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Atty. General Bondi To Trump: Will Ask Judge To Unseal Epstein Grand Jury Transcripts; Trump Authorizes Atty. General To Release Some Epstein Grand Jury Docs; House Passes $9 Billion DOGE Spending Cuts Package; Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) Discusses About Spending Cuts Passed By Congress; Officials Give Update On Deadly Blast at L.A. County Sheriff Facility. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 18, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:57]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: The President says, "I'm suing," vowing to go after the Wall Street Journal for publishing a story about a birthday letter he allegedly sent accused sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein. Trump denies he wrote it.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Plus, another legislative win for President Trump House Republicans narrowly passed a measure that claws back $9 million from foreign aid programs and public broadcasting. Critics say the cuts will be devastating for rural areas.

And then, later a staple of late-night television is coming to an end. CBS says ending "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" is purely a financial decision, but some are wondering.

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

JIMENEZ: We're going to start with a shift in the fight over the Epstein files. We're waiting to learn more about a request President Trump's Justice Department is expected to be making today We're told they're going to ask a judge to unseal grand jury testimony pertaining to alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein's case. Now, the President wants some of that information released while also threatening to sue the Wall Street Journal for a new bombshell report

KEILAR: Yes, the Journal says that Trump in 2003 sent a letter to Epstein for his 50th birthday. This is a letter they say bears Trump's name. And reportedly, it shows a sketch of a naked woman as well as lewd references. The President adamantly (INAUDIBLE) doing today as this is playing out.

Well, I think Omar's description of this as a shift is really accurate. It appears that the tide has turned here at the White House. As President Trump is now going on the offense because of this Wall Street Journal story. And just to recap it was just a little under two weeks ago that the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a memo that concluded that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide and that there was no so-called client list.

Since then, MAGA world has been in revolt demanding transparency asking for the release of more documents and information and essentially pitting the President against his most loyal and ardent and some of his most vocal supporters to the point that President Trump has really been downplaying this saying that it is sorted but not interesting. He even said in a post to social media, quote, "if there was a smoking gun on Epstein, why didn't the Dems, who controlled the 'files' for four years, and had Garland and Comey in charge, use it? Because they had nothing."

But the pressure on President Trump was intensifying over the past few days, including this new story in the Wall Street Journal that details a letter it said was signed by Trump to Epstein on what was his 50th birthday back in 2003. The President reacting to that letter. He said, quote, "These are not my words. Not the way I talk. Also, I don't draw pictures. I told Rupert Murdoch. It was a scam. Now, I'm going to sue his," and again I'm quoting here, "ass off."

The President announced that he was going to be asking Attorney General Pamela Bondi to unseal the pertinent testimony related to Jeffrey Epstein. That is something we'll be watching out for. But if that request is granted, that could take a long time and it still marks a very small portion of the overall evidence gathered against Jeffrey Epstein during the course of that investigation.

Meanwhile, the President continuing to lash out at the Wall Street Journal, the story and the letter that he says are fake. He says, quote, "I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his "pile of garbage" newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience."

[15:05:02]

The President, of course, reverting to a familiar playbook, attacking the media as it appears that some of his most ardent supporters are now unified with him on that really turning the tide here.

JIMENEZ: We'll see how it goes. Betsy Klein, appreciate it.

I want to bring in CNN Senior Justice Correspondent, Evan Perez, who has more on the status of the files.

I mean, Evan, what do - what do we expect officials will be asking a judge to do here?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the key - there's a couple key words in what the President said and what the Attorney General said. She said that they're going to go to court and it - and according to the President, they're going to look for a pertinent - documents that were - that are included in this grand jury information.

Now, keep in mind the grand jury is by - the way it's set up is supposed to be secret. And so, judges are very reluctant traditionally to unseal the information in the - that is gathered as part of the evidence before the grand jury. It is - it does happen, but it's very rare and you have to have good reason to ask the judge to unseal that information. And so, we'll see what good reason the Attorney General has to provide to the judge to it to unseal. What could be potentially thousands of doc - pages of documents.

Now, this is only, as you pointed out, a fraction of the millions of pages, right, that are part of this long-running investigation that brought charges against Jeffrey Epstein back in 2019, right before he committed suicide.

So, even if you just get to the grand jury information, it is clear that Pam Bondi, the Attorney General is sitting on a large - much bigger trove of information that MAGA world has said they want in - they want out. So, I'm not sure that this is going to solve the problem.

The other part of this issue is, you know, in the President - in his tweet last night said that he wants the, quote-unquote, "scam to end now." Well, that's not going to happen. The judge is going to take some time to hear from perhaps from victims or accusers who may have provided testimony to the grand jury. There's a lot of information that the judge is going to want to have before deciding what and if any of these this grand jury information gets released. So, this is not going to be resolved very, very quickly. At this point, we're just waiting to see what the wording of that document is that they're going to file in federal court in the Southern District of New York, which we expect to happen in the coming hours.

KEILAR: All right, Evan, thank you so much for that. We're joined now by Jackie Kucinich, CNN Political Analyst and Washington Bureau Chief for The Boston Globe. And also, Mark O'Mara, criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor.

Jackie, I think it was really tough for Trump when it was him Versus a lot of his stalwart supporters who wanted more Epstein information to come out. Now, you have the usual foils to Trump popping up, right, the media and Democrats who have been weighing in. Has this been a shift or is he still in trouble with his base?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: So, I think for the near term, yes, this is a shift, because we did have this remarkable moment last week where he could not change the conversation and the voices from a space that we're not used to being loud against him kept on coming. Now, because, as you point out, the Wall Street Journal had this story, it's a familiar foil, it does take the heat off.

However, there's still a lot of people who are fans of Trump who want to see these files released. One of them, who's not a fan of Trump frankly is Thomas Massie, congressman from Kentucky He has this procedural measure that's working its way through the House gathering signatures And if it gets enough signatures, it could get a vote this bill to release the Epstein files, could get a vote on the House floor that's - it's going to take some time, but it just shows there's - this one has a long tail.

JIMENEZ: Yes. Mark, the President is threatening to sue the Wall Street Journal. Obviously, he's threatened to sue many outlets over the course of - I mean, the past decade, you can go even further, does he actually have a legal leg to stand on? How do you analyze things here?

MARK O'MARA, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY & FORMER PROSECUTOR: Well, again, first of all a public figure and President Trump is probably the most public figure in the universe right now, has a very difficult time suing at all even with active defamation. So, even if it were untrue, when you put yourself out there as a public figure as obviously he does, it is much more difficult standard. Having said that, if - maybe it would have come to light if that letter was, one, completely untrue, it was not him or his handwriting, and the media knew about it, then maybe.

But again, I think this is one of those tactics of threatening to sue and sue, and see sort of what type of a diversion that might create much like it could be a diversion to start asking about releasing grand jury transcripts. It's something for someone to focus on.

[15:10:01]

But again, that's well less than 1 percent of what we know is there in the volume of documents in the Epstein event?

JIMENEZ: Yes. And Jackie, I mean, look, as I kind of mentioned, I doubt that the Wall Street Journal was surprised that sort of the reaction from the President to this point. And we have seen President Trump's fight with the media, especially be prominent during this administration. How does the Wall Street Journal do you expect them to navigate this latest version of the fight and do you think it affects Rupert Murdoch's relationship with Trump?

KUCINICH: Let's peel back the layer of what happens when a story like this is going through the process for a second. I've never worked for the Wall Street Journal, but I can tell you I've worked for several places where lawyers look at this, lawyers comb through this. After the story is done, they make changes, they see, they point out places where they could have exposure. There could be verbiage that could, you know, expose them to lawsuits? These things are very meticulously gone through because they know that the President is litigious and because they want the truth frankly. But also, because they don't want to open themselves up to a lawsuit.

So, you don't just write it and slap it on the website, a lot went into - I'm assuming - put - just knowing how these things happen, went into getting this story, you know, to where we saw it. As to, you know, what this means, his relationship with Rupert Murdoch has kind of been off again on again. You have to imagine this would be maybe a permanently off again the situation. We'll have to see. You never know with President Trump someone can be on the outs and then be right back in the circle, because Rupert Murdoch does have a very loud megaphone with all of his various properties in the Trump universe and beyond.

KEILAR: Yes. And, you know, Mark, there's this issue - I mean, like you said, there's so much that hasn't been released and there's also legitimate reasons for why a lot of things haven't been released. We're talking about victims. We're talking about accusers, both of whom are often protected, but that's not an issue when it comes to the autopsy report, which actually I think a lot of people would be surprised to be reminded it has not been released and there was an Epstein family paid for a lawyer who's a former New York medical examiner who really had a lot of questions about what the findings were and that has sort of created this question of - there's the official conclusion. He died by suicide, but there are many people who are questioning whether that was the case including David Schoen, Epstein's former lawyer who we spoke with should that come out the autopsy report?

O'MARA: Well, an autopsy has its own level of confidentiality as you can imagine, because nothing gets much more private than that. However, the family is certainly the best position to make the request as they are. And yes, because if it's an - it's an ongoing issue an ongoing question and a lot of people have concerns over whether or not it was suicide or some type of assisted suicide or homicide, yes, I think that's one of those documents that should be reviewed at least by some independent magistrate or somebody so that the family can get some of the answers that they deserve and then quite honestly the rest of us get it as well.

JIMENEZ: Jackie Kucinich, Mark O'Mara, appreciate you both for being here. Thank you.

KUCINICH: Thank you.

JIMENEZ: All right. Still to come, the DOGE spending cuts package is heading to the President's desk, a bill that claws back $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting.

KEILAR: Plus, the Associated Press now reporting that ICE will have access to the personal data of 79 million Medicaid recipients. It's information that could be used to track down immigrants who may be in the country illegally. And then, later how music superstar Billie Eilish is imposing special rules at her concerts to protect the planet. We'll have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:18:05]

KEILAR: President Trump and congressional Republicans celebrating another legislative win after another late night in the Capitol. Early this morning, the House narrowly passed the DOGE spending cuts package to eliminate roughly $9 billion in government spending and it now heads to the President for his signature. These cuts include roughly $8 billion in funding that had already been congressionally approved for foreign aid programs, another $1.1 billion is being pulled from the corporation for public broadcasting, which helps fund PBS and NPR.

We're joined now by Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado who you, sir, have called these cuts a stark abandonment of American leadership in the world. How do you think America's role will change because of them? REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): Well, it is an abandonment. There's no other

way to put it. You know, but I think the important point for most Americans is this is a classic example of being penny-wise and pound foolish. This is the outright expense that this is going to cost. They haven't thought through the medium-term and long-term implications. By cutting this funding, you're cutting communications infrastructure around the United States that Americans rely on for public safety announcements, you know there have been disastrous floods to get emergency management notifications.

You know, the - literally, the telecommunications network and infrastructure that's maintained by a lot of these community stations and these rural stations will be in jeopardy. And then, you add on top of that cutting the diplomatic and State Department funding that helps prevent transmission of diseases in famine to keep the world safe. I mean, listen, we learned during COVID that if there are diseases in pandemics around the world, eventually, they make their way to the United States. We're going to be less able to deal with all of that as a result of these cuts.

KEILAR: It's really important that we take a look at the factors that are pushing Americans to - many of them - to approve of these kinds of cuts, right?

[15:20:05]

There's new CNN polling that shows a majority of Americans, 56 percent, think the U.S. should not take a leading role in trying to solve international problems. Democrats and Democratic leading adults in particular have really shifted on this. In March after that, Zelenskyy-Trump Oval Office confrontation, 58 percent of that group said the U.S. should be taking a leading role. That's now down to 44 percent. What are you seeing there? And what about that concerns you?

CROW: Well, there is justifiable anger and resentment after 20 years of largely failed foreign military interventions, right? We, for 20 years, we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. We spent $3 trillion, thousands of American lives, 10s of thousands of other lives, 10s of thousands of Americans with traumatic brain injury and other injuries. And people saw how it turned out, right? And Republicans and Democrats and independents alike are asking why, why should we do that, right?

So, the solution is not to just stop doing things altogether and to retreat from the world because isolationism actually ends really poorly for America, history has been very clear about that. But yes, we need to be smarter. We need to be better stewards of the taxpayer dollars and Congress actually needs to be asking tougher questions about why we are involved in certain places Which is exactly why me and others raised really deep concerns about President Trump's illegal and unauthorized strikes in Iran, not because we don't think Iran's a danger and a threat because they are, but because when Congress stops asking tough questions, things go unchecked and it ends poorly.

KEILAR: Yes. I mean, and you of all people know that, right? I mean, the middle class has borne the brunt of these questionable policy decisions that led to these protracted wars. You're a former Army Ranger, you served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and you're seeing this kind of populist streak, right, when - and an appeal in this argument of changing America's role. I mean, how do you actually confront that? I hear what you're describing, but I mean, there's a whole generation and their children who will see what those wars cost them, how do you actually turn that around in a serious way, or is it permanently broken?

CROW: Well, first of all, I recognize the anger and the resentment and the animosity, because I actually have a lot of it, right? Having seen friends and people lose their lives or have their lives broken badly because of these unchecked interventions and because we stopped having accountability and debate about it, it's a real problem, and I think we have to recognize that, right?

And then, listen, I'm a member of Congress. I sit in an office, I'm sitting in my office right now and in Washington. And what I know is that when people talk tough and pound their chest in this town, and act tough, it's not them that have to pick up a rifle or jump into a tank or a plane and go off and do the dirty work. You know it's middle-class kids like me, working-class kids like me around the country in the Midwest and in rural communities that have to go off and do the dirty work, right? And that's what I used to be, and that's what I think about all the time, and that's what guides my work.

So, at the same time but I also know is true is that if we retreat from the world, and if we try to erect walls, literal or physical, and try to keep things outside of the United States and just not pay attention to what's happening, eventually those things come home, and eventually we have to deal with them and it's usually pretty bad by the time that happens.

So, I believe in American leadership. I believe in American involvement in a smart strategic way. I believe in restraint, but there is also a time and place for us to step up and lead and that's the case that we need to be banking to Americans.

KEILAR: I also want to ask you about the Epstein issue, former speaker Nancy Pelosi saying that it's kind of a distraction. Democrats have waded into this. I want to play some of what she said. Let's listen.

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REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Whether it's Jeffrey Epstein or Alcatraz, it's all off the subject of what they're doing with this budget that is harmful to the kitchen table, meeting the kitchen table needs of the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Do you think members of your party who have waded into this, saying, you know, more should be looked at or kind of even just capitalizing on the difficulties the President has had politically on this issue, have actually maybe inadvertently given the President one of his usual foils instead of just letting him battle this out with some of his most stalwart supporters. Has this been any - bit of a misstep on the part of people in your party? CROW: I Don't think it's an either-or situation. I think that's kind

of a false choice.

[15:25:04]

You know, I agree with the Speaker's sentiment that the vast majority, the vast majority of our work and what we talk about and should be doing should be about the lack of affordable housing, the lack of education in America, our crumbling infrastructure. I mean, those are the things that Americans - that's a lived experience. That's what they're really worried about.

But corruption also matters, sexual predators in dealing with it and having accountability also does matter. And the fact that Donald Trump before he saw the Epstein files, before he was sworn in again in January. It was like release the files, release the files. Now that he's seen the files, he's like don't release the files, hide the files. Something is up here. Something is really off and America deserves to know, right?

And this is a corruption issue. This is a transparency issues. And Donald Trump largely campaigned on checking debt and he just added $3 million of debt. He campaigned on ending wars and he's running unchecked military conflicts in the Middle East and he campaigned on anti-corruption and transparency, and he's the biggest, you know, swamp monster of all right now and he's refusing to do the thing that he's been calling for, for years himself. So, you know, that's worth talking about.

KEILAR: Congressman Jason Crow, thank you for talking with us. We appreciate it.

CROW: Yes, thank you.

KEILAR: And this just in, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department just gave an update after three members of the department died in an explosion at a training facility. Let's listen to what they said.

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SHERIFF ROBERT LUNA, LOS ANGELES COUNTY: Tragically, there were three sworn members who were fatally killed that were assigned to our arson explosives detail. No other department members were injured or transported to any hospitals. This is, unfortunately, the largest loss of life for us as the L.A. County Sheriff's Department since 1857. Between all three sworn members, they had served our community proudly for 74 years and that's amongst all three of them collectively.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Sheriff Robert Luna went on to say they actually don't know the cause of the explosion at this point. He did say the devices that were involved were ultimately rendered safe. The FBI and the ATF are helping in the investigation.

Still ahead, an agreement between Medicaid and the Department of Homeland Security. The Trump administration is handing over the personal data of millions of enrollees to ICE so they can track down immigrants We'll have details ahead.

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