good thursday morning. top of the hour. i m erica hill. i m jim sciutto. major economic news this morning and good news. inflation showing signs of easing in the month of december consumer prices post the biggest monthly decline in months, also easing in the annual growth rate. the impact this could on the fed s decision to race interest rates. how much, how long, we ll break down the numbers just ahead. president biden s legal team has discovered a second batch of classified documents. the white house has declined to comment on the matter. republicans certainly have much to say. we ll discuss the legal political ramifications facing the administration, also the differences with trump s handling of such documents. the airline industry this morning recovering from that massive damage done by a single corrupted file yesterday. what is the faa saying as they investigate the cause for these thousands of delays and cancellations yesterday. we ll bring you up to speed. firs
communications department and why this is the approach we re seeing this morning? reporter: erica, so far the white houses has not commented at all on the second batch of documents. really they haven t said much about the first batch of classified documents either as evidenced by the white house press briefing yelled when the press secretary basically evaded answering question of question and really just wouldn t say anything new. so what we re left with right now, and paula ran through some of those questions, is a whole bunch of things that we don t have answers to including on the timing factor here. why was it that folks knew about the first batch of classified documents going back to november, but the public wasn t aware of it until several days ago. what were some of the details of how those documents ended up at the private office? of course, when it comes to the second batch of documents, where exactly was that found and who put those documents there? i think the biggest ques
investigate the cause for these thousands of delays and cancellations yesterday. we ll bring you up to speed. first we have more on president biden s legal team finding that second batch of classified documents at another location. with us, cnn correspondent paula reeva steenkamp and white house correspondent m.j. lee. paula, first to you. tell us what this discovery was and what they did with the documents. we don t know the answers to any of those questions. all we know is the headline that biden s legal team discovered an additional batch of documents that includes classified information. the white house is making a deliberate decision not to get in front of this matter and allow this to leak through the press. i ll let m.j. handle the reporting on why that is. this is the second batch of documents discovered. previously we learned they discovered ten classified documents in an office they were cleaning out. those documents included top secret information and we ve
probably is, and paula got to this, whether we re about to find out about the discovery of additional documents. it s not going to be helpful to the white house, to say the least, if this ends up being a sort of drip-drip situation. we know based on what we ve heard from republican lawmakers so far, they re very intent in adding this to their growing list of investigations targeting the biden administration and the biden white house. in terms of the political timing, all this is looming over an expected decision coming soon from the president on a potential second term. paula reid, m.j. lee, thanks so much. the economic news, the key measure showing inflation is continuing to cool. the labor department released new numbers minutes ago. they show inflation eased once again in december, both a monthly decline but also a slowing at least of price growth on an annual basis.