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Nicolas Maduro Trial Set to Begin in June 2027; Nolan Wells' Cause of Death Undetermined After Independent Autopsy; Tropical Storm Bertha to Bring Flooding Rain, Gusty Winds; Model Recruiter Who Introduced Young Women to Epstein Found Dead. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 22, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

ANKUSH KHARDORI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: -- respects a very standard hearing and that it is a pretrial hearing to set a schedule that will govern the rest of the case. The discovery, which is unusual and more complicated than an ordinary case in a trial date, sort of setting the rules of the road, the trial date, particularly because it was stipulated, you know, we might expect that it will hold. But in a complicated like this, it could get pushed out.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Could slide. OK. So the president on social media yesterday called the military action in Venezuela that led to the capture of Maduro, he called it a war. I wonder if legally that matters because the administration has claimed that Maduro was extradited.

KHARDORI: OK. He was not extradited. There are proceedings in place that actually govern extradition, and the long and short of it is extradition treaties do not involve, you know, the government going in and just unilaterally taking someone from a foreign country. There are usually processes.

The foreign government gets notified, they review the charges, and then they decide whether or not they will extradite someone. Now, it is the case, in my estimation, that the abduction or the retrieval of him was what we would ordinarily describe as an act of war, now, under international law and even under domestic law, given what happened.

So ordinarily, you would expect that to carry some weight. The problem in this case is that judges don't typically concern themselves with how someone gets to their court, just that they are in the court. So the fact that he may have been taken away or abducted according to his lawyers in a way that was illegal under international law is likely not to stop the judge from going forward.

KEILAR: And Venezuela is not troubling themselves too much with that right now. So that may be where you'd see that play out, right?

KHARDORI: Well, yeah. I mean, Venezuela -- the interaction between the U.S. proceedings and Venezuela are quite unusual, right? For instance, you know, the government is saying -- our government is saying, well, he's not entitled to head of state immunity because we don't recognize him. But they have recognized his vice president as his successor, which somewhat complicates that argument logically.

KEILAR: How does it? Tell us about that, how that complicates his immunity claim.

KHARDORI: Well, ordinarily, if you're the head of state, you're not supposed to be able to be prosecuted by a foreign government. If you have head of state immunity, that is supposed to shut the thing down. Now, the government, the U.S. government can get around that and has in the past by saying that we don't recognize this person or they were not lawfully elected under their country's laws.

That is what -- how we've resolved cases in the past in these sorts of situations. But even though the government has taken that position here, it's hard to reconcile that position with the government also recognizing his vice president, because that does seem to suggest that there was a lawful governance structure in place.

I don't know how complicated that will eventually make this situation, but it does introduce a wrinkle that the judge and the lawyer is going to have to have to deal with.

KEILAR: Yeah, that'll be a really interesting thing to see how it turns out. Ankush, thank you so much for your expertise. Really appreciate it.

Next, independent autopsy results for Nolan Wells, the Mississippi teenager, are leading to more questions than answers. We have the new report.

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[13:37:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: There are more questions today after an independent autopsy on the body of Nolan Wells could not determine the cause of the 18-year-old's death in Mississippi. His family's attorney released the results as his family awaits the findings of the initial autopsy conducted by the state medical examiner.

The college football player, you'll remember, was found face down in the waters off Horn Island after a Fourth of July boat trip with friends. Photos from that trip show the black teen surrounded by white friends helped fuel nationwide speculation about whether race may have played a role in his death. CNN's Ryan Young has been following, and he has the latest.

And Ryan, listening to the details of this independent autopsy as released by the lawyers, some of them are, well, they're hard to hear.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: They are hard to hear. And look, we had a producer and photographer in the room when this was going on today, and there were a lot of people there who gasped when they heard parts of what this autopsy revealed.

But you've got to understand, there's a lot of emotions. This is 18 days since Nolan Wells was first reported missing, and there's been a lot of online chatter about exactly what happened. But today was supposed to be the first chance that we got at some newer details and maybe a fresh look at what's going on, because what we do know right now is there's an absence of an official report.

We would love to bring you what the ME's office has done or what the sheriff's department believes, but what we know is there were no fractures or deep tissue injuries, according to this independent autopsy that was paid for by Colin Kaepernick. But let's take a listen to Ben Crump talk about some of the discoveries they had today and the fact they're going to continue pushing for more in this investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN CRUMP, WELLS' FAMILY ATTORNEY: For these reasons, this pathologist cannot rule out if any intervening non-accidental factors contributed to or caused the death of Nolan Wells. Understand, he's saying based on the examination of the body, he cannot rule out foul play.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Yeah, he can't rule out foul play. Now, we also have this photo that they released. There was a spot on the back of his head that stood out and that they highlighted today. They were not sure what that means, but they did note this in that independent autopsy.

They also talked about the fact that they didn't have the interior wall of his neck, so they couldn't really go through that portion of his body. And then they talked about not being able to see his lungs and figure out whether or not they were full of water. So there are still a lot of questions moving forward.

And of course, when we have a toxicology report, we'll be able to figure out whether or not there was something in his system. And we're waiting for the state also to fill us in on those sort of details. But as you can imagine, and I attended the funeral on Monday, this has been very painful not only for this family, but for the community.

So many people coming forward with stories about how much they loved this kid and the idea that they want to know something.

[13:40:00]

But take a listen to his mom, who you obviously can understand her pain and maybe just her desire to know exactly what happened to her son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTINE WELLS-WONSLEY, MOTHER OF NOLAN WELLS: My concern and also my husband's concern was it was not even an hour that his body had been removed and the sheriff came out and said this is, you know, accidental drowning. We don't think there's foul play. Again, that is why we're doing what we're doing and why we're moving the way we are because I sat there and asked them, please take this case as if this is your child, your family member, your whatever, and they promised that they would.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Yeah, Jim just looking down on my notes one of the things that stood out to me is if you remember the family had to go get the cell phone of Nolan Wells from one of his friends. They tracked it using the Live360 to a house and they believe something may have been done to the phone, so we know they're going to have to go through the phone at one point and figure out if anything's been deleted and that really set off a sort of alarm signal to this family that something may have taken place that is not being told to them.

And then there's two different stories in terms of why did Nolan stay behind. And the last thing that I'll mention here is, we've had repeated calls to authorities in that area to try to figure out what this timeline is. Those phone calls, at this point have, gone unanswered since we've had this new updated information. And I will tell you this lastly, is that the tip line for Nolan Wells has really been getting a lot of phone calls since they've raised this reward. So just to give you a heads up.

SCIUTTO: Much investigation to come, no question. Ryan Young, thank you.

Well, a tropical storm is now closing in on Louisiana, but the biggest impacts could be felt hundreds of miles away.

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[13:46:13]

KEILAR: Right now, Tropical Storm Bertha is closing in on Louisiana as it threatens the Gulf Coast with fierce winds and serious flooding. And it could brush the coast or make landfall as soon as this afternoon. Its arrival will also be felt hundreds of miles away through the end of the week. CNN's Chris Warren is tracking this threat for us.

Where's the storm right now, Chris?

CHRIS WARREN, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, Brianna, right now, the storm is getting closer and closer to land. And it's going to be essentially unavoidable now when you look at where it is. It's right here, right now, and getting closer to the Louisiana coastline. And it's not going to go south, north. Even if it did, it would be touching land.

But the worst of the weather, the strongest storms are well removed from the center of this, the center of circulation. That being said, still seeing some of the stronger winds and tropical storm conditions with tropical-storm-force winds are expected here in blue, where already there have been winds gusting stronger than 30 miles an hour.

Close to 40 there in Biloxi with that onshore flow. Also increasing the chance there could be a little bit of storm surge, maybe one to two -- two to four feet of water higher than a normal high tide. And you can even make out that circulation, pretty good here with the radar where the rain is falling. But also notice there's not a lot of yellow or orange or even red showing up on the radar. So not real heavy rain, just gusty, showery kind of weather.

It is expected to continue to weaken during the overnight hours tonight into tomorrow morning as it moves over land. But here's the deal. Even as it moves into Texas over the next couple of days, some of the moisture is being drawn up into the southeast where there's the frontal boundary here that is stalled out or stalling out. It's just going to hang out for a while. It's the same system that brought that big mess and the dangerous weather throughout parts of the northeast and into West Virginia last night and overnight.

So now that flood threat is being transferred down here into portions of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, even a bit into parts of Alabama and Mississippi where you see some of the higher rainfall totals expected in yellow and orange. And even outside of those colors, you could have, Brianna, pockets of very heavy rain that's partially being fueled by Bertha, as at this point, will be moving into Texas.

KEILAR: All right, we'll be tracking that with you. Chris Warren, thank you so much.

A French modeling agent who connected young women to Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead in his home near Paris. We'll have details on that next.

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[13:53:30]

SCIUTTO: An associate of Jeffrey Epstein, known to have connected the late sex offender to young women, has been found dead in his apartment near Paris. Daniel Siad's name appears more than 2,000 times in files released by the Justice Department and those records reveal how he spent more than a decade arranging for Epstein to meet models, including two women who would later say that Epstein abused them.

CNN Senior International Correspondent, Melissa Bell is in Paris with the details.

MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A French model recruiter linked to Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home in the suburb of Colombes near Paris, according to prosecutors. Daniel Siad had been the subject of renewed scrutiny in the wake of the latest releases of the Epstein files by the U.S. Department of Justice.

For over a decade, he'd arranged for the late sex offender to meet several models. CNN's Katie Polglase recently interviewed Siad, who said he'd had no reason to believe that two women he'd recommended to Epstein had been harmed by him even though those two women told CNN that they were indeed abused by Jeffrey Epstein.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DANIEL SIAD, MODEL SCOUT: My work with him has been strictly professional. I never doubt that -- because I never heard anything from anyone I introduced him who came back to me that they had a bad situation with him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BELL: Siad said he believed that Epstein was a casting director for Victoria's Secret and for a modeling agency. CNN has found no evidence to support that claim.

[13:55:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIAD: I didn't know a lot about him until when he comes to Paris and I told you again, he said he pays these -- his due to the government. So for me, he's free man, he's clean. He was such a powerful person, and how can I not trust him?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BELL: Epstein ties to the modeling industry are part of ongoing investigations, including a criminal probe launched this year in Paris involving Siad, according to the city's chief prosecutor.

Now, Siad's lawyer has pointed to the stress that the man was under due to the unbearable waiting and, I quote, the stigma cast upon him. Siad's lawyer's statement also calling for respect for his loved ones as they mourn, adding that he died and was innocent.

Siad himself was also facing accusations of abuse. A model accused him of rape when she was working in France in 1990. Siad had also denied that accusation. His death certainly marks the latest macabre twist in the Epstein saga and a reminder of the ripple effects of the revelations from the Epstein files and of the fact that they are far from over.

Melissa Bell, CNN, Paris.

SCIUTTO: A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right after a quick break.

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