnesses. >> there's a reason to suspect this is just about trying to kick the can down the road. not that you're not going to call witnesses and bury it later. that said, keep in mind the optics of yesterday. the chief justice swearing in the senators, then signing this oath book in which they pledge to do impartial justice. they'll now have to sit there quietly and listen to this evidence. and so i think we are to ask

ourselves whether or not that might change the minds of a few key senators who have already indicated some willingness to hear witnesses. that doesn't mean you'll have 67 votes for removal, but i think there's a real possibility that the end of that really overwhelming presentation of evidence, republican senators, three or four that will join with the democrats to say, look, we at least need to hear from some additional witnesses in this case. >> listen, we often will talk about romney. but i spoke to john barrasso yesterday. he said he's at least open to the question of witnesses. michael, given your experience here and covering this closely, lay out what you think the president's defense is likely to be. >> i think the president's defense is likely sort of take two different paths. the first path is that he just did nothing wrong. you've heard this already. and he's going to argue that whatever happened can put -- can say some things that may be hard to prove but the defense will

be, look, there's nothing bad that happened here. and so the president does this all the time. you might hear that a lot. the second, i think they'll argue that the money was released. and, therefore, the harm, whatever harm was produced against was minimal. no harm, no foul, and, therefore, this is a lot about nothing. >> and you might hear multiple arguments, even contradictory ones saying it didn't happen, but even if it did happen, it's not impeachmenable. >> the gao comes in and says it was illegal to hold that aid. now, you have many republicans saying, this is a partisan organization. it's led by someone who was appointed by obama. if you look at the gao's history, it's a nonpartisan organization. and the argument they are making here is not an outlandish one because i know there were folks in the pentagon concerned that

congress passed this money, appropriated this money. that's congress' job. it's a problem if we're not spending money as congress appropriated. >> gao is not a partisan organization. it's a nonpartisan organization. i think that they are plainly right as a matter of law that the administration was not allowed to do this. that they were violating the law. we saw administration attorneys being concerned with that. and the reason why it might be significant, gao isn't a judge. it's not a court. nobody is going to go to jail over this. but by saying the president has broken the law and the administration has broken the law, that does make the impeachment case cleaner and clearer for the american public. you don't have to have a statutory offense or violation of law and order to impeach the president. but the idea that the president didn't just do something that was wrong or unpatriotic. he actually violated the law. i think that's something that's going to be easier for the public to understand why the house took this extraordinary step of impeaching him. >> the law is quite clear on it, is it not, that if congress

appropriates the money, that money has got to be spent. the president -- there are laws passed after nixon that specifically prohibited a president from saying, you know what? congress may have appropriated it, but i disagree. >> that's completely correct. so let's just remember basic constitutional law. it's the president's job to enforce the policy that congress makes. the policy here was to appropriate money for ukraine's national security. that's the policy. it's not up to the president to modify that, to change it. particularly to suit his personal interests. there was no grand objective, no objective for changing congressional policy. it was all done for the personal benefit of the president. >> michael gerhardt, susan hennessy, thanks for your expertise on this. any moment now, secretary of state mike pompeo, he'll be making an appearance at the state department. we should note that so far he's not responded at all to reports that ambassador of the united states, marie yovanovitch, was

under illegal surveillance in ukraine. why isn't he saying anything about her. also, we're now learning u.s. troops were injured in that iranian missile attack. the pentagon initially saying there were no casualties. why did it take so long? they are saying now they suffered symptoms of traumatic brain injury from those attacks. and a cnn exclusive. the wife of andrew yang has broken her silence. she says that she was sexually assaulted by a doctor and having to watch her accused attacker walk away with what she says was just a slap on the wrist. we'll have more. ♪

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♪ ♪ ♪ don't get mad. get e*trade, dawg. secretary of state mike pompeo set to appear at any moment as he appears with the foreign minister of pakistan. so far he's not said a word following the release of stunning messages that suggest former u.s. ambassador to ukraine marie yovanovitch may have been illegally surveilled before she was forced out of her post. involved in that, a close

associate of the president's personal attorney. kylie atwood is here with me now. you've been asking about this, i know, repeatedly in the state department. ukraine. the thing they're investigating is the surveillance of the u.n. ambassador. why has pompeo stayed silent? it would be a simple statement to say, of course, we're concerned about the safety of our ambassador. >> we've gotten some kind of drips of information from lawmakers on the hill. so house lawmakers have said they have been assured by diplomatic security at the state department that they are going to be investigating this. but as you say, the state department and the secretary himself have not come out and said anything about the matter. and there are a few things that are really important here. the first of which is the ukrainians have already announced that they are going to be investigating this. and the other thing to consider is that it's not as if the state department stays quiet when it comes to the security of u.s. embassies and the u.s.

ambassadors writ large. over the weekend i asked them about the security of the u.s. ambassador to iraq. they gave me some lines on that front. they don't get into the details but they talk about it in broad strokes. they are making a choice not to do that here. it has been more than 48 hours since these developments that ambassador yovanovitch was being surveilled by these giuliani associates. >> have they ever given you an explanation as to why the -- >> they hadn't said anything. and we should note that the secretary has never publicly defended ambassador yovanovitch at all. and he has done that for other ambassadors. the other thing as you know, secretary pompeo, a big part of who he is, are the benghazi hearings. so he was grilling then secretary of state hillary clinton and the state department for answers about what they did for the security of u.s. diplomats around the benghazi attack. obviously, this is an apples to apples. ambassador stevens, obviously, was killed in that attack.

ambassador yovanovitch is safely back in the united states. but, still, he is someone who has pressed the state department for answers, and he's not providing any answers or any commitment to an investigation just yet. >> accused the state department at the time of dereliction of duty. kylie atwood, thank you. with me is democratic congressman mike quigley, a member of the intelligence and appropriations committee. thanks for taking the time this morning. >> thank you. good morning. >> you heard the conversation there. ukraine launched an investigation of yovanovitch and announced so publicly. should the state department announce an investigation of this, and should we hear from the secretary of state defending a u.s. ambassador? >> we should have already. we have -- we heard from the ambassador's testimony just how dangerous their jobs can be. she was literally in the line of fire. he detailed how we have lost ambassadors in the past. it's a dangerous job and a critical job. they face enough dangers on their own.

we can't be any way hesitant to do everything possible to keep them safe and to make sure the other ambassadors know that we'll do just that. and that those who would threaten them would be halted. so i would like to think we've already heard about this or that we hear about it very shortly. >> let me ask you about the ongoing impeachment trial now in the senate. you've heard a number of republican senators, david purdue among them just yesterday saying that the senate should not consider new witnesses and new evidence. that that was the job of the house. looking back, should democrats in the house have waited for courts to order witnesses to testify there, waited longer in effect before impeaching the president? >> i was torn on that myself because i was so interested in hearing from people like mr. bolton and others. but i think in the final an analysis we're talking about the possibleity of a year. the possibility this takes place

after the november election. and clearly this president needs to be held accountable before that. we've seen how long these courts have taken. if they had ruled that john bolton had to testify and he showed up and started taking the absolute immunity defense that others have, that courts have ruled against, that puts it off for three or four more months, and the appeals that go with it. so in the final analysis, you had to move forward to again, hold the president accountable and educate and inform the american people. >> you're seeing the partisan lines form in the senate here with some exceptions because there have been republican senators who say they're willing to hear from witnesses. but i wonder, as you look at this process going forward, do you believe that this would be a meaningful trial in the senate? a meaningful consideration of the witnesses and testimony or are you concerned that most of the republicans and most of the democrats for that matter have already made up their minds?

>> look, they take a sworn oath to impartial justice. the american people have asked for that. over 72% want witnesses. they want the documentation. and they know what it looks like, right? they appreciate the fact that in trials, that people don't come there, the jury doesn't say he's guilty but go ahead, they hear all the testimony and see all the documents. i'd like to think that that pressure will give at least four republican senators the intestinal fortitude necessary to demand just that so the american people can be educated and informed. we'll take it a day at a time. i've heard people say, well, don't do this unless you're sure you can win. that's not how the constitution reads. we did our constitutional duty moving forward. it's the senate's turn. >> i want to talk about another issue. you sit on the intelligence committee. what you hear from senior intelligence officials, both in public and private settings, important to you.

a source telling cnn that top intelligence officials have asked congress to hold worldwide threats briefings. this is something that's done regularly and in public by senior intelligence officials that they be held behind closed doors. and the reason, of course, this request coming after last year's testimony when chiefs, intelligence chiefs testified and drew the ire of the president for disagreeing with him. let me just put one of those tweets on the screen. you get a sense. intelligence seems to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of iran. they are wrong. and it goes on there. what is your response to this effort to now hold these in private? it seems to avoid the ire of the president. >> it's a horrible idea. in a democracy, it's tough enough that the intelligence community has to operate in secret. then otherwise open government. or at least that's what we strive for. at least once a year, the core

of the intelligence community comes forward and explains in front of the public in an unclassified version, exactly what the threats are and what they are doing about it. this is what transparency is all about. it's what the oversight role of the house and senate committees, select committees on intelligence is all about. to say they want to move that to a classified session takes away that opportunity. to let the public know what those threats are and certainly now, they ought to know what they are. and exactly what they're doing to address those threats. the fact the president didn't like their views shows even more the president doesn't understand and value what the intelligence community does. and he wants them to be his lap dog. that's extremely dangerous. they need to operate independently to keep us safe. >> final question. we've now learned iran's missile strike on a u.s. base in iraq

did cause u.s. casualties, discovered days later, specifically traumatic brain injury, concussions from the effect of those blasts here. i wonder, immediately following, the president, the administration said iran missed. there were some reporting, speculation that iran deliberately missed, but it looks those were very near misses. and our reporter on the ground spoke to witnesses who said these bombs dropped just yards from where the were. does this raise questions about what exactly iran's intention was with those missile strikes and raise questions about the administration's response? >> i think it raises questions about their response and their transparency. all the more reason to bring these things to light publicly and hide what is an extraordinarily opaque administration's tactics. our concerns and thoughts are with those injured by this attack and recognize that our forces are in harm's way, especially now after this strike

on soleimani. so we fight for transparency, and the true arguments as to why this took place in the first place. >> and tbi is no small thing. congressman mike quigley, good to have you on the program. >> any time, thank you. up next, more on those u.s. troops in the iran attack. we'll speak with arwa damon. she was the first reporter to arrive at the al asad air base. she spoke to witnesses about it. let's see what she saw. y're acty pulling out the minerals from the enamel. i like to recommend pronamel to my patients. pronamel will help push the minerals back into the enamel to keep the enamel strong. i know it works and i hear nothing but great things from my patients that have switched to it.

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service members were injured during iran's strike on the al asad air base in iraq. they're being assessed for traumatic brain injury. that's a concussion following explosions. cnn's senior international correspondent arwa damon. the first journalist to report from the al asad air base and pentagon reporter barbara starr. the initial reports the bomb damage assessments showed no casualties. these were discovered after the fact. tell us how and why. >> well, what we do know now is the military followed very standard protocols in combat zones these days. any troops that are near a blast are assessed for brain injury, concussion, traumatic brain injury. and that's what happened here. as the troops were assessed, they got reports of some of the troops experiencing symptoms. so 11 of them have now been evacuated out of iraq. eight to the military hospital in landstuhl, germany, three to

kuwait where there's better medical care, ander the assesse. they believe they'll be able to report back to duty. we will see. they will have to be fully evaluated for all of this. so this is something that is so important because it is that silent wound of war that we've seen for so many years now that so many troops have suffered from. emerged after the fact, the pentagon wasn't exactly speedy in revealing this. they had originally said no injuries, but after they learned about this late last night, it did come out with a statement. >> traumatic brain injury, something the pentagon takes seriously. i've met people who have been through it. arwa, you're on the ground at the base. you spoke to service members after it struck. and what struck me about your reporting is they said some of these missiles struck just yards from where they were. tell us what they told you

exactly and what their experience of it was. did they feel they were in danger? >> well, jim, first of all, it is not surprising having been there and talked to some of these soldiers that some of them do have these kinds of brain injuries. just given, yes, how close some of those missiles exploded to them and then the fact that some of them have to hide in those small bunkers that are intended to protect against rocket or mortar fire. but were in effect protecting troops against a ballistic missile which is 3,000 times more powerful than your ordinary rocket or mortar that would actually be landing in this area. when we were speaking to them, they talked about how the shock waves reverberated through their bodies. how some of them got knocked around. and it's also worth mentioning that oftentimes with these kinds of head injuries, the sumymptom emerge later in the days

afterward there was still a lot of adrenaline coursing through a lot of their bodies. many of them trying to cope with everything that they went through that night because, by all accounts, it was a very physically and emotionally trying experience. >> it's a good point you make. the shelters you often see there, that's for rockets and grenades. rpgs. not for something this big. this raises a bigger question. in the immediate aftermath of this attack, a lot of the characterizations from the administration was iran deliberately missed here. this was in effect a shot across the bow as opposed to intending to harm u.s. forces. but based on arwa's reporting and the fact we have soldiers suffering tbi, are we so sure that was -- was this a nearer miss than originally described? >> i think that that original take that the iranians deliberately were able to avoid u.s. troops was perhaps a

political talking point, if you will, from some civilian officials because the military always felt that they had to assume absolutely if somebody was firing a bliftuc missile at them, they were trying to kill them. and, in fact, what they will tell you is what they very quickly assessed, given where the damage happened on these bases, there would have been troops there if the u.s. hadn't had that early intelligence warning and been able at least to move them to these bunkers, try and disperse them. so the view of military commanders, perhaps quite different than the political side of the house. everybody was after de-escalation. nobody really wanted to talk it up. but military commanders privately felt all along that absolutely, the iranians were out to kill them. >> yeah, that's an interesting consequential difference. the wife of andrew yang, candidate for president, of course, in an exclusive interview with cnn, reveals the personal missions she is on now. this after finally coming

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in a cnn exclusive, evelyn yang, the wife of presidential candidate andrew yang is revealing for the first time that she was sex yell lsexually, allegedly by her ob-gyn while pregnant with her first child. >> at that moment, i knew it was wrong. i knew, i said -- i knew i was being assaulted. >> did you tell your husband andrew? >> no. i didn't tell anyone. i didn't tell anyone what happened. i didn't tell andrew or my family because i didn't want to

upset them. i thought, this happened to me. i can -- i can process this. i can deal with it. i can compartmentalize it. >> and did you? i tried. but i just didn't want to affect others. and i certainly didn't want andrew blaming himself for not being able to go with me to these doctors visits because, honestly, if he was with me in the room, if anyone was with me in the room, this obviously wouldn't have happened. at the time, he was traveling a lot for his nonprofit. and most of the scheduling didn't work out. >> dana bash joins me now. this doctor has been accused by multiple women. what's happened to him, and is he still practicing? >> he is not practicing. what has happened is that he lost his medical license as part of a 2016 plea agreement with the manhattan da.

but he only had to register as the lowest level sex offender. what makes evelyn yang and other survivors so angry is that this doctor never had to go to jail. and not just that, although he was charged on nine counts involving six accusers, he only pleaded guilty to two charges involving two women. evelyn yang was not one of them. and she told me that it wasn't until after the me too movement started that she and others say that hadden assaulted them, realized, wait a minute, in her words, he got off with a slap on the wrist. and this is a da's office that we're talking about. it's the office of da sy vance. he's the same one who was lenient with jeffrey epstein over registering as a sex offender and initially failed to prosecute harvey weinstein. and we asked, of course, for a response. the da's office told cnn that obtaining a felony conviction was the goal in this case. and also said while we stand by

our legal analysis and resulting disposition of this difficult case, we regret that this resolution has caused survivors pain. now, going back a bit, evelyn yang had told no one as she mentioned, not a soul about her doctor assaulting her. she says when she was seven months pregnant, until after it happened, because she got a letter in the mail saying hadden had left the practice. she said she got goose bumps and here's what happened next. >> i googled him. and there it was. there was a headline that said that he had assaulted another woman. and she reported it to the police. and at that moment, everything just stood still. it was this sense of relief, of

finally realizing that i wasn't alone in it. he still picked me, but that it wasn't because of -- right. it wasn't something that i did. it was, you know, this was a serial predator. and he just picked me as his prey. >> reporter: it was at that point she told husband andrew. >> i just needed to tell someone. i needed to share it in that moment because it felt so big to me. i needed that support. and i told him. and he cried. he wasn't bawling, but there were tears. and he said it's because he

remembered when i told -- when i came home one day ranting about pervy doctors, i said something like, why do they let men be gynecologists? it makes no sense. and he remembered that i had made this comment, and he felt so bad. he felt guilty that he didn't make the connection or ask me more. >> such a powerful testimony there. this doctor was with columbia university, a very powerful organization. what's been their role and response? >> columbia university still has a lot of questions that need to be answered. and the reason why we're talking about columbia is because it runs a -- the facility where he practiced. and hadden was arrested in his

office about six weeks before the events evelyn yang described because another patient called the police and said that he had assaulted this other patient. the arrest was voided. dr. hadden went back to work. he was unchaperoned, according to yang, and as she said, that makes what happened to her even more painful because it could have and should have been prevented. she says columbia university protected hadden at the expense of other survivors to avoid negative publicity. now i should say cnn sent detailed questions to columbia, including why dr. hadden was allowed to return to work after his initial arrest and do so without anybody in the room. the response that we got from the university, in part, basically said that the allegations against hadden are abhorrent and they deeply apologize to those whose trust was violated. and what's so incredible is that this has grown so much, jim.

>> no question. great reporting. fantastic exclusive interview. just a deeply, deeply important topic. dana bash, thanks very much. we have breaking news now into cnn. we're going to go direct to the white house. our correspondent kaitlan collins. tell us what you know. >> we're learning about three new members who are going to be added to president trump's impeachment legal defense team. sources are telling my colleague pam brown and i that alan dershowitz, the famed tv lawyer the president has been relying on for advice for several months now throughout the mueller investigation and impeachment is expected to add -- to join the president's defense team. we got a statement on that saying that professor dershowitz is going to present oral arguments at the senate trial to address the constitutional arguments against impeachment and removal. while professor dershowitz is nonpartisan when it comes to the constitution, he is opposed to the impeachment of president bill clinton and vote forward hillary clinton, he believed the issues go to the heart of our

constitution. he's participating to prevent the creation of a dangerous constitutional precedent. of course, that is not the only person. we're also told that robert ray and ken starr are expected to join president trump's defense team. now we had had sources kind of hinting at this for the last several days, saying there was a chance they could add attorneys as they went on. we've been reporting it's the white house counsel pat cipollone and jay sekulow who were going to be heading up his defense in front of the senate. but now the president is adding these three big heavyweights to his impeachment defense team and it's going to be really interesting to see these figures coming out. the question, jim, had really been, is it going to have these republican house members arguing for him, something that people like mitch mcconnell were pushing against, but now we're being told dershowitz, robert ray and ken starr are going to be on the president's defense team on the senate floor when this trial gets formally kicked off on tuesday.

>> katlyn clirngs thaitlan coll the reporting. still have dana bash here. dershowitz, starr and ray, starr with a deep past. clinton impeachment, dershowitz. these are public figures who, how should i say this, that engender very strong opinions from both sides. interesting choices. >> interesting choices all. one thing they all have in common is that they are on tv a lot. particularly alan dershowitz. they are on a lot. and starr on another. but in particular, dershowitz. he has grown more and more over the years and now he is a -- he is fully, and i guess has been for a while now, in donald trump's camp on everything. but particularly on matters of the law. first on the russia investigation, and now on this. >> do you see the president's hand in these choices? >> 100%. he likes to see the people he sees to represent him with who

he thinks will do well. one thing i'll say is that dershowitz is an appellate lawyer. he's a professor. he's on tv. i -- you know, we'll find out as we dig in. i don't know how many recent cases he's actually tried in >> think of rudy giuliani, sometimes questionable appearances in the president's presence. dana bash. thank you so much. we'll be right back. and now, introducing new boost mobility with collagen for joint health. when taken daily, its key nutrients help support joints, muscles, and strong bones. new, boost mobility.

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welcome back. deputies in one county in north

carolina are warning driver to be careful after someone shot at cars on the highway. it happened about 30 miles from raleigh. there were no reports of injuries, but several people say their windows were shot out. investigators did not say how many cars may have been shot in total, but did say at least five vehicles were hit. police in new orleans have issued an arrest warrant for cleveland browns star odell beckham jr. after he appeared to slap the behind of a man in uniform. video taken after lsu's national championship win on monday shows the incident, not clear whether the man is a security guard or law enforcement officer. beckham is wanted on a misdemeanor battery charge as a result. the 27-year-old is a louisiana native and played football at lsu. massachusetts congresswoman ayanna pressley is opening up about her own personal struggle in -- she revealed she has alopecia, it can cause permanent hair loss. she told the root she wants to

get rid of any shame associated with the condition. >> this is my official public revealing. i'm ready now because i want to be freed from the secret. aim making peace with having alopecia. i have not arrived there, it is about power, it is about acceptance. >> congresswoman pressly says started losing her hair last fall. she wanted to explain herself to little black girls who identified with her signature senegalese twist. coming up, more on our breaking news, president trump now adding three names to his legal name ahead of the senate impeachment trial. stay with us. there is lots more.

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poppy harlow is off today. the trial of the president of the united states is officially open. and breaking this morning, sources tell us the president is now composing his defense team, adding seasoned lawyers, many who appear on television, to a legal defense team, some of the very familiar names. let's begin at the white house, cnn white house correspondent kaitlan collins. tell us who is on the list. >> reporter: these are notable people and figures that people are going to recognize. especially ken starr, who, of course, this hard charging prosecutor who led bill clinton's impeachment. but he's not the only name who is being added. another interesting figure who is on the other side, alan dershowitz, makes clear in his statement he's someone who voted for hillary clinton, but he believes given what is at stake here that is why he's coming in to represent the president and not only that, we're learning a little bit more about what his role is going to like. he's going to be presenting oral arguments on the senate floor