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Search Continues For Mother of Savannah Guthrie; Interview With Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI); Trump Calls to Nationalize Elections; 700 Border Agents Withdrawing From Minnesota; Ryan Routh Sentenced to Life. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 04, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: No suspect, but many questions. The search for Savannah Guthrie's mother stretches into a fourth day. The latest on a purported ransom note and what we're learning about Nancy Guthrie's disappearance.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus, a drawdown or backing down? The White House pulling 700 federal agents out of Minnesota just days after President Trump denied any plans to reduce that number.

And there's new fallout from the Epstein files. The ex-wife of Bill Gates says the billionaire should explain his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, even as Gates denies any wrongdoing himself.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: We have breaking news.

The man convicted last year of trying to assassinate then-candidate Donald Trump has just been sentenced to life in prison. Ryan Routh set up a sniper's nest along the edge of Trump's West Palm Beach golf course in 2024, where he lay in wait with the barrel of a rifle poking through the fence until a Secret Service agent foiled his plan.

CNN national correspondent Randi Kaye is in Florida with more on today's sentencing.

Tell us what's happened so far.

RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well he got that life imprisonment, plus 84 months, for count two, 240 months for count three. These are all federal charges, federal convictions, 18 months for count four and 60 months for count five. That will all be served concurrently.

But this is what the judge told Ryan Routh as she sentenced him. She said: "Your plot to kill is deliberate and evil, despite your feigned peacefulness." She said: "You demonstrated your intent to kill and you almost achieved your evil plan."

Now, Ryan Routh had spoken before this. He spoke for about 15 minutes. He was interrupted twice by the judge, which we saw happen a lot during his trial. He said that execution, sadly, is not an option for him. He described himself as a human shell. He said he would like to go to a prison in a state that offers assisted suicide.

He said: "I hope the prosecution can call Israel and trade me." He talked a lot about Gaza and Ukraine, which is when the judge interrupted him and said, you have to talk about the case.

And then finally she gave him five more minutes. He continued to talk about all the good he has done in the world and more about Gaza and Ukraine. His lawyer, Martin Roth, who he hired, who was hired after he was convicted, Brianna, said that he's a complex person. He told the court that he has a very good core and a very good side to him.

Meanwhile, John Shipley, the federal prosecutor in the lead position in this case, said -- walked the court through the evidence once again and showed a picture, which was very, very moving from that point of view, from that sniper's nest, where they say Ryan Routh laid in wait, just showing the distance of 126 feet to that sixth green, where he had the option, would have had the option of shooting then-candidate Donald Trump, and just how close he came.

That was a really powerful moment in that presentation. He said that life imprisonment is the only sentence. He said this was premeditated, months of stalking for then-candidate Donald Trump, and that he had an escape plan and no regret -- Brianna.

KEILAR: What was his reaction as this outcome was revealed?

KAYE: Well, if you remember last time, when he was convicted, he attempted to stab himself in the neck with a pen. So this time, he was handcuffed and shackled. His feet were shackled as well, but he did sit there. He wasn't allowed to stand.

He sat there and shook his head no, as the judge said those very strong words to him. And then when he was leaving the courtroom -- he had a very stern face, but when he was leaving the courtroom, he turned back to someone in the gallery, obviously someone he knew, and winked and smiled, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Randi Kaye, thank you so much for that report from Florida -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Here are some new details in the urgent search for "Today Show" anchor Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother, Nancy.

Nearly four full days since she was last seen, officials are now reviewing purported ransom notes sent to at least three media outlets demanding millions of dollars in Bitcoin. Also today, a major clue in the timeline of the case. Data from Nancy Guthrie's pacemaker last sent a signal to her iPhone around 2:00 a.m. on Sunday. CNN's Josh Campbell is with us now.

And, Josh, officials say there's still no suspect at this time. How significant is this new tidbit about the pacemaker data?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, this could be significant as they build up that timeline.

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Up to now, what investigators have said is that Nancy Guthrie was last seen around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday and wasn't reported missing until the next day. And so what this data could potentially tell us with the pacemaker is that we know her cell phone was left behind at the residence, but it appears, the last time that her pacemaker connected with that cell phone was about 2:00 a.m.

So that could mean that was the time that she was actually taken from the home. Meanwhile, authorities continue to look at other pieces of evidence as well. As you mentioned, there have been reports of purported ransom notes that have been received by various media outlets demanding million in cryptocurrency, the letters that purported to list details about what was inside the home.

But I have to say, in these high-profile cases, there's always a dose of caution that's in order because sometimes investigators will get tips that are credible. Sometimes, they get tips that are not related to the case. And even more sinister, sometimes, people try to throw sand into the gears in the investigation, mischief makers.

And so they're sorting that out. The sheriff said they're certainly taking it seriously, trying to determine if those letters are indeed credible.

SANCHEZ: The sheriff also said that he was awaiting cell phone tracking data, possible camera imaging as well from Nancy Guthrie's home yesterday. How long does it take to get that? How difficult is that process?

CAMPBELL: Well, the cell phone towers are important, because any time that a cell phone is in the location where a tower is, it will register. That can then help authorities determine what devices may have been there, and then possibly try to tie those two particular devices around the same time frame when this disappearance is a belief to have happened.

As far as the cameras, that is -- seems a little bit more difficult for investigators. They know that cameras were inside the residence, but the sheriff said that they're still working with a third party to try to process that. And people might be wondering, well, what's taking them so long?

There is a question about how long that information is stored. Sometimes, video can rewrite over itself. And that doesn't mean that it's lost entirely. They can bring in these technical experts to try to resurrect some of that information from what's called the slack space of storage.

But the sheriff said they are working with the company that has that proprietary technology to try to determine what was actually happening inside the scene. But, of course, the longer this goes, there is the big question about her well-being. The sheriff has said that she needs medication that could prove fatal if she doesn't have that. And so they are certainly racing against the clock.

SANCHEZ: And that's why they keep insisting that any information the public has could be helpful.

Josh Campbell, thank you so much for that.

If you or someone may have information about what may have happened to Nancy Guthrie, you're asked to please call this tip line, 1-800-CALL- FBI. Any lead, no matter how seemingly insignificant or possibly irrelevant, could help with this case. So please call that number on your screen -- Brianna.

KEILAR: We're also following a significant shift on the streets of Minnesota.

Today, White House border czar Tom Homan announced that the DHS is immediately withdrawing 700 personnel, but he stressed the operation isn't over, as about 2,000 officers do remain on the ground. They're carrying out a mission that has infuriated residents, especially after the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Homan suggesting today that the situation is still evolving.

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THOMAS HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: My goal, with the support of President Trump is to achieve a complete drawdown and end this surge as soon as we can. But that is largely contingent upon the end of the illegal and threatening activities against ICE and its federal partners that we're seeing in the community.

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KEILAR: CNN's Whitney Wild is tracking all of these developments for us.

And, Whitney, this is a bit of a turning point here for this operation in Minnesota. What do we know about these plans?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Border czar Homan laid out new strategies and new planning and basically said that there were new priorities that are being set.

National security, public safety is going to be the top priority, but he made clear that anybody who is in the state of Minnesota who is an undocumented immigrant is potentially going to be at some point contacted by immigration officials.

He said just because we have priorities that are national security and public safety risks doesn't mean we're ignoring everyone else. And as you see right there, he said over and over that they were not turning away from the mission, which is mass deportations.

Border czar Homan also laid out a new chain of command strategy, saying that Border Patrol and ICE would all work together under a single chain of command. At no point, Brianna, during this press conference earlier did he criticize the past operations.

He said only that they were not perfect and he sought to improve upon what was already a pretty effective impact as far as he was concerned. And it was interesting, Brianna, because he praised President Trump's impact at the border and he also praised Governor Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey more than once.

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Over and over, he said that this was the result of better working relationships, better cooperation throughout the state and, as I said, praised Walz, Ellison, and Mayor Frey for ushering that in. Here's more from border czar Tom Homan.

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HOMAN: We're not surrendering the president's mission on a mass deportation operation. If you're in the country illegally, if we find you, we will deport you. But this is about targeted enforcement operation, and that's what we're going to be doing.

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WILD: Brianna, again, he stressed that they are hoping to draw down and go back to something closer to pre-surge levels, which would be about 150 agents in the state of Minnesota, but all of that is contingent on continued cooperation from local leaders and the public, Brianna.

KEILAR: And Homan was asked if the seemingly random citizenship checks and roving patrols will continue. Tell us how he responded to that.

WILD: Well, he did not say that they were not going to use certain strategies that we have seen before, but he said that they were going to put the priority on other operational strategies, saying that they want to go to a targeted approach, this is how ICE has operated for many decades, and then said, when they go out into the street, they know who they're looking for.

But he stopped short of saying what you have seen in the past is no longer going to be the plan, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Whitney Wild, thank you for the latest there. Appreciate it.

And still to come: President Trump doubling down on his calls for the federal government to take over elections, even after the White House tried to say that that wasn't actually what he was saying. Plus, Bill Gates is speaking out after appearing in the latest batch of the Epstein files -- what he's now saying about his relationship with the convicted sex offender.

We'll have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: New today, election officials in Fulton County, Georgia, have filed a lawsuit in federal court trying to force the Trump administration to return the hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records they seized last week. The FBI seized those.

Fulton County has been at the center of President Trump's baseless claims of 2020 election fraud. And dominating the headlines about elections this week, the president's repeated calls to nationalize voting, a proposal that legal experts say is clearly unconstitutional.

Here's what he said Monday.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many -- 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.

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KEILAR: Now, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was on cleanup duty after that, saying the president was only talking about a bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What the president was referring to is the SAVE Act, which a huge commonsense piece of legislation that Republicans have supported that President Trump is committed to signing into law during his term.

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KEILAR: Legal experts say, because of all of the Americans who don't have a passport or a readily available birth certificate, the SAVE Act would make voting harder for millions upon millions of people, including married women who have changed their last name.

And the problem it purports to solve, widespread voter fraud by illegal immigrants, does not exist. A "Washington Post" analysis of voter fraud data compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank showed less than a handful of undocumented immigrants on average per year are alleged to have voted in recent decades.

But perhaps that's irrelevant for the purposes of what Trump is calling for, because, shortly after you saw the press secretary backpedaling there, President Trump made it clear he really did mean what he said about nationalizing elections.

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TRUMP: A state is an agent for the federal government in elections. I don't know why the federal government doesn't do them anyway. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta. Look at some of the places that -- horrible corruption on elections.

And the federal government should not allow that. The federal government should get involved.

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KEILAR: We're joined now by Democratic Congressman Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island. He's a member of the Homeland Security Committee.

Thank you, Congressman, for being with us. And you hear these different things that Trump is calling for, the administration is doing. He's saying nationalize elections, his administration seizing ballots in Fulton County from 2020, seeking voter data in so many states, and linking the Minnesota immigration action to a demand that Minnesota turn over full non-public voter data.

Is this informing what Democrats are thinking about the midterm elections in November? What are you preparing for?

REP. SETH MAGAZINER (D-RI): Well, understand what's happening here.

The White House, the president, Republicans in Congress, they are panicking. They know that the American people hate the terrorists, are frustrated with the economy, don't like the fact that they have just gutted health care for millions of people.

And now, on immigration, on ICE, which used to be the Republicans' strongest issue, they are backpedaling because the American people do not like the chaos and the violence that they are seeing from this masked agency that ICE has become that's invading American cities.

So, Republicans, including the president, are worried about the midterms. And so what are they trying to do? They're trying to build the pretext to challenge election results and to interfere with lawful elections.

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Understand, as your data showed, there has never been any proof of widespread voter fraud in America in the last 25 years and probably much longer than that. After the 2020 election, the Trump campaign initiated like 60 lawsuits to try to allege that voter fraud had occurred, and all of those cases were thrown out of court, including by Trump-appointed judges, because the evidence just wasn't there.

So this is not about trying to find evidence from 2020, because that doesn't exist. And I think, on some level, they know that that doesn't exist. This is about building a pretext for trying to interfere with the lawful administration of elections and trying to change the outcome of the midterms.

But they are fighting a losing battle here. The American people are tired of this lousy economy that is only working for the very rich at Mar-a-Lago and not for everyday people. They are tired of the health care cuts. They are tired of the ICE chaos in the streets. They are tired of a president who is more fixated on ballrooms and arches than he is with trying to solve the problems that everyday people are facing.

And that is why you see the president and other Republicans freaking out over the midterms. And they should be.

KEILAR: OK, I want to play something that former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon said on an episode of his show yesterday, alleging once again that the 2020 election was stolen. Let's listen.

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STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: You're damn right. We're going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We're not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.

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KEILAR: That sort of speaks to what you are describing Republicans doing here.

But, respectfully, you are describing a problem as you see it. What are Democrats preparing to do about it?

MAGAZINER: Well, listen, we are going to be very active on the litigation front to make sure that they do not try to interfere with the lawful administration of elections.

I know that state secretaries of state, state governors are also taking every step that they can. But the most powerful player here is the American people. And I will tell Steve Bannon right now, if he thinks that he can intimidate the American people out of showing up to vote, he is wrong.

The American people who I know, who I represent in Rhode Island, including swing voters, by the way, are not going to be intimidated. People are frustrated with the economy. They do not like the authoritarian impulses of the Trump administration. They do not like how out of touch Donald Trump is.

And if Steve Bannon thinks that having a bunch of masked agents outside of polling sites are going to stop people from showing up and exercising their constitutional right to vote, he underestimates the American people. KEILAR: So, talking about ICE, ICE already has so much funding,

right, $75 billion through 2029. So this is money they have over the next four years because of Trump's BBB.

Has the ship actually sailed on dramatic reforms to ICE because they have such a huge pocketbook?

MAGAZINER: ICE has lots of funding. They don't have accountability. And that is what they need.

Again, everyday Americans are sick of this. They want to go back to a normal form of law enforcement. Public safety is supposed to be about making people safer. And instead of making people safer, ICE is creating violence and creating chaos in the streets.

And so Democrats are doing exactly the right thing by saying that we are not going to vote for this Homeland Security funding bill unless it includes major reforms to ICE in order to hold this rogue agency accountable.

And, by the way, the signals that the White House has been putting out and even a number of the congressional leaders, Republican leaders have been putting out is that they know they're in trouble here. They have expressed openness to making a deal. You see them backpedaling by pulling Dan (sic) Bovino out of Minneapolis, by making this announcement that they're going to do body cameras now, which is a necessary, but not sufficient reform.

Republicans in the White House are the ones who are on the back foot here, because, again, the American people do not like what they see. And it is Democrats who are forcing the issue and saying, you're not going to get our votes, we're not going to give you a blank check until there is real fundamental reform.

KEILAR: All right Congressman Seth Magaziner, thank you so much for being with us. Really appreciate it.

MAGAZINER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still to come: the major clue that could help police narrow down the timeline in the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie's mother.

We will have that next.

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SANCHEZ: Today, the sheriff in Pima County, Arizona, says there are no suspects yet in the disappearance of NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie's 84-year-old mother.

Nancy Guthrie has been missing now for nearly four days. A source says investigators know that her pacemaker last sent a signal to her iPhone around 2:00 a.m. on Sunday. Investigators are also examining what appear to be ransom notes received by TMZ and local TV stations in Tucson.

Investigators have not yet confirmed whether those notes are legitimate. The sheriff, though, is not yet dismissing them.

Let's turn now to CNN senior law enforcement analyst Charles Ramsey. He led the police departments in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Chief Ramsey, thanks so much for being us (sic).

How does law enforcement process ransom notes like this that are sent to media outlets?