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FBI Releases New Description And Request's Footage From Neighbors; NY Fed: U.S. Businesses, Consumers Paid 90 Percent Of 2025 Tariffs; Judge Blocks DOJ From Demoting Kelly Over "Illegal Orders" Video. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired February 13, 2026 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[06:30:00]
AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: But is ever off? Is it ever truly off?
LAUREN FEINER, SENIOR POLICY REPORTER, THE VERGE: I mean, I think part of it is that when files are deleted, they're not necessarily immediately overwritten in a way that is never recoverable. It really depends on the circumstances.
CORNISH: OK. Lauren, I'm glad you're here. Thank you for taking that last question. You can catch her reporting on the Verge online.
And straight ahead on "CNN This Morning," the search for Nancy Guthrie does enter a new day with a new description, new evidence. We're going to be live from the scene, next.
Plus, heartbreak for Chloe Kim at the Winter Olympics dashing her hopes for a third consecutive gold.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:35:25]
CORNISH: Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for joining me on "CNN This Morning." It's half past the hour. And here's what's happening right now.
As tensions with Iran escalate, the world's largest aircraft carrier is heading to the Middle East. That's according to "The Associated Press." The USS Gerald R. Ford will join the Abraham Lincoln, which is already in the Arabian Sea. President Trump hinted at the move earlier this week.
And the Trump administration has delivered its most decisive blow against climate change yet. It's effectively erasing the most powerful tool to limit pollution and slow global warming. The president has revoked what's known as the endangerment finding. The scientific finding that says that it's the -- it's the legal basis for the EPA's pollution rules to lower greenhouse emissions.
And heartbreak for Chloe Kim in Milan. The U.S. snowboarder failed to pick up her third consecutive gold in the half pipe after a fall on her third and final run. She did still take home a silver medal.
And team USA's men's hockey dominated Latvia five to one. The roster is filled with NHL players and two sets of brothers.
This morning, Norway remains in the lead with seven gold medals. The US has four and seven more golds are up for grabs.
I want to turn back to this. The Guthrie family keeping hope alive as the search for Nancy Guthrie enters a second week.
Investigators are releasing more clues about the suspect seen on Guthrie's doorbell camera here. They say he's a man around five feet ten with an average build.
Our Leigh Waldman is joining me now from Pima County, Arizona. Leigh, can you tell us more what you're learning from law enforcement?
LEIGH WALDMAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Audie, it's been almost two weeks now since Nancy Guthrie disappeared and we're finally getting some semblance of a profile from the FBI, a man with an average build between the height of five-nine and five-foot-ten.
We know now about the backpack definitively that he was carrying in that doorbell camera video that we saw from Nancy Guthrie's front door. It's a black 25-liter Ozark trail hiker backpack.
Now, next as the FBI is going to start investigating how many of these backpacks were sold and when trying to pinpoint exactly when that backpack came in his possession. They're also going to try and identify any other brands that they can, like that jacket or the ski mask that we saw him wearing.
Yesterday, we saw a white tent pop up outside of Nancy Guthrie's home. And what we're hearing now from a law enforcement source is that the FBI agents are putting this tent up to try and recreate those nighttime conditions so they could try and identify his height and identify some of the items that he had on this person.
The Pima County sheriff is now telling one of our CNN affiliates, KOLD, that they have, quote, good leads on this Nancy Guthrie investigation, something that we haven't really heard in the span of this two week long investigation. They're still asking neighbors in this area within a two-mile radius of this home to check their surveillance cameras from January 1 to February 2nd, looking for any people, traffic, vehicles that could be deemed out of place or suspicious.
But this entire neighborhood is on edge as they wait for someone to be taken into custody and for Nancy Guthrie's return. Take a listen to what one neighbor had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the whole country is, you know, on the edge of their seat right now. And there's just a lot of people that wanna show their support. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can feel the burden that these people would be feeling when you're here and actually see it. It's -- it's -- it's so real.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When we're seeing yellow, it's -- it's a sign we show our troops, right, when we welcome them home and we're -- we're hoping that she gets returned safely to her home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALDMAN: And you can see that yellow reflected in this memorial that's been growing by the day behind us outside of Miss Guthrie's home.
We know today there's rain forecasted here in this area. That can hamper an outdoor investigation. It can contaminate evidence that's out here. But the FBI is saying that despite the weather conditions they're expecting today, they will still be out here gathering evidence, Audie.
CORNISH: OK. That's Leigh Waldman talking to us from Pima County. We're going to check in with her later today.
All right. I want to talk about the price of Trump's prosperity, which is turning out to come at a cost to Americans because we have been paying the tariffs not foreign countries. That's according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which finds we paid a whopping 90 percent of import taxes last year. It costs us households an average tax increase of about $1,000. The National Bureau of Economic Research and CBO had similar numbers.
[06:40:09]
I wanted to talk about this because there was this kind of head scratching moment in the Pam Bondi hearings where I think it was Jerry Nadler was trying to ask her question about the thing she was there for, something legal in the Epstein files. And here's how she responded.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAM BONDI, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: The Dow -- the Dow right now is over -- the Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over $50,000 right now.
The S&P had almost $7,000. And the NASDAQ's smashing records Americans 401(k)s and retirement savings are booming. That's what we should be talking about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: You are laughing, as she said. So the internet responses.
LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: You know, head of the Justice Department? No. Like no. CORNISH: The internet responded hilariously. There are people that are like, oh, your girl is cheating on you. Say, why are we talking about this? The Dow.
NOEL KING, CO-HOST AND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, "TODAY, EXPLAINED" PODCAST: You got fired? Yes.
But -- and -- and one joke hit me where it was like, my rent is late, but what about the Dow? Why are we talking about this?
There's a lot of people with late rents. There are some people we're starting to see credit. Are you seeing this as well?
KING: The stock market is not the economy. The stock market is doing well. The stock market does not pay your rent. The stock market does not pay for your car insurance. The stock market does not pay your grocery bill. The stock market is also not the Epstein files, but we don't need to go there.
But -- but, yeah, I think that this administration has been doing this actually since the first term. What it says is the stock market is galloping under us. And if you're a retiree, if you're somebody who's worried about retirement, if you're somebody who has a lot in investments, yes, yes, you really care about that.
If you can't afford your grocery bill at the ALDI, you do not care about the Dow.
CORNISH: Yes. And then AARP put out a study this week saying that there was a percentage of people who had to un-retire --
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.
CORNISH: -- to deal with their rising costs.
WILLIAMS: As you know, Audie, there's a line about this very specific point in my book in the context of public safety, though, which is that when people feel unease, quoting statistics to them is a failure from politicians.
And it happens in the public safety context. All the time, it was Democrats big failing in 2024. But it's really happening here on the economy.
To your point, there are people who cannot pay their rent. And it can also be true that the Dow is doing well. But using that as a deflection from both the Epstein files and all of people's economic anxieties, it's just a failure.
CORNISH: And the poll -- the polling is showing that people care in particular about the economy more so than immigration. I don't know --
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: -- if I had my numbers right. But I was like scanning the headlines and you just see those little seeds of doubt. Bloomberg, consumer delinquencies are the highest they've been in a decade. Credit cards at topping 1.28 trillion.
Like people are finding other ways to cover the higher costs, which clearly were incurred by tariffs --
KING: Yes, yes.
CORNISH: -- which we paid. And it's going to start hitting them in terms of debt.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes. And -- but it's not only that. Look at some of the other indicators. If you are looking for a job right now --
CORNISH: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- you know, other than in healthcare, you know that jobs are very hard to come by, especially by the way now, if you're a white collar worker, everything is --is frozen.
If you want to work in healthcare, great. If you want to be a home health aide, fantastic. But other than that, jobs aren't being created.
If you want to buy a house, worst start for new house -- new house buying. The new numbers just came out.
There are lots of indicators in this economy --
CORNISH: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- that show that things are frozen.
CORNISH: But I do think that where they feel successful, they're happy about it. I don't think we have the clip here. But like Trump, at one point, was asked about housing and what he was going to do for housing. You saw this.
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: And he said, look, I want people to stay wealthy. I don't want to hurt people whose home prices are doing well. That's not music to the ears of all the people who are locked out of that housing market.
WILLIAMS: And what got lost in all -- this is almost -- and this is almost to come at this from the right in a sense. Lost in this debate was the fact that tariffs are a tax.
KING: Yes.
WILLIAMS: They are a levy on goods brought into the United States and --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Basic economics. KING: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Basic economics. And to the point --
CORNISH: Well, now, we have a study. All right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's why we did it.
WILLIAMS: I'm just saying -- I'm just saying, you know, for -- for the administration to have pushed them so hard, lost in the fact that, you know, they're treating it as an economic win, but they raise taxes in a way.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But you know why they got lost in the fact? And this is where I blame American businesses.
WILLIAMS: Uh-huh.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Because if you recall, at the beginning of the tariffs, Walmart and others wanted to put a little thing saying, this price is increased because, you know, tariffs.
And then the Trump administration freaked out and they all decided we're going to eat it or we're going to hide it. And so, you know, part of this is that the -- that these companies have been in some ways holding water for the Trump administration. They've been raising prices or they've been making things smaller. They've been hiding this in all sorts of different ways.
[06:45:12]
CORNISH: And we're still paying. Yes.
KING: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And we're still paying it.
CORNISH: All right. You guys stay with me. And also, if you missed any of that conversation, maybe you want to share it, maybe you want to argue with us about it in the comments, we're a podcast. Scan this QR code to find it.
And in the meantime, CNN's also available anywhere you get your podcasts.
Next, a string of courtroom losses. Will it deter the president from going after his enemies?
Plus.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): No, they were spying on us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: Does the DOJ have the right to track what lawmakers search in the un-redacted Epstein files?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:50:10]
CORNISH: OK. The Epstein files, everybody's been talking about it still, and now, there's this new twist.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The House figure making a rare break with the Trump administration, which comes after the Attorney General Pam Bondi, while testifying on Capitol Hill yesterday, was photographed with a pronoun of what was Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat's search in the un-redacted Epstein files.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Members should obviously have the right to peruse those at their own speed and with their own discretion. And I'm not -- I don't think it's appropriate for anybody to be tracking that. So -- and I'm sure it was an oversight. That's my guess.
RASKIN: No, they were spying on us. They were clearly monitoring and surveilling the computer searches that we were conducting.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not only are they covering up the Epstein files and protecting the powerful men who did bad things with Epstein, they're also spying on members of Congress who are trying to do their jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: OK. I'm going to take this to the group chat. This came up because of that photo image that people noticed where Bondi opened up her binder. And instead of the insult, it was like this person's search history on Epstein.
When I talked to a lawmaker about it this week, she sort of said, look, we know that they're watching us. And is it illegal in any way?
WILLIAMS: Oh, it's not illegal or anyway. Is it not cool in all the ways? Absolutely. But is it illegal? No.
Just think about they were reviewing files that were sealed files at the Justice Department. They are on computer and they have records of who's looking at them.
So necessarily, the Justice Department knows what someone's looking at when they're looking at something on a Justice Department computer in the Justice Department building.
Now, prepping the attorney general for a hearing, which I have done, you are putting in the record for him or her just about everything you have, right?
That said, as a -- as a separation of powers matter, Congress' job is to oversee the Justice Department. And like I said, not cool. Not a good idea. CORNISH: Yes. But I feel like there's lots of Republicans who are watching it and saying, look, the administration, through the course of the Jack Smith investigation and Operation Arctic Frost, like, they also were spying on lawmakers.
KING: They did it, of course.
CORNISH: -- by requesting taps of their phone.
KING: I have a -- look --
WILLIAMS: It's very totally different though.
KING: Can I ask you a question?
WILLIAMS: Yes, ma'am.
KING: If you don't mind. If you're a lawmaker --
WILLIAMS: I do. Go ahead.
KING: I get you on it's not cool. But if you're a lawmaker, why do you care? You're in the Epstein files. You're supposed to be looking.
WILLIAMS: You know why? I'll tell you, there's one reason why. The Congress regards it as they should.
We are a co-equal branch of government. In fact, in the Constitution, we are the first among equals and we have every right to do our basic job, which is to oversee the functions of this department.
And if you are watching us, quite frankly, as a subordinate entity, you have breached our any norm of interaction.
CORNISH: Yes. Is that why Mike Johnson of all people?
WILLIAMS: Yes. Because he's the head of the House. Head of the House.
CORNISH: I was surprised to see him say anything.
WILLIAMS: Yes. Now, I would say this is in -- and I saw Lulu also about to explore about too.
There is -- this is in no way comparable to -- to Jack Smith, only because that was pursuant to a valid investigation. They -- they brought in metadata of individuals who were calling the target of an investigation. That is something that happens all the time in law enforcement. It's not a breach of decorum.
Anybody who sort of knows how cases work, knows that that was totally different.
CORNISH: OK. I want to turn to one other legal thing, which was definitely a setback for the administration that had tried to go after those lawmakers that were in that video saying to veterans, look, you do not have to follow unlawful orders. In the meantime, you've had the Trump administration being accused of being retaliatory -- retaliatory. A federal judge ruled that about the defense secretary in his attempt to basically punish Kelly, I think by going after his pension and things like that.
Hegseth said this will be immediately appealed. Sedition is sedition, Captain. And here's how Mark Kelly replied.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): I wouldn't put anything past that. Of course, you know, this president has a habit of doubling down on (BLEEP) ideas, on bad precedent, on breaking the law, on violating people's constitutional rights of Americans. He doubles down on it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CORNISH: I wanted to talk about this because a grand jury did not indict --
WILLIAMS: Yes.
CORNISH: A grand jury, like a bunch of random people sat in a room, looked at what the administration said and they were like, this is not sedition.
WILLIAMS: Now, you know, a lot of the arguments about the -- the -- the administration going after opponents of the president have been on a moral level, but it is just wrong for a president to take over government and go after his opponents.
I'd say on a practical level, they are losing remarkably every single time in these cases, whether it's Jim Comey or Letitia James or here. You know, even if it's not a criminal investigation, these members of Congress, both judges and grand juries are beginning to look at these materials and say that these are on such shaky legal footing that they're actually not worth pursuing.
[06:55:09]
CORNISH: Yes. Like the judge have had it. I've seen way more people quoting rulings.
KING: Yes. The judge in this one quoted Bob Dylan and everybody's like, he quoted Bob Dylan, you used exclamation points.
I mean, it -- it is --
CORNISH: OK. That's actually kind of interesting, though. Yes. OK.
(CROSSTALK)
KING: It was like, look, they're going after Mark Kelly as if he is still serving. When you serve, your -- your rights to free speech are limited. They're more limited.
Mark Kelly does not serve anymore. Mark Kelly is a private citizen. He is not in --
CORNISH: Yes.
KING: -- the military.
WILLIAMS: And go further, not only is he a private citizen, he's also protected by the speech or debate clause of the Constitution as a member of Congress. And you can make the argument that most things he's saying are part of his job.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And also, doesn't Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense, I think there's still a war in Ukraine. I think that we might be getting into something in Iran. I think we took the head of Venezuela and he's in a prison.
I mean, doesn't he have better things to do with his time than actually go after a former astronaut and captain of the U.S. military --
CORNISH: Yes.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- who has served his country? I just don't think that veterans and others look at this and think this is something --
CORNISH: Right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- that they want to do. This feeds into, again, audience of one, President Trump, who wants to see his enemies gone after a by members of this administration.
CORNISH: I was thinking about the fact, you know, it's Black History Month. And after World War II, you know, the roots of the Civil Rights Movement came from black veterans who came home to segregation and began to fight back.
And like you can -- like the government somehow didn't go after them then.
KING: Right.
CORNISH: And yet, here we are all this -- all these years later.
OK. We've had so much serious news this week. I want to know what you guys are talking about in your group chats.
Yes. You can go.
WILLIAMS: Well, OK. You're looking at me. You know --
CORNISH: The floor is yours.
WILLIAMS: The floor is mine. You're welcome.
No, but you know, I've always wanted to see cartoon John Roberts or Avatar Sonia Sotomayor. And now look at that. It exists. A law professor has, in an effort to make the Supreme Court more accessible, created this mechanism where you can see them reading their arguments.
CORNISH: Ugh. Unsubscribed, Elliot. I do not want this. I do not want this.
KING: You want this.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: By the way, that you're like, I always wanted to see an avatar.
CORNISH: Hold on. Hold on. No, no, no, no. The implications of this are terrible.
WILLIAMS: And here's what -- it's so -- OK.
CORNISH: I don't want to see anybody --
WILLIAMS: Serious, joking aside. Joking aside.
CORNISH: -- showing the Supreme Court.
WILLIAMS: Absolutely.
CORNISH: Saying things that maybe they did not say.
WILLIAMS: At the heart of this -- at the heart of this is the fact that the Supreme Court does not allow cameras.
CORNISH: Right.
WILLIAMS: It's not federal courts have not for since time immemorial. And there's been a back and forth, not just in the legal profession, but everywhere in the world, that the Supreme Court ought to be more accessible.
I am one -- I'm -- I was teasing before. I wanted to just (INAUDIBLE) Audie. This is starting to get into the world of weird. But again, A.I. has scrambled everything about how we see the world, including the legal profession. And now we've got this creepy John Roberts bot reading his opinions. It's a little odd.
CORNISH: OK. You guys?
KING: The personal lives of the Winter Olympics athletes continue every day to deliver.
CORNISH: Yes.
KING: Drama, scandal, crime.
CORNISH: Are you -- you're still talking about the guy who admitted to have cheated on his girlfriend --
KING: That guy. CORNISH: -- and tearfully requested --
KING: And she said, no thank you. The French ice dancers, the skier who stole her roommate's credit card.
CORNISH: Wait, is that a thing?
KING: Oh, it's a real thing. It's a real thing. And my colleagues, we're in a big work group chat. And they're like, is it because they're all Gen Z? It this what Gen Z does?
WILLIAMS: Wow. Oh, my God.
(CROSSTALK)
CORNISH: Don't do that.
WILLIAMS: OK, boomer.
KING: It's just -- listen, it's really competitive.
CORNISH: Yes.
KING: You've reached the pinnacle. Then you get put into this weird giant dorm and everybody's so attracted.
WILLIAMS: They're all there.
(CROSSTALK)
KING: Yes. I can see how we can turn into below-deck Olympics. We've been there. We've all been there.
CORNISH: Yes. What? That's a good show. Go on.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: My group chat is still Bad Bunny. Because --
CORNISH: Come on. Come on.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: -- you know, you'd think that this was already not going to happen, but enter the GOP.
And my friends in Congress decided that it just wasn't enough to have Bad Bunny win the halftime show, they've decided that they should look into the twerking that happened.
WILLIAMS: Oh.
CORNISH: You were referring to Randy Fine and others saying --
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes.
CORNISH: --- they're going to file FCC complaints into the dancing.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yes, into the dancing.
CORNISH: And with the Spanish was allowing him to get away with saying things that an artist wouldn't say in English.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's exactly right. And so, you know, again, the moral panic of the twerking and -- and, you know, him apparently holding his --
CORNISH: His crotch.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: His crotch in a way that was shocking and suggestive and might have, you know, hurt the, you know, young eyes of (INAUDIBLE).
CORNISH: Yes. I like to tell them that's the plot of Footloose.
KING: Yes.
CORNISH: I mean, it literally is --- literally is.
WILLIAMS: Real quick. Lost in this -- lost in Mr. Kid Rock's slur, a lot of them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Of course.
WILLIAMS: I take strippers out to breakfast. You can add that to my checklist. I'm a low life.
So the idea --
KING: For the kids.
CORNISH: No, it's not.
WILLIAMS: Yes. For the kids. For the family.
CORNISH: OK. Well, we're going to keep an eye on that because, to be honest, I feel like every other Super Bowl, there's those kinds of list of complains and it's just this one is very in the culture war that what happened in this conversation.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, it (INAUDIBLE).
CORNISH: Yes. Also, you guys, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for waking up with us. The headlines are next.
