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Don Lemon in Court; Top HHS Officials Departing; Partial Government Shutdown Nears; Search For Nancy Guthrie Continues. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired February 13, 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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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We have new details on a suspect in the Nancy Guthrie kidnapping. And CNN is speaking to the sheriff about potential leads and conflicting reports that he blocked the FBI from accessing key evidence. Those details are ahead.

And a bitter divide. Washington headed for its third government shutdown of President Trump's second term. What this funding lapse might mean for the Department of Homeland Security.

Plus: an ice skate debate. Why the French team's gold medal comes with controversy.

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

We begin this afternoon with the desperate search for Nancy Guthrie, frustration growing today as the case now nears two full weeks without any apparent trace of where the 84-year-old is and without a suspect, or at least one that's been publicly named.

The FBI says they're looking for a male suspect somewhere around the height of 5'9'' to 5'10'' with an average build. Officials are asking neighbors within a two-mile radius of Guthrie's home to look at their surveillance video for anything suspicious dating back to January 1, a whole month before officials say Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today Show" host Savannah Guthrie, was taken.

The Pima County sheriff earlier today telling CNN: "This is like a roller coaster. We got some good leads. We remain hopeful."

With us now is the co-host of "America's Most Wanted," Callahan Walsh. He's also the executive director for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Callahan, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

Obviously, your family -- for folks that may not know, your family was forever changed by a missing persons case. You have spoken to a lot of families that are in the situation that the Guthries are in right now. I wonder if you could speak to what your biggest takeaways are so far in this investigation.

CALLAHAN WALSH, CO-HOST, "AMERICA'S MOST WANTED": You know, this is certainly one of the most unique searches for a missing person that I have seen, everything from the ransom note to the way this investigation has ebbed and flowed.

It's gone hot to cold, hot and cold, back again. But the family needs to continue to hold out hope. They can't give up. And we know the family won't. Law enforcement's not going to give up either. But now really it's up to the public.

I think it's the public that's going to help come through, provide the tips that lead to the arrest of the person who's responsible for this. My father and I co-host "America's Most Wanted." "America's Most Wanted" has been responsible for over 1,200 fugitives being captured, some of the worst of the worst, 17 guys off the FBI's top 10 most wanted.

And it's all from the help of the public.

SANCHEZ: I wonder, Callahan, given that you and your father have gone about doing this for decades, trying to get information from the public to lead to the capture of folks that are involved in kidnappings, if you would like to see more press conferences from law enforcement, if some of the details, in your mind, have perhaps lagged, because it was some 48 hours between us seeing this video and us finding out a description of this suspect.

Would you want to see more?

WALSH: Well, I don't want to see everything.

When law enforcement releases too much information, there is a flood of tips that will lead law enforcement in the wrong directions. So they need to release the right information, the actionable information that the public can really use to help pinpoint the location of this individual.

And so I would like to see more from that -- the camera. I would like to see if there's any other identifiable markings or items that law enforcement can share that may pinpoint who this person is, right? You may have a roommate that has that backpack and wears that balaclava ski mask when it gets cold.

But maybe there's some more stuff that law enforcement knows that they haven't shared with the public that the public could use to identify the person of interest.

SANCHEZ: I also wonder how frustrating it must be, not only for investigators, but also for the Guthrie family, to have received by way of media outlets, these notes, first a fake ransom note that somebody is being prosecuted for, and then another note that seems to be dubious in its intent, demanding a Bitcoin for some information leading to a potential suspect.

I mean, that has to be incredibly aggravating.

WALSH: It absolutely is.

And it adds so much spectacle to the case, which is never a good thing, right? And it also takes attention away from law enforcement. They have to track down these leads. They have to follow up with these ransom letters, because God forbid they were real and come to find out after the fact. That would be devastating.

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And so it does -- it takes away time and energy and resources from the investigators, but it's heartbreaking for the family. It's just that I know they feel like they're being toyed with, and it's not fair.

SANCHEZ: I wonder if you could speak to what a disappearance like this does to the community more broadly. Obviously, it's something that you experienced. You were much younger when your family was affected, obviously, but I wonder if you could speak to what it does not only to the family, but to the greater community as well.

WALSH: Well, two things.

One, it is devastating for the community, because the communities oftentimes think something like this can never happen there. This is a nice place where Nancy Guthrie lived. I don't think a lot of people could ever imagine that an 84-year-old woman would go missing in the middle of the night, that somebody who dressed like they dressed in that doorbell camera would come to their front door in the middle of the night.

It's just -- it's devastating. So the community is absolutely scared. I think people across the country are scared. But it also rallies the community. We know the Tucson community has rallied around the Guthrie family and shown support.

And I wouldn't be hesitant to say you're going to start to see groups forming in the future to make sure that there's neighborhood watch groups that they're tightening security and to make sure something like this never happens again.

SANCHEZ: They're making the best of a really unfortunate situation.

Callahan Walsh, thank you so much for everything you do and for sharing your time with us.

WALSH: Thank you for having me.

SANCHEZ: And we just want to flash the tip line one more time. For anyone who has information on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, please call this number 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Now to the looming threat of a partial government shutdown. Funding for the Homeland Security Department is set to run out at midnight tonight. And, right now, there's no deal in sight. The Democrats are refusing to back a bill to fund DHS unless major changes are made to immigration enforcement after the deadly ICE shootings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Some of their demands include using signed judicial warrants and better officer identification, no face masks, requiring body cameras, and also a better officer code of conduct. Republicans, though, say that these demands go too far and ignore agent safety amid concerns about doxxing of federal agents.

Now, if this shutdown happens, other federal agents -- agencies under DHS could be impacted, including TSA and FEMA.

CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox is here.

Lauren, this looks inevitable because lawmakers are on recess right now. So what does this mean?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, it says a lot that I'm sitting with you here...

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FOX: ... rather than being back at the Capitol chasing lawmakers around, given the fact there are still several hours, right, until this shutdown goes into effect.

But the negotiations between the White House and Senate Democrats have been really interesting, because they have been slow-moving. They have been trading papers back and forth. They have been trading legislative text back and forth, but there didn't seem to be the kind of urgency that we have seen in the past when it comes to these kind of negotiations at the 11th hour.

Clearly, what is happening is, the White House entered into this negotiation a couple of weeks ago after the death of Alex Pretti. There was this momentum around doing something, changing something. Democrats rolled out their demands. The White House and Republicans have argued those demands came slowly.

And then they continued to grow over the course of the last two weeks and that that has soured the negotiations. But I am told that talks are still happening, they are still trading proposals back and forth, but they left town in part because this isn't going to come together imminently.

Yesterday, you saw Republicans go to the floor. They tried to put forward a short-term stopgap measure to keep this agency funded while they continued the negotiation. Democrats rejected it out of hand, saying that they just didn't feel like the talks were going seriously enough behind the scenes. Therefore, they weren't willing to go there on this short-term patch.

But the difficult part for Democrats is that, over the next couple of days, what you're going to see is the shutdown take place. But because of the Big Beautiful Bill that injected tens of billions of dollars into CBP, into ICE, into immigration enforcement priorities that the president's administration has been talking about for the last several years, what you are seeing now is that those agencies are going to continue functioning.

It's TSA, it's FEMA, like you noted, and the Coast Guard that might feel the brunt of this shutdown. So, politically, Democrats feel like they have the upper hand because of Alex Pretti's death, but it's not clear that people who are watching at home are going to realize that that's the effect, when immigration raids continue to happen.

SANCHEZ: Yes, that's a really important point.

Given that, what does a negotiation look like? Does it seem like Democrats are open to passing some form of voter I.D. law? That's what Republicans have been urging.

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FOX: Yes, I mean, look the SAVE Act that Republicans have been pushing forward, that has been a nonstarter for Democrats for the last year-and-a-half. That's not going to change.

Is there some kind of middle ground? It's just so hard to say, because I have covered immigration in fits and starts on Capitol Hill. It feels like there's momentum to do something. This is one of the stickiest issues in Washington, and I don't think that's going to change over a short-term shutdown at this point.

SANCHEZ: Lauren Fox, thanks so much for the reporting.

FOX: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Any moment now, President Trump will arrive at Fort Bragg Army Base in North Carolina. This hour, he plans to deliver a speech to the troops at the base and meet with family members and the Special Forces soldiers involved in last month's Operation Absolute Resolve, which captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The president will be joined by first lady Melania Trump and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth. Stay tuned for that as we bring you updates from the president's remarks.

And still to come, we're learning of a major shakeup at the CDC ahead of midterm elections. We will tell you who is out.

Plus, a new report finding that, in some cases, the Trump administration has spent a million dollars to deport a single immigrant, the details on that.

Also, moments from now, the Quad God, Ilia Malinin, takes the ice in Milan representing the United States.

That and much more coming your way next.

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SANCHEZ: New today, a major shakeup at the Department of Health and Human Services. CNN has learned that two of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s top aides are leaving, including his second in command, Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill, a controversial figure who was named the CDC's acting director last August.

CNN health reporter Jacqueline Howard is following this story for us.

So, Jacqueline, what more are you learning?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Yes, Boris.

Well, keep in mind, Jim O'Neill just took this seat as acting CDC director months ago, in August, and now we're seeing this major shakeup. So what we know so far is that, yes, HHS Deputy Secretary and Acting CDC Director Jim O'Neill will leave his role, as well as general counsel Mike Stuart.

And this does appear to be part of a broader restructuring. the agency is undergoing ahead of midterm elections. And when you think about the past year that, not just HHS, but specifically CDC, has had as a whole, there has been ongoing chaos, ongoing changes.

When Jim O'Neill took his seat as acting CDC director, that followed a string of departures. And now we're seeing these additional changes specifically at the leadership level. And we're hearing that this appears to be a part of the White House's aim to really take further control of daily operations and health communications across the federal government.

And it seems to be also an effort to make health care a central part of the midterm strategy. So, again, this is really a part of a broader restructuring that we're seeing here, Boris.

SANCHEZ: And, Jacqueline, when Kennedy took the position, he said he was going to restore faith in American health care.

You have some new polling on how that's gone. On.

HOWARD: That's right.

So we're actually seeing a decline really in the public's trust in federal health agencies. The latest data from the health policy research group KFF, in a KFF poll, it found that fewer than half, 47 percent of the public, say that they trust specifically the CDC, at least a fair amount, to provide reliable vaccine information.

And this trust has fallen in recent months. That's what we're seeing, this recent decline. So, again, Boris, it will be interesting to see how this restructuring impacts the public's trust and really the public's perception of federal health agencies and specifically of the CDC itself, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Jacqueline Howard, thank you so much for that update. Any minute, former CNN anchor Don Lemon is set to appear in federal

court on charges stemming from his presence at a church protest in Minneapolis. We have the latest on his legal fight.

Plus: His family was evacuated from Afghanistan during a daring rescue organized by U.S. troops. Now he's in ICE custody, at risk of being sent back to the country he fled. That story is next.

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SANCHEZ: Just moments from now, independent journalist Don Lemon is said to be arraigned in Minnesota. He's facing federal charges stemming from an anti-ICE protest inside of a St. Paul church last month.

Lemon was livestreaming as dozens of demonstrators interrupted Sunday service. As the incident unfolded, Lemon repeatedly said that he was there as a journalist, not as an activist.

Georgia Fort, another independent journalist, is also being charged in the case.

Let's go now live to St. Paul with CNN law enforcement correspondent Whitney Wild.

Whitney, what are we expecting in court?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: We expect a pretty quick hearing. This is an arraignment. This is usually just when the judge is checking in on the defendant and asking if they would like to enter any kind of plea; 99.9 percent of the time, the defendant enters a not guilty plea or they push that back a little bit.

So these early hearings are usually pretty quick, but we do expect that Don Lemon will make some remarks following the hearing here. This is really putting more attention back on Minneapolis. This comes after Tom Homan has said that there's going to be a major drawdown in immigration agent assets here in the state, basically saying that Operation Metro Surge has concluded.

Protests like what Don Lemon captured in his livestream happened in many places throughout the city, these large protests. They were noisy. They went on for several weeks, but this is the one that DOJ is zeroing in on. And this is why.

They say that that protest directly interfered with congregants' ability to exercise their free right to worship. It basically stopped the church service halfway through. And so it denied those congregants their ability to exercise their First Amendment right to religious freedom.

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And they say that, because Don was there and was part of this from the beginning, that he was part of that, although Don said over and over that he was just there as a journalist. He was chronicling. He was not part of it.

And one of the things that DHS is alleging here is that these felonies hinge on this idea that the worship was stopped through threats and intimidation. And, actually, when you watch the video, you hear Don Lemon say: I'm not here to intimidate. I'm here as a journalist. I'm here to chronicle. Let's listen to just a brief snippet from some of his livestream.

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DON LEMON, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: I'm just here -- I'm not -- I'm just here photographing. I'm not part of -- I'm not part of the group. I'm just here photographing. I'm a journalist.

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WILD: And he says remarks like this over and over and over and makes clear to the people he's interviewing that he's not with the group. He is following the group.

So I expect that we will hear more about that today in court. Notably, he is represented by a man named Joseph H. Thompson. He was effectively running the U.S. attorney's office here in Minnesota until mid-January, when he quit among a wave of resignations that included five other prosecutors in the fallout from how DOJ approached the Renee Good shooting.

So, a very interesting moment, because it will pit his attorney, Joseph H. Thompson, against the very U.S. attorney's office he was running until about a month ago. He is the local counsel. Obviously, this -- the main team is being run by a very well-known attorney, Abbe Lowell. So we will wait to hear which one of them speaks, if both of them speak.

So this is -- it is quite a consequential moment for a long list of reasons, Boris. It is zeroing in on what First Amendment rights are for journalists. DOJ has a very different opinion than Don Lemon. What were the rights of the congregants? What were the rights of the protesters? And then also this sort of subplot here about Joseph H. Thompson, again, going up against the U.S. attorney's office that he used to run, guys.

SANCHEZ: Whitney Wild, thank you so much for your reporting from St. Paul.

Coming up, we're live at Fort Bragg, where President Trump is set to speak at any minute.

Betsy Klein is there now -- Betsy.

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Boris.

Air Force One touched down just moments ago, and we expect President Trump here any minute now. You can see these service members behind me. The president also expected to meet with Special Forces involved in the capture of Nicolas Maduro and their families.

More on that when we return.

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