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Split in GOP as Trump's Base Demands Answers in Epstein Case; White House Officials: FBI Deputy Director Bongino Staying for Now; Flash Floods Slam Northeast, Millions Remain Under Flood Threat; DOJ Fires at Least a Dozen Employees Who Worked with Jack Smith; 75 Former Judges Urge Senate Committee to Reject Trump Nominee Bove. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired July 15, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Again, this is where this this story takes a turn because investigators say, again, that while Craig was behind bars, he tried to hire an inmate to kill this lead detective. He was also trying to mastermind a plot to support evidence that Angela was suicidal.

This idea that Angela Craig was suicidal is going to be key to James Craig's defense much more to get through, John, and then I'll leave you with this.

There have been many turns in this case. He's had, you know, he's gone through multiple defense attorneys. He's on his third defense attorney. This case was supposed to begin in November. There's been a delay. It is now beginning today. So a lot to learn here, again, opening statements today -- John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, so much evidence in the prosecution's hand. Yet the defense does have a clear strategy here. So we will watch it unfold very shortly. Whitney Wild, Thank you so much.

A brand new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, President Trump publicly pleading with his base to move on from the Jeffrey Epstein case and privately telling his top aides to let the story die. So far, though, MAGA world is still making accusations of a cover up.

And breaking overnight. Dangerous flash flooding swamp cities in the Northeast, creating treacherous road conditions and prompting water rescues where the threat remains at this hour.

And this morning, thousands of employees across federal health agencies waking up without a job. What the mass layoffs could mean for public health.

I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let the story die down. CNN has learned that is what President Trump is telling his team as he faces a growing uproar from his most ardent supporters and some inside his own administration over the Jeffrey Epstein case. It's already been a roller coaster a few days over this.

And now sources say the president is hoping to tamp down the drama, dividing his base. Still a lot of questions and a lot remains in limbo, including the future of the FBI deputy director, Dan Bongino. He returned to work yesterday after reportedly threatening to quit over Attorney General Pam Bondi's handling of the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files. Sources say his relationship with the White House at this point is basically untenable.

And as the president's supporters continue to demand answers, his own daughter in law is speaking out, suggesting that this may not be the end of the Epstein saga.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARA TRUMP, FORMER CO-CHAIR, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: I mean, look, I don't know what truly exists there, but I know that this is something that's important to the president as well. He's going to want to set things right as well. So I believe that there will probably be more coming on this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: CNN's Kevin Liptak starting us off this hour at the White House with much more. And so what is the White House saying now about this?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, I'll tell you what they're not saying, which is that there will be more coming on this, which is what we just heard from Lara Trump. In fact, the entire gist of the Department of Justice memo that started all of this was that this was case closed, that we wouldn't be hearing any more on this matter. And essentially the hope and expectation here at the White House is that this will all essentially just sputter out, that the president's supporters will listen to his entreaties to put this matter to rest.

And this will all sort of dissolve into the ether, like so many Trump controversies before it, at least with one subset of the president's outraged base, which are the people who actually work for him. That does appear to be what's happening. Dan Bongino, the deputy FBI director, who threatened to quit over this last week and didn't show up to work on Friday, was at the job, was in the office yesterday morning after some back and forth, the president and his allies trying to work and massage the situation with Bongino to get him back on the job.

But we should say that Bongino has said previously he doesn't particularly like this job at the FBI and he does appear to be working to maintain some credibility with the audience of his podcast, which he had previous to this job, on which he peddled so many of these conspiracies regarding Jeffrey Epstein. And at the end of the day, it is this question of credibility that seems to be at the center of this. President Trump is someone who used these conspiracies to cultivate his political base.

But now that he's president, he seems unable or unwilling to give the answers to his base that they were looking for when they elected him president. Listen to one of those supporters, the Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, talking about this controversy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MAJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): A lot of people in MAGA, they really want to know more information about the people that were involved with Jeffrey Epstein. And is there a blackmail list?

[08:05:00]

And are there foreign countries' governments involved?

And there's nothing wrong with people continuing to ask that.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: How big of a blowback is there right now in MAGA world specifically?

GREENE: It's pretty big. I have to be honest. I'm always honest about what's going on. And yes, this one, this one has been pretty big.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: So you really see how this is testing the president's power among his supporters, which is a group of people he has ordinarily an almost preternatural ability to read. In this case, he seems to have lost the pulse in some ways.

You talk to some Trump allies, they think he might not have digested fully the effect this is having on his base. And they say that his attempts to dismiss or diminish it might just be making things worse.

BOLDUAN: Well, it sounds like we're about to we're going to find out pretty soon. It's good to see you, Kevin, thank you so much -- John.

BERMAN: All right. With us now is CNN political analyst Jackie Kucinich and Zolan Kanno-Youngs. I will say we did hear from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who says it has had a lasting impact on the MAGA base.

On the other hand, President Trump is asking people to stop talking about it. And I want you to listen to what Charlie Kirk says about this conservative activist who was talking a whole lot about the Jeffrey Epstein case but now tells us this. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE KIRK, CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST: Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration. I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done.

Solve it. Balls in their hands. I've said plenty this last weekend. So if you guys want to see my commentary on it, that's fine. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So, Jackie, what does the Kirk capitulation there tell you?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: We know that he spoke to the president. We know that this all sort of came to a head at his event in Florida this past weekend.

But listen, I think one of the interesting things just about the Trump phenomenon, right, is that he has ability for the supporters to, you know, just completely pass blame to really be able to set the narrative here.

And you're not seeing that now. What you are seeing happening is attempts to shift the blame from his supporters. What is Bondi not telling him? Who is speaking to him? Who is advising him? And that's what I would imagine would continue to happen here and leaving the president himself blameless in all this and instead really blaming the people around him. That seems to be where this is shifting right now.

BERMAN: And, Zolan, we have the Dan Bongino of it all, who took off work on Friday, didn't show up, did show up yesterday. But there are sort of hints that maybe he's trying to make sure that he doesn't lose the support of his podcasting base, doesn't maybe want to lose that side hustle or previous hustle. So what does that tell you?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, absolutely. This came to a head last week when we had a heated exchange between Dan Bongino and the attorney general in the White House in front of senior White House officials as well.

And, of course, it's important to remember that, yes, the attorney general did at one point, you know, raise expectations for what the administration would turn over on Epstein, only to later walk that back. But Dan Bongino spent a while on a podcast during the presidential campaign, you know, almost igniting, you know, the fire around this conspiracy theory. He talked about it all the time on his podcast.

It's one of the main reasons it drove, you know, popularity as well for his podcast. So you can see now how this topic has come about and he would think about not just his current, you know, job in front of him, but also the previous job that brought him that popularity. There's been reports as well that he's complained about this high- profile government job that he now has in the FBI as well.

So, you know, we're going to have to see now moving forward. This administration has tried to tame down on firings compared to the first Trump term, seeing it as almost a way to prolong a controversial period. So it'll be interesting just to see where this moves now moving forward.

As you noted, he did come into work after some questions about that towards the end of last week.

BERMAN: I think it was Axios who pointed this out this morning, Jackie, that there are some examples now of President Trump kind of asking things of his base or going against --

KUCINICH: Right.

BERMAN: -- some of the things that his base came to expect from him. You have the Jeffrey Epstein sort of pseudo promise that he was going to release the files there. And now you have Ukraine, where President Trump and it's certainly J.D. Vance and others had been critical, if not disdainful, of Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but now announcing that absolutely going to supply weapons through NATO. But just listen to a little bit of what the president said.

Oh, we have a full screen here. I can read that for you. Let's put it up.

[08:10:00]

We've made a deal today where we're going to be sending them weapons and they're going to be paying for them. We, the United States, will not be having any payment made.

The point here is he is sending weapons to Ukraine, albeit through this creative way of saying, hey, we're not doing it directly.

But how much will the base stand for? And can he just by sheer force of will kind of shift the positioning here, Jackie?

KUCINICH: Well, he also did that with Iran. Remember that he was someone who said he was going to be a non-interventionalist. Really, he is the center of gravity in the MAGA movement and has been.

Whether or not he can sustain that as he does really shift. I mean, the Trump doctrine is kind of what he says it is. And that's managed to move people.

I mean, even look at the Big, Beautiful Bill this last week. There were conservatives who were saying we're absolutely not going to vote for this. And yet they did because the president told them to, essentially, and they were able to get there.

How long the base goes along with him, we're going to have to see. I really think the midterms are going to be a test of this, truly, because we're going to see how much his base will go along with him and whether his supporters in Congress will be punished for things they don't agree with.

BERMAN: Zolan, what kind of pressure does this put on a guy like J.D. Vance?

KANNO-YOUNGS: Well, at this point, the vice president seems to be acting as a mediator, you know, between the different -- between the different factions as a part of the last topic we were talking about with Epstein, trying to almost calm tensions between Bondi and Bongino as well.

And remember, you know, J.D. Vance has been, you know, after the revelations in a Signal chat between senior administration officials, he has -- it is pretty clear that he has moved towards -- wants the administration to move towards an isolationist approach, an America first approach where you're pulling out of these forever wars when it comes to something like Ukraine.

I thought it was interesting that yesterday during the president's meeting with the NATO leader as well, that he actually at one point pointed to J.D. and said, look, we do have a view that also Americans are not on the battleground there. And he was saying that as almost a way to it seemed, you know, hedge expectations on just how long on on America's involvement as well. So it does put pressure on J.D. Vance, especially when you talk about holding on to this MAGA base, you know, for years to come beyond this Trump term as well.

BERMAN: Well, because clearly that's where J.D. Vance could be looking. All right. Jackie Kucinich, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, thank you both so much for being with us -- Sara -- actually, Kate.

BOLDUAN: I'm literally right here.

BERMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: I love you so much. Let's move to this.

There was massive flooding overnight across a huge portion of the Northeast as big summer storms caused dangerous conditions across multiple states.

New York City got two inches of rain in one hour, the second single wettest hour in history, which led to subway stations and trains flooding right during the evening commute. As you saw. And I'm like, that is not something you ever want to encounter when you're in the subway.

In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there were at least 16 water rescues that were required. Cars brought to a halt as drivers face down flooded roads in what became very quickly and probably almost very suddenly treacherous conditions. Right now, millions remain under a flood threat still.

CNN's Derek Van Dam live from the Weather Center watching all of this for us. Where -- where to begin?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, Kate, where to begin? Good question. So in Petersburg, Virginia, some of the hardest hit areas from the flooding saw up to five inches of rain that prompted a flash flood emergency in the darkness of night last night.

And then there's this. This is coming out of the North Plainfield, New Jersey region. We're talking about 17 miles to the southwest of Newark. So that vehicle there bursting into flames after the driver attempted to drive around the flooded roads. Here's the aftermath. Look at the debris strewn across the roadways there. Shows you the force of the flash flooding, which rises rapidly in these types of instances, and it can leave behind the debris.

Now, at one point last night, right during rush hour and into the late evening hours, there were over three dozen flash flood warnings with this heavy rain event, and it covered over a dozen states across the Mid-Atlantic and into New England. We had over 200 reports of flooding, especially across the Mid-Atlantic, and I want to hone in on the Petersburg region.

Here's the Colonial Heights. We have a couple of these instances where they saw 18 inches of water in the backyards of houses. We had flooding on the first floor of apartments with several inches of water inside of the building.

There is still a flood warning for Petersburg and the surrounding areas through this morning. As it takes time for this water to recede, the heavy rain has moved on, but we still have the flooding ongoing across the region.

Now, what can we expect into the rest of the day?

[08:15:00]

Well, we have newly issued flood watches across parts of Virginia and into Maryland, as the Weather Prediction Center has identified this area for the greatest risk of severe storms. You can see the heaviest of precipitation moving offshore from the I-95 corridor between D.C., Baltimore, and New York.

But once again, by this afternoon, we'll take advantage of the summer daytime heating. We get these slow-moving summertime thunderstorms that can be very effective rainfall producers, producing perhaps two to four inches of rainfall. There is just so much moisture to work with, Kate.

We're talking about precipitable water, the amount of water that the atmosphere can hold, so much that this tropical environment that we have over the eastern seaboard could produce additional flash flooding as the weeks go on. Back to you.

BOLDUAN: All right, Derek, thank you very much for that update. My goodness -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. The Department of Justice has fired at least a dozen employees, including the top ethics watchdog at the DOJ. All of them, at one time or another, worked with former special counsel Jack Smith, investigating Donald Trump.

Until last week, Jason Tirrell directly advised Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on how to navigate conflicts of interest.

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig is with me now. Tirrell posted a letter that Bondi sent him, firing him, saying there was really no stated cause for his firing. What does that tell you about why he was fired exactly?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Sara, this is payback. These are retributive firings, and that's not an opinion or a take. That's a fact. We know that because back in late January, about a week after the Trump administration took office, they fired the first wave of prosecutors who had participated in Jack Smith's prosecutions. And they sent letters to those prosecutors saying the reason you're being fired is because you worked on those cases against Donald Trump. Therefore, you cannot be trusted to implement Donald Trump's agenda.

And now what we're seeing now, yesterday, is really round two of those firings. And now they've dug past just the prosecutors. They've gotten into the ethics advisor. They've gotten into support staff, meaning paralegals and analysts. They've even fired U.S. marshals. Essentially, anyone who touched this case in any regard has been fired, and it's purely about payback.

SIDNER: You know, in the LinkedIn post from the former Department of Justice senior executive in charge of ethics, Joseph Tirrell, he wrote this.

I believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. I also believe that Edmund Burke is right and that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

Is there anything that he or any of those who are fired can do to fight for their job at the DOJ in the sense that this was done, in your words, out of retribution?

HONIG: Well, technically, yes, there are things that he can do. They're not great options, though, frankly. In the actual dismissal notice sent to this individual, it says you have the right to appeal this to something called the Merit Systems Protection Board, meaning you can go to this bureaucratic entity and say I was fired for bad cause.

But the fact of the matter is, the attorney general does have very broad discretion as to who she wants to fire. And it's really hard to claw back your job in these scenarios. People can try, but frankly, it's an uphill climb for him.

SIDNER: Something that you don't see happening anytime soon. Elie Honig, thank you so much for your expertise. We haven't seen you in a minute. I'm glad you're back -- John.

BERMAN: All right, new this morning, dozens of former judges coming together to urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject a high profile judicial nominee who also just happens to be the president's former personal attorney.

Happening now, wildfires raging in the Grand Canyon. We've got dry lightning and temperatures reaching 110 degrees.

And a paraglider crashes into a power line. We have new information on how they are both doing this morning -- the paraglider and the power line.

[08:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: New this morning, more than 75 former federal and state judges are calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the nomination of President Trump's former personal attorney, Emil Bove, to an appeals court judgeship.

The group is pointing to controversies that Bove has been at the center of while serving as a high ranking Justice Department official.

They write, His egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.

Let's get right to CNN's Annie Grayer in Washington for how the Judiciary Committee is hearing this.

ANNIE GRAYER, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Bove has been surrounded in a number of controversies in his short tenure at the Department of Justice. He investigated FBI and DOJ officials who had investigated January 6th. He pushed for the dismissal of charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

And there's a whistleblower who has come forward and said that Bove ignored court orders in order to further Trump's deportation agenda.

Now, these former federal judges in the letter that you mentioned come from Democrat and Republican administrations. And they say that because Bove has been Trump's personal attorney, they worry that he is not going to be able to be impartial on the job.

But Bove throughout this process has pushed back on any allegations against him and denied any wrongdoing.

BERMAN: You've got sources all over The Hill. Do you have any sense on how Bove is being received up there?

GRAYER: Well, the Republican to watch is Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who is known for having a bit of an independent streak. What we need to look at is how Tillis views Bove's comments on January 6th.

[08:25:02]

So what's interesting here is last week Tillis sat down with our colleague Jake Tapper and said that he would not support any nominee who who couldn't be critical of the violence of January 6th. He said that he wouldn't support any nominee who made any comments like that. And that's why Tillis did not support Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney, Ed Martin. And Tillis actually was the vote that killed that nomination. So take a listen to how Tillis framed it to our colleague Jake last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R-NC): The president should know if there is anyone coming up for a nomination through any committee of my jurisdiction that excused January the 6th, that they're not going to get confirmed in my remaining tenure in the U.S. Senate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRAYER: So I lay out all that context because Bove has been vague about his views about January 6th. He's told the Senate Judiciary Committee he doesn't remember where he was that day and he cannot be critical of the violence when he's asked point blank about what happened on January 6th. So we are going to be tracking Senator Tillis to see if his views on Bove changes.

But for now, Tillis is saying that he will support Bove. But there's a lot of time between now and Thursday when Bove's nomination is expected to come up in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. If he passes out of the committee, he will head to the floor, which will be his last stop before confirmation.

BERMAN: All right, Annie Grayer, up on The Hill this morning for us. Thank you very much -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right, ahead this morning, thousands of employees across several U.S. health agencies waking up without jobs this morning. What this could mean for public health.

Plus, we are just minutes away from the release of a brand new key inflation report. Let's check in on stock futures this morning. You can see it's a mixed bag.

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