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NTSB Found Fatigue Cracks in Hardware That Attaches Engine to Plane in Investigating the Ups Plane Crash; Family, Former Presidents, VPs Honor Dick Cheney at His Funeral; Trump Signs Epstein Bill, DOJ Has 30 Days to Release Files; House Democrat Charged With Stealing $5 Million From FEMA; FBI Sued After Employee Fired for Displaying Pride Flag at Desk. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired November 20, 2025 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:33:50]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Today, the NTSB released critical images showing the moments that an engine separated from the UPS plane seen in this catastrophic crash in Kentucky a little more than two weeks ago. It killed all three people who were on board, nearly a dozen others on the ground, and it left debris -- a debris field that was half a mile long. The new pictures go frame by frame as the MD-11 aircraft climbed just 30 feet before igniting into a fireball. CNN's Pete Muntean here with the details on this. Pete, take us through what these new pictures show.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, these new findings from the NTSB really detail a huge revelation that the hardware that held the engine onto the airplane failed stunningly, leading to these really sobering images that we're now seeing. These are the frame by frame images of UPS Flight 2976 as it lifted off from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, and you can begin to see here the left engine, this is the number one engine underneath the wing, the left wing of this trijet, this MD-11F going up and then over the wing in this very serious fireball, really doomed from the start.

[13:35:00]

As you can see here, this plane happened -- this happened, just as this plane rotated off the ground here. And the NTSB says it only got about 30 feet above the ground as these frames continue to go, this is the fifth frame and then the sixth frame from a UPS surveillance video, looking at runway 17R there in Louisville. We know that this really left this huge trail of debris as this plane essentially cut through a gas recycling facility, narrowly missing a restaurant, and then hit a UPS warehouse.

What is really interesting now and what the NTSB is focused on in this preliminary report is the -- what's called the pylon. This is the structure of the engine, the structure that holds the engine onto the wing. You can see it sort of tighter there. This is it blown up. And back here is the hardware in question, it's called a mount or a lug, and there are two pieces. There's one piece that holds it onto the wing. There's this piece, the lug that holds the mount, the pylon onto the wing. And the NTSB was able to go through the debris field there, off of runway 17R and find the lug itself.

This is the actual image of the mounting hardware that failed. And the NTSB says they were able to look at this, typically they do this under a high-intensity microscope and find that there was signs of fatigue cracking and overstress failure, which is really, really significant here. In layman's terms, this broke in a spectacular fashion, and really led to this very horrible crash. You can see, these are the parts.

KEILAR: Is this part of it that broke off?

MUNTEAN: Yeah. So this is the part that sheared off.

KEILAR: Wow.

MUNTEAN: This is the -- this is one part, this is sort of the top of the lug. I'll go back to the diagram here. You're looking at essentially the top there. It's a little hard to see. This is the bottom portion. This is what would've gone to the engine pylon that holds the engine on the airplane. This is the part that is from the wing. This is the hardware that's attached to the wing. And so you could see, obviously, you need this lug to be a full sphere. It's called -- it's a spherical bore here that they call it. And so if that's not continuous, the engine cannot stay on the airplane.

So this is a huge smoking gun from the National Transportation Safety Board. And AvGeek students of the crash -- of the craft will really see the similarity here to American Airlines Flight 191 back in 1979, a very similar airplane, a DC-10 that had a very similar failure where the engine fell off the mount, went up and over the wing. That plane made it 300 feet in the air, but killed everybody on board and a few people on the ground, very similar to this incident. The NTSB, of course, still investigating the final cause. These are only preliminary findings, but a huge, huge smoking gun here.

KEILAR: What's the answer to stopping something like that? Is there something you can investigate and see this easily to (inaudible)?

MUNTEAN: Well, the NTSB says that there was an inspection, a visual inspection of this part back in 2021 and really wasn't due for another visual inspection for another 7,000 cycles or flights. And so it wasn't, it's not a part that's easily seen, which sort of compounds the problem here. And of course, the NTSB will look into very deeply the type of inspections that were due and what could have been done to prevent future accidents like this. It's important to note that MD- 11s, all of them worldwide, or at least in the United States, have been grounded pending this investigation.

KEILAR: Really important to note. Pete, thank you for taking us through that.

MUNTEAN: Anytime.

KEILAR: It really gives us a sense of maybe what happened, at least preliminarily here. Up next, political leaders from both sides of the aisle mourning former Vice President, Dick Cheney. CNN's John King was in the National Cathedral during the service, and he's going to speak with us after a quick break about what was an extraordinary moment.

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[13:43:08]

KEILAR: Today, political leaders from both sides of the aisle gathered to pay respects to former Vice President, Dick Cheney.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Now during the service, his daughter and former Congresswoman, Liz Cheney, praised him for choosing to defend the Constitution over political partisanship. Notably, neither the president nor vice president were invited to attend the service. CNN's John King was in the cathedral and joins us now live.

John, this was really a tribute to four decades of public service.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was a strange event, Boris and Bri, in the sense that it was a tribute to the more than four decades of service. And also then a little bit of a parallel, almost unspoken parallel universe of the Cheneys in the Trump age. But let's start with that 40 years you talked about. This is the program here and you see in the program, House of Representative, vice president, secretary of defense, Dick Cheney was also a White House Chief of Staff. What a remarkable resume.

Whatever your politics, just a remarkable career in public service. I first traveled with Dick Cheney back when he was defense secretary for George H.W. Bush in the lead up to the first Persian Gulf War, spent a lot of time traveling with him when he was George W Bush's vice president. And he is, as he was described by friends and family members today, very conservative, soft-spoken, always answered your questions, sometimes asked questions back in exchange, but loved the country and loved -- it was -- the patriotism in the service today, I think was something Dick Cheney would've very much appreciated.

The patriotic music and the tribute to country and tribute to service, obviously a lot of controversial decisions if you're in politics for 40 years, principally his role in the Iraq War and things like that. But this was a -- it was a -- I'm standing outside a Cathedral where I felt like I was going back in time to a different kind of politics, Democrats and Republicans, thousands of years of public service, of the people in those pews at this service today. Most of them now, some Democrats, mostly Republicans, and most of them, Boris and Bri, unwelcome in Donald Trump's Washington. In that sense, it was farewell to Dick Cheney and almost a celebration of the past the way it used to be.

[13:45:00]

KEILAR: That's right. I mean, this was a Washington we have not seen in some time as far as the political moment goes. That was by design, John. KING: Yeah, Bri, I don't mean to make light of this because it's a somber, memorial service for the former vice president of the United States, but it felt like going into a time machine. It felt like time travel, being inside the cathedral today. I walked out with James Carville and Mary Matalin. Remember back in the day, you might even be too young, Bri, to remember back in the day when James Carville was working for Bill Clinton and she worked for George H.W. Bush and you had a Democrat and a Republican in a relationship. And that was sort of the first reality TV way back before we had the Kardashians and reality TV in our life.

You had the Mike Pence and Al Gore and Dan Quayle and Joe Biden saying hello to each other, Kamala Harris, people treating each other like public servants, not in the partisan, polarized way that Washington now exists. And again, Dick Cheney was a staff member first, right? Chief of staff, worked his way up, always was loyal to his staff and dozens of people in there who worked for him in the Congress and at the Defense Department and in the Bush White House. And most of them think of the thousands and thousands of hours of experience, years of experience of all the people in that room, just sitting around shooting the breeze, talking about what they call, consider the good old days. If you think about it, I covered -- I was thinking about this. It dated me being in there.

I covered the White House for 10 years, including the first six years of the Bush-Cheney administration. So that was 18 years ago when I walked out of the White House. They were in the White House, the Bush- Cheney administration for two more years after that. That is a Washington that does not exist today. So as they bid farewell to Dick Cheney today, there was almost a nostalgic celebration of the way it was -- once was. And some of them -- some of them predicting, Bri, on the way out, Boris, that it will get back that way. We'll see if that's the truth.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, we'll see if it does. John King live outside the National Cathedral for us in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much.

Still ahead, the clock now ticking for the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein files though there is some uncertainty about what exactly is going to be released or potentially redacted. We're going to speak with an attorney who represented Epstein victims when we come back.

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[13:51:47]

SANCHEZ: The Justice Department now has 30 days to release the full Epstein files since President Trump signed the bipartisan bill ordering their release yesterday. Attorney General Pam Bondi says the DOJ will follow the law, but some lawmakers and victims are skeptical considering how hard the Trump administration fought to withhold those files. They're now worried the DOJ could redact information or use the new Epstein investigations that Trump ordered last week when the passage of his bill became imminent as an excuse to keep some of the documents under wraps. We're joined now by attorney Spencer Kuvin. He is the Chief Legal Officer of GOLDLAW. He's represented nine of Epstein's victims throughout this two decades-long fight for justice and transparency. Spencer, thanks so much for being with us. My understanding is that all but one of your Epstein related clients have remained anonymous. And I wonder if you share any of the concerns voiced by Speaker Johnson that this law may insufficiently protect those victims, that their names could be exposed against their will.

SPENCER KUVIN, ATTORNEY WHO REPRESENTED EPSTEIN VICTIMS: I don't. And the victims aren't concerned either because the law was specifically tailored to protect the names of the victims, especially child victims, and the act provides for that protection. So, the fact that the speaker raised that as an issue or his issue for why this shouldn't have been passed to begin with really made absolutely no sense to the victims.

SANCHEZ: Now that DOJ is working on this release, how do you think they should handle any redactions or, or withholdings?

KUVIN: Well, the law provides specifically that any redactions that are made must be justified by the Attorney General's office. And those redactions and their explanation of why the redactions are made have to be published in the Federal Register for all to see. And they have to advise Congress of what those redactions are and why they're making them. So, those explanations are going to be paramount. The one thing I would note though that is concerning is, is that when Congress wrote this act, they didn't provide any remedy if there was a failure by the Attorney General to produce or follow this act. And the lack of a remedy in there is concerning.

SANCHEZ: I've spoken to victims and advocates who have concerns about what DOJ is going to put out and I wonder if you trust that the Attorney General is going to be fully transparent?

KUVIN: I don't, I don't. You have to remember, my clients are people that have been denied justice by both the state prosecutorial system, the federal system as well for almost going on 20 years now. They've been lied to by the government about what they were going to do and that they were going to seek justice on their behalf. And they failed each and every time except for Ghislaine Maxwell. But then even after they had her convicted, they've now given her a sweetheart deal and transferred her to this other facility. So, my clients have absolutely no trust right now when it comes to the federal government that they'll do what they say they're going to do.

SANCHEZ: So how would you know when you've gotten all the documents, when all the information is finally put out?

[13:55:00]

KUVIN: Well, we know that there's going to be certain information that they have, right? During the initial investigations, when my client first went to police, victim one went back in 2006, 2007, we know that once the case transferred to the federal government, they conducted interviews of young girls. That's 40 plus young women who they interviewed. We should be seeing those interviews. Those interviews contain information about who they saw, who they were with, and who they may have been trafficked to. In addition, the law specifically allows for us to see the flight logs. It would show us who was on the planes, where they were flying, when they were flying. The law also provides that we get to see the financial information that the federal government collected over the years with respect to who was funding Jeffrey Epstein's enterprise and who he was getting money from.

SANCHEZ: I also wonder, given that there are undoubtedly some names attached to these files that have not been criminally implicated, but have had links to Jeffrey Epstein, what these victims would want to see in terms of accountability for people like Larry Summers or others who corresponded with Epstein well after he'd already pled guilty to those state charges back in 2008.

KUVIN: I think unfortunately, that our criminal justice system doesn't account for people who just have poor taste and bad judgment. But I think that the public disclosure of this information at least brings to light the complicit nature that so many people felt around Jeffrey Epstein to allow this to continue on, because he should have been an absolute pariah within the political world and the financial world given the fact that he was abusing young children. There should have been no one that felt comfortable socializing with this man. So I think that ultimately, if there is no criminal ramifications that we can pursue, then I think public judgment of these people is appropriate.

SANCHEZ: Spencer Kuvin, we have to leave the conversation there. We very much appreciate your time.

KUVIN: Thank you

SANCHEZ: Brianna?

KEILAR: Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour, a new indictment accuses Representative Sheila Cherfilus- McCormick of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds. According to the Justice Department, the Florida Democrat's healthcare company was overpaid by FEMA back in 2021 through a federally funded COVID-19 staffing contract. Federal prosecutors say the Congresswoman used some of the money to fund part of her 2021 special election campaign. Attorneys for Cherfilus-McCormick say they will fight to clear her name.

Also, a former veteran FBI employee is suing the agency after claiming he was fired for displaying a pride flag. According to the lawsuit, FBI Director Kash Patel gave the employee a letter last month informing him of his dismissal for displaying inappropriate political language. The employee says he helped lead diversity initiatives during his 16 years at the Bureau and displayed the flag at his desk with the support and permission of his supervisors. The FBI and Justice Department have declined to comment.

And Russia, once again denying reports that it's working with the U.S. on a peace proposal for Ukraine. Earlier today, a spokesperson for the Kremlin said there are no new developments since the August meeting in Alaska between President Trump and Russian President Putin. However, a source telling CNN, the Trump administration drafted a proposal calling for Ukraine to give up territory and reduce its military in exchange for U.S. security guarantees.

A new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

SANCHEZ: On the clock after President Donald Trump signed the bill forcing the release of the full Epstein files, The Justice Department now faces a deadline to release all the material. But, are there potential loopholes for the DOJ? Plus, a U-turn at the CDC, scientific information on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website has been replaced, in its stead, false claims linking vaccines and autism, we'll explain. And the president accusing several Democratic lawmakers of seditious behavior after they urged troops to disobey illegal orders potentially issued by the administration. We're going to be speaking with one of those lawmakers in just moments, as we follow these major developing stories and many more, all coming your way right here on "CNN News Central."

The White House just wrapped up its first press briefing since President Trump signed the Epstein files bill into law. And the question on so many minds, when will all the files be released? We're monitoring the remarks as they just wrapped, I learned a moment --