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Interview With State Rep. Mitch Little (R-TX); Texas Redistricting Battle; New Report Released on Titan Implosion; Will Ghislaine Maxwell Interview Be Released?. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 05, 2025 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Up for debate. The Justice Department has an audio recording of its latest interview with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and now the White House is weighing whether a transcript should be made public, as House lawmakers move ahead with their own probe of the Epstein files.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And a -- quote -- "preventable disaster." The Coast Guard releasing a scathing new report on the deadly Titan submersible implosion, saying there were design flaws. And, also, the company ducked scrutiny for years.

And what is the scariest sound a human can make? Is it Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, their fight from that "Married Story" movie? Is it AC/DC "Thunderstruck"? We will explain why both of these are candidates when it comes to scaring wolves.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: CNN has learned that the Justice Department has an audio recording and a transcript of its recent interview with convicted Jeffrey Epstein associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.

And according to three senior administration officials, the Trump administration is considering releasing the transcript publicly. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who once served as President Trump's personal lawyer, conducted that two-day interview with Maxwell last month.

And last week, she was moved from a federal prison in Florida to a lower security prison camp in Texas. Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.

CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid is with us now on this.

And, Paula, you're part of the team that broke this story. What else have you learned?

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's significant that we're breaking this news as the administration continues to face questions about its decision to backtrack on a promise of being more transparent with evidence in the Epstein case.

Now, in the course of our reporting, with our colleague Alayna Treene and Kristen Holmes, we were quite surprised to learn that there was a recording made of this interview. This is an interview that went on for roughly 10 hours, and they're talking to someone who is a convicted sex trafficker, who has faced questions about our credibility in the past.

She's also been in prison for several years, which really doesn't do much to help anyone's state of mind. So it was notable that they're creating a new record while facing the scrutiny over not releasing so many of the records that are already in their possession.

Now, we're told that the administration is discussing whether it wants to release a version of this transcript. Of course, any transcript that is released, you would have to redact sensitive information, like the identity of victims and other sensitive details. We are told that no final decision has been made.

But the news, the revelation that this transcript exists, we can expect that the administration will continue to face pressure to release this and much of the additional evidence that they still have in their possession within their control.

KEILAR: And, Paula, DOJ is asking the federal court in New York to make five days of grand jury testimony public in the Epstein and Maxwell cases. You have two of Epstein's accusers, at least two of them, abuse victims, who are condemning this request.

Tell us more about what you're learning here.

REID: I'm so glad you asked about this, because really one of the first times that we're hearing directly from victims about how they feel about how the Trump Justice Department is handling all of this.

In the wake of the blowback for not releasing the material that the attorney general had said that she would, the Justice Department moved to release some transcripts from grand juries related to the Epstein probe in New York and Florida. Down in Florida, the request was denied. But up in New York, the judge wanted to know more about what DOJ wanted to release and also gave victims and even Ghislaine Maxwell the opportunity to weigh in.

And last night we got two victims -- they have until today, so you could hear from more -- weighing in with some really remarkable insights, especially their criticism of how they feel that they have been ignored in this larger political drama.

One anonymous victim writing: "I am not some pawn in your political warfare. What you have done and continue to do is eating at me day after day as you help to perpetuate the story indefinitely." [13:05:00]

They also write that they believe that the government is focused on protecting specifically President Trump and other third-party individuals, writing: "I feel like the DOJ's and FBI's priority is protecting the -- quote -- 'third party,' the wealthy men, by focusing on scrubbing their names off the files of which the victims know who they are."

But what was really notable to me is that neither victim who's weighed in so far opposed the release of these transcripts. Instead, they said -- quote -- "Why not be completely transparent? Show all the files with those necessary redactions, be done with it, and allow me/us to heal."

So we will be watching until the end of the day today for any additional letters and notes from victims in this case. This is something that the judge will likely weigh quite heavily in his decision.

KEILAR: Yes, as they should.

Paula, thank you so much in bringing that new reporting to us as well. We really appreciate it -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Now to discuss is Eric Lerner. He's an attorney who's represented Epstein victims in the past. He still serves as attorney for Epstein accuser Jennifer Araoz.

Eric, thank you so much for being with us.

As DOJ is considering releasing either an audio recording or a transcript of the interview that it conducted with Maxwell last month, what does your client think? Does she want that recording released?

ERIC LERNER, ATTORNEY FOR EPSTEIN ACCUSER: Hi, Boris. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. I mean, it shouldn't be a debate. The public has a right to transparency and the full transcript should be released, albeit any victim's name should definitely be redacted. But we should also know what type of deal, if any, was offered to Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for this information.

SANCHEZ: Talk to us more about that. What specific concerns does your client have?

LERNER: I mean, so my client is very concerned that President Trump is considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell.

Last weekend on CNN, my client extended an invite, actually, to President Trump to meet with her and other survivors, so he can witness firsthand the pain and suffering that she and they have endured before considering a pardon. And as of now, we have not received a response. We believe it's crucial to re-extend that invitation, because, if the

president is genuinely considering a pardon for Maxwell, the responsible and compassionate action is to meet with those affected and consider the gravity of their trauma before making any decisions.

And for us, this isn't about politics. It's about respecting the victims' perspectives and giving them a chance to be hurt.

SANCHEZ: Given the administration's dual reticence to release the information that they promised they would release all the files related to Jeffrey Epstein and their reaching out to Maxwell and also moving her from a facility in Florida to a lesser security facility in Texas, what do you think the administration is trying to accomplish here?

LERNER: It's very confusing.

We don't know what they're trying to accomplish because the likelihood is that any names that she could give and offer, the Justice Department already has. And, in addition, she -- the prosecutors and judges and the judge who oversaw her 2021 trial have said that Maxwell made multiple false statements under oath. She was also charged with two counts of perjury alleging she made false statements in a deposition under oath in the 2016 civil case.

So the credibility of anything she would offer is seriously in question. So we really don't know what they're trying to accomplish, other than making the public happy, because there was an outrage over the fact that no new information was released by Pam Bondi.

SANCHEZ: I wonder, given that the House Oversight Committee issued nearly a dozen subpoenas to DOJ and several former attorneys general, as well as James Comey, Bill and Hillary Clinton, et cetera, seeking files related to Epstein, what your client thinks will be learned from these files.

If the view is that DOJ already has a list of Epstein associates in its hands, then what is going to be found through these subpoenas? Is there something your client thinks should come to light about Epstein and his accomplices and his nefarious activity that the public doesn't know about yet?

LERNER: I mean, it's essential for accountability that all relevant documents and testimonies are examined, and to ensure that justice for the victim -- that there's justice for the victims, and preventing similar abuses in the future.

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We're glad that all victims' names would be redacted from this, but we don't think it should be behind closed doors, because that's what they're talking about right now is these -- questioning people, these depositions of high-profile officials all being behind closed doors. We think it should be out in the open.

And we did notice that former Florida U.S. attorney Alexander Acosta was not amongst the names of the people being subpoenaed. And he was the one that gave Epstein the sweetheart deal in Florida in 2009, so he should definitely be included. But we think that a lot can be learned from these depositions, especially if they're out in the open.

SANCHEZ: That is a very good point about Acosta, a former Trump appointee.

Eric Lerner, we have to leave the conversation there. Thank you so much for joining us. Please do let us know if you hear back from the administration.

LERNER: Will do. Thank you for having me, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Of course -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Two years after the OceanGate Titan submersible imploded in the Atlantic near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing five people on board, including the company's co-founder, pilot, and CEO, we're getting some official answers today about why the tragedy occurred.

The U.S. Coast Guard has now released its report, calling the incident a preventable disaster. Its investigation largely blames the company, OceanGate, for several contributing factors, including -- quote -- "inadequate design, certification, maintenance, and inspection process for the sub. The report says that all five people on board died instantaneously."

CNN's Tom Foreman is with us now.

Tom, what more did investigators find here?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a fascinating report, and let me tell you, through these hundreds of pages, the message is simple enough. This was badly designed, badly maintained, badly operated. They dodged all forms of inspection of this, and that's why five people died.

If you look at some of the details, they talked about the design of this thing. There's a carbon fiber hull that basically is glued to these rings at the end where they put the caps on. These people are bolted inside. There is no way for them to get out under any circumstances without somebody outside helping them.

No meaningful analysis on the life cycle of a carbon fiber hull. Carbon fiber sounds like a big word. It's a great material. It's wonderful, but it is these interlaced layers, and carbon fiber is either great or it has totally failed. There's not a lot of in between. When it starts failing, it fails.

They weren't watching that carefully enough. They were overrelying on a real-time monitoring system. They had little sound systems, sensors on the hull of this thing. They were basically listening to see if it was cracking, and if they heard enough signs, well, maybe this thing's going to fail. We need to get out of here.

And they had sensed problems before, which they just glossed right over and kept using it. I have spoken to engineers about this. Honestly, unless you were going to do really, really robust testing on that hull every single time, you could have seen this as a single-use submersible. Use it once, retire it, build a new one, because of the pressure on this thing.

The hull was used after these previous incidents. We talked about the design and the construction of the hull, and then the failure to investigate after significant damage in previous dives. They just kept going forward. They cited in this company a culture of being much more worried about, are we meeting cost targets here? Are we getting enough customers? How can we make this work?

That was the real focus, not on keeping this going forward. And they stored it outdoors in Canada during winter, exposing it to extreme temperature fluctuations. When this happened, automatically, the red flags among engineers went just right in the air, because they're saying, how did you build this thing? How did you operate this thing?

How did you rely on a system -- when they were going up and down, their communications was an abbreviated text messaging system, where, if they wanted to know if they had communications up top, they would just send the letter K. That was the only thing, and then up top would try to tell them something else.

They couldn't talk to anyone up top. They were having communications problems that day, which might have been a signal to say halfway down, turn around, come back up, but that is not what happened. The one real positive, but it's such dark positive news out of all of this, is that, when this happened, they were approaching two and 2.3 miles down, something like that.

The amount of force at that level is close to 5,000 pounds per square inch. So, when they say a catastrophic failure, unless they had some warning inside, some indication, some -- they heard something, unless that happened, this truly collapsed so quickly nobody on board would know that anything was even beginning to happen. It would be over.

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But we do know this in this report. People standing on the ship, on the ship, the Polar Prince above, said, hey, what was that bang? They felt it up there. And one of the engineers later on who operated the ship said later on, he said, yes, he said, in retrospect, I felt like there was a shudder in the ship at that moment, an hour-and-a-half after they left.

All of that added up into a completely preventable tragedy, and this report confirms it.

KEILAR: Yes, it's so, so sad.

FOREMAN: It is just -- it is worth going online and reading it to see how people can get carried away and commit the most terrible mistakes.

KEILAR: Yes.

Tom, thank you so much for taking us through that. Really appreciate it.

Minutes from now, the Texas Statehouse is set to reconvene for a second day without dozens of Democrats, who now face civil arrest warrants after they fled the state. We will have the latest on the redistricting fight.

Plus, a search for a motive under way after police in Tennessee arrest the suspect wanted in the killings of four family members. We have new details coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SANCHEZ: Minutes from now, the Texas Statehouse is set to reconvene with dozens of Democrats, likely absent again and now potentially facing arrest, the Texas governor ordering warrants be drafted after they failed to show less than 24 hours ago, many of them fleeing the state on Sunday to block a redistricting plan backed by President Trump.

Today, the president saying Republicans are -- quote -- "entitled" to the five House seats that Democrats could lose if the Republican plan passes.

CNN's Ed Lavandera is at the Texas Statehouse for us.

So, Ed, what are we anticipating is going to come in just a matter of minutes?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, here at 1:00 Central time, the House is supposed to reconvene, try again, but all indications are that the Democrats will not be here again, so there will not be a quorum, which means the speaker of the House will gavel in, take roll call, and within a couple of minutes, everything will come to a grinding halt because there won't be a quorum to continue doing business.

So that would be day two of the official quorum breaking here by Texas Democrats, who have left for Chicago and Albany, New York. And one of the things that Democrats were saying leading up to this quorum break is that, if it was going to happen, they needed to have -- they described it as a bigger purpose to all of this, because they know ultimately they don't have the votes to stop eventually the passing of this redistricting bill here in the state of Texas.

But they either, A, wanted to draw attention to the issue or convince other states to fight fire with fire, as we have heard some of them describe, and continue and convince places like California, Illinois, New York to carry out their own redistricting measures that would essentially balance out what is happening here in Texas.

And it will be interesting -- it's interesting to see how we're now starting to get indication from Governor Gavin Newsom in California saying he's open to it, governor of Illinois saying earlier today it's not something he wants to do, but it's something that he can do. And the governor of New York has also expressed support for it as well.

And that's one of the things that we have heard from several Democrats in the days leading up to their departure from the state on Sunday afternoon. But Republicans here, as much as Democrats are trying to make this process here in Texas very difficult for them, Republicans doing the exact same thing, issuing the arrest warrants that went out yesterday, and the governor of Texas threatening to remove them from office for abandoning -- what he described as abandoning their posts here in Texas.

But Texas Democrats say they're willing to take the risks.

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STATE REP. RAMON ROMERO JR. (D-TX): Right now, there's folks saying that we walked out. And I think everyone behind me will say we're standing up, and as Texans would say, we're standing tall. There's others that are saying and warning us that they're going to arrest us or make us pay fines.

I will pay that price for America. And I think everyone behind me would say they would do the same.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: So, Boris, the House will try to reconvene here at 1:00. We will see what happens then.

And exactly kind of I think another thing to monitor is, we'll just -- what will the rhetoric around all of this, how will it continue to unfold here as this continues to play out? Because we're about halfway through this special legislative session. There are about two weeks left. So Democrats would have to stay away that long to kill this redistricting bill, at least for this session.

But a reminder in all of this that the way the rules are set up here in Texas, the governor can simply call another special session and start this process all over again -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Ed Lavandera, thank you so much for the update from Austin -- Brianna.

KEILAR: We're joined now by a Republican member of the Texas state House, Mitch Little.

Representative Little, thank you so much for being with us.

And we're, of course, keeping our eye on the Texas House reconvening next hour. As we do that, I do want to ask you, does issuing civil arrest warrants for Democrats that are likely not enforceable outside of Texas perhaps actually incentivize them to stay out of Texas?

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STATE REP. MITCH LITTLE (R-TX): No, it's certainly not. And we have counted who's in Chicago. We have counted who's in Albany

with Governor Hochul. And we know that there are plenty of Democrats that are still sitting home here in Texas, and we intend to go out and retrieve them. The costs of compliance will increase until compliance is gained.

KEILAR: So, just before this vote where Democrats officially broke the quorum, actually, what we heard from one of your Republican House colleagues, Brian Harrison, talking to my co-anchor Boris yesterday, was this about your House speaker. Let's listen.

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STATE REP. BRIAN HARRISON (R-TX): This is an abject failure of the elected Republican leadership in the state of Texas, because the elected Republican leadership in the state of Texas had every tool available to prevent this quorum break.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Speaker Dustin Burrows signed the civil arrest warrants for Democrats breaking the quorum. I wonder, overall, how are you seeing his leadership on this?

LITTLE: Well, I'm very impressed about the Democrats' ability to bring Republicans together.

As you may or may not know, Brianna, in Texas, our legislature has been kind of ruled by the uniparty, and we are one step significantly closer to having an 88-62 speakership and Republicans united behind the values that are important to us.

We are eager to get back to working on flood relief, ending taxpayer- funded lobbying, protecting the unborn, but we will get this redistricting job done. The Democrats cannot hold out forever. And the sooner they get back, the nice -- the bigger, happier family we will be in the Texas House.

KEILAR: The timing of this, can you talk to me about this? Why do this in a census off-year, when you just redistricted in 2021?

LITTLE: Because we can. We have the votes. It's legal for us to do so. It's legal for us to draw the lines based on political performance. We have three Hispanic-predominated districts in South Texas that we believe that we can carve out for Republican leadership in the United States Congress. It's going to be a good thing for Texas.

I don't spend any time thinking about what happens in California, Illinois or New York. I'm here to protect Texas and ensure that our voices are heard.

KEILAR: Because you can. Why should you, though?

LITTLE: Because it's good for our party, it's good for our state, and we need to ensure that Donald Trump's agenda continues to be enacted throughout his second term.

And we as Republicans see this as the difference between Democrats trying to impeach President Trump again during the second half of his final term as president of the United States or accomplishing the agenda that all the voters in Texas by a significant majority sent him to accomplish.

KEILAR: So you're doing this for President Trump?

LITTLE: We're doing this for Texas. President Trump doesn't call me. I don't think he has my phone number. But what I would submit to you is, this is the best thing for Texas and its representation in the United States Congress.

KEILAR: Your state attorney general, your former boss as well, Ken Paxton, in his calling for Democrats to be arrested. He's also primarying sitting Texas Senator John Cornyn. And as you're well aware, President Trump has made it clear he wants this redistricting in your state.

Is that at play here as you're watching this? Is Paxton trying to court Trump for an endorsement?

LITTLE: No, I don't think that's really involved at all. I think Attorney General Paxton is probably going to beat Senator Cornyn by 10 points, regardless of whether he has a Trump endorsement. So let's lay that question to the side.

I think what you're seeing, Brianna, is, you're seeing alignment between the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the Republicans in the Texas House and the Republicans in the Senate to accomplish the goals that our voters sent us to accomplish. This level of cohesion has not existed in my lifetime. And I think we're on a tremendous path of succeeding not only in redistricting, but our other policy goals during the special session.

KEILAR: I do want to ask you about something else. You have gained a new resident in your state in the last week who's back in the headline specifically today. That is convicted child sex predator Ghislaine Maxwell.

She was moved to a federal prison camp in Texas the week after she spoke with the Justice Department about the Epstein files as she's seeking clemency. Do you think President Trump should pardon her or should he rule that out?

LITTLE: I don't really give much thought to what happens with Ghislaine Maxwell.

I happened to be in New York with my family when she was being tried. It sounds like she was rightly convicted. She's in the same prison as Elizabeth Holmes, who committed security fraud, as well as some other significant defendants at a national level.

It sounds like Ghislaine is in the right place for us to keep track of her. And I think President Trump will weigh all of those considerations with the attorney general to determine what's best for the people of the United States.

KEILAR: Those are more white-collar criminals. You think she's in the same category, being a convicted child predator who, according to victims, actually personally carried out their sexual abuse?