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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Investigators Find Gloves, Expand Call For Video In Guthrie Case; Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE), Is Interviewed About Homan: Enforcement "Surge" In Minnesota Is Ending, Dems Demand Changes At DHS As Funding Deadline Looms, NYT & WSJ: Dispute Over Intercepted Conversation About Jared Kushner, House Passes Bipartisan Bill To Help Home Buyers; Tech CEO Warns Public Isn't Ready For Rapidly Advancing A.I. Tools; Judge Blocks Pentagon From Cutting Sen. Kelly's Retirement Pay; Body Camera Footage Released Of Border Patrol Agent Shooting Woman Five Times In Chicago. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired February 12, 2026 - 17:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Thank you for being with us. Jake Tapper is standing by for "The Lead."

And Jake, I know you're back from Arizona. Although of course, the search for Nancy Guthrie still a top story.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Horrible story. Thanks, Kasie. We'll look for more tomorrow in "The Arena."

HUNT: See you tomorrow.

[17:00:54]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: A new urgent plea in the Nancy Guthrie disappearance investigation. The Lead starts right now.

Check your videos. That new request to everyone who lives within two miles of Savannah Guthrie's mother, Nancy. They're asking neighbors to look back a whole month before the 84-year-old disappeared. They asked just two days after the release of those chilling images of an intruder armed at her front door. Authorities also now say they have discovered multiple gloves in the area and are examining them as potential evidence.

We're going to go live to Tucson with the very latest. Plus, a federal judge just shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amidst his attempt to retaliate against Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, one of six lawmakers who made the video reminding service members that they are not obligated to carry out a legal order, something that Hegseth once said aloud.

This is the second rejection in just one week of the administration trying to punish speech it does not like. And the AI CEO who has the world doing a double take with his article titled something big is happening, warning that whatever it is could be, quote, "much bigger than COVID." That CEO will be here on The Lead.

Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper and I'm back from Tucson. But we are still focused on this important story. The Lead tonight, investigators in the search for Nancy Guthrie are asking any residents within the two mile radius of her home for security camera footage of any suspicious activity from the entire month before her disappearance on February 1st. The 84-year-old mother of "Today" show anchor Savannah Guthrie disappeared from her Tucson home on that Sunday in the wee hours of the morning.

And now the Pima County Sheriff's Department wants her neighbors to send in any video of vehicles or traffic or pedestrians or any suspicious activity between January 1st and February 2nd, the day after her disappearance. CNN's John Miller reports that investigators have gotten a number of leads since Guthrie's disappearance, one of which involves a white van, according to one official with knowledge of the case, though they have cautioned that it's just one of many unconfirmed tips that authorities are still examining.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department shared today that investigators recovered several items, including gloves, plural. This comes after the New York Post reported yesterday that FBI agents found at least one black glove about a mile and a half from Nancy Guthrie's home. You may recall it was someone with gloves wearing gloves, someone seen tampering with her doorbell camera in the early hours of the morning she disappeared.

Even though it has been 12 days since then, with no suspect identified, the Guthrie family and Tucson and indeed all of Arizona, they're keeping hope alive. News for Tucson, that's the station where Savannah Guthrie worked early in her journalism career, hung a banner outside today reading, bring her home. That's referring to Nancy Guthrie. Savannah also took to social media and posted this old home video and a family photo. This is on Instagram today in tribute to her mother with the caption, our lovely mom.

We will never give up on her. Thank you for your prayers and hope.

Let's go right now to CNN's Nick Watt, who's on the ground right outside Nancy Guthrie's house outside Tucson.

Nick, give us a lay of the land of the investigation as of today.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, it's been fascinating to see how that investigation has evolved and perhaps accelerated since. Since they released that video from the doorbell cam showing the suspect on Nancy Guthrie's porch. Thousands of tips coming in a day. You mentioned the white van and also the video requests have been fascinating. Earlier today, we heard that authorities were asking anybody around here for very specific days and times.

They were January 11, so about three weeks before Nancy Guthrie disappeared between the hours of 9:00 and midnight. Also January 31, the day before she disappeared, between 9:30 and 11:00 in the morning, they mentioned there was potentially a suspicious vehicle spotted in the neighborhood at around 10:30 that morning. So then later, they expanded it as you say. They asked for not just vehicles. They asked for people, anything that anybody deems suspicious in that month long period from January 1 to February 1.

[17:05:13]

Now, it's going to be interesting to see what they get because this is a kind of rural area. There are no street lights, so unclear what will be picked up. Also, local zoning means every house has got to be at least 30 feet back from the road. A lot of them are further than that. And there is a lot of vegetation. So investigators will be trying to get any shreds of video they can to try and patch them together and figure out a timeline, try and track this suspect in and also crucially out.

You mentioned the gloves, Jake. Yesterday we saw investigators finding a glove. We hear from the sheriff's department this morning. Gloves, plural, and also other evidence that they are going through. We also saw this morning, Jake, just before 8:00 a.m. local, a white tent was put up by Nancy Guthrie's porch, the kind of tent that you sometimes see at crime scenes.

Now, that porch, of course, provided one of the first clues, which were some spots of blood on that porch that were traced to Nancy Guthrie. As you say, it's been 12 days. The investigation appears to be accelerating, but as far as we know, there doesn't appear to be an end in sight. Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Nick Watt in Tucson, Arizona, thank you so much.

Let's bring in Jack Jupin. He's a retired FBI supervisory special agent.

Jack, the Pima County Sheriff's Department is now asking for more than a month's worth of video footage from Nancy's neighbors. The first post on the neighbor's app by Ring just requested footage from two days on January 31st, the day before Nancy's disappearance, on January 11th, two weeks before she disappeared. Why are they expanding the request? And why now are they doing this 12 days in?

JACK JUPIN, CEO, JUPIN INTERNATIONAL: You know, Jake, very good point. And I got to be very honest with you. As a retired supervisory special agent, I've worked violent crime, I've worked international terrorism, I've worked white collar crime. I've worked an actual legitimate kidnapping, which what we're looking at right here. My point is, I would have been doing this, and I'm not second guessing anybody in law enforcement.

I'm just saying how we did things back in the day when I was still working as an FBI supervisor. You -- that is absolutely important, that not only two days, I would be going back a month.

TAPPER: Yes.

JUPIN: This isn't happenstance. This is a targeted kidnapping. That person didn't just show up there that day and wonder, geez, will she be here? Will she be at home? They knew who she was, they knew her home, she knew her, they knew her address, right?

So I'm going back a month, I'm going back a month and a half because they've been doing drive bys, they've been targeting, they've been casing her house to see a pattern of life of her and what she did, what she normally did on weekends, weeknights, what have you. So my understanding is -- and listen, I understand, I -- trust me, I've dealt with the FBI laboratory a million times, they're outstanding, they're the best in the world and they really are. And I've heard a lot of my colleagues say this on other networks, your network, they're the best of the best. But it takes some time to go through digital evidence. Obviously, you know, they're dealing with Nest, they're dealing with --

TAPPER: Yes.

JUPIN: -- you know, getting that evidence out. Sometimes it does not happen. You know, I like to tell people, you know, it's not like television, nothing happens in 24 hours in the FBI or the federal government, it does take time. But working with our local partners, our state partners, our federal partners, and everybody's kind of chiming in here. The fact that we're looking for gloves, those gloves, that's not a coincidence.

I mean, you know, why is somebody -- you know, there's a lot of things here that don't add up to me --

TAPPER: Yes.

JUPIN: -- as an investigator, because two gloves all of a sudden found, obviously were -- they look identical to the gloves that were used. Why would you drop gloves within, you know, within a half a mile of a crime scene --

TAPPER: So --

JUPIN: -- that you use. There will be DNA. TAPPER: It's interesting that the law enforcement's asking for footage

through February 2nd, January 1st through February 2nd. Nancy disappeared on February 1st.

JUPIN: Yes.

TAPPER: Why would they want footage for the day after?

JUPIN: Well, good question. A lot of times in a crime scene, somebody commits a crime, they show back up.

TAPPER: Yes.

JUPIN: And we've seen -- we've seen this time and time again in homicides. We've seen this in very violent crime actions. We've seen this in assortment of other crimes, unfortunately, where the bad guy does show back up again. And I would -- I would be doing everything that you're talking about right now, Jake. I would be going back a month, a month and a half before, I would go back till the day that happened till now to find out, are we seeing the same thing? Are we looking at LPRs, license plate readers? Who's been in that area? Who's common to that area? And they're all over. Trust me.

[17:10:04]

LPRs are all over every street. You will never see them. You'll never know they're there. They're there. There's cameras everywhere.

You know, whether they be red light cameras, whether it be Nest cameras, whether it be doorbell cameras, ring cameras, what have you. There is surveillance in that area.

TAPPER: Yes.

JUPIN: I understand the atmosphere there that the house is back. It's on a big, large piece of property. All the houses are kind of the same. That being said, there's no way you're getting in and out of that neighborhood multiple times without being noticed.

TAPPER: All right, Jack Jupin, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

The six still photos and three videos may be the strongest evidence yet in the Guthrie case. Coming up, what a forensic analyst is picking up after reviewing the images for two days now. And later on The Lead, an American citizen shot five times by a border patrol agent and survived. They say that she rammed them with her SUV. But the footage tells a different story. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: We're back with the national lead. Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year- old mother of "Today" show anchor Savannah Guthrie has now been missing for 12 days. The Pima County Sheriff's Department in Arizona is requesting that her neighbors, anyone within a two mile radius of her home outside Tucson submit anything that was caught on any of their security or surveillance cameras that might strike them as out of the ordinary. Anything filmed between January 1st of this year and February 2nd. That's the day after she disappeared.

[17:15:20]

Let's bring in Nick Barreiro. He's a certified audio video forensic analyst.

Nick, the sheriff's department says they want 31 days of footage from Nancy's neighbors. Anything unusual during that period. How quickly can law enforcement comb through hours and hours of security video footage from this 31 day time period?

NICK BARREIRO, CHIEF FORENSIC ANALYST, PRINCIPLE FORENSICS: Well, it's certainly a big task. There could be -- there could be a lot of footage there. Luckily, there are a lot of analysts working on this case. The analysts that you see on scene there are not necessarily the ones that are going to be doing that work, though. The ones that are boots on the ground, they're going to be doing more of the canvassing of the neighborhood, trying to locate those cameras, trying to extract that footage in the best way possible to get the highest resolution images possible.

And then they'll have analysts off site that are going to be combing through all of that footage. TAPPER: The first alert this morning specifically mentions a

suspicious vehicle in the neighborhood the morning before Nancy's disappearance. Now, CNN's John Miller reports that investigators are looking into a potential lead involving a white van. Talk us through how you might go about combing through video from this timeframe to search for any suspicious vehicle. Would you focus only on white vans?

BARREIRO: So the first thing that I would do is exactly what they're doing is just throwing a wide as net as possible and gathering as much video as possible. And then yes, obviously if you have a lead like that, you have a lead about a white van, run that to the ground, right? Get people on that immediately because of course, time is of the essence. And then if that doesn't get you anywhere, then you can expand your search and you can look at other vehicles that are in the neighborhood and see if maybe they don't belong in that neighborhood. See what you can learn about all of the movements through that neighborhood in the days leading up to this and after.

TAPPER: Nick, earlier today, investigators put a white tent around Nancy Guthrie's front door and they took it down shortly afterward. They were also seen packing up a large black case. Do you have any idea of what they might be looking at, why they'd put up the tent? I mean, that is the area that we saw in the doorbell camera video?

BARREIRO: Yes, absolutely. My assumption is that they were doing a couple of things in there. One is they were doing a 3D scan of that entire porch area because you can use that 3D point cloud that they create to then compare with the surveillance footage that we've all seen. And you can take some really accurate spatial measurements within that footage to get the suspect's height, to get the suspect's approximate weight, potentially a shoe size, something like that. And then additionally, we also saw that they were carrying in a scale, a height chart, and that would be used in combination with an exemplar recording that they're going to make or that they did make from a camera positioned in the exact same spot as the original footage was taken from.

And they can use that height chart in the location where the suspect is seen standing on the porch. They can use that height chart then as a yardstick to overlay over the top of that original footage and take an accurate measurement of the suspect's height that way as well.

TAPPER: Yes, that makes sense. And they understandably didn't want people to see that happening. Nick Barreiro, thanks so much.

And you out there, if you have any information about the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you think you might recognize the armed intruder on that FBI surveillance video they released, there are multiple ways you can alert law enforcement authorities. You can call the Pima County Sheriff's Department at 520-351-4900. You can call the FBI at 1-800-Call-FBI. You can also reach the agency, the bureau, rather online at tips.fbi.gov, tips.fbi.gov.

[17:19:23]

Coming up, two brand new reports revealing details of a whistleblower complaint about, well, it's not about, but it involves Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Was an intelligence report inappropriately withheld from Congress or not? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: A lot going on in today's politics lead. At the top of the list, the Department of Homeland Security running out of money tomorrow. Tomorrow night, as Democrats say they're going to block new or even temporary funding if the Trump administration will not meet their demands for reforms to address the conduct of immigration and Border Patrol agents. The fight is coming to a head the same day that Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, announced the end of the controversial surge in Minnesota.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, BORDER POLICY ADVISER: I'm very pleased to report that this surge operation and our work here with state and local officials to improve coordination and achieve mutual goals, as well as our efforts to address issues of a concern here on the ground, have yielded the successful results we have came here for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Let's start there with Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska, who joins us in studio. Thanks for being here. Good to see you in person.

REP. MIKE FLOOD (R-NE): Thanks for having me.

TAPPER: So is -- I mean, should they have just sent Tom Homan to Minnesota to begin with and then all this awfulness and these deaths, et cetera, could have been avoided?

[17:25:03]

FLOOD: Well, he's certainly done a good job turning the temperature down. And what's the first thing he did? He sat down with the governor, sat down with the mayor and he said a week before that second tragedy, he said, just let us into the jails, into the county jails, the detention centers, and we can do this much differently. Like in my home state of Nebraska, very close to Minnesota, we don't have any of this because our local and state law enforcement are there on kind of a peacekeeping mission. They're there to make sure nobody gets hurt.

Whether it's a protester, the person they're trying to detain, or even the law enforcement officers. So I think Tom Homan's done a good job here. Credit to everybody involved for turning the temperature down and I'm sure the people of Minnesota appreciate it.

TAPPER: Let's turn to the funding fight over the Department of Homeland Security because the government might shut down again because of this. This impacts ICE, Customs and Border Protection, TSA, FEMA, Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, the Coast Guard, the U.S. Secret Service. These agencies perform essential functions. So more than 90 percent of DHS's 272,000 workers will either -- well, they have to stay on the job, some of them without pay. Now, the Democrats long list of demands, you see it here, I'm going to put it up, includes no masks for these federal agents, an end to racial profiling, use of force standards requiring state and local oversight, use of body cams.

That's not all of it, but that's some of it. Do you think those requests, those demands are unreasonable?

FLOOD: Well, well, first thing, there's a little misnomer going on here because in the One Big Beautiful bill, we fully funded the ICE enforcement through 2029. So really, although the Democrats are having this fight with Republicans over DHS, what they're really impacting is TSA, FEMA, you know, some of our HSI cybercrime investigators and the U.S. Coast Guard.

ICE is going to continue doing what it's going to do because it's funded through the One Big Beautiful bill through 2029. As far as the list of demands, like are we really willing to put everybody into a partial government shutdown over a situation where the agency already has the money? And I think Tom Homan has demonstrated yet again today that he has been responsive to the concerns of local folks.

Work with states to get these folks that are in prisons and detention centers and let's work it that way.

TAPPER: Well, credit to Homan and Mayor Frey and Governor Walz and others for bringing down the temperature. But I mean, an end of racial profiling, some use of force standards, use of body cams, no masks. I mean --

FLOOD: Well, as I understand it right now, body cams are already being handed out to DHS employees. And if they're not, they should be. I think that --

TAPPER: Well, they weren't.

FLOOD: They should be. They should be. Like I've always said that. You know, people talk about the masks all the time. You got to remember that these ICE agents, they are going out, they are enforcing the law and they are up against a international criminal organization called the Cartels, the that have for years made billions and billions of dollars moving people into the United States, sending them with coyotes across the border.

And we have seen these agents, they have been docs, they have been targeted. They have been at the receiving end of some pretty terrible threats.

TAPPER: Yes.

FLOOD: So, you know, like, I don't think Congress needs to actually prescribe the actual uniform for a federal law enforcement officer. TAPPER: Breaking news this afternoon, both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal provided new details about this debate about this classified whistleblower complaint against the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsa Gabbard. The accusation is that she's hiding this from Congress. Both the Times and the Journal say that the complaint is related to a conversation intercepted last spring in which two foreign nationals were discussed the president's son in law, Jared Kushner. The Times says the larger conversation was about Iran. The Journal quotes senior Trump administration officials as saying the claims about Kushner in this conversation were demonstrably false.

So CNN previously reported the whistleblower complaint includes claims that the distribution of the highly classified intelligence report had been restricted for political reasons. Do you think this is going to be a problem for Tulsi Gabbard? And if Jared Kushner didn't do anything wrong and his defenders are saying, who have seen the complaints say, he hasn't, why not just release this to Congress?

FLOOD: Well, I'm not on the Intelligence Committee, but some of the biggest adults in Congress are. When I say adults, I'm talking about Jim Himes from Connecticut, Elise Stefanik from New York. Listen, when they make a decision on the Intelligence Committee bipartisan way, we all pay close attention to it. So I'll defer to them. These are Democrats and Republicans that have really turned the temperature down to depoliticize our intelligence efforts and our oversight.

TAPPER: Yes.

FLOOD: And I'll defer to the House Intelligence Committee before I weigh in.

TAPPER: I know you want to talk about this other important matter that didn't get much attention. The House of Representative passed a bill aimed at helping people afford homes. The bill came out of the Financial Services Committee. You remember that. Tell us about that. And does it actually have a chance of getting through the Senate, becoming law?

FLOOD: Well, look at the personnel involved here. Maxine Waters, not necessarily a shrinking violet. You know, French Hill, one of our best. Me and Emanuel Cleaver from Kansas City, for a year and a half, we have gone to work every single day putting all the other stuff aside. We came to a bill that was adopted on the floor of the house last Monday, 390 votes to nine, and it makes the most sweeping changes in housing legislation since 2015.

That's the part of Congress that Americans need to know about. That's the part of Congress that doesn't end up on the 9 o'clock news because there's no anger, there's no vitriol.

[17:30:11]

TAPPER: Oh, you're on the 5 o'clock news.

FLOOD: Well, I'll stay all night to talk about housing if I can. But you know, we are 5 million units short in this country. The average median age of a new homeowner is 40.

TAPPER: Yes.

FLOOD: That's not right. One of the things that this bill does, thanks to John Rose of Tennessee, is it exempts manufactured home builders from having to put a chassis on a manufactured home that can then be $25,000 cheaper and you can build a second floor. Listen, in 1905, you could order a two-story house from the Sears catalog.

TAPPER: Yes.

FLOOD: Now you can get a manufactured home for $215,000, not the $415,000 that it usually costs, and people can realize the American dream. That's as important to Maxine Waters as it is to me and everybody else.

TAPPER: You know what? Get either Maxine Waters or Emanuel Cleaver. Come back. We'll talk more about it and we'll push the Senate.

FLOOD: I told Maxine I want to do a bill with her.

TAPPER: Yes.

FLOOD: Flood Waters.

TAPPER: Nice.

FLOOD: You like that?

TAPPER: Pretty good.

FLOOD: You like that?

TAPPER: It's pretty good. Congressman Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska. Good to be here.

FLOOD: Thank you.

TAPPER: Thanks.

Next here on The Lead, the tech CEO who wrote that alarming article warning that something big is happening in the world of A.I., something that we're not prepared for, why he says he has a duty to share the trends that he's seeing. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:35:29]

TAPPER: An alarming story in our Tech Lead today. A CEO who says that we are not taking warnings about artificial intelligence seriously enough. A new viral article published on fortune.com has reached more than 30 million views in just the last day. It warns something big is happening in A.I. and most people will be blindsided.

So let's bring in the author of the article. Tech CEO Matt Shumer. Matt, thanks for joining us. So in your article you write, "Nothing that can be done on a computer is safe in the medium term. If your job happens on a screen, then A.I. is coming for significant parts of it. The timeline isn't someday. It's already started."

So as someone on the front lines of A.I. development, what are some of the biggest advancements you've seen in A.I. that leads you to this conclusion that people are going to really start losing their jobs soon?

MATT SHUMER, GP, SHUMER CAPITAL: First of all, thank you for having me. And I want to start by saying my goal with this article wasn't to terrify people. It wasn't to get people to freak out. It was just to start a conversation because this conversation needs to be had. Knowing is really important. Knowing gets you ahead. It may not affect you today. It may not affect you in a year or two years. But if you know that this is coming and you don't bury your heels in, you don't bury your head in the sand, you're going to be better positioned for when it does eventually happen. So that really was my goal here.

What I saw was pretty -- it was a wake-up moment for myself. I've seen these models get better and better every year. The A.I. models are getting better at code first. The model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have focused on code before everything else because it helps them build the models for everything else. Over time, they've gotten better and better. And you can kind of think of it like let's say the model today is at level 50 on code.

It's probably at level 20 on everything else. But that means next year the model is going to be at level 50 on everything else and level 100 on code. Very recently, we had a new model from OpenAI that I tried and I had a very eye-opening experience with. It was the first time it felt like it was far better than me at pretty much everything I do from a technical perspective. I am not doing the hands-on coding work anymore. It is quite literally just saying, hey, what do you want done? And it does it for me end to end.

And if that's possible today in code, it means that very likely over time that's going to be available for everything else. Now, that's not going to proliferate through the economy immediately. Just because it's able to do it, just because the capability is there, doesn't mean it's going to happen and take jobs overnight. I'm just warning people that the capability is getting there and they should pay attention and have a conversation about it.

TAPPER: So your proposed solution to the concerns and the rise of A.I. is for everyone out there to get on board, start using A.I. more, so they can become familiar with how it can help them and what they can do that A.I. cannot. So if a viewer watching right now, let's say a teacher, a nurse, somebody with a white collar job is worried that A.I. is going to take their job. I mean, one question they might say to you is, why would I want to train it so it's better than it would have been without my help?

SHUMER: First of all, I would say training it and using it are two very different things. These model labs, right, like I'm not part of one of these labs, but I see what's happening. They are going to improve it for these things with or without people using it. They have these sort of techniques that actually don't require human data anymore to make this better.

So just by using it, you're not training it. You want to be able to understand where it's at. One of the things that I actually give is advice to most of my friends who are outside of tech is I say, build your own personal benchmark is what I call it. So take your job and take a few things that you think A.I. will never be able to do or it's very far away from and build sort of like simple prompts for the A.I. to say, hey, try this, put it in today. And it may not be great today.

The output might not be anything that impresses you. But every few months, these A.I.s get better. I recommend trying it on the newest one every few months, and you'll have sort of like your own warning bell for when this is actually going to come and affect you. And again, just because it can do something doesn't mean it's going to take your job. You give the example of a nurse. I think that's a good one, right? It's not going to replace nurses anytime soon.

There are jobs that are more affected. If it's just something in front of a computer and you're not interfacing with other people in person, you are likely to be affected first. But folks like salespeople, for example, a lot of what they're doing is very likely going to be affected by A.I., but they still need to be in person to do a lot of what they do. So I think it's very nuanced and very specific to each thing.

I did not know this article was going to go this far. If I did, I think I would have spent a little bit more time elucidating on some of these points when I was writing it.

TAPPER: Well, the article is on fortune.com. Matt Shumer, come back. We'd love to talk to you more. Appreciate it.

SHUMER: Thank you for having me.

[17:39:52]

TAPPER: Next, the ruling from a federal judge that stops the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, from trying to punish Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. He's one of six Democrats on the Hill who made the video reminding service members they are not obligated to carry out illegal orders. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead today, a federal judge torpedoed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's efforts to punish Arizona Senator Mark Kelly by reducing his rank and pay. Kelly came under fire for posting a video reminding military members that they do not have to obey illegal orders. Indeed, they're obligated to disobey them. Here is how Senator Kelly responded to the ruling in his favor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ): This might not be over yet because this President and this administration do not know how to admit when they're wrong. However hard the Trump administration may fight to punish me and silence others, I'm going to fight 10 times harder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[17:45:00]

TAPPER: This afternoon, Hegseth responded posting on X, "This will be immediately appealed. Sedition is sedition, Captain." A reminder that Pete Hegseth said something very, very similar as a "Fox News" host in 2016 about how troops don't carry out illegal orders and will not carry them out if Donald Trump, who he was then critical of, orders them to do so.

For what this means legally, politically, let's bring in J.P. Cooney, who was a top deputy to former special counsel, Jack Smith, working on both federal cases against President Trump, was later fired by Trump. Also with us, Maura Gillespie, deputy chief of staff to former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger and Democratic strategist Chuck Rocha.

So in the ruling, Chuck, I'm going to start with you. The U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who was nominated by George W. Bush, just for anybody keeping track of that, he writes, "This court has all it needs to conclude that defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees. After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." I thought it was a weather vane. But in any case, very few people are paying attention to all these machinations right on Capitol Hill.

This is a story that most Americans are probably not. But is there a cumulative effect that actually might hurt President Trump and the Republicans?

CHUCK ROCHA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: That's why I was shaking my head while you were doing that whole thing, because I'm like, they don't want to be talking about going after a military hero, an astronaut nonetheless. And Kelly welcomes this fight. He's raising more money. He gets to play on his playing field. They're not talking about what they want to talk about, which is law and order.

And this judge has made it very clear that this is ludicrous on his face. While Donald Trump wants to be talking about the economy, they're having to talk about this. This is not good political messaging for the midterms.

TAPPER: Maura, I'm old enough to remember when I was told that these were going to be this free speech warriors, the Trump administration. They were going to be -- he said it, I think in his address to Congress, like we're now, you know, no longer is anybody going to be prosecuted for their speech. This is exactly, they are literally trying to throw them in prison, not just reduce their rank and pay. They tried to indict them. It failed, of course.

MAURA GILLESPIE, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL, BLUESTACK STRATEGIES: Well, not only that, but they're also disparaging like Chuck pointed out, you know, a military hero, which, you know, again, the Republican party has long pride itself on supporting our veterans backing the blue and all these things.

And then you're disparaging someone because you didn't like what he said. And again, a party that I am part of that has gone after saying things got, you know, too woke as them or whatever it was. And now what does it look like? It looks as though they are trying to engage in cancel culture.

Anytime someone says something that the president Doesn't like. And what we're seeing from Pete Hegseth here, the secretary, is that he is also engaging what Pam Bondi showed us this week is that they're playing to an audience of one and not to a Republican voter base that they need to be playing to if they want to keep any sense of control in Congress.

TAPPER: So you know that the response from a lot of Republicans is, well, what about the war, the lawfare against Trump? And you were with Jack Smith's group. You were part of that. They're sort of like, well, if the president's doing lawfare, you know, that's what was done to him.

J.P. COONEY, FIRED FORMER TRUMP PROSECUTOR: I wasn't part of any lawfare. I was part of an independent prosecution of the President, of Donald Trump based on the facts, based on the law. And had we had an opportunity to bring that evidence to court, unlike the evidence that this administration brought to the grand jury yesterday with respect to Senator Kelly and the other members of Congress that they've targeted, Donald Trump would have been found guilty of multiple crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.

TAPPER: Yesterday, Congressman Joe Neguse, he's a Democrat from Colorado, played a 30 second video during Attorney General Bondi's hearing for the judiciary committee. Now we should note, this is really interesting stuff and kind of disturbing. It shows Jared Wise, who was hired by DOJ as a senior advisor. This is Jared Wise on police body cam footage, berating police officers on January 6th, 2021. He faced multiple felonies, but of course was pardoned by Trump. Here's part of the exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm former law enforcement. You're disgusting. You are the Nazi. You have to be stopped from that.

REP. JOE NEGUSE (D-CO): This is who you choose as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States of America to hire at the Department of Justice. Someone on video yelling, kill him at police officers, right?

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I believe he was pardoned by President Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Right. And what's your response?

COONEY: This is just another example of the lawlessness of this administration and its efforts to erase history, putting a person like Jared Wise doors down from the attorney general of the United States, a man who attacked the United States camp -- capital in an effort to overturn a presidential election and actually called for other rioters to kill police officers. It's a disgrace to the Department of Justice.

TAPPER: So we should know that you're running in a district. You're running for Congress. You're running in a district as a Democrat that technically doesn't exist in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of right now, the new maps will need to survive any legal challenge and voters will have to approve it in April referendum. What -- how do you answer when people ask you that why is it bad for Texas to redraw their maps to help Republicans, but OK for Virginia to do to help Democrats.

[17:49:55]

COONEY: Donald Trump put us in this circumstance. He has engaged in political gerrymandering and multiple states throughout the country in an effort to entrench his power, to expand his rubber stamp majority in a Republican controlled Congress. And I'm calling upon Virginians and proud of Virginians to stand up to him. They can join us at ConneyforCongress.com, form this new district and we are going to stop this unlawful power grab.

TAPPER: You were talking about backing the blue a second ago. This is a story that NPR, reported yesterday, a different January 6th participant. This guy was pardoned by Trump as well. He was convicted in Florida. He was found guilty by a jury, Andrew Paul Johnson's his name of, "Five charges, including molesting a child under 12 and another under 16, as well as lewd and lascivious exhibition." This is one of the "Patriots," Patriots that Trump pardoned. How do we get back to normal after this era?

GILLESPIE: I think it's by being honest, right? I think if you had problems with the Biden-Harris administration for letting in illegal criminals who then committed crimes because they were let back in or put it on, you know, we're released from prison. Then you should also be infuriated that the President pardoned someone who then went on to then commit this crime to try and blackmail an 11-year-old boy with an iPhone and money and promises of money for sexually abusing him.

I think that you should be as outraged as you were about anything that happened to Laken Riley and others. You can't just cherry pick when you're mad. I think it's important that we just get back to an honest conversation and saying what's wrong is wrong. And there's not a red or blue stamp of approval next to it.

TAPPER: And the money that she's talking about that this convicted child molester was offering was money he said he was going to get from the settlement that the Trump was going to give to the January 6th protesters.

ROCHA: And what that makes the American people feel like is that there's a lot of different systems and the system is rigged. And in every one of these races that we're working in right now, that's the number one thing along with your utility bills and others. But the biggest thing is they feel like everything is a rigged system of them right now.

TAPPER: Thanks to all of you. Appreciate it.

Next on The Lead, a Chicago woman shot five times by border patrol agents. They say that she ran them with her SUV. The footage suggests something different. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:56:19]

TAPPER: In our National Lead, significant revelations after body cam footage was released in one of the most violent and controversial interactions with federal agents during Trump's immigration crackdown. A Customs and Border Protection agent shot Marimar Martinez, a 30- year-old U.S. citizen, after her SUV collided with a CBP vehicle in Chicago. This is last October.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security accused Martinez of ramming the agent's SUV. She was charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers. But a judge threw out the case and cast doubt on the government's claims. CNN's Omar Jimenez reports on how the body cam footage appears to show it was actually the federal agent who rammed Martinez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cameras on.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is newly released body camera video. A team of three Border Patrol agents is driving through a Southside Chicago neighborhood, two have guns drawn. Marimar Martinez, an American citizen and schoolteacher, is driving next to them, honking her horn, warning people to the presence of federal immigration enforcement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do something --.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): Another vehicle is behind the agents, also honking the horn.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, it's time to get aggressive and get the -- out, because they're trying to box us in.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): It all happens in seconds.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, we're fine, man. All right, out of the car.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be advised, we've been struck. We've been struck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out. JIMENEZ (voice-over): Martinez was shot five times and survived. In this surveillance video, you can see the front of the agent's SUV come to a stop. Four seconds later, Martinez's silver Nissan drives off, she says, fearing for her life.

The Department of Homeland Security was quick to accuse her of attacking federal law enforcement, saying Border Patrol agents were, "Ambushed by domestic terrorists that rammed federal agents with their vehicles." The body camera video tells a different story just before the moment of impact, it's Agent Charles Exum who sharply turns his steering wheel in the direction of Martinez, proof, according to her attorney, that they hit her vehicle, not the other way around.

And as for the claim of being boxed in, this surveillance video calls that comment into question with nothing in the path ahead of the border agent's vehicle. The court also released text messages and e- mails from after the shooting, including one message from Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino just hours after the incident, offering to delay the retirement of Agent Exum, who shot Martinez, "In light of your excellent service in Chicago, you have much left to do."

And then a text message exchange between Agent Exum and someone whose name was redacted. "Are they supportive?" Someone asked. "Big time. Everyone has been, including Chief Bovino, Chief Banks, Secretary Noem and El Jefe himself."

In various texts to and from fellow agents, the mood was celebratory. "Good job, brother. You are a legend among agents. You better effing know that. Beers on me when I see you at training." "That's awesome. You did real good." "Damn it, man. Good shooting."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JIMENEZ: And that's part of why Martinez pushed to get this information out. Because she believed it allows people to have a greater understanding of how agents might react after incidents like this, no matter the city. And to further clear her name, because to this point, the Department of Homeland Security has never retracted its accusations against Martinez, even after the criminal case against her was dropped at the request of the government.

Now, as for the shooting, Agent Charles Exum, Customs and Border Protection, did tell CNN that he has been placed on routine administrative leave pending further investigation.

[18:00:04]

Omar Jimenez, CNN, New York.

TAPPER: And our thanks to Omar Jimenez.