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Sources Say, Bondi Told Trump in May His Name was in Epstein Files; House Oversight Subcommittee Votes to Subpoena DOJ for Epstein Files; Families of the Slain Students Address Their Killer in Court. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 24, 2025 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Breaking overnight, we learned the Deputy Attorney General is set to meet with convicted Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell today. This after it was revealed that President Trump was told his name was in the Epstein files back in May.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And a major deal between Columbia University and the Trump administration, the first school to reach a negotiated settlement after being targeted by the president. The deal comes with a more than $200 million penalty.

And a new report this morning on the pay gap between CEOs and their employees. The gap was already vast and it grew even larger last year.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman. Sara is off today. This is CNN News Central.

BERMAN: All right. The breaking news, the morning headlines just out tell the story, from Punch Bowl. President Trump has lost control of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. From Politico, if it wasn't a crisis already, it is indisputably one now. First, what is about to happen? Sources tell CNN that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will meet with longtime Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in prison today. She was convicted of conspiring with Epstein's, a sexually abused minor. So, that is coming.

What we know this morning that we did not know yesterday is that President Trump was told he is in the Jeffrey Epstein files. Sources say he was told so by Attorney General Pam Bondi two months ago. He was told he was in the files two months ago, and then when asked about it just last week, he said no. no. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What did she tell you about the review and, specifically, did she tell you at all that your name appeared in the file?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: No, no. She's given us just a very quick brief.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: No, no. Sources say the attorney general and deputy briefed the President on the findings of the Justice Department's review of the documents related to Epstein, which found that the files appeared to include several unsubstantiated claims that they determined not to be credible, including those relating to Trump.

And, again, it is crucial to note that being mentioned in the files is not necessarily indicative of any wrongdoing. But the disclosure to the president came weeks before the Department of Justice released a memo on July 6th, attempting to shut down the Epstein case, which said, quote, no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.

But now, some disclosure might be coming whether they wanted or not. The House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to depose Ghislaine Maxwell and a separate subpoena from a subcommittee that goes one step further to the Justice Department, asking for the release of the files in full. And that was a bipartisan committee vote. This all happened despite Speaker Mike Johnson shutting down the House a day early to avoid floor votes on any Epstein related matters.

Let's get right to CNN's Evan Perez with the latest on what we're going to see today. Evan, a lot going on, but let's talk about this highly unusual meeting about to take place with the deputy attorney general.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John, good morning. This is going down in Tallahassee, Florida. This is where Ghislaine Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence. There's a women's prisoner there, and we expect that the deputy attorney general is going to initiate this meeting. And, you know, the question is what is he bringing? What can he offer to Ghislaine Maxwell? She doesn't have a lot of incentive to speak. She hasn't really spoken to federal investigators throughout this investigation to offer what she knows.

And so the question is, what can Todd Blanche offer Ghislaine Maxwell to provide information, because we know what she wants. She wants to get out of prison. And she obviously knows that the president has the pardon power. He has the power to commute her sentence. And so we will see how that meeting rolls out later today.

Now, this is all, of course, coming after we learned that the attorney general and Todd Blanche briefed the president back in May to let him know that they had found part of this review that had been going on by the FBI.

[07:05:10]

They found his name obviously repeatedly in those files.

Now, as you pointed out, it doesn't indicate that there's any kind of wrongdoing by the president. Certainly, there were a lot of -- dozens, perhaps hundreds of names that came up on, you know, as part of the investigation, certainly from witness statements. And so that is part of the thing that is playing out right now. Now, the question remains, you know, when are we going to see some of these files? A judge in Florida yesterday ruled that they're not going to release files down there. Now, this is from a grand jury back in 2005 and 2007. What is still pending, John, is whether the grand jury's transcripts in New York from those two cases, whether those can be released in the coming days.

BERMAN: Yes. And, of course, there's a whole bunch of information that's not part of grand jury testimony under direct control, in theory, of the attorney general that she could release today, yesterday, tomorrow.

PEREZ: At any time.

BERMAN: At any time.

PEREZ: It is already redacted, right.

BERMAN: So, that is what is not happening, as far as we know.

Evan Perez, great to see you this morning, thank you very much.

PEREZ: Thank you.

BERMAN: Kate?

BOLDUAN: There's a lot developing with that story overnight and will continue today.

So, despite the house speaker saying no votes until September, as John was just talking about, the House Oversight Committee went and voted. A subcommittee now moving forward to subpoena the Justice Department for all of its records in the Epstein case file. That would go far beyond just the files presented to the grand jury, and that's after the Oversight Committee already this week moved to subpoena Epstein's longtime associate, as they were just discussing, Ghislaine Maxwell, for a deposition.

CNN's Lauren Fox is tracking this one for us. I mean, it was like a rolling series of developments with this Epstein saga. This is, of course, from Capitol Hill. This vote happened after the speaker made clear no votes until September.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It was really fascinating because this is all playing out in the backdrop that the House Rules Committee had essentially been immobilized by this issue. That meant that they couldn't vote on several bills that they had planned for this week. Then Speaker Johnson made clear to his members that they needed to give the president additional time, and yet Democrats continue to push this issue in these committee hearings.

And where this all played out yesterday was after this House vote, the final vote of this summer session before they go on August recess. There are three Republicans who joined Democrats in agreeing to moving forward with a subpoena. Now, the subpoena still has to be signed by the chairman of the committee, James Comer, but I want to walk through exactly what the subpoena does. It calls for the release of the Epstein files with victims' names redacted. And we should note that Republicans and Democrats worked behind the scenes to try to make sure that this was something some of these Republicans were willing to vote for. So, that victims' names redacted piece of it was really important to a couple of those Republicans.

Then it also calls for communication between the Biden administration and DOJ. It also calls for depositions from the Clintons and James Comey. This was in addition to another subpoena that has already gone out from the committee chairman, James Comer, asking for a deposition with Ghislaine Maxwell, who obviously is now front and center in these talks with the Justice Department and now may have further conversations, of course, with the House Oversight Committee. That is something that when I asked the speaker yesterday if he was supportive of, this is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): I will note the obvious concern, the caveat that Chairman Comer and I, and everyone has that, could she be counted on to tell the truth? Is she a credible witness? I mean, this is a person who's been sentenced to many, many years in prison for terrible unspeakable conspiratorial acts and acts against innocent young people. I mean, can we trust what she's going to say? Even if she raises her hand and says that she'll testify under oath? Is that something that can be trusted? You know, that's a reasonable question. Is that credible evidence? I don't know, but we'll have to see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And this was in response to a question that I had asked the speaker about whether or not he had started to lose control of his conference on this issue. He said that there was no daylight between him and James Comer, but you see there he does have a lot of questions, a lot of doubt about whether or not Maxwell's deposition is going to lead to any information that, in his view, is credible. Kate?

BOLDUAN: All right, Lauren, let's see what happens there today. I really appreciate it. John?

BERMAN: All right. Breaking overnight, hundreds of newly released police documents in the Bryan Kohberger case details, some pretty strange events of the weeks leading up to the murders before Idaho College students.

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Also breaking, Columbia University agrees to pay more than $220 million in a deal with the Trump administration to restore federal funding.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: New this morning, hundreds of pages of police documents released overnight reveal a trove of new details of the days leading up to the murders of four college students in Idaho. Weeks before the murders, one of the victims, Kaylee Goncalves, told her roommate, she saw a strange man staring at her outside.

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Another time, the roommates came home to find their door wide open. Nine days later, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen would be found stabbed to death inside that home.

In a dramatic sentencing hearing, their families confronted the convicted filler killer as he got life behind bars without parole.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT LARAMIE, MADISON MOGEN'S STEPFATHER: Evil has many faces and we now know this, but evil does not deserve our time and attention.

We are done being victims. We are taking back our lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Let's go right to CNN's Veronica Miracle in Boise with us this morning. Veronica, this was a certainly a dramatic day, but on top of that, we have all these new details released.

VERONICA MIRACLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John. Now, that this case has concluded, the Moscow Police Department has unleashed and has revealed all of their investigative documents, there's going to be a slow drip of that over the next weeks and months. And in those documents, we are learning a little bit more about Kohberger's personality, like a coworker who said he was intelligent but selfish. There was also a prisoner who was in the cell next to Kohberger who said that he would be up all hours of the night, but then during the day would excessively wash his hands, would take long showers and would speak to his mother for hours at a time.

And then there was this woman on Tinder who said she was so disturbed when she was communicating with him, chatting with him. She cut off communication after he asked her how he thought she would -- what were the worst ways to die, so some very disturbing details about his personality coming forward through some of those documents.

Now, as you mentioned in court, it was an incredibly heavy, heavy, disturbing day, family member after family member going up to the podium, getting the opportunity to look at Kohberger and tell him exactly how they -- how he has devastated their lives. There was grief, there was some forgiveness, and there was a lot of rage. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE GONCALVES, KAYLEE GONCALVES' FATHER: Today, we are here to finish what you started. Today, you've lost control. Today, we are here to prove to the world that you picked the wrong families. Police officers tell us within minutes they had your DNA, like a calling card. You were that careless, that foolish, that stupid.

Master degree, you're a joke, a complete joke.

RANDY DAVIS, XANA KERNODLE'S STAPFATHER: You're going to go to hell. I know people believe in other stuff. You're evil. There's no place for you in heaven.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MIRACLE: After the hearing concluded, we heard from investigators and the prosecutor and all of the law enforcement officials who were involved in this case for the first time in years because now the gag order has been lifted. And they talked a lot about how they could never find a murder weapon. They searched extensively, they did soil samples, they looked in the water. They went to every possible place they could think of that Kohberger may have been. That was never recovered.

They also talked about, they did extensive psychological testing on him and there was never anything that rise to Idaho state law that would influence the conclusion of this case. They also said that he had wiped all of his devices, possibly with some kind of software, before police could get to him, so there was no evidence found on his cellular devices. So, there was a lot of information that also came out after the hearings from Prosecutor Bill Thompson.

Now, we are expecting, again, more documents in the weeks and months ahead to be unsealed by the court. But will we ever know a motive? That is unlikely? That is one thing that Bill Thompson was very clear about, that they could never figure out why Bryan Kohberger did this.

BERMAN: And, of course, he refused to speak at length yesterday at the hearing.

Veronica Miracle in Boise, great work out there, thank you very much.

So, when would the average person have needed to start working in order to make as much as a high paid CEO in a single year? Try before the revolution, the one in the 1700s.

And caught on camera, a stolen car crashes into a church.

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BOLDUAN: NFL preseason begins one week from today. So, start counting the days. It's like Christmas Eve, basically. And the teams, they're getting ready. The Cleveland Browns unveiled their new helmets with the ceremony on Lake Erie.

CNN's Andy Scholes has that for us. And that is quite a big helmet, Andy. ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: It was, Kate, And you know, the reveal that took place on a barge out on Lake Erie, where -- so a guy accidentally fell in the lake. And when this video originally came out, you would be like, oh, no. But you dig a little deeper and it's likely just the Browns coming up with a creative way to get attention for them and a sponsor.

So, as they made the helmet reveal, you see a photographer there on the barge, missteps, he falls off into the water. Now, again, you may think, oh, poor guy, but the photographer's social media influencer, Ross Smith, in the video, there's an inflatable dude wipes mascot dancing around. And Smith actually posted this video saying, dude, I wiped out on live T.V. tagging dude wipes. So, likely just a bit, but. hey, that helmet does look cool.

All right, Packers meanwhile partaking in one of the best traditions in sports yesterday. Every year for the first training camp practice, all the players ride children's bikes to practice while the kids walk next to them carrying their helmet.

And I want you to check out Nazir Stackhouse, 6'4", 327 pounds, getting on that bike. I hope that thing had some strong wheels. NFL preseason kicks off a week from today with the Hall of Fame game between the Lion and Chargers.

Meanwhile, in Austin last night, the MLS All Stars beating the League of M.X. of Mexico three to one. Now, Messi, who is tied with the most goals this season, did not partake in the game. And the MLS actually has a rule. If you are an all star and do not participate and are not injured, you face a one game suspension. Now, MLS has not made an announcement if Messi will, in fact, get that one game suspension.

All right, baseball another day, another home run for Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers' slugger homer yet again. It's the fifth straight game. Ohtani has homer tying a Dodgers record. He now has 37 home runs, which is tops in the National League.

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L.A., They were tied with the Twins 3-3 with two outs in the ninth, when Mr. Clutch, Freddie Freeman coming through. Harrison Bader just missing catching that. Dodgers celebrate., they won that one 4-2.

Meanwhile, Yankees manager Aaron Boone did not have a pleasant night in Toronto. So, Anthony Volpe gets a rung up here on a ball that was pretty high and Boone starts giving it to Home Plate Umpire Manny Gonzalez. Well, he gets ejected. And then he comes out to get his money's worth. It was Boone's fourth ejection this season. Yankees, they made four errors in the 8-4 loss to the Blue Jays.

And, you know, Kate, I've been saying it all season long, we really got to appreciate and soak up these manager ejections, because next season, Volpe could just probably tap on his head and challenge that strike three call and it would get overturned and we won't have any managers going crazy. So, appreciate him while we can.

BOLDUAN: But, I mean, he can still spout off and then make the call. Just -- I mean, if one is so, I'm fine.

SCHOLES: But if I can reverse the call, can you really stay that mad, you know?

BOLDUAN: I mean, believe me, I can for sure. And, by the way, I have to say I'm not really good at lip reading, but that one was pretty clear right off the top in that, a little pretty clear.

SCHOLES: Might have said some not safe for T.V. words.

BOLDUAN: Oh, well you are the one saying Big Dumper every day. So, what are you talking about?

SCHOLES: Hey, Cal Raleigh's historic season, we got to do it (ph).

BOLDUAN: You can't go a day without it, Andy. Thank you so much.

All right, President Trump is set to visit the Federal Reserve today, kicking up a notch his pressure campaign against the Fed chairman. What is this going to look like.

And the brutally emotional and gut-wrenching statements coming from the families of the four Idaho murder victims. And just as Bryan Kohberger begins his life sentence today, police release a trove of new documents on their investigation. Those new details ahead.

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