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Interview with Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ): House Oversight Ranking Member Accuses DOJ of White House Cover Up; New York Times: Army's Flying Habits Over DC Concerned Other Pilots; War in Ukraine Being Blamed for Surge in Wolf Attacks in Finland. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired December 22, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: A growing number of Epstein survivors are slamming the Justice Department for releasing only a fraction of those files by Friday's congressionally mandated deadline. More than a dozen survivors, along with family members at the late Virginia Giuffre today, issuing a new statement which expresses several concerns, including their objections to, quote, abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation. They also say some victims' identities were left unredacted, noting this caused real and immediate harm.

They pointed to the fact that financial documents were absent and that they found it, quote, difficult or impossible to search for information about their own cases. Adding to that, more than a dozen files released by the DOJ on Friday were no longer available Saturday afternoon, including this one, which shows a photo of President Trump in a desk drawer, among several other photographs. Now, the Justice Department says that was removed, that it was removed because they needed to determine whether more in that image needed to be redacted to protect victims.

It was then restored to the online database. President Trump, of course, has not been accused of any wrongdoing or charged with any crimes in connection with Epstein.

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Congressman Robert Garcia is accusing the DOJ of a, quote, White House cover-up. My next guest is a member of the Oversight Committee, Democratic Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari of Arizona. Congresswoman, it's good to have you with us.

You posted in response to what was released saying that the, and I'm quoting here, the scope of these redactions is obscene. You went on to say no one involved in this cover-up will escape accountability.

[14:35:00]

What does that accountability look like to you, and who specifically are you targeting?

REP. YASSAMIN ANSARI (D-AZ), OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: We are just completely just dissatisfied with the way that the Department of Justice has handled this from the get-go. As Ranking Member Garcia said, the White House has been covering up the release of the Epstein files because, quite frankly, there has been a subpoena since July that they have failed to comply with. As the victims pointed out in their letter, there have been so many extreme redactions when it comes to the most important documents, the indictments, the 60-page document regarding Epstein's sweetheart deal that he received many years ago that still does not have adequate explanation.

All of this is completely unacceptable and wildly illegal. As Congressman Ro Khanna and Congressman Massey have discussed publicly, they are looking at introducing contempt and introducing a privilege resolution in January, which would only require the House. It would basically indicate that Pam Bondi herself could have to pay personal fines every single day as she fails to comply with this.

And then, of course, I believe impeachment should be on the table as well, which she has done, is impeachable, but of course a much larger political hurdle to have to overcome.

HILL: You mentioned that plan for inherent contempt coming from Representatives Khanna and Massey. Congressman Khanna also telling CBS they are, in his words, building a bipartisan coalition. Do you have a sense of how much bipartisan support there actually is for that?

ANSARI: I think this is a very bipartisan issue. The fact that we went from thinking largely that the discharge petition that eventually led to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, I think when that was first introduced, it seemed pretty impossible that that would come to be. And then eventually, of course, we had the 218 signatures and it passed unanimously.

The public pressure on this issue was so immense because the crimes are so egregious. The fact that Jeffrey Epstein committed these crimes over the course of decades, received a sweetheart plea deal from somebody who went on to become the Labor Secretary under the first Trump administration. The fact that Ghislaine Maxwell now is in a cushy jail with preferential treatment.

The fact that Pam Bondi and Kash Patel and this administration have refused to release these files for months on end and continue to lie and cover up. All of this has led to the public being so dissatisfied and so angry about the fact that so many rich and powerful men are not being held to account. And there's clearly a cover up happening.

So I don't think Republicans can escape this. So I would feel very comfortable saying that there would be pretty, pretty broad bipartisan support to hold Pam Bondi in contempt.

HILL: It's also important, Deputy AG Tom Blanche said in a letter which was sent to Congress on Friday that the DOJ's extensive review of the Epstein related materials, quote, did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties. Do you accept that statement?

ANSARI: Then release the documentation to the public. I mean, the fact of the matter is they're refusing to release the files. The deadline on Friday was not meant to be an initial deadline. It was not a suggestion. That was the legal deadline 30 days after the law was signed by the president himself. And I just again want to remind people that they have had the entirety of this year to prepare for this.

The attorney general went in front of the American people and said that she had these files on her desk reviewed and ready to be released. And they are still not complying and still breaking the law every single day. And I also don't trust Todd Blanche because this is the president's former defense attorney.

He's backpedaled multiple times already. You know, first releasing a photo of President Trump, then removing the photo. And again, it's not about whether or not the president is implicated.

It's really not about that. It's about honesty, transparency and justice for the survivors. And the survivors today have indicated that they are woefully unhappy with the response from the Department of Justice and expect Congress to hold them accountable.

HILL: They certainly have. And they've said that to a number of us here at CNN multiple times as well. Just to follow up on one thing you said.

So if you're saying you don't trust Todd Blanche when he says that there wasn't anything, there was no evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties, it sounds to me like you're saying you think there could potentially be something there. Would that then mean that the Biden administration could have failed to any uncharged third parties?

ANSARI: I mean, the fact of the matter is this cover up has been underway for decades.

[14:40:00]

At various levels of the government, the FBI, I mean, just the sweetheart deal in and of itself. There are not clear answers as to why Jeffrey Epstein ever got that deal to begin with back in the mid 2000s.

There's no question that powerful people with close connections over the course of Republican and Democratic administrations have refused to give the public the truth and the survivors the truth.

One of the most compelling things I always hear from the victims is they have asked the FBI many times for their own files. They want to understand what happened to them because there's so much trauma that comes with the type of abuse that they endured that there's often lapses in memory. And the FBI refuses to provide that information to the victims themselves.

But this cover up right now, I mean, the fact is this administration is compelled by law, both through the subpoena from the Oversight Committee as well as the law that was passed last month to release the full unredacted files, and they have failed to do so. HILL: Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari, appreciate you joining us this afternoon. Thank you.

ANSARI: Thank you.

HILL: Still ahead here, a new report revealing local pilots have been concerned now for years about the Army's flying habits near Reagan National Airport. More on that is next.

[14:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Just an explosive report from the New York Times detailing how for years the U.S. Army put inexperienced pilots in aging helicopters while they were flying over the nation's capital. The Times found Army aviators had operated in the complex airspace above Reagan National Airport in a way that suggested they were unfamiliar with some of its dangers. CNN has reached out to both the Army and the FAA for comment, but they have not responded.

January 29th will mark one year since that midair crash that killed 67 people in the deadliest Army accident ever to occur on U.S. soil. An American Airlines passenger jet collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River. The U.S. government ultimately took responsibility for the crash, admitting to Army and air traffic controller failures. New York Times investigative reporter Kate Kelly uncovered this story. She reviewed a trove of e-mails and government reports, and her investigation included interviews with dozens of pilots, military officials and relatives of those who died in the January 29th accident. Just an amazing report here, Kate.

And if we can just kind of move through some of it so that people understood what you found. I think what's most alarming is that there were prior complaints. For instance, one you bring up of a local police helicopter pilot who had previously flown for the Army who was sounding the alarm years ago that this could happen.

KATE KELLY, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, that's right. I mean, we did find, especially in these e-mail exchanges that we got through open records requests, there were local pilots, at least two of them that I know of who were former Army aviators themselves, who said that they had had close encounters with Army helicopters in the D.C. airspace as early as 2022. And anecdotally, I have heard that it went back far longer than that. Where they just felt that the Army pilots, as talented as they may have been were just not sort of -- they use the term situational awareness -- sort of aware enough of the nuances of the Washington airspace. How to kind of hang back, particularly when law enforcement was actively on a job chasing a criminal or a suspected criminal, you know, on the ground and needing a wide berth, if you will, to avoid a close call. Even when they were in contact with air traffic control who was supposed to keep them safely separated.

So concerns went back years. And really, it seems that not enough was done to mitigate those concerns. KEILAR: And there really seemed to be a need for this situational awareness, specifically of Runway 33, which is the lesser used one that the American Airlines flight was to be using that January night. It crosses the Potomac. So when you have the route that the helicopters would have been taking that ran parallel to the normal approach for D.C.A., they were kind of getting bisected by Runway 33's approach. What did you find about the awareness of Army helicopter pilots when it came to that, you know, kind of glaring danger?

KELLY: Yes, so it was not good. And there were a couple of fault lines there. The first one was the FAA is supposed to review its route structure on an annual basis.

And the NTSB investigation suggests that that was not being done, or at least not with the regularity or the rigor than perhaps it should have been. Because it seems like a number of parties were not aware of just how dangerously close that helicopter route was to the approach path for the airplanes that that airplane took on the night of January 29th. That was for starters.

Many, if not most, local helicopter pilots knew that one did not want to fly along the helicopter route when an airplane was landing on 33, even if they didn't know exactly how short that vertical distance would be between a landing airplane and a helicopter that continued on the path. They knew it was dangerously close. So they would tend to hover or change course before going forward.

But the Army, it seems, maybe not everyone, but many were not aware of either the shortness of that expanse or just the fact that it was so dangerous. Their view was essentially the route structure is set up to keep us safe.

[14:50:00]

They had not briefed their young pilots that they were teaching as instructors, or even the instructors had not been briefed by the super senior pilots on those dangers. So their view was essentially, if air traffic control tells us we can continue going forward, we're going to continue going forward.

So, again, we talked about situational awareness. It seems there was a lack of it when it came to that particularly dangerous hot spot in the air.

KEILAR: Yes, and air traffic might tell them they could go forward, but the margin was so small and air traffic control was making some assumptions. You talk about the inexperience in here that you learned over time. We've seen with some of these pilots in what's the 12th Aviation Battalion out of nearby Fort Belvoir, but you also talk about the equipment being different, right?

They're trained on one kind of helicopter, and then they come and they're flying here in the D.C. area on a helicopter that actually has fewer of the bells and whistles than the one that they were first learning on. KELLY: Yes, that was one of the particularly concerning sort of double disadvantages that we found. So, in recent years at Fort Belvoir, Fort Belvoir had typically been a kind of a destination for your very seasoned Army pilot, maybe even a final tour for a pilot that was finishing their 20-year service commitment before retirement. They tended to get a lot of seasoned folks who had had many different deployments and were experienced aviators and could handle a very complex airspace like Washington's.

In recent years, sometime around the pandemic, maybe a few years before, they started getting pilots who had just graduated from flight school. And if they were just graduating from flight school, they had more than likely only had experience on a more modern type of helicopter, a Blackhawk. When they got to Fort Belvoir, there was a more likely than not chance that they were then assigned to fly an older Blackhawk, one that they perhaps had never sat in before.

So, all of a sudden, they're training on an older Blackhawk that requires more manual flying. For example, it didn't have an autopilot feature that would allow you to like lock in an altitude and just stick to that altitude. You had to manually maintain your altitude instead of just plugging it in sort of like a vertical cruise control is how I think about it.

And you also had these pilots who maybe had 150 hours of flight time of experience as opposed to hundreds or thousands of hours because they were toward the end of their career. So, you had the people with the least sort of field experience flying on an older model that they had never sat in before. And those were two things that would be difficult for any pilot to kind of handle, but particularly in a challenging airspace like Washington.

So, they were not set up to succeed in the way that one might have hoped.

KEILAR: Yes. Well, it is a tremendous report, really the portrait of a tragedy, but also raising questions about what has really been done to make sure that something affected by these systemic failures doesn't happen again. Kate Kelly, thanks so much for being with us.

KELLY: Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me.

KEILAR: And we'll be right back.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: As the war in Ukraine nears the four-year mark, CNN is learning more about just how far-reaching the devastation has become.

HILL: Yes, Putin's war is now being blamed for a crisis in a region that's actually known as the official home of Santa. Here's CNN's Isobel Yeung.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ISOBEL YEUNG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Russia's war in Ukraine is having far-reaching and surprising impacts even hundreds of miles away here in Finland. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world flock here to the Arctic Circle.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have a feeling that you came to see Santa.

YEUNG (voiceover): Finish legend has it that this is the home --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hooray! Santa!

YEUNG (voiceover): -- of Santa Claus. The iconic reindeer are at the heart of Finland's culture and economy, but Finland's reindeer are in trouble. Thousands are showing up dead and you might be surprised to know who people here blame -- Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia's border with Finland stretches over 800 miles, the longest of any NATO country.

Juha Kujala lives just a few miles away. His family have been wrangling reindeer for over 400 years. He now sells reindeer everything from reindeer yoga --

YEUNG: Think like a reindeer.

YEUNG (voiceover): -- to sleigh rides.

YEUNG: Oh, poor reindeer. What is it that's killing the reindeer?

JUHA KUJALA, REINDEER HERDER: Wolf is the worst --

YEUNG: Um-hum.

KUJALA: -- and they just kill, kill, kill, kill. It's awful. This area was -- most of them come farther east -- the Russian side.

YEUNG: How do you know that?

KUJALA: You see the tracks. They come from the Russian side.

YEUNG: Why do you think there are more Russian wolves?

KUJALA: That's the Putin, who changed the world.

YEUNG: Putin?

KUJALA: Yeah. The soldiers and the young hunters -- they hunt the wolves, but now they're hunting people in Ukraine. There's nobody anymore that are left who is hunting wolves.

YEUNG: So do you blame Vladimir Putin for these dead reindeer?

KUJALA: Who could I blame? I could blame the whole world -- why this has happened. It's getting worse after the Ukraine war.

YEUNG (voiceover): In an effort to control the thriving wolf population, Russian men have long been paid bounties by the state for every wolf they hunt. But experts who track the Russian military tell us that recruitment drives into the war in Ukraine have been intense, leaving fewer people to hunt the wolves.

Now reports in Russian media say wolves are increasingly entering villages and towns and it seems they're crossing the border. Extensive wolf DNA testing supports that theory.

In Finland, there's been a dramatic rise in wolves, which are killing reindeer in record numbers. Sightings like these are increasingly common all along eastern Finland. That's something that will be difficult to stop as tensions along this over 800-mile border are at their highest point in decades.

YEUNG: So right now we are with some Finish conscripts in the northernmost part of the European Union.

YEUNG (voiceover): Finland has increased defense spending and is carrying out largescale military training.

YEUNG: Finland seems like a very optimistic but also very prepared country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's smart to prepare.

YEUNG (voiceover): As Finland preps for the worst, Kujala is hoping for the best.

KUJALA: Hopefully, Mr. Trump, if you hear me, do everything to try to stop this war. If we cannot fix this wolf situation quickly some part of the area is going to be without reindeers.

YEUNG: And what would that mean to you?

KUJALA: Like, somebody took my life away.

YEUNG (voiceover): Isobel Yeung, CNN, in northern Finland.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

END