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Interview With Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM); Fed Set to Cut Interest Rates?; FBI Raids Home and Office of John Bolton. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired August 22, 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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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Happening right now, the FBI is at the home and office of President Trump's former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Sources tell CNN it's all part of a national security investigation. We have new details on the searches.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Plus, it's the news that Wall Street, Main Street and the White House have been waiting for. Fed Chair Jerome Powell hints that long-awaited interest rate cuts could be on the way. Right now, the Dow is surging into record territory.

And a critical day in the infamous Menendez brothers case. One is going before the parole board just a day after the other was denied a chance at freedom -- ahead, reasons the board said no to Erik Menendez and what it could mean for Lyle's chances.

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

SANCHEZ: We start this afternoon with breaking news.

The FBI is right now searching the home of John Bolton, the former national security adviser and frequent critic of President Trump. Agents have been inside his Maryland home for just over five hours now. And sources tell CNN this is all about classified information, specifically, whether or not Bolton illegally disclosed classified details in his 2020 book to his clients or to the media.

After having served in the first Trump administration for about 18 months, Bolton became an outspoken Trump critic. Notably, this week, Bolton was repeatedly on CNN and on this show criticizing the president's approach to the Kremlin and peace in Ukraine.

In his first comments about the search, Trump said he didn't know it was going to happen and then added this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not a fan of John

Bolton. He's a real sort of a lowlife. I -- when I hired him, he served a good purpose. He's a -- not a smart guy, but he could be a very unpatriotic guy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: We have CNN's Betsy Klein at the White House for an update there.

But, first, let's go to Evan Perez, who is live outside Bolton's home as the operation continues.

Evan, what are you seeing there?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, we're now entering the sixth hour of this FBI search. There are still a few agents that are inside the home.

Let me give you a little bit of a scene here. You still see about four FBI cars here at the scene. We saw them reposition the cars just a little while ago. One of the SUVs has been backed up to the garage area, seemingly perhaps to get ready to remove items from the home.

We saw them come in with the document boxes, perhaps to retrieve items that are inside the home. Again, we don't know much more about the search. We do know, as you pointed out, that this is a national security investigation. This is related to what they believe or what the allegation is, that Bolton may have disclosed national security information.

This is related to his 2020 publication of that memoir, his book of his time serving in the government. And what we don't know is whether there's any new information that has prompted the FBI to take a new look at this.

Now, as you pointed out, Bolton is downtown in downtown D.C. That's where his office is located and where a separate search is also being conducted by the FBI. We don't know whether -- how long the agents are going to be at that location, but clearly they're trying to make sure that they gather whatever information they need to get to satisfy the terms of the search warrant.

Now, this is an investigation that, as you pointed out, occurred back in 2020. It was closed early in the Biden administration. I was told at the time that the government officials at the time, the Justice Department, viewed it as a weak case. Again, we don't know whether the FBI has obtained new information, new allegations that would fuel this search, this extraordinary search that we're seeing still ongoing here six hours later at Bolton's home in Bethesda, Maryland -- Boris.

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SANCHEZ: Evan Perez live for us in Bethesda, thank you so much for that update.

Let's now go live at the White House with CNN's Betsy Klein.

Betsy, what else is President Trump saying?

BETSY KLEIN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Boris, President Trump right now is in the Oval Office, where he's making an announcement to reporters, and we're going to listen in on that and let you know if he weighs in on this further.

But, earlier today, he did react to the first time. He claims he had no prior knowledge about this search at the home and then the office of his former National Security Adviser John Bolton. But his language about Bolton, calling him a -- quote -- "lowlife" earlier today, really underscores the tumultuous relationship these two men have had.

Bolton served as Trump's third national security adviser during his first term for about 18 months. He was fired in a tweet back in 2019 that officials told us at the time was because the two men were not aligned on policy and priorities, but clearly the president now -- then days after or hours after getting returning to office in January removed Bolton's security detail after he had threats from Iran of an assassination.

But the White House says that President Trump was not aware beforehand, and the president said he expected to be briefed later today by Attorney General Pamela Bondi, but then appeared to backtrack. I want you to listen to how he laid out his thinking on that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I know nothing about it. I just saw it this morning. They did a raid. I tell Pam and I tell the group, I don't want to know, but just you have to do what you have to do. I don't want to know about it. It's not necessary. I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I'm actually the chief law enforcement officer.

But I feel that it's better this way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KLEIN: And just months after Bolton left the White House, he published a book called "The Room Where It Happened" in 2020, just months before the 2020 presidential election, where he laid out in great detail his time at the White House as one of the president's closest advisers.

He alleged that the president requested Chinese help with the 2020 election. He said that Trump argued that Venezuela was part of the United States. He said the president offered to intervene in the criminal justice system on behalf of other world leaders. He also warned that Trump's policies were -- quote -- "a danger to the republic."

And, as you mentioned, Boris, in recent weeks, he has emerged as one of the sharpest critics on the Republican side of the aisle on the president's policy regarding Russia's war in Ukraine, coming on CNN, where he said that Russia came away from that key summit earlier this last week on the winning side, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Betsy Klein live for us at the White House, where we should note that Oval Office event is now under way and we are monitoring it as we speak. We are waiting for the president to potentially take questions about the search at John Bolton's home.

With us now to talk more about these developments is Mike Feinberg. He is a former FBI assistant special agent in charge. We're also joined by Bradley Moss, a national security attorney.

And, Bradley, in order for this search to take place, it would need to be approved by a court. A judge would have to sign off on this. What kind of criteria would that judge have to look at to go ahead and allow this?

BRADLEY MOSS, NATIONAL SECURITY LAWYER: Sure.

So they would have brought it to a federal magistrate in the district of Maryland, and they would have had to demonstrate through sworn affidavits that there was probably a cause to believe a crime had been committed, there's evidence of a crime that they have to seize here, documents, computers, laptops, things along those lines, just like in any other search warrant.

At some point, that search warrant will be unsealed, no doubt, just like it was with the Trump search warrant back in Mar-a-Lago once upon a lifetime, and we will get a real sense of where they're going with this. What remains to be seen, are there actual documents that are seized that are classified, or is this really all about the 2020 book and are we really going to relitigate this mess all over again?

KEILAR: What, Mike, does it entail, if you can just take us through this? They're at his home. There's a separate search at the office. They have been there for hours.

Kind of walk us through what that looks like, what they're looking for, and what it's going to look like when they're done.

MIKE FEINBERG, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: What they're essentially going to be looking for, and it's going to be a rather time-consuming process for a reason I will explain in a minute -- but what they're really searching for is either classified documents or handwritten or computerized notes that contain classified material, possibly summarized or collated by Bolton in preparation for his book.

But we're not going to know the answers to whether they find that for quite some time, because any document that they seize is going to have to go through something called an original classification review, which means the FBI is going to have to figure out who owned the purportedly classified information, have them go over it, and document in writing that, yes, the information in fact was controlled for national security reasons.

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So I would not expect a resolution to many of these questions in the next day or two.

SANCHEZ: Mike, I also want to get your thoughts on some of the social media posts that we have seen from Trump administration officials. You had an FBI Director Kash Patel tweeting: "No one is above the law. FBI agents on mission."

His deputy, Dan Bongino, posting: "Public corruption will not be tolerated." And then Attorney General Pam Bondi posted as well: "America's safety isn't negotiable. Justice will be pursued always."

I mean, this is at the inception of, or at least early on in an investigation. What do you make of these tweets?

FEINBERG: This is incredibly out of the ordinary and a violation of longstanding Justice Department norms and the Justice manual.

Justice Department officials, with very few exceptions, are not supposed to comment on ongoing investigations that have not yet resulted in a charging document or a jury verdict. This is especially true for the FBI. Everybody in your audience and yourselves can probably recall the storm over then-Director Comey's comments about the Clinton e-mail-investigation.

I don't see how what Patel and Bongino did this morning is remotely distinguishable from that. And if one side of the aisle was going to be very upset about the comments that were made back in 2016, I don't understand how they could countenance the comments made today by Bongino and Patel.

KEILAR: Yes, I mean, Bradley, again, there's a whole process, so we don't know what they're looking for, exactly what they may have found.

But, also, the vice president, J.D. Vance, told Kristen Welker in an interview on NBC for "Meet the Press" when he was asked about this search, he said: "I suspect that if the media and the American people let this case actually unfold, that they let the investigation unfold as it's currently doing, they're going to find out that what we're doing is being very deliberate and being very driven by the national interest and by the law here, and that's as it should be."

What do you think about the vice president talking about what we're doing, when this is supposed to be a law enforcement action from which the White House is separate?

MOSS: Yes, and this kind of goes back to what Mike was just mentioning, was, all those norms, all those customs we had about the idea of a wall between the Justice Department and the White House and the office of the president and vice president, they're gone.

This is the Trump consolidation and capture of law enforcement institutions and basically the federal government. It's all we now. It's we are doing this.

So, look, what J.D. Vance said here was on some levels correct in terms of you should let the process play out. And, of course, it should, but it's not appropriate for the vice president, the president, Justice Department to be commenting like this. That violates everything they have been supposed to be doing for years.

And it goes to a larger concern about this is us as the political element pushing this, as opposed to this is the federal government serving the Constitution and the United States public taking this action.

SANCHEZ: If it is based on what was published in the book that, as Evan Perez pointed out, was deemed a weak case by the Justice Department during the Biden administration, what kind of charges could Bolton face?

MOSS: So, assuming that's what it is, it's going to be Espionage Act charges, similar to what Donald Trump faced, similar to what General Petraeus almost faced, similar to what they were looking at for Hillary Clinton. It's going to be that he disseminated and published information he knew to be classified when he published the book without the final approval from the prepublication review office.

The reason Justice Department didn't want to go through with this in 2021, the reason they let it die was, just as the first Trump administration was ending, the federal judge who had been raking John Bolton over the coals authorized discovery in the civil action. He said, you get to depose the people who were part of this prepublication review process.

People forget, because it's been a lifetime since then, but there was all kinds of issues of bad faith and potentially unclean hands that were about to be explored. That will all come out now if there's a criminal case.

KEILAR: Yes, that's very interesting.

Mike Feinberg, Bradley Moss, thank you so much to both of you. Great insights there.

And we have much more on this breaking news of the day, the FBI conducting searches at the home and office of former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Plus, the Justice Department is set to share the first batch of Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee today. We will note that timing, and we will be speaking to a lawmaker on that committee next.

SANCHEZ: And markets surging, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell suggests that long-awaited interest rate cuts could be coming soon. We're going to talk about what that means for your wallet in just moments.

Don't go anywhere.

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SANCHEZ: It's the news investors have been anxiously awaiting, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell today suggested that interest rate cuts may be on the horizon, and that potential change sent Wall Street surging, the Dow now up more than 900 points, in record territory.

CNN business and politics correspondent Vanessa Yurkevich is here with more on what Chairman Powell had to say -- Vanessa.

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Boris, for the first time, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, indicated that a rate cut may be on the horizon, and that sent Wall Street surging.

You see the Dow over 900 points now, well on its way to its first record of 2025. It also saw investors now pricing in a 90 percent chance of a rate cut that Jerome Powell was alluding to in September. That is up significantly from the 58 percent chance that investors saw about a month ago. And then, for everyday Americans, when we talk about rate cuts, that usually means that borrowing costs become more attractive and more affordable.

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Jerome Powell today said that tariffs were no doubt affecting prices. He also said that there was something curious or unusual going on with the labor market, where there was both a lack of demand for workers and a lack of supply of workers. He also said that, while inflation has remained pretty steady, it is still far away from the Fed's target of 2 percent.

And he reminded the audience that he was speaking to in Jackson Hole that the Federal Reserve is really an independent body, and anybody who questions that is not sort of being accurate in terms of what the Federal Reserve's job is. Listen to what Jerome Powell said earlier this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: With policy in restrictive territory, the baseline outlook and the shifting balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance. Monetary policy is not on a preset course. FOMC members will make these decisions based solely on their assessment of the data and its implications for the economic outlook and the balance of risks.

We will never deviate from that approach.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YURKEVICH: Now, at the same time Jerome Powell was speaking, President Trump was speaking to reporters earlier this morning and he said that he will fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook if she does not resign. Lisa Cook is one of the members of this Fed board that votes on interest rates.

This is after the DOJ said that it was initiating a probe into looking into whether or not Lisa Cook was in fact committing mortgage fraud. For her part, she says that she's -- quote -- "gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts." But, Boris, really what this indicates is that President Trump has really backed off firing Jerome Powell, but clearly the other board members are very fair game. The only way that the president can fire a Fed governor is if there is cause. This would certainly be cause if true, but remains to be seen if these allegations are in fact true -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Vanessa Yurkevich, thanks so much for the update -- Brianna.

KEILAR: We're following breaking developments today, as FBI agents search the home and office of former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton. A source tells CNN the FBI is investigating whether Bolton disclosed classified information in his 2020 book and potentially to clients or media members.

The president previously threatened to jail Bolton over his book, which criticized Trump's foreign policy knowledge. The book included material that the White House initially cleared for publication, but then Trump political appointees sought to overturn the approval. The Justice Department investigated Bolton in Trump's first term. That probe was closed during President Joe Biden's.

We're joined now by Democratic Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico.

Congresswoman, first your reaction to this morning's search.

REP. MELANIE STANSBURY (D-NM): Well, I think it obviously raises serious questions about Donald Trump's increasingly autocratic behavior.

We warned early on and Donald Trump himself said he wanted to be a dictator on day one, and we're seeing just an absolute hostile takeover from within the Justice Department. When members of Congress vetted these political appointees to the FBI and DOJ, they specifically asked about retribution of political opponents of Trump. And they, of course, promised that they wouldn't go after them.

But this is not American-like behavior. This is the kind of behavior you would expect of a leader like Vladimir Putin or a country where leaders are trying to take over the institutions meant to protect the public and weaponizing them to go after their political opponents.

But at the end of the day, this is also a distraction from Donald Trump's own legal issues, his own political issues, the Epstein files, the fact that the economy is in freefall, and the fact that he basically is historically unpopular as a president.

And the domestic policy -- policies that he just passed in the big ugly bill are deeply unpopular and going to lose the midterm elections for him.

KEILAR: Congresswoman, we should -- we don't know what they found. It's going to be some time before we do learn what, if anything, they found.

But this was a court-authorized search, two different judges for Bolton's house and his office. What do you make of that?

STANSBURY: You know, obviously, the law should be pursued if there is a legitimate legal reason to go after somebody who has broken the law. And so we will see what surfaces.

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But what I can say is that what this looks like is gangster behavior. Bolton was in Donald Trump's inner circle. He was a part of the National Security Council and has revealed not only Trump's incompetence, but the way in which he's endangered the American public and national security. And Donald Trump has been trying to go after him to silence him for several years now.

And so if there is a legitimate legal question regarding disclosure of classified materials, obviously, that should be prosecuted. But that's not what this looks like.

KEILAR: And what -- you mentioned Epstein, so what do you think about the timing here? The White House obviously has been so eager to turn headlines away from the Epstein files. And today is the first day the House Oversight Committee, which you're on, is going to receive some of those documents from the DOJ.

STANSBURY: Yes, I think we can expect a drip, drip from DOJ and that they are going to try to control the narrative.

And I have very little, shall we say, confidence in the Republicans on the Oversight Committee, who have consistently used this committee as a political tool for Donald Trump, including all their fake impeachments last Congress. And so we have not yet received any files. It's unclear how they plan to redact them.

And I think it's very clear, even by the deposition that happened to Bill Barr earlier this week, that they're trying to spin the narrative to protect Donald Trump. And if they didn't think there was "there" there, why did they send Congress home early, instead of passing appropriations bills?

In fact, they canceled Congress because they didn't want to have to be held accountable to actually talk about this issue anymore.

KEILAR: The expectations of what is in these files is pretty high. Trump allies set it -- a very high bar for years. Democrats have jumped on that bandwagon more recently. Is the public inevitably going to be disappointed by whatever comes out?

STANSBURY: I think the public is going to be disappointed by the process that Trump's DOJ has set into motion, because, as we know, Pam Bondi told us that she had these files on her desk for months.

And reporting from "The Wall Street Journal" reveals that Trump is named in them multiple times. If they have all that information, they should have just released it to the public. But, clearly, they're using a backdoor process to allow redacting both the DOJ and through their political allies on the Hill. So, yes, I think the public's going to be disappointed by what the

Republicans release, because they're not actually going to release the entire files.

KEILAR: The committee also subpoenaed numerous former officials, including A.G.s from past administrations, as you note.

Alex Acosta notably was not on the subpoena list, even though he was the one who negotiated the 2007 non-prosecution agreement as then-U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, later had to resign as Trump's labor secretary from the fallout around that.

Will he be called at any point? Should he be called?

STANSBURY: Yes, I mean, the House Democrats on the Oversight Committee have made clear that there's very questionable issues surrounding the prosecution of Epstein in that case. And we have been working with our Republican counterparts to try to add him to the list.

But, again, I will just say that it's very clear that the Republicans on the Oversight Committee are trying to shield Trump and use this as another extension to try to stop...

KEILAR: Can I ask you, are they -- I'm sorry to interrupt you, but are they resistant as you're trying to add him to the list? Are you saying that you're trying to add him to the list? What are they saying in response?

STANSBURY: So I personally am not in the negotiations, but my understanding from committee staff is that they are resistant to adding him to the list and that they're trying to control the narrative over what is stated about these depositions and who they want to call.

KEILAR: What is the staff saying about why they're resistant specifically to Alex Acosta?

STANSBURY: That, I can't answer, but I think it's obvious, as I have said a couple of times, that the House Republicans on the Oversight Committee have consistently used this committee as a shield for Donald Trump and to do his political bidding.

So, while we view this as a very serious matter, we would like to ensure that there is full truth and disclosure and transparency of both the files and justice brought to the victims and to the perpetrators who've committed crimes against individuals, it looks like what the Republicans are trying to do is to set up a process to shield Trump.

KEILAR: He seems like a logical person to be talking to.

Congresswoman Stansbury, thank you so much.

Let's go now to the Oval Office. President Trump is taking questions.

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KRISTI NOEM, U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Everybody will be thoroughly vetted, but they will be welcomed to this country. It'll happen quickly.