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Trump Expected To Make "Major Announcement" On Russia; Report: 700+ Migrants Held At New Florida Detention Center; Trump Defends AG Pam Bondi Over Handling Of Epstein Investigation. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired July 14, 2025 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning President Trump will host the NATO secretary general at the White House.

And you'll recall last week the president said that he would be making a major statement on Russia and the war in Ukraine today. This is days after he announced a deal with NATO to send weapons to Ukraine -- an agreement the president said will include NATO paying for U.S. weapons and sending them to Ukraine.

When asked about the bipartisan Russia sanctions bill that's being pushed by Congress but waiting for Trump to give the green light, the president said, "We'll see."

All of this comes as Russia hit Ukraine with a fresh barrage of drone and missile attacks this weekend.

And President Trump saying this Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am very disappointed with President Putin, you know. I thought he was somebody that meant what he said. And he'll talk so beautifully and then he'll bomb people at night. We don't like that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Big questions though what today means for this ongoing war effort.

Joining us right now is a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker. Also the former special U.S. representative for Ukraine negotiations in the first Trump administration. It's good to see you again, Ambassador.

What do you think of what we know --

KURK VOLKER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO, FORMER SPECIAL U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FOR UKRAINE NEGOTIATIONS, FIRST TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, SENIOR ADVISER, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: Good to see you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: -- of this agreement with NATO and the reporting -- and what weapons it could include?

VOLKER: Yeah. Well, first off, this is classic President Trump to get the weapons to Ukraine but have somebody else pay for it, and the NATO allies are willing to do so. They have committed to spend five percent of GDP on the fence, and quick way to do that is to buy some U.S. weaponry and to continue to support Ukraine, which is in their vital security interest. So that's seems to be going forward, and Secretary General Rutte is here.

It will include Patriots. There will be additional missiles and batteries of Patriots going to Ukraine and some other long-range weapon systems I would think. And then a lot of artillery as well.

BOLDUAN: In addition to that one thing that is lingering -- has been lingering and it's been going on for, I mean, months and months is the big question of what about sanctions.

When you and I spoke back at the end of May --

VOLKER: Yeah.

BOLDUAN: -- I was looking back at it -- you were saying then that Congress needed to move on these sanctions right away. You fast- forward now almost two months now and you have Graham and Blumenthal still trying to get the president and his team on board with it.

I want to play for everyone what Sen. Graham said just yesterday about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): A turning point regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine is coming. Dick and I have got 85 co-sponsors in the United States Senate for congressional sanctions with a sledgehammer available to President Trump to go after Putin's economy and all those countries who prop up the Putin war machine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: From your perspective, Ambassador, why is this needed?

VOLKER: Well, I think that Russia is still able to sell oil and gas and get paid for it, so that is bringing in money into the Kremlin coffers which is funding their war. So if we actually go forward with secondary sanctions so that anyone who is helping Russia do that is subject to sanctions themselves that will dry up that flow of money into the war machine. So I do think it's essential that this go forward.

What I expect President Trump to do is to send a signal to Congress that he does want them to pass this legislation now, but he also wants the discretion as to when and how to apply the sanctions himself. So executive authority but having the tool in his hand already.

BOLDUAN: Yeah, and the -- because the clip I just played earlier of the president from yesterday hearing him say again that he is disappointed in Putin -- I mean, this has become a consistent new message from President Trump on Putin, at least consistent in the past week, that he is now happy with him. Things -- I mean, he said last week he thinks that Putin has been feeding him B.S.

With that in mind is there any good reason for President Trump to continue balking on these sanctions? Because you know there -- they can work out the waiver authority. It's -- that's -- you know, that's part of the detail. They can always get worked out. It's just does he want it to go forward or not?

VOLKER: Yeah. Well, if you remember back to the NATO summit, Marco Rubio was asked why are you not going ahead with the sanctions now? And he said -- and I'm sure he was channeling President Trump -- he said well, if we do that then we've lost all hope for a negotiated settlement.

Now, I don't agree with that. I think that it actually needs that kind of pressure on Putin to get him to the point of a settlement, but I think that has been the administration's thinking.

I think what we're seeing from President Trump now with these consistent statements over a week of how disappointed he is with Putin, is that he's realizing that there is no other way other than this kind of pressure.

BOLDUAN: The president's special envoy to Russia and Ukraine, Keith Kellogg -- he just arrived in Ukraine as well.

What role is he playing in all of this?

[07:35:00]

VOLKER: Well, it's not clear. You know, President Trump is the master of his own administration. He's making his own decisions on what he wants to do and not do. He has several people who are involved in talking with various people. You have Steve Witkoff. You have Kellogg. You have Marco Rubio himself.

But Kellogg is the most knowledgeable person in the administration at this stage about Ukraine, about the war. He's a retired general, of course. He understands all of the issues on the ground. So his knowledge and his advice is critical and he's able to have productive conversations with the Ukrainians.

But that is just one piece that is being filtered up to President Trump alongside other pieces about dealing with Putin, about the economy, about tariffs, about energy, and so forth.

BOLDUAN: Is there one thing that you are hoping that you -- that you hear that would give you a signal that Trump is ready to really put the weapons in place and do the -- make the moves that you have been saying are essential for months now to really change the dynamic in this war? Something you're looking for to hear -- to hearing today.

VOLKER: Yeah. So there's a potential trifecta here that would be a very strong signal to Putin, and that would be not only agreeing that NATO countries can buy U.S. weapons. That should happen. The secondary sanctions -- that should happen.

Third, we should seize the Russian central bank assets that are still in the United States -- there's about $8 billion there -- and use that for support to Ukraine and urge the Europeans to do the same. And they're sitting on about $260 billion in Russian assets. So that would be quite significant if they did that.

And then one final piece of legislation that has not been renewed yet but still could be is lend-lease for Ukraine. That's giving Ukraine the authority to borrow directly from the United States provided they buy American weapons and ammunition and pay us back later.

All of those things together would send a very strong signal to Putin that he's hit his highwater mark. He's not going to get any more out of this and it's time to stop the war.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. One of the questions it seems having over -- if not now, when is kind of the moment it seems to be -- we seem to be at.

Ambassador, it's really great to see you. Thank you so much -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning we're learning new details about the controversial new detention center in the Everglades. According to reporting from The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times, more than 700 migrants are being detained there or scheduled to be. Many of them have no criminal records.

CNN's Rafael Romo has been digging through this and joins us now. What are you learning, Rafael?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

You may remember this. When President Donald Trump toured the migrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades earlier this month, he said that it would very soon house some of the most menacing migrants. He said some of the most vicious people on the planet. But a new report published Sunday suggests that may not be the case.

Hundreds of immigrants with no criminal charges in the United States are being held at Alligator Alcatraz, according to an investigation by The Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times, which obtained records about the migrants being held there.

According to the report, John, there are more than 250 people who are listed as having only immigration violations but not criminal convictions who are being held together with those accused and convicted of crimes. The report says only a third of the detainees have criminal convictions with charges that range from attempted murder to illegal reentry into the United States, as well as traffic violations.

The information comes from a list of more than 700 migrants who are either already being held at the tent facility or are scheduled to be transferred there.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was part of a group of Florida elected officials and members of Congress who had access to the migrant detention center on Saturday for the first time since it opened earlier this month, reacted to the report on Sunday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-FL): We were very suspect of that because they have a bracelet system of red, yellow, and green, I believe. And, you know, there were -- we could hardly get up close to any of them, but it was clear that there were not many with red bracelets.

But then the Herald story comes out this morning and shows that hundreds of these 900 detainees have no criminal conviction, and that was our suspicion to begin with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: Wasserman Schultz also said that migrants are packed into what she described as cages with 32 people inside each holding unit and only three toilets available.

In an interview on CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION" with Dana Bash, White House border czar Tom Homan dismissed the claims, suggesting the Democratic lawmakers' complaints about conditions at Alligator Alcatraz are politically motivated.

This is what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: I've been doing this job since 1984. Detainees complain about the conditions of detention. And I've said this many times, you can simply go to ice.gov and look at the detention standards ICE has. The have the highest detention standards in the industry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:40:10]

ROMO: And John, after touring the detention center Saturday, Rep. Darren Soto, a Democrat, said lawmakers also witnessed evidence of flooding, highlighting serious concerns of what could happen to detainees if there is severe weather during what forecasters said may be a busy hurricane season -- John.

BERMAN: Yeah -- and that, of course, is coming soon.

Rafael Romo for us. Thank you very much -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Also new CNN reporting coming in of former President Barack Obama bringing some tough talk to Democrats in a private fundraiser Friday. He was in New Jersey. The event hosted by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and his wife Tammy Murphy. The dinner raising $2.5 million through in-person and online donations for the DNC, a source familiar with the event telling our Arlette Saenz. Let's get to our Arlette Saenz with more on what President Obama then said. And Arlette, what was the former president's message here?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, former president Barack Obama issued a call to action for Democrats, saying that it's time for the party to "toughen up." Now, these comments came at a private closed-press fundraiser in New Jersey on Friday evening, but CNN has obtained some exclusive excerpts of President Obama's remarks where he encouraged Democrats to have some courage and stand up for what is right.

The former president said, "I think it's going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it's going to require Democrats to just toughen up."

Now this comes as the Democratic Party has really been searching for a path forward in this second Trump era and beyond. There are many in the party's base who want to see more forceful pushback from Democratic leadership as they are locked out of power.

But as Democrats weigh who should lead the party into the future, former President Obama said that Democrats need to focus on the elections that are happening right now -- specifically pointing to the governors' races in New Jersey and Virginia. He praised both of those candidates and said, "Stop looking for the quick fix. Stop looking for the Messiah. You have great candidates running races right now. Support those candidates."

Now as for the current president, Obama said that he has not been surprised by Trump's actions while in office. But he did call out law firms and universities, saying that they need to do more to stand up to the intimidation tactics coming from the Trump administration.

Now, Obama has been quite selective in when and how he has spoken out since Trump returned to power in January. We have heard of various speeches or online events where he has criticized Trump policy or warned that the country is moving closer to a more autocratic government.

But for the former president he still carries a lot of weight within the Democratic Party, so we will see how this message resounds as he is offering a very blunt message for his party that it's time for them to do more.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. Great reporting, Arlette. Thank you so much for bringing it to us this morning -- John.

BERMAN: All right. With us now, CNN political commentator Kate Bedingfield, and Maura Gillespie, founder and principal of Bluestack Strategies.

I want to shift gears if I can because overnight Politico just put out a story this morning that they did an interview with Laura Loomer, who is a conservative activist and a fierce supporter of President Trump who has been highly critical of the Justice Department and their memo on Jeffrey Epstein saying that there is no client list that they're going to release and they're not issuing anything else on it.

Maura, Laura Loomer is calling for a special counsel now to investigation the Department of Justice handling around this. What would that do to quell the controversy, and why is this controversy so loud, Maura?

MAURA GILLESPIE, FOUNDER AND PRINCIPAL, BLUESTACK STRATEGIES, FORMER PRESS ADVISER TO HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER (via Webex by Cisco): The controversy is so loud because in either scenario -- either Pam Bondi, Donald Trump, and the Trump White House used this information to campaign on knowing that there was nothing there or they flat out are now covering something up.

In the view of MAGA those are the two options here that they need to decide which is worse. Did they lie to you and there's nothing there and they just used it to get an election win, or do they have something and they're covering it up? So either scenario doesn't seem very good for the MAGA base.

But when it comes to Laura Loomer, she is not an elected official. She is not a member of the Republican Party leadership. So I don't take a whole lot of stock in what she says and does considering her dangerous conspiracy theories and the like. So I do think, though, that her drawing attention to this and being such a loud voice in the MAGA world could only further the problem that the president and his team will have if they continue to dismiss this Epstein stuff and pretend like it's not a big deal.

BERMAN: Do you think, Maura, that a special counsel would dampen some of the spirits or the calls right now?

[07:45:00]

GILLESPIE: It may if they actually took the attention to say, OK, let's look into this. But obviously there's something going on that the MAGA world does not find to be excusable, and so there has to be some sort of answer. They can't continue to push this away. I don't think it's going away, so there has to be something done with either Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Kash Patel even. They need to come out and say what it is in those binders.

But there's also a lot of people in the MAGA space who went on X or Twitter, or whatever -- Truth Social -- and said I watched it. I saw it. I watched the videos. I saw the binder. I saw the list. So where are they now? What have they said about it? Because I think there's a lot of questions still floating around there.

BERMAN: So Kate, what is it that Democrats can and should do, do you think, about this? We have started to see some -- like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman -- come out and call for a certain level of transparency. What do you think the Democrats can on their side?

KATE BEDINGFIELD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR (via Webex by Cisco): Well, I think it's certainly reasonable for the Democrats to push for additional transparency. This is a problem of Trump's own making, and this is why I actually am not sure that a special counsel is going to solve the problem for Trump here even if he does take Laura Loomer's advice. Because he has -- he has created this problem by campaigning on making these files known to the public and then refusing to do it, and he's put himself right at the center of the decision-making.

I mean, we saw the Truth Social post a couple of days ago. I think it was actually the first Truth Social post that's ever been ratioed for Donald Trump. I mean, the MAGA base incredibly fired up about this. This is the first time we've seen them say they don't take him at his word. It's the first time we've seen him unable to successfully slough something off on someone else in his administration. He is really continuing to take the blame.

And I think as long as he is saying to his base and to the country we're not going to -- you know, you should move on -- you shouldn't take about this anymore -- this isn't an issue -- we're not going to provide any more information, this is going to continue to go straight to him, whether it's Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, or a special counsel looking into it.

So this is the first time he's really had to reckon with his base being unhappy with him in a way that he can't seem to wiggle out of.

BERMAN: So there was a story in The New York Times overnight. The New York Times spoke to former President Biden specifically about the pardons he issued at the end of his term. And this issue that a lot of Republicans have brought up that many of the pardons were signed with an autopen. That's an automatic pen; not the president's own hand here.

Let me read you one quote and then the other from this article. "In an interview with The New York Times Mr. Biden said he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term, calling President Trump and other Republicans 'liars' for claiming his aides had used an autopen to do so without his authorization." So he said he had orally approved of all of them.

But he also said, the article said, "Mr. Biden did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people, he and his aides confirmed. Rather, after an extensive discussion of different possible criteria, he signed off on the standards he wanted to be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a reduction in sentence."

In that case, Kate, it had to do with classes of individuals. People -- drug offenders and whatnot.

How far will this go Kate, do you think, to quiet the calls on the right for those who are saying oh, these pardons and commutations aren't legit? President Biden, they say, didn't know about them. What does this do now?

BEDINGFIELD: The story I think was actually a smart move on the Biden team's part because it goes to how diligent the process was. There are emails provided to The New York Times that show there was a process in place where Biden personally signed off on the categories of commutations -- which, by the way, is the exact same procedure that Donald Trump said that he used to make decisions about the January 6 pardons. He, himself, said there were too many names to go through one-by-one and so he approved a blanket pardon, and those pardons were then auto penned.

So this is the exact same process. If Republicans want to pursue this then they are going to need to answer for the January 6 pardons, which we know is something that they are not eager -- many elected officials -- many elected Republicans, I should say, are not eager to have to talk about and embrace.

So I think for the Biden team to lay out categorically emails -- contemporaneous emails from the time -- from the period between the election and the inauguration that show that there was a diligent process in place and that Biden signed off on these pardons I think was a smart thing for them to do.

BERMAN: Maura?

GILLESPIE: I think then if you're comparing what Biden did at the end of his term to what Trump did at the start of his term as a citizen watching this play out, neither of those situations and neither of those processes clearly worked because there were the mistakes made. It's a flawed practice.

We already read that article in The New York Times pointing out that there were changes made at the bureau. The prison bureau called and said OK, we have some updates and changes that were not reviewed by the president.

[07:50:00]

We also obviously know that President Trump when he pardoned -- you know, which a lot of Republicans in Congress and elected officials, and American at large don't agree with the pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists.

Those are flawed processes. And so when I hear that and when I look at that, that to me just says that we need to do better and elect better because that's a broken system and those blanket pardons are a problem.

Maura Gillespie, Kate Bedingfield, thanks so much for being with us this morning.

All right, we do have breaking news. We're learning about multiple fatalities that are now being reported. Also, firefighters hurt at a senior living facility. This happened in Massachusetts overnight. Those details are just coming in.

And accusations of poisoned protein shakes, an affair, and a jailhouse murder-for-hire plot. We have more on the trial of a dentist accused of murdering his wife.

(COMMERCIAL) BOLDUAN: Slow-moving thunderstorms brought heavy rain to parts of central Texas -- the very same parts still reeling from the July Fourth deadly flash floods.

[07:55:00]

Ground search operations in Kerrville, Texas -- they were brought to a halt for a time yesterday when those storms brought more flooding -- more risks to the river level to the areas that were already devastated.

CNN's Derek Van Dam is joining us live from the Weather Center with much more on this. What were they -- what were they dealing with, and what's it -- what's it going to look like now?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, authorities on the ground, Kate, really have that delicate decision as they were watching the radar in real time across the Texas Hill Country. The last thing they want to do is pause the ongoing search efforts across this region, but this is what happened.

So roughly between four and six inches of rain fell cross Kerr County, some of the hardest hit areas. And there was flash flooding that occurred -- nowhere near what we experienced on the Fourth of July across the area but certainly enough to cause more misery in the areas that have already had enough.

So there's more rain in this forecast, unfortunately. Right now, as it stands, this is our current radar. See those flash flood warnings. This is western-central Kerr County. That black outline indicates a considerable tag associated with it, so we're talking about a level two of three in terms of the expected flooding occurring with this.

So this is a very saturate environment and with over six inches of rain falling across the region, remember we've got the Guadalupe River, Llano River, and the San Saba River to the north. All of tis falling within the river basins here, funneling into the valleys below and causing this flash flood threat that will be ongoing today.

You can see the mixture of showers and thunderstorms that will form across the Texas Hill Country today, fizzling out overnight and then reforming into the day tomorrow. We have a slight risk of flash flooding across that area.

Now to the East Coast -- a different set of flooding circumstances but still considerable. Look at D.C. to Philadelphia under this moderate risk. That's a level three of four. The potential here for two to four inches of rainfall overwhelming some of the drainage systems here. We've got over 40 million Americans under this flood watch.

And in terms of timing we'll see these showers and thunderstorms increase by this evening just in time for the rush hour home. So heads up -- that I-95 corridor between 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. tonight. There could be washouts, and you could potentially have some planing if you're driving too fast over those flooded roadways -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. A lot to watch. Thank you so much, Derek. I really appreciate it -- John.

BERMAN: All right. We are getting some breaking news this morning. At least nine people have been killed and dozens we understand injured after a fire ripped through an assisted living home in Fall River, Massachusetts. This fire broke out last night at Gabriel House in Fall River, which is a blue-collar city about an hour south of Boston.

Fire crews pulled elderly people from windows as other parts of the building were engulfed in flames. This morning investigators are trying to figure out what sparked this fire. At least five firefighters were also hurt.

New this morning an update in efforts to curb HIV. The World Health Organization is now recommending a newly approved, twice-a-year injection to block new infections. The shot is not a vaccine, but it does offer near total protection and is an alternative to the daily -- the daily prep pill, which many struggle to take consistently.

Rollout in low-income countries may face hurdles. International funding is shrinking after cuts to global HIV programs by the Trump administration.

BOLDUAN: Hmm.

BERMAN: Kate.

BOLDUAN: So jury selection is now underway in the trial of the Colorado dentist accused of fatally poisoning his wife. James Craig has pleaded not guilty to six felony charges, including first-degree murder for allegedly putting cyanide and other poisons in his wife's protein shakes.

CNN's Jean Casarez has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. JAMES CRAIG, COLORADO DENTIST ON TRIAL FOR MURDERING HIS WIFE: My name is Dr. Jim Craig, and I practice at Summerbrook Dental Group.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): Craig and his wife Angela had all the appearances of a storybook life. The couple lived outside of Denver where they were busy raising their six children. Craig ran a seemingly successful dental practice. But prosecutors will soon paint a very different picture of what was going on behind the scenes.

On March 6, 2023, Craig made Angela's daily protein shake, but after drinking it she didn't feel well. She texted her husband.

"Have you eaten anything?"

"I had my protein shake and magnesium makes me weird. This is not hungry."

"Are you nauseous?"

"No. I feel drugged." Over the next 10 days she went to the hospital three times, but they couldn't figure out what was wrong.

On March 10 she texted her husband. "Everything was negative or normal. They just did an ultrasound of my heart."

Investigators believe she continued to drink protein shakes at home. As his wife was fighting for her life, investigators say Craig had a girlfriend come visit. She spoke out to ABC News after his arrest.

MATT GUTMAN, ABC NEWS CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Do you think James Craig allegedly poisoned his wife to clear the deck so he could be with you?

KARIN CAIN, DATED MURDER SUSPECT: There's no way I'm motive. There's been no planning a future.