and to those who disagree and feel a longer prison sentence is appropriate, as difficult as it may be, please try to empathize with ms. potter's situation. as president barack obama once said, learning to stand in somebody else's shoes, to see through their eyes, that's how peace begins. and it's up to you to make that happen. empathy is a quality of character that can change the wo world. officer kimberly potter was trying to do the right thing.

of all the jobs in public service, police officers have the most difficult one. they must make snap decisions under tense evolving and ever-changing circumstances. they risk their lives every single day in public service. officer potter made a mistake that ended tragical ly. she never intended to hurt anyone. her conduct cries out for a sentence significantly below the guidelines. okay. thank you.

>> welcome to "inside politics." you just listened to a courtroom drama this hour in minnesota that just concluded. the sentencing hearing for the former police officer kim potter who was convicted of killing 20-year-old daunte wright. she was sentenced to two years, two years, in prison. 16 months in prison and the remainder under supervised release and a jury convicted potter of fatally shooting wright during a traffic stop last year. today, an emotional judge regina chu called potter's action a tragic mistake. and she strayed far from the sentencing guidelines, handing down a less harsh sentence. wright's family had asked the judge to hand down the maximum amount of time. cnn's adrienne pbroaddus is

joining me. a two-year sentence versus a maximum of 15 that she could have received. what do you think is the reaction in minnesota and the reaction from daunte wright's family who pleaded just moments ago for a maximum sentence? >> abby, i think you'll see multiple reactions. there are some people who will be pleased with this sentence. there is another group of people who say this isn't enough. and then there is that set of folks who say this entire case sucks. there's pain which was displayed in the courtroom on both sides. as she delivered that sentence, this is something i've never seen in my nearly 20 years of reporting and covering trials. a judge nearly breaking down on the stand. judge chu said this was an extremely difficult decision for her. she said this is the toughest case she's seen in her entire

career. and that sentence, for those of you who are just now joining us, kimberly potter sentenced to two years in prison. that's 24 months. she will serve two-thirds of that time or 16 months, in prison and one-third on supervised release. abby? >> thank you. i know you're staying on top of this. let's go in the room with elliott williams to help us break down what happened here. elliott, the judge made it very clear that she did not believe that these aggravating factors that the prosecution had said should be considered were justified here. she said kim potter did not abuse her position of authority. potter was trying to do the right thing and that it required a significantly lower sentence, even than what her discretion would have allowed. tell us about that. >> right. so both in the federal and state systems, here in minnesota, they have sentencing guidelines which are worked out based on the kind of offense, like what the crime

was and the circumstances of the defendant. like with their criminal history and so on. here you have a sentencing range guideline of 74 mouths to 103 months. that's presumptively okay. if she sentenced within that range would have stood up to the law. she can depart upward or downward depending on the factors she sees. she focused very heavily on the factors that would have departed downward mhere, including the remorse kim potter showed and the fact she made the decision, split-second decision. this is a very low sentence for a manslaughter. just to be perfectly blunt. and it's surprising. like i would have thought, sitting down today, she might have gone to the six-year range, around 74 months. >> which is what you could have expected potentially if she were to use the discretion -- some discretion, even to veer downward. but she seemed to very clearly make the point, this is not similar to the case of the officer who killed george floyd. she specifically referenced that

case and tried to make the point here that kim potter is not in need of rehabilitation. she's not in need of being locked up behind bars. that is, however, obviously cold comfort to the victims here, which would be daunte wright's family. how can, you know, the country, still dealing with all of this, process what happened in the courtroom today and people who might say this is not justice at all? >> look, she's right. this is not derek chauvin. this is not the same type of crime. these are the types of decisions judges are forced to make all the time which is weigh one case against the other. now, if you are the family of the victim and you know that the person who killed your son is going to get 16 months, whatever explanation the judge has given about the rehabilitation of the defendant simply is just going to ring hollow. and i would think that certainly, i'm sure we'll hear from the family shortly, but i'm certain they'll be upset by this decision, just based on -- she

could have acted perfectly within her authority and given six or seven years and been at the lower end of the range the law would have allowed. it is striking. hearing her weigh it out, it was striking. >> what do you make of her emotion? uncharacteristic for a judge on the bench. i mean, she broke down. >> you know, i am not going to vilify anyone's show of emotion. these -- having been at sentencing myself, having seen judges and different people react in different ways. >> this is a tough case. >> it's emotionally frauts, socially fraught. this was tough for the judge. looks like the decision she made was a clunker. >> elliott brings up a good point this is going to be obviously cold comfort to this family who has been through quite a lot. listening to daunte wright's mother earlier today, emphasizing this was her 20-year-old son. a 20-year-old son who had a child of his own. take us to that family. what do you think they are going

through right now? >> more pain, abby. more hurt. during that 15-minute break before the sentence was read by judge regina chu, our pool reporter inside of the courtroom spoke with daunte wright's brother. and during that short or that brief interaction, he said he believed kim potter was not remorseful. and he called it bs. those are his words, not mine. and moments after that is when we heard kim potter turn in the courtroom and address the wright family. she told them she was sorry, and she told the family that she prays for them and daunte wright all the time. if you go back to just hours ago, when katie bryant addressed the court, she said the one thing she wanted during the course of that trial in december was for kimberly potter to turn

to her and mouth, if not anything, the words "i'm sorry." and she didn't get that. while potter was on the stand testifying in her own defense, she never referred to daunte wright by his name. she only called him the driver. that hurt the family. reminded the judge today and kimberly potter that their son, their nephew, their brother was a human. he was someone they all loved. and something that was striking to me, abby, and i'm paraphrasing here, we heard from diamond wright, that's one of daunte wright's sisters. he's sibling of many. she mentioned when her brother was alive, they talked about the killing of george floyd and they were with their mother, daunte, diamond and saying -- and i'm paraphrasing here, that they hope their whiteness would protect them. that they wouldn't be a target by police. but she said today that wasn't the case.

and to quote her, she said, you know, one drop of blackness in their skin and i'm paraphrasing, made them a target. so the question is, moving forward, how do we really heal. what does restorative justice look like and will the wright family be willing to talk to kimberly potter? >> we'll be hearing from that family at some point today as they process what happened here. elliott, just to wrap this up. is there any more that can come from this? the minnesota attorney general keith ellison has been very involved in these cases because the spotlight is on minnesota. is there anything more that his office can do or is this the end of the chapter for this case? >> we'll see. usually downward departures aren't appealed unless there's no plausible way that anyone could -- we'd have to look at the minnesota law. no plausible way the decision could be supported. she did lay out her reasons for

it, whether they're particularly good ones is an open question. now what needs to happen here is that kim potter can lay out a path forward for ensuring this doesn't happen again. start a nonprofit to ensure better training, funding, speak to future officers and use your time as a free citizen to rectify what happened here. now, look, she's free not to, but for the good and healing of the community, it would fall on her to do that. >> the family was so disturbed and hurt by a lack of apology. kim potter did apologize in the courtroom tearfully today. for them, too late, but as you point out, she perhaps has an opportunity to take that platform and do something with it. eliot williams, thanks for being here for that. coming up next for us, evacuations, shelling. the new russian military exercises. an urgent call of nato allies. a bleak intelligence assessment. the situation in ukraine hits a new crisis point.

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that feels anything but artificial. the eqs from mercedes-benz. it's the car electric has been waiting for. now to ukraine. today a bleak new american intelligence assessment. 190,000 reasons to doubt vladimir putin's word. u.s. officials say an invasion of ukraine may still happen any day now set off by a false-flag operation. now, a new american assessment puts the number of russian troops in the area of ukraine at just under 200,000. it confirms what the u.s. and its allies have been saying publicly for days. that russia isn't telling the truth about pulling back its troops. so now president biden will convene a call with european and nato allies and also plans an afternoon update on the

situation in ukraine. cnn is on the front lines of this story all over the world and here in washington. we start our coverage at the white house with cnn's kaitlan collins. we will hear from president biden later today. why now? and what are you expecting him to say? >> we expect it to be an update. we'll see if the president has any new intelligence he's been briefed on to share when he comes out at 4:00 this afternoon. of course, those remarks are going to come just several hours after yesterday he warned that they do believe a russian invasion of ukraine could happen basically any day now. now, of course, they haven't been able to pinpoint it. they've had some digs thrown out there. those have come and gone. it's difficult because this is up to vladimir putin and what decision he makes. they're seeing the makings of an invasion before their eyes with pretexts. basically russia trying to manufacture a justification for invasion and that's what you heard secretary blinken lay out in quite vivid detail yesterday. so president biden will be speaking this afternoon after he has a call with these

trans-atlantic leaders. that's to talk about the latest that they know about what's going on. it's a call that was pretty abruptly scheduled overnight but the president will be having with several world leaders that he's been speaking with on a daily basis about this factor. you are right. we have that new 190,000 number we got from a u.s. ambassador earlier today. if it seems a lot larger than what we heard this week and what we reported on, which is about 150,000 russian forces, that's because in this number they are including those russian-backed separatists in eastern ukraine. it's not that the number has grown in the last several days but it's a concerning number for the white house. and we'll hear more from president biden this afternoon on it. >> thanks. we'll go now to maripol, ukraine, where alex marquardt is on the ground. we're getting word of mass evacuations in the donbas region, which is where you are. this is after more shelling yesterday, including at an elementary school. take us through what we know and why all of this matters.

>> yeah, abby. a number of worrying developments here in eastern, crane. the authorities in donetsk, a breakaway enclave backed by russia, out of kyiv's control reported there was an explosion near their government building. it appears to have been a russian-made car. we don't know too much more than that. frg we're hearing out of eastern ukraine in the russian-backed areas, we're taking not just with a grain of salt but with a bag of salt. we did hear from two leaders of those two breakaway enclaves today calling on their citizens to leave and evacuate to russia. they claimed there was a ukrainian offensive planned. that ukrainian troops and weaponry have shown up along the border and so they are telling their citizens to flee. of course, we don't have any sense that ukraine has any intention of doing anything remotely offensive, but this really is something we're watching closely because we are

on the lookout for some kind of false pretext, false flag operation that would give vladimir putin a justification for launching an invasion into ukraine. this does come on the heels of a significant spike in cease-fire violations along the so-called line of contact where those ukrainian forces have been fighting for the past eight years against russian-backed forces. there were 60 of them yesterday. that's the highest number in about four years. president putin has warned of a genocide. of course, that is not true. and the kremlin saying this is a very dangerous situation. it is, abby, but it is entirely of their own making. >> alex marquardt, i know you'll keep us updated on the ground there and also stay safe yourself. let's go to munich now where cnn's natasha bertrand is on the ground. it's an important test today and this weekend for the vice president, kamala harris, who is on the world stage. what is she expected to accomplish on this trip? >> very important test for the

vice president, abby. she's been primarily focused on stemming migration and stemming those root causes of migration. her emphasis has been on the southern border. she's thrust into the center of this major international crisis with russia and ukraine. she's expected to deliver a speech tomorrow here at the munich security conference at the hotel behind me. essentially laying out how the u.s. is viewing the russian threat right now. expressing unity with nato and european allies and laying out those severe consequences that russia will suffer if it does move to invade ukraine. she'll also be meeting with the ukraine president zelensky tomorrow who is also in munich for the weekend, meeting with european and nato allies trying to get a better sense of whether they will be sending more support to ukraine as they face down this russian invasion. really vice president harris' task this weekend has been to express solidarity with the european and nato allies to show russia that there's a united

front here against their aggression. and u.s. officials say that message has really come across loud and clear. that they feel there has been more unity on this issue than they have seen in many years. especially when it comes to russia because as we know, a lot of these yoeuropean economies a dependent on russia. might have been -- nangets tau. >> notasha, i've got to pause. we're taking daunte wright's mother katie wright who is speaking now. >> to sit there and watch, pouring my heart out in my victim impact statement that took so long to write, to not get a response out of the judge at all. but then when it came down convicting -- or to sentencing kim potter, she broke out in tears. so once again, we are standing here to say that we're very disappointed in the outcome. yes, we got a conviction and we

thank everybody for that. but again, this isn't okay. this is the problem with our justice system today. white women trumps justice. and i thought my white woman tears would be good enough because they're true and genuine. but when they're coerced, coached and taught by the defense attorney, i guess we didn't have a win in this at all. thank you. >> i want to just say, you know, i feel cheated. i feel hurt. i'm very upset that my son's life was taken. and that it seemed to me that nobody even cared enough, you know, it was like they were so

tied up into her feelings and what's going on with her that they forgot about my son being killed. a life was tooken. and it's just sad to say that i feel like we was tricked. we was limited on everything on what they would say, i feel like and it's just sad that our justice system -- you know, we actually thought we was going to get a little justice. you know, nothing could ease our mind from daunte being killed, but just the fact of knowing that this lady was going to pay for that, it gave us a little sense of hope like, you know, things were going to get a little better. but now, i walk out of this courthouse feeling like people are laughing at us because this lady got a slap on the wrist and we still every night sitting around crying, waiting on my son to come home.

i'm upset. >> the emotions are real. >> you just heard the father of daunte wright aubrey wright and his mother katie speaking tearfully, painfully about the loss of their son and a sentence of two years handed down to kim potter, the police officer who killed him in a traffic stop. we have cnn's adrienne broaddus back with us. we were just discussing how painful this has all been for the family. and you heard daunte wright's father there saying we thought we would get a little justice, and we didn't. they are clearly still hurting. what is next for this community? >> that is the big question. community leaders that i've been in touch with say this sentence is a smack in the face. leslie redman is the former president of the naacp in

minneapolis. and she also runs an organization called "don't complain, activate." she pointed out people are serving time for nonviolent offenses. we're talking about people in minnesota who haven't even killed anyone. yes, the community is grateful that there was some form of accountability, but in their eyes, this is not justice. this is the same community that is healing behind the killing of george floyd. and during this news conference, with attorneys who represent daunte wright, you heard attorney ben crump talk about muhammad north. that's the black officer who shot and killed a white woman from australia. in that case, there was no departure. abby? >> thanks. eliot, you heard adrienne bring of muhammad moore. was the significance of the judge saying this was an accident. kim potter did not mean to pull her gun. does that matter in a case like

this? it seems that it very much did. >> sort of yes and no. it's manslaughter in the first degree in minnesota, which is, in effect, an accidental killing. the very killing that she's charged with is an accident. what the judge was saying is that not all accidents are created equal. and this was an officer in the heat of the moment attempting to, you know, as the judge laid out, protect other officers from harm or defuse the situation or so on. again, it's an interesting way to have cut up the facts here based on everything we know and frankly the egregiousness of the mistake and mishandling of the firearm. yes, it's an accident, but again, you can't judge all accidents equally. >> and at the end of the day, we have to remember that someone's life was cut short here. and this family is not seeing this as justice in any way. we'll be right back. loan debt?k with stut ♪ move your student loan debt to sofi—you cocould save

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the top republican in the house wants his fellow republican liz cheney out of congress. kevin mccarthy is putting its support behind cheney's trump-backed rival for wyoming's congressional seat. and it's definitely not common for leadership to get involved in primary races against sitting members, but mccarthy is taking a gamble. he hopes the move will win trump's favor and win him the speakership if republicans take back the house.

here's how the house majority leader is defending his endorsement. >> wyoming deserves to have a representative who will deliver the accountability against this biden administration. not a representative they have today that works closer with nancy pelosi going after republicans instead of stopping these radical democrats for what they're doing to this country. >> and we have our panel with us. manu raju, alex burns and mj lee. so manu, you know, this probably doesn't come as a surprise to many people on the hill. kevin mccarthy has not stood up for liz cheney in any way, but still he's stepping in to a -- what's going to be a pretty bloody primary for trump effectively. >> he's been pushed very hard by the very conservative house freedom caucus that is very close to donald trump. as we've seen since january 6th and aftermath when mccarthy criticized donald trump, he has walked away from that criticism

completely and moved closer and closer to the trump wing of that party because that is what dominates the house republican conference. trump supporters. that's what's different than the senate republican conference which has a much more diverse set of members when it comes to fealty towards donald trump. mitch mcconnell said last year in the statement about liz cheney, called her a leader of deep convictions and the courage to act on them. calling her an important leader in our party. that was before she joined the select committee. after she voted to impeach donald trump. 1 of 10 republicans to do that. but it shows the debate over which direction this party should go. >> here's the thing that may make this interesting. so trump is lobbying to try to make it harder for -- to make it not impossible for liz cheney to use the support of democrats in the state to win the nomination. he is getting into the weeds here to try to make sure that she only has republicans accessible to her when it comes to going on the ballot. >> it's a very specific

political strategy that donald trump is engaging in, and, look, i think liz cheney has become perhaps the most vivid illustration of what can happen to a republican elected official if you choose to speak out against donald trump or trumpism. trump's ideals in such a clear way. you know, the problem for her is in a lot of ways liz cheney has become almost this republican national heroic figure for the republicans who do not support trumpism and some of trump's ideals. but it is not republicans across the country who are voting for her. it is the republicans in her wyoming district. and at this point, she is facing donald trump's wrath in her next re-election. >> i want to turn to mike pence because he's been out. he's been speaking. he denounced trump trying to get him to overturn the election. fine. but listen to what he said about legitimate political discourse. >> i just don't know too many people around the country,

including my friends at the rnc and chairman of the republican national committee who have any different view than it was a tragic day. than the people that ransacked the capitol were wrong. we're not talking about people that engaged in violence against persons or property that day. that they were speaking about a whole range of people that have been set upon by this committee, and i believe them. >> so the republican national committee belongs to trump at this point. but pence still is hoping -- holding out hope that maybe he can have a political future or is this genuinely what he believes? >> i think this is an extension of what we've seen from mike pence since he became donald trump's running mate. how many times have we seen him stand next to trump literally or figuratively while trump says something completely outrageous and then the camera turns to pence and he pretends trump said something different than what he

said. he's very skilled at sanitizing, sanding down, doing simultaneous translation of whatever trump and his cohorts say into something that sounds more mainstream, right? i think it's not a strategy, obviously, that has worked well for pence since leaving office. but if your whole political future is premised on the idea that there's no substantive space between you and donald trump, that's just obviously not true of the former vice president. and it's not a sustainable act. >> just the political discourse. republicans have tried to redefine what that resolution said. nothing talked about the violence that happened on january 6th. it referred to legitimate political discourse and citizens were engaging in that are being persecuted by the january 6th select committee. since then they've said they're talking bother people and it turns out to be other people investigated for this so-called fake elector issue. so this is part of the investigation that's going forward, but obviously trying to clean up this mess. >> we all know pence came this close to, "hang mike pence," to

being pushed and prodded into trying to overturn the election. and we're learning this week from a former federal judge, j. michael ludig who has an extraordinary story about how a few of his tweets gave pence the justification to not overturn the election. just listen to this. it's extraordinary. >> richard then said, well, you don't know, do you? and i said, know what? and he said, john's advising the president and the vice president that the vice president has this authority on january 6th, two days hence. and i said, wow, no, i did not know that. i think i said that night, i said, look, you can tell the vice president that i said that he has no such authority at all. >> he went on to write a few tweets that gave pence the justification to reject trump's logic here. and that's as close as we came

to this being a total disaster. >> it's pretty fascinating to get this little picture and insight into the actions that the former vice president took on what ended up being one of the most fateful days of his entire political career. that he felt it was so important to get an opinion from a legal scholar to justify saying something and giving an opinion that pre-trump should not have been at all controversial. i think what's also fascinating is that at the end of the day, it didn't matter that pence was able to cite this person. it didn't matter in trump's view because at the end of the day in trump's view, mike pence wasn't on his side. t. was just about mike pence not being tough enough. mike pence not being willing to do what trump wanted him to do. never mind what the constitution says. thanks, guys. coming up, ahead for us, a new report is finding that a fractured senate republican primary gives a controversial trump loyalist an opening in missouri. nancial picture.

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new reporting today on cnn about the missouri senate race. republicans are worried that they could lose a senate seat there because of the apparent front-runner has some heavy personal baggage. that candidate, eric griton had to resign as governor in 2018 because a woman he admitted he was having an affair with accused him of coercion, sexual violence and blackmail.

all of which he denied. he has hired a couple of trump allies to advise him in that race. but the former president hasn't endorsed anyone yet. my panel is back with me today including manu raju who has this story. manu, former president trump always likes to be the kingmaker, but it's not happening yet. >> not yet. it's still unclear what donald trump will do. they've tried to counsel him, urge him, they're concerned about griton emerging from this. urging him not to get behind him. people like senator josh hawley. he has not said that, don't endorse gritons but he's made clear what he views as the most electable candidates. he got behind vicki hartssler last week. but ted cruz got behind another candidate, eric schmidt, the state attorney general showing how this field has splintered. this is a crowded field that the

concern among republicans is that because the support will be fractured, gritons could emerge and become the nominee and be vulnerable in a general election. talking to republican leaders, they are watching this very closely. mitch mcconnell told me that he's watching this closely. i asked him, were you engaged in this race, trying to defeat griotns in this primary if he catches steam? he would not rule that possibility out. democrats believe that gritons emerges they could see a repeat of 2012 when claire mccaskill won there when todd akin, a controversial republican, won that nomination. >> and obviously candidates always matter but they matter particularly this cycle for republicans. if you look at the map, 34 seats are up for grabs. 14 democrats are holding 20. republicans are holding. so they're got to hold onto their people. but they have some pick-up opportunities. there are some candidates in these states that are problematic. eric gritons is one of them. but in other places you have a case of arizona where trump is

pushing out a potentially good candidate. they are in a tough spot. >> they are. and, you know, missouri is a state that's so conservative overall that if they just nominated a cardboard cutout of a republican, they'd have no problem at all in that staircts right? if it were just an issue of a messy primary, the way you have in a state like pennsylvania or state like arizona, republicans probably still end up winning that seat and comfortably. but if it's a long, messy, brutal expensive primary after which you nominate a guy who is forced out of the top job in the state because he accused of sexual assault, that's a whole other story. the risk for republicans, by the way, and some of them will admit this off the record, is the risk is also that you nominate him and he wins and then he's a member of the senate and he's an embarrassment to the party every day. >> it's worth pointing out this is obvious at this point, but for president trump, a political endorsement really has nothing to do with whether it is seen as being good for his party. the republican party. it has everything to do with

whether he sees that candidate as being on his side or not. >> there could be a scenario in which you have a senate that's actually more trumpian than the one we have right now. and mitch mcconnell may not love that. but, you know, i mean, that may be the reality come next year. coming up next, the california governor gavin newsom rolls out his state's new plan to shift from a pandemic to an endemic approach to covid. will other states follow this strategy?

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california is shifting its covid strategy and moving from a pandemic to an endemic phase of learning to live with the virus. and they're not alone. states across the country are rolling back mask and vaccination mandates as cases decline. cnn's medical correspondent elizabeth cohen is here with me in washington. so is california just formalizing what all these other states are doing more inf informally? >> i think so because they've put it together in to this nice rubric that makes sense. these are things that should have been done, we hoped were done all along. encouraging people to get vaccinated. having more vaccination sites at schools or, for example, getting covid treatments to the patients who need it. these again are things that should have been done all along. let's hope that california is really going to make all of this happen. let's hope that other states

make this happen. i think some ways this pandemic, endemic thing, it's not really important what we call it. what's important is that we take the right steps. >> and public health officials have a definition for endemic, but people are still moving forward. i want to ask you about this omicron subvariant that people are talking about. how worried should we be about yet another variant popping up on the scene? >> i feel like just hearing that question i'm probably the least popular person on television today because we're talking about another variant. so this one is called ba.2. it's a subvariant of the omicron variant. let's take a look at what we know about it. so what we know so far is it's actually even more communicable than omicron which seems impossible but it valley. it's been found in 74 countries and it's become the predominant variant in ten countries, most of them in asia. so that sounds really scary, but here's what we don't know. we don't know that it's any more severe. if it's not any more severe than omicron it might not be that big

of a deal. here's another thing that we know that can make us feel better. if we take a look at the week of february 5th, this new ba strain was 3.9% of cases in the united states. the week before, it was 1.6% of cases. that's a pretty slow increase. omicron at that stage was going gangbusters. it was growing much more quickly. this is kind of like puttering around. there's a chance this could kind of fizzle out. >> and a large portion of the country may have gotten infected by omicron. we don't know yet how that factors in. >> we don't know if that will give people immunity to this. this new omicron is pretty different than the original omicron. it's unclear how much immunity it will give. >> thanks for being with us, elizabeth. we love having you here. thanks for joining us for "inside politics." ana cabrera picks up our coverage after this break.

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hello on this friday. i'm ana cabrera in new york. preparing to invade. a senior u.s. official calling the latest intel assessment of russia, quote, bleak. it indicates an attack could happen in the coming days. now just minutes ago, the state department echoed accusations that this blown-up vehicle in the disputed areas of eastern ukraine is part of a russian false-flag operation. that is a pretext for a possible attack. now already today, there hav