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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Sheriff: We Have DNA In Guthrie Case, Don't Know Whose It Is; Door Cam Video In Guthrie Case Sparked 5,000 Tips In Hours; ICE Officers Being Investigated; Sheriff: Google Working To Recover More Video From Guthrie Home; Longtime Friend And Colleague Of Nancy Guthrie On Her Impact On The Community; Sources: Trump Privately Lashes Out At GOP Lawmakers Over Racist Video Blowback; WSJ: Coast Guard Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem's Missing Blanket; Charges Dropped Against Men Accused Of Attacking ICE Officer; NBC "TODAY" Unites Around Guthrie & Family. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired February 13, 2026 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

PAM BONDI, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: We said right away was not redacted and should have been, meaning the victim. We went back and redacted it. We're doing everything we can based on the tight timeframe and over three million pages that we released that Donald Trump signed for pure transparency.

M.J. LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over) : M.J. Lee, CNN, Washington D.C.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Of course, he signed that after spending months and months and months trying to avoid doing just that.

Thanks so much for joining us, Anderson starts now.

[20:00:34]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Tonight on 360, there's breaking news in the search for Nancy Guthrie. The Sheriff says, we have DNA, the question is whose DNA is it? Where did it come from? How might it figure in the case?

Also, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, called the shooting of a Venezuelan man in Minneapolis self-defense by ICE agents. But now two of those agents are being investigated for possibly lying under oath about what happened.

And later, stunning new behind the scenes reporting about Secretary Noem, her closest aide, Corey Lewandowski, and the luxury private 737 they've been jetting around on.

Good evening, thanks for joining us we begin tonight with the search for Nancy Guthrie. Tomorrow night marks two full weeks since she vanished from her home outside Tucson, two weeks. Today, the local sheriff delivered what could be significant news.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CHRIS NANOS, PIMA COUNTY SHERIFF: We have DNA, So, trust me, if we

knew who it was, we'd be on it but we do have some DNA, and we're continuing to work with those, with the lab on that DNA analysis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The sheriff did not say where the DNA was found. Did tell CNN's Ed Lavandera that the investigators also DNA from Miss Guthrie, her family, her landscapers and housekeepers.

Now, on the question of gloves, he said that several have been recovered as far as ten miles from the Guthrie home. They're being checked for DNA and presumably any connection to crime scene.

Also, today, pool workers were spotted at the Guthrie home, which initially drew interest. The pool service later said their visit was for routine maintenance CNN's Nick Watt joins us now from Tucson -- Nick.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, two major strands in this investigation, the DNA, as you just discussed, and also the video. Investigators want more video. So today, we took a look at where that might come from.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WATT (voice over): That haunting doorbell cam footage of the suspect gave investigators a physical description. What about his vehicle? Investigators have put out a call for video of anything suspicious within this two-mile radius around Nancy Guthrie's home. My colleague Ed Lavandera just interviewed the sheriff.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And do you believe that the suspect's car has been captured on some video that you have?

NANOS: We hope so, but we don't know that. We are still piecing together all those leads.

WATT (on camera): A lot of these houses around here do have security cameras, but local zoning laws mean every house has got to be at least 30 feet back from the road. And there's a lot of vegetation. So, it's unclear what those cameras might have picked up. Also, there are no street lights here and also multiple ways in and out of this neighborhood.

LAVANDERA: Have you been able to figure out what route the suspect drove through the neighborhood to get to Nancy Guthrie's house?

NANOS: No, all those things and possibilities are looked at, but, I couldn't tell you.

WATT (voice over): There are some traffic cameras operated by the county on the more major roads that surround Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood, but the county says they're not available at all intersections and not always archived. WATT (on camera): So, in addition to those cameras run by the county

there are also cameras run by the state and the city of Tucson. It could have been an option, here's the issue.

About 10 years ago, the people of Tucson voted to outlaw the use of traffic cameras for red light infractions or speeding, so this camera here on a major road just a few miles from Nancy Guthrie's house, it only monitors traffic conditions. It doesn't record, so, nothing on tape from the night Nancy Guthrie was taken.

NANOS: If you have any information, whether it's from your RING camera or it's just you've seen something that is of concern to you, please share it with us.

\(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Nick is back. Nick, what's the latest on any law enforcement activity near the home or surrounding areas?

WATT: I mean today, Anderson, it was just the Sheriff Department supervising those pool maintenance workers and making sure that no one enters the crime scene. But we have heard that they are working now on other cameras that were inside that home.

Now, you remember that porch camera? It took engineers a long time to extract that video. They are now trying to do the same with other cameras that were inside the home. The sheriff said they're working on it. They don't know if they'll be able to get it. But the sheriff certainly hopes that they can. That might give, I don't know, a vehicle, another angle of the suspect, maybe an accomplice, whatever. They want to try and get that video if they possibly can, and they hope it will come through -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Nick Watt. Nick, thanks very much.

We're joined now by our law enforcement team, former NYPD Detective David Sarni; CNN chief law enforcement intelligence analyst, John Miller; and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

[20:05:31]

John, you heard the sheriff say the DNA has been found. Not clear who it belongs to. What does it -- I mean, why does DNA take often so long?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, it's a lengthy process and there's always somewhat of a backlog. Now, this case is going to be getting top priority in likely the private lab the sheriff uses, certainly at the FBI at Quantico because it's a kidnap for ransom case, which puts it ahead of other unsolved crimes because there's a victim, you know, at bay here. But it's significant in that they have a set of known contributors, people who are in and out of the house that they can document that belong there.

COOPER: And that they can quickly check it against. MILLER: Exactly, which they can they can run those people against

their own DNA. In this case, you have an unknown contributor, which is significant, potentially. You can run it against CODIS. Have they been arrested for a felony? Have they been in prison? That will pop up in the national database, but it hasn't.

So now, what you have is you have an unknown contributor where if you get a suspect, you have something to run against that suspect, particularly if the suspect says I was never on that road. I never wore that glove. I was never in that house, depending on where it was found. It could be useful. It could be nothing.

COOPER: And, Andrew, I mean, does the FBI have other databases besides people with prior criminal records that they could run through?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: You know, the basic law enforcement database is what John just referred to is CODIS. There's also ways to do what we call rapid DNA, so they can do the processing of the sample pretty quickly. But you're held up at the point where you don't have an existing sample in that data set.

There is some work that cold case squads and other investigators have done with commercially available DNA data sets. It's not clear to me whether or not they are going to rely on those data sets here.

That's a very different approach. You would take your unknown sample and run it against the samples contained in that commercial data set, to see if there are relatives, people who are connected to the same DNA in that data set. And if there are, then you have to do some genealogy research to try to figure out who your unknown person is. But again, it's not clear to me that that's happening in this case yet.

COOPER: So, David when you know, the authorities say they have DNA that's different from Nancy Guthrie's and from the other known known people, does that -- I mean does that give you a lot of confidence that may lead to something? Or could there just be other people who were in the house that nobody knew about?

DAVID SARNI, FORMER NYPD DETECTIVE: And that's the thing, you have to, when you talk about DNA and recovery, where the location of the DNA is recovered. And not only that, you've done the elimination. If you have elimination from like we would do fingerprints, elimination prints from the family, that's fine but what you have to do now is we had responding officers that scene, where were they at in that house at the time? And is the DNA that's recovered in the area where they've been at?

So, that's another thing. I don't know if they've done an elimination DNA on substrates on the responding officers, anybody else in the house, because that's what you have to really look at, is could it be a contributor that was there as law enforcement and not only that you're still going to have to find out through the analysis.

We have DNA, is it is it a mixture? Do we have -- and matches come through CODIS, does it match -- which is no one known, no names, but a hit would be a name to a name.

So, in other words, if they got DNA and they tested it and analyzed it, and they found it matched someone with no name, that's something different. But when you get the hit, that means you have a definitive name of the person.

COOPER: And John, I mean, the FBI is, they're looking at potential, you know, obviously any potential leads. Theres this other doorbell camera video from a house roughly six-and-a-half miles away from Mrs. Guthrie's, we've seen as blurring the man's face. We don't know who this is or if its anything nefarious, it shows someone holding some items of clothing bending over from January 23rd which is not a date authorities have cited as necessarily important. What would authorities do with something like this?

MILLER: Well, what you're looking for is and I mean, when you're working on a case like this, you're doing everything at once. You're focused on what about those ransom notes? What about these other letters?

But you're also focused on residential burglaries home invasions. One of the things they asked the public to say is, check your cameras and see, did anybody approach your door? Is this somebody who has been targeting houses in the neighborhood? Could this case be very different?

COOPER: I mean, it certainly looks like potentially suspicious.

MILLER: Right, and I mean, in a case like this you could have somebody who is contemplating a burglary trying to avoid that camera. At a case like this, you could also have somebody who's looking for those Amazon packages that people go on at front doors and take. It's one of the main things that RING doorbell cameras are really good at catching, but it's good that people found it, it's good that posted it. It's good that law enforcement is looking at it.

COOPER: Andrew, the sheriff, said that his department and the FBI, are joined at the hip he also denied reports that he blocked the FBI from accessing key evidence. When two law enforcement entities are investigating a case like this. I mean who takes the lead? Who's in the lead right now? Who's running this?

[20:10:40]

MCCABE: Yes, I think, you know, I think as a result of years and years of watching, you know these things on television, people have a sense that there's always conflict between the feds and the locals. It's really not the case and particularly in the post 9/11 world, our relationships have gotten so deep and so consistent over the years because of the task forces.

We bring local officers into the FBI. We deputize them as federal marshals, work together, we all have the same legal authorities, things like that. So, I have no doubt that there the Sheriff's Department has worked and is working closely with the FBI, and there's no animosity there. Where you have problems is when communication isn't very clear or

logistically something happens in an awkward way that shouldn't have happened. Unintentional, but maybe evidence sits in one place when it should be analyzed someplace else. That that could have happened here. That's pretty standard. I don't, at the end of the day, I think it will be fair to look back at both entities, both the sheriff's department and the FBI to look at, like the urgency of the response. How quickly did they call in the FBI and all their resources?

Was it a couple of hours? Was it half a day? Was it a day or several days? And there may be lessons to be learned in the aftermath. But right now, everybody is very focused on getting Miss Guthrie back and that's absolutely what they should be thinking about.

COOPER: We're going to take a break. We'll have more with our team.

Next, the intense pressure of conducting a life and death investigation in the national spotlight, what veterans of other high- profile cases say can happen.

And later, we'll be joined by a longtime colleague and friend of Nancy Guthrie's what she makes the developments today and the search, which is now going into its third weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:16:33]

COOPER: We have more breaking developments in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. The Pima County Sheriff, telling CNN this afternoon, this door cam video has triggered the greatest number of leads for investigators. He says they got about 5,000 tips within just hours of releasing it on Tuesday. Tonight, almost two weeks into the search, still, there is no sign of the 84-year-old mom, and the sheriff is disputing reports of any conflicts with the FBI over the investigation.

More on that tonight from CNN's Brian Todd.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The Pima County Sheriff, in denying reports that he blocked the FBI from accessing key evidence in the Nancy Guthrie case, is also denying in an interview with CNN that there's any tension between his office and the FBI.

NANOS: The FBI and the Pima County Sheriff's Department are joined at the hips. We have done this for not years, decades.

TODD (voice over): Two law enforcement veterans tell CNN, even if there's little to no tension between the Sheriff's Office and the FBI. Make no mistake, as this case nears its third week with no signs of Nancy Guthrie, her alleged abductor, not identified and the media scrutiny unrelenting, the law enforcement teams in Arizona are feeling the heat. CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Theres enormous

pressure whenever you have a case like this especially when it's not quickly resolved.

TODD (voice over): Charles Ramsey was the D.C. police chief during the D.C. sniper case in 2002, and was part of the task force hunting the suspects. The case dragged on for more than three weeks ten people were killed, then Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Chief Charles Moose was the official leading the investigation and was its public face. The pressure on Moose as the hunt intensified was physically noticeable, especially when a child was shot and wounded.

CHARLES MOOSE, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND, POLICE CHIEF: Stepping over the line, shooting a kid. I guess it's going to be really, really personal now.

RAMSEY: I certainly can't speak for Chuck Moose, but you could see the stress. You could see the pressure, and everybody felt it. And I can only imagine what it had to be for him.

TODD (voice over): Former FBI Special Agent Steve Moore recalls one instance when tension inside a high-profile investigation he was involved in got personal.

STEVE MOORE, FORMER FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT: I was thrown out of a police chiefs office one day when I was the first FBI agent to arrive to assist in a kidnapping. Turns out that the kidnapping victim was his secretary, and he was personally offended that someone else would come in and try to help him solve the kidnapping of his own secretary. And I was forcefully asked to leave the building.

TODD (voice over): Fueling the tension in the Guthrie case, the celebrity factor. It's not just that a nationally renowned network anchor is at the center of it, the fact that President Trump has weighed in repeatedly, experts say, puts more pressure on investigators.

DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Ultimately, when the FBI got involved, I think you know, progress has been made.

MOORE: When the President of the United States is involved in your case, you have entered a new level of hell.

TODD (on camera): How to deal with that pressure and the internal tension in a case like this, both Charles Ramsey and Steve Moore say it's crucial for the leaders in the case to sit down and talk through whatever issues they have, and to keep all of that away from the on the ground investigators so they can focus on the job.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Thanks, Brian. Back now with our panel, David Sarni, John Miller, Andrew McCabe,

we're also joined by the retired FBI special agent and crisis negotiator, Richard Kolko.

John Miller, just in terms of the cooperation, just the lead agency on this case is which one, FBI or the local?

[20:20:12]

MILLER: So, the sheriff said there is no lead agency, we're working together. The simple fact is that right now, this is a state violation, and the FBI is there assisting local law enforcement. Now, make no mistake, the FBI brings tremendous resources, resources that can't be matched by any other agency to a case like this. But at the end of the day until the FBI establishes and this may or may not happen, that there was a kidnapping and that it crossed state lines and became a federal violation under the Lindbergh Law, this is a state case.

So, they're working together fine is my understanding. They've had discussions about where the DNA should go and which labs should do it. But those are normal discussions in a case like this.

COOPER: Richard, to your experience with the FBI, what's it like working with local law enforcement?

RICHARD KOLKO, RETIRED FBI SPECIAL AGENT AND CRISIS NEGOTIATOR: I think the rumors or stories that we've heard from the past are old movies from the 50s. Every time that I was involved, we got along fine. Sometimes there were some territorial issues in evidence collection procedures, processes, but it always got worked out. And I think one of the most important tasks of a special agent in charge of any field office is to develop and build those relationships with every local, state police official there is. You see them knocking on doors.

COOPER: They're also clearly working with companies like Google on the cameras. David, you had mentioned the other night, the idea of checking on Google Maps or Apple Maps, any kind of ways for people who may have put in looking for the address of Nancy Guthrie.

SARNI: Yes, absolutely because given the fact of the darkness of the area, you know, I do it when I go to Florida. I go to the same place every time I go to Florida and I still have Waze on. And if you're dealing with a place that you've been even one or two times, you have to be there, 10, 20 times in the darkness of that area, is there a chance? And this is what you sometimes do, sometimes you have to just spit out in the wind and something catches. This might be something that catches.

We've run every gamut right now. You're looking at the video; you're getting backpacks identified and things like that. But now sometimes I don't use outside the box. But looking at the tech issues, that might be existing for the common man at this point, for someone who was just going out in the street, I don't know where I'm going, let me Google it, let me map it out somewhere, so, is that a possibility? Yes, it's a possibility.

COOPER: Andrew, you know, as you know they doubled the reward for information leading to the location of Nancy Guthrie or her captor or captors. Is that something that a family can make a determination of? Like could the Guthrie family say you know what, let's make it $500,000.00 because we were talking the other day of, you know, the difference between $50,000.00 and $100,000.00, maybe a hundred thousand that is starting to attract people who may actually have a knowledge because of, you know, their cousin is involved and they were asked to be involved and they decided not to but $100,000.00 suddenly, you know real money on the table.

MCCABE: Yes, you know, I don't know what the tipping point is there, right? And I think that the FBI looks at the reward system a little more holistically. It is primarily a driver of attention. When you put a reward on a case in whatever aspect you're trying to incentivize, it draws eyes and ears to the story, makes people think, motivates lots of people to look around, and then you start getting tips.

So, just simply putting a significant reward on accomplishes that. Now to start elevating the amount you're offering, you're trying to zero in on that. Maybe there's somebody who's not going to do it at 50, but they would do it at 100. But honestly, there's not a lot of examples of that. There's not, you know, there's no hard data that says like, we catch, you know we collect better tips at 100 than we do at 50.

As far as the family is concerned, most families are not in a position to be putting their personal resources behind the reward offer, right, most families in a situation like this are really scrambling to find money that they might use to pay a ransom. I think it's probably -- I think if a family offered to contribute their own reward in accordance with the FBI reward, they could certainly create the effect of increasing the value of the reward. That would not be a problem, but as a practical matter, I haven't really seen that happen because as I said, most families are very focused on the ransom factor.

COOPER: This case has obviously attracted a lot of interest online. You have a lot of social media crime enthusiasts and influencers down there putting out a lot of content, some of its very compelling. Does that -- is that a problem for law enforcement?

SARNI: It can be and it can't be. You know, sometimes, you know, the internet sleuths are out there. I look at reddit and I see the trails and the threads and everything like that. You read it and it keeps people entertained to an extent, does it affect us? It affects the case when they interfere. I'm talking interference, meaning they get engaged in the case that they're somehow leaks come out or they are actually at the scene doing things. That's where I would have a problem with.

You can talk all you want on the side on the internet, that's fine. Would it be a possibility that someone leak something out? Yes, and that's one thing we're concerned about. But that's why I think with this case there hasn't been any leaks, which is pretty impressive.

[20:25:24] MILLER: When they start posting pictures of suspects, naming names and

this is, you know, as a result of their sleuthing or guesswork that can put people in danger. We saw that in Brown University, we saw it in the Boston Marathon bombing where they said, this is you know --

COOPER: I've seen a lot of like A.I. demasking of the doorbell camera things and with different people looking very differently.

SARNI: Absolutely and that's the thing, that's why with that new video out there, they blot out his face. Because imagine that person's face is out there. All of a sudden you get a thousand tips saying, that's the guy who did this that's a video of a person who is who is out there. Is he doing something out of the ordinary? Yes. Is he the perpetrator in this case? Far from it. But what happens is the court of public opinion will see it, identify him and say that's the guy no matter what. And that's the concern for law enforcement. We don't go by public opinion; we go by facts and circumstances to make arrests.

COOPER: Did you guys think when this first started that we would be here, you know, nearly three weekends later?

MILLER: Not really.

SARNI Thirteen days is a very long time and I don't think anyone --

COOPER: Nineteen.

SARNI: Yes. It's almost, you think about that the amount of time that's taken place. I don't think any kidnapper would be prepared to be that extended amount of time with somebody.

COOPER: Do agree with it?

MILLER: I mean, I look at the other cases, Sidney Reso, the President of Exxon, that went on for a long time. Ultimately, he had died and they were still demanding the ransom.

Samuel Bronfman, that turned around in just a few days, same with Marci Klein and other cases. So, you know, you get to the Getty Kidnaping that went on for months. Elizabeth Smart, nine months. So, you've seen one kidnaping, you've seen one kidnaping.

COOPER: Andrew, I mean, is there an upside to the, you know, the large amount of information on a case in terms of tips received or the ability to crowdsource a particular lead or do more random tips, you know mean more manpower needed to run things down and a lot of them don't turn out to be anything?

MCCABE: That's absolutely true. But at the end of the day, you know, like most investigators, I'm an intel guy. I want the information, whatever you have. Whatever you have, I want more than that. The tips that go nowhere, the people who are intentionally trying to, like, distract you and mislead you. That's all part of this work; everybody understands that its incumbent upon the leaders of these entities that are conducting the investigation to resource it in such a way that you can handle that kind of volume. You know, we famously did not do that when we released the photographs

in the Boston Bombing case. We showed the photographs of the bombers to the world and asked for information. And immediately we got so much information in that it essentially knocked down our entire system. We couldn't receive any tips or photographs or videos for a while, because we kind of like we basically inflicted a denial-of-service attack on ourselves.

So, you learn those lessons, you learn like what you need in terms of manpower to actually go through this stuff. And you also build up those electronic systems to handle the load. That's part of the responsibility.

COOPER: Andrew McCabe, John Miller, Richard Kolko, and David Sarni, appreciate it, thanks very much.

Up next, I'll speak with a friend and former colleague of Nancy Guthrie, who also taught Nancy's daughter, Savannah, at the University of Arizona.

And later, after weeks of protests in Minneapolis, the border czar has announced the surge is coming to an end. We're just not sure when. And other questions remain, including what happened when a migrant was shot. He survived. Now, two ICE officers are being investigated for possibly lying under oath about what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JACOB FREY (D), MINNEAPOLIS: The damage caused by this operation has been staggering.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[20:33:25]

SHERIFF CHRIS NANOS, PIMA COUNTY, ARIZONA: I believe she'll be found. And I believe that we are working as hard as we can to do that as fast as we can. Sometimes, it just doesn't work that way. But we are working hard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: This is Pima County sheriff this afternoon on the nearly two- week search for Nancy Guthrie in an interview with CNN's Ed Lavandera. The sheriff also saying that Google is working to see if they can get any more video from the cameras around Guthrie's home in Tucson, Arizona.

Joining us now is a longtime friend and colleague of Mrs. Guthrie's, Jacqueline Sharkey. Jacqueline, I appreciate you joining us. I'm so sorry we are talking under these circumstances. You've said that Mrs. Guthrie really is an integral part of the community. Can you just talk about what your work together has been like?

JACQUELINE SHARKEY, LONGTIME COLLEAGUE AND FRIEND OF NANCY GUTHRIE: Yes. Nancy is one of those quiet leaders in a community. Part of the fabric of the community. Every organization that she belonged to, every issue that she embraced, she was the person who was insightful, strategic, organized people, organized information, got out effective messages. So when we hear about this, everyone who's worked with Nancy, who's known Nancy, who's shared her faith in her church, feels this tremendous terror in the fabric of the community.

COOPER: I understand Savannah Guthrie was a student in your journalism class at the University of Arizona, and that's how you first met Mrs. Guthrie, is that right?

[20:35:03]

SHARKEY: That's correct. I first met Nancy because Savannah was a student in our classes. And later when I became director of the journalism school, she became part of our journalism advisory council, which is made up of alumni and colleagues who help with curriculum development and community outreach, fundraising, that sort of thing.

Nancy was a very important part of that group. We leaned on her for guidance. We leaned on her for her diverse perspectives and viewpoints, for the depths of her knowledge about journalism and about education. And she drove many of the most successful initiatives that we had.

And I also worked with Nancy on another very important community initiative that very few people know about, because Nancy, regarded her role as being in the background, supporting people, guiding people, but the focus was never on herself. Back in the mid-90s, the University of Arizona was going to close the Poison Information Center hotline, the hotline that people all over southern Arizona would call if they ingested something that was toxic, if their children inhaled something that was poisonous.

The university was going to close that because of budget cuts. I learned about that, and I gathered a very small group of people. Nancy was the central person in that group. She helped us gather data. She helped us do brochures. She helped us with public relations releases.

This is way before the Internet. I mean, back in those days, in the mid-90s, there was -- there were no social media. There was no Internet.

COOPER: Were you able to get that turned around?

SHARKEY: We did. With Nancy's help, we designed brochures, petitions, got 20,000 signatures, took them to the governor's office, and the decision to close the center was reversed. That center is still open today. And the thousands of people --

COOPER: Sorry, go ahead.

SHARKEY: No, go ahead. I was just going to say, the thousands of people who called into that center in the 30 years since it's been saved, they owe a huge debt to Nancy Guthrie.

COOPER: When you heard about her disappearance, what went through your mind? I mean, you're a journalist, a journalism professor, and yet you know her so well.

SHARKEY: When I first learned about this, I was heartbroken. For Nancy, for Savannah, for every member of her family. Because if everything works out perfectly and she comes home as soon as possible, the stress and the trauma is so heart-wrenching.

And to see this family and to think about Nancy going through this ordeal, when she is a person who was such a role model to so many of us. When I think of Nancy, I think of someone who lives a life based on values. She was devoted to her faith. She was devoted to the truth. She was devoted to justice. She was devoted to kindness.

And our hope is that when Nancy comes back, she can continue to show us how to live a life that's meaningful. So we're hoping she comes back as soon as possible because there's this phrase in the Bible that says, you know, Jesus said, by your deeds you shall know them. By Nancy's deeds, that's how we know her.

COOPER: Well, thank you for helping the rest of us in the world to get to know her. Jacqueline, I really appreciate it. Thank you.

SHARKEY: Coming up next, President Trump hasn't punished anyone for posting the memes portraying the Obamas as apes. We have an update on that story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[20:43:03

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, have you fired or disciplined that staffer who posted the video from your account that included the Obamas?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I haven't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The president yesterday saying there have been no consequences for the purported staffer who allegedly posted the racist meme that went up on his social feed a week ago, Thursday. Former President Michelle Obama's apes. Tonight, not only is there no proof a staffer posted it and not the president, no repercussions for anyone who may have posted it.

According to new reporting, there may be repercussions for some Republican lawmakers, including South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who's black. He called the Obama post, quote, "the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House."

CNN's Alayna Treene has the story, joins us now. So, Alayna, you're reporting that the president has talked about consequences for Republicans who push back on the post. Is it clear what that means?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Not necessarily, but we have a good idea, Anderson, from what we've even heard the president say this week when we saw six Republicans break with him on a different issue on his tariffs on Canada. He said that they would likely face primaries and would suffer consequences in the elections.

But, look, from what I was told from multiple sources who were with the president or had been hurrying about these comments last weekend when he was at Mar-a-Lago, is he was specifically focused on two lawmakers. He had railed against a lot of them. But Tim Scott, in particular, really got under his skin that he had spoken out publicly about that post.

The president telling his allies essentially that he felt Tim Scott should have reached out privately given they have a close relationship, that it was really Scott's post calling it racist that he felt made the entire story blow up. I will say from another conversation I had with a source, they said that Tim Scott had actually privately reached out to the president first before he had posted that criticism of the post, but then didn't reach him. And so he went ahead and published it on social media.

Now, the president also had pretty strong words, I was told, even stronger language for Alabama Senator Katie Britt, who had also spoken out about this. He had used a lot of expletives, I was told, when talking about her saying, you know, she had a lack of loyalty in doing that and also said that she was dead to him.

[20:45:11]

So very, very much anger from the president over how some of these lawmakers had reacted. And I do think it reflects kind of this growing sense that we're seeing of Republicans who, for the president's first year in office really rarely, if at all, stepped out of line to break with him. We're seeing that happen more and more in recent months.

COOPER: Yes. Alayna Treene, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Moving on from a controversy surrounding President Trump to one engulfing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. She is the subject of a sprawling investigative piece by The Wall Street Journal. Among the journal's revelations that she travels around the country on a luxury jet earmarked for high-profile deportations.

Another involving her top adviser Corey Lewandowski quoting from the Journal article. Lewandowski had initially wanted to formally serve as Noem's chief of staff, but Trump rejected the idea due to reports of a romantic relationship between the two, which he has continued to bring up, officials say.

Now, I should note both Noem and Lewandowski denied reports of an affair, and a DHS spokeswoman told the Journal they are, quote, "salacious, baseless gossip." Overall, the piece paints a picture of dysfunction from the top down throughout the agency. It is a fascinating article. It's titled, "A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem's Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS."

Michelle Hackman leads the byline. She joins me now. Thanks so much, Michelle, for being here. I want to start with the item about the headline, the pilot and the blanket. What happened?

MICHELLE HACKMAN, REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: It's a crazy story.

COOPER: It's bananas.

HACKMAN: Can't make it up. We were told -- so for months we've been hearing that Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, her top adviser, fire people sort of for petty reasons, sometimes at random. And one of the craziest stories we heard is that she was on a flight. She had to switch planes for mechanical reasons.

And the flight crew forgot to move her blanket onto her new flight. And so she fired the pilot, the head of the crew, out of retaliation, but then realized she had no way of getting home so she had to reinstate the pilot to fly her home.

COOPER: Oh my -- wow. That must have been an awkward conversation. You describe Noem and Lewandowski berating senior level staff, including the acting ICE director, giving polygraph tests to those who they don't trust, firing, demoting roughly 80 percent of career ICE field leadership. That's incredible.

HACKMAN: Yes. I mean, the reports we've heard for months are that it's interesting because it's not even necessarily huge policy disagreements between Kristi Noem and, you know, top ICE leadership, top Border Patrol leadership, but that her management style has been sort of so chaotic and that she sort of prizes sort of, you know, spectacle, TV spectacle over, like, substantive immigration enforcement, that even her critics who are, like, hardcore, you know, fans of Trump's mass deportation policy have lost patience with her.

COOPER: Well, I mean, she is jetting around posing and doing photo ops in different costumes and uniforms. One day she's, like, out on a Navy boat and the next she's on the border on a horse. And she's then toting a, you know, large automatic weapon. From sources you spoke to in the White House, I'm wondering what's her standing in the administration?

HACKMAN: So it's really interesting because sources, you know, tell us that at the White House people are very broadly frustrated with her. They don't like the spectacle. They don't like, you know, she's paid for these really expensive TV ads telling people that they should self-deport. By the way, those ads are in English and run mainly on Fox News.

COOPER: Great targeting of an audience.

HACKMAN: Exactly. But the president still likes her, and especially the president feels very close to Corey Lewandowski. Corey Lewandowski is a, you know, is her biggest champion. And so, so far, the advisers, you know, people have lobbied President Trump for months to fire her. And so far he's resisted based on that sort of personal relationship.

COOPER: And what has the administration's response been to your reporting?

HACKMAN: Basically that the administration is one team, that they're all working together toward, you know, a mass deportation and deny the fact that any of these sort of fissures exist.

COOPER: How long were you working on this?

HACKMAN: We've been hearing reports like this for months. We wrote a story about Corey Lewandowski last spring, raising some concerns about his standing in the administration. He also serves as what's called a special government employee, which means he actually is allowed to work at the private sector at the same time as working in the administration.

So, you know, he has a consulting firm of his own, but he controls personnel at DHS. He also controls contracts at DHS. This is one of the largest federal agencies in the government, and it's just been handed $175 billion by Congress, by Republicans in Congress, basically to carry out the mass deportation.

[20:50:03]

COOPER: Well, the reporting is incredible. Michelle Hackman, thank you very much. It's in the Wall Street Journal.

HACKMAN: Thank you.

COOPER: Appreciate it.

More now on something else, Secretary Noem has made a habit of being quick to weigh in after ICE and Border Patrol shootings, but wrong or even misleading about the facts. Today, a federal judge dropped the charges against two men, including one who was shot in the leg during an encounter with federal agents in Minnesota a month ago.

Or as Secretary Noem described it the next day, quote, "What we saw last night in Minneapolis was an attempted murder of federal law enforcement." She elaborated on Fox News, saying the officers were trying to arrest a suspect when the two men rushed in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTI NOEM, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: And as they were wrestling on the ground trying to detain this individual, two other men came out of that building and started attacking him with weapons and shovels and brooms. And as it was three on one, the agent feared for his life and defensively had to take action.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, today, a judge dismissed charges against the two, and two immigration officers are now under investigation. CNN's Priscilla Alvarez joins us with more. So what's the administration saying here? PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, it was the Justice Department that had filed a motion to dismiss these charges, which, as you said, have now been dismissed by this judge. But it is a significant development in what was a string of high profile shootings where there were conflicting accounts from the federal agents as well as from the eyewitnesses.

And in this case, as you mentioned, this occurred last month. It was after the shooting of Renee Good, where officials claimed these two Venezuelan men had assaulted the federal agent, which is what led him to shoot one of them in the leg. You heard there from Secretary Noem that they had assaulted him with a shovel and with a broom.

But both of these men had denied that. And in reviewing the video and speaking with eyewitnesses, they found that there was nothing to support the agent's account of what transpired here, which is what now has led to this federal investigation into whether these officers had lied under oath.

I want to read you a significant statement from the acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, Todd Lyons. This is what he said today. He said, quote, "Today, a joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements. Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation.

Lying under oath is a serious federal offense. The U.S. Attorney's Office is actively investigating these false statements." He goes on to say that "the officers may face termination of employment, as well as potential criminal prosecution."

Now, of course, Anderson, we have covered at length the moments in which there have been conflicting accounts over the shooting of Renee Good as well as Alex Pretti, but certainly in some of these other instances. And this statement was notable because we were hearing from their boss, the acting director of ICE, who said that this review is ongoing now and these officers may face termination as they determine whether they lied under oath over an incident that resulted in a shot fired at a man's leg.

COOPER: Yes. Priscilla Alvarez, I appreciate it.

Up next, we're going to return to the Nancy Guthrie story with a look at the support daughter Savannah is getting from her TODAY Show family. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:57:18]

COOPER: Day 13 in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie and the sheriff is saying they are working hard, his words, to reunite her with her family. Tomorrow night marks two full weeks since she vanished from her home outside Tucson, not long after an armed man with a backpack was seen on her doorbell camera.

Her daughter Savannah, of course, as you know, taking time away from NBC's TODAY show to be closer to the investigation at home. And as CNN's Brian Stelter reports, her NBC family is following along and right there with her.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New developments in the disappearance of Savannah's mom --

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST (voice-over): In the long and dramatic history of morning TV, there's never been a crisis like this.

HODA KOTB, CO-ANCHOR, NBC NEWS TODAY: Good Monday morning with all eyes on Arizona.

STELTER (voice-over): All week long.

KOTB: Good Friday morning. Key new developments in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie.

STELTER (voice-over): For the second week in a row, the TODAY show led every day with the search for Savannah Guthrie's mom.

CRAIG MELVIN, ANCHOR, NBC NEWS TODAY: Hoda with us again while Savannah remains with her family in Arizona.

KOTB: And that is where we begin with --

STELTER (voice-over): Former co-host Hoda Kotb now back on the show and filling in for Savannah as the show takes things one day at a time, according to an NBC source.

KOTB: You know what, Craig? We always talk about our show as a family. We are a family.

MELVIN: Yes.

KOTB: I'm part of the family. I'm happy to be with you because we show up for each other. So --

MELVIN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you kidding me?

STELTER (voice-over): And Nancy has been an extended member of the TODAY family since she had visited Savannah on air many times.

NANCY GUTHRIE, MOTHER OF SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: My kids are absolutely amazing. So --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They sure are. Absolutely amazing.

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, ANCHOR, NBC NEWS TODAY: I love you, mama. STELTER (voice-over): Now, Savannah's fans waking up every morning hoping to hear about a breakthrough, but instead hearing things like this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A man who says that he was the one that was detained last night has now come out and told reporters that he has been released.

STELTER (voice-over): During the Olympics, TODAY normally relocates to the host city. In fact, Savannah was getting ready to fly to Milan when she learned Nancy was missing. NBC decided to keep the entire show stateside.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For all of us who just have gotten to know her and love her, it is personal.

STELTER (voice-over): This week, the tears have dried and the segments are more sober, addressing the challenges of the investigation, while noting that Savannah says she will never give up looking for her mom.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And, of course, our hearts continue to be with Savannah and her family, Craig.

MELVIN: Indeed. Indeed, they do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STELTER (on-camera): It really has been a remarkable balancing act by the TODAY show, with staffers covering a story that is so personal and so disorienting. Earlier this week, with Savannah still in Arizona, Savannah's husband visited the TODAY show team at 30 Rock. I'm told he thanked the staff for continuing to cover the case so thoroughly and for keeping the tip line phone numbers out there in public view.

You know, in morning TV, the stars are encouraged to share their families, to share their personal lives on air. But now some in the industry can't help but wonder, if that openness, if that accessibility might have put the Guthrie family at more risk. It is just one of many questions, many unknowns relating to this awful story. Anderson?

COOPER: Yes. Well, our thoughts are certainly with Savannah and her entire family. Brian, thank you very much.

That's it for us. I hope you have a good weekend. The news continues. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now.