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CDC Panel Votes To Drop Universal Hep B Vaccination For Newborns; Federal Judge In Florida Orders Unsealing Of Grand Jury Records In Epstein Investigation; Judge Orders Records Unsealed From FL Grand Jury Epstein Probe; Sources: Admiral Told Lawmakers Survivors Didn't Radio For Help; D.C. Pipe Bomb Suspect Makes First Court Appearance. 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 05, 2025 - 15:00   ET

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

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If there were any forensic particles that were found in any of the debris from the home. And so, this of course goes to the dismemberment, but it's before the jury.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right. Jean Casarez, what an interesting week it has been and we'll be looking to see what happens next week as well. Thank you for all of your reporting on this story.

CASAREZ: Thank you.

KEILAR: And a new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Backlash after a CDC advisory panel votes to abandon universal hepatitis B vaccinations, what this could mean for newborn babies.

And the man accused of planting pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC headquarters, making his first appearance in court. What we know about his possible motive?

And later, Texas officials releasing the 911 calls that came in during deadly flooding in July.

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

KEILAR: We do begin with controversial developments today at the CDC. The agency's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voting to abandon universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendations for newborns. This panel was handpicked by HHS secretary and noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. But the vote today was not unanimous.

Three members voted no, with one of them saying this in protest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. CODY MEISSNER, MEMBER, CDC'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON IMMUNIZATION PRACTICES: And I will just say, we've heard do no harm is a moral imperative. We are doing harm by changing this wording, and I vote no.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KEILAR: Health departments across the country are now bracing for the

impacts, including how it could affect access to vaccines for families who do want to immunize their children.

Senator Bill Cassidy, who is a medical doctor, called the decision a mistake. He now says the CDC's acting director should not sign off on the panel's recommendations.

Let's talk about this now with Dr. Demetre Daskalakis. He's a former CDC official who resigned earlier this year over concerns about Secretary Kennedy.

Doctor, how are you seeing this recommendation, especially focusing on babies born to hepatitis B negative women? Do women definitively know whether they're carrying Hep B at birth?

DR. DEMETRE DASKALAKIS, CDC OFFICIAL WHO RESIGNED OVER CONCERNS ABOUT RFK JR.: Thank you for that question. So, I think, importantly, women may know their status for hepatitis B. Testing is helpful. But that doesn't mean that that's true for all women who may not actually have access to testing. And more importantly, hepatitis B isn't always transmitted during birth. It is also something that can happen later after birth in the perinatal period because of exposure to people either in a -- in a care setting or even, you know, household contacts who have hepatitis B.

So, the bottom line is that, though, for the most part, a negative test for hepatitis means that the mother doesn't have it, it doesn't mean that the baby is out of the woods from the potential of exposure. So, it -- it really doesn't take into account the epidemiology and the biology of hepatitis B and how we know it's transmitted. It's a bad decision.

KEILAR: And so, to be clear, the question here, too, is say someone has a newborn baby. They want that baby vaccinated. How could you see this interfering with the availability of them getting that vaccination they want?

DASKALAKIS: Yes, I mean, the -- the good news is the actual vote that they conducted really didn't change very much in terms of coverage and access. It has created some complication because, frankly, it's not written well. It's confusing.

So, really, at birth, if somebody wants to give their baby that vaccine, they can. The problem isn't so much the vote, it's that they've created a huge amount of chaos and confusion among providers. It creates anxiety for providers if you have a vaccine that's called shared clinical decision-making because it makes them think that there's something wrong with the vaccine, that there's something risky about it. And that is certainly not the case -- the vaccine is exquisitely low risk, and the risks for hepatitis B are really extensive.

So, in the U.S., we should have tolerance for zero or as close to zero newborns with hepatitis B. And the problem with this is that is not the priority of this advisory committee, nor of this recommendation. KEILAR: So, how would you see this changing for parents who go in to a

pediatrician? How would you see this changing those conversations that they are having for parents who have newborn babies? How does that change the conversations they're having with doctors about what to give their -- their babies?

[15:05:00]

DASKALAKIS: Conversations in the pediatric offices now have been made so complicated by this advisory committee for immunization practices and the work that Secretary Kennedy has done to undermine vaccines.

So, I think what this really means is that, the providers are going to be confused, and the patients are going to be confused, and very often what confusion means is the wrong medical decision. And so -- and I think that that's what we're looking at. We're looking at confused providers.

So, my advice is don't listen to ACIP at all. The provider needs to focus on the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Disease Society of America, AMA, the list goes on and on of people who are actually giving good advice to providers and to medical staff around what the right thing is to do for vaccines and for kids about hepatitis B.

So, you know, unfortunately, this just creates more chaos, and that's really been the theme of this new advisory committee. It's chaotic, and it creates a lot of distress in vaccines with no scientific basis. If there was something scientifically important that was different, then this would be an interesting conversation.

Nothing has changed about the hepatitis B vaccine that we've been using now for decades to drive down cases of hepatitis B in newborns.

KEILAR: It seems Republican Senator Bill Cassidy agrees with much of what you were saying there. What happens to a little baby if they get hepatitis B?

DASKALAKIS: It's devastating. So, if you have a newborn or near newborn who gets infected, 90 percent of them will go on from that acute -- that early infection to what's called chronic infection. And that means that they have virus in their blood, and that virus acts as a carcinogen. It actually attacks the liver, and it makes the liver sometimes develop cancer or scarring, which is called cirrhosis.

Of those 90 percent of kids that go on to chronic hepatitis B infection, almost 30 percent of them will die early of the infection. That's not how we do American vaccine policy. So, this means that there will be kids that will fall -- that will fall through the cracks and who will in fact get hepatitis B and who will go on to liver cancer. This is a -- a cancer-preventing vaccine that this Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices has tried to destabilize.

KEILAR: Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, thank you so much for being with us. A lot of parents watching this very carefully, thanks.

DASKALAKIS: Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: Boris?

SANCHEZ: Now to breaking news out of Florida. A federal judge ordering grand jury transcripts and other records from the Jeffrey Epstein case be unsealed for the first time. This comes after years of pressure from victims to let the public see the documents the government has compiled on the late sex offender.

CNN's Kara Scannell is following this story for us.

So, Kara, what sorts of records could we potentially see based off of this ruling?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Boris, this ruling relates to the investigation that was conducted by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Florida that ended with the non-prosecution agreement struck with Jeffrey Epstein in 2007.

So, it could contain some of the investigative files from that early -- that initial investigation, things that could include financial records, search warrant returns, interview transcripts with survivors, with people who worked for Epstein. That's the potential of what this will entail. They have not been explicit in this court filing about exactly what is covered by the protective order that the judge has now ruled can be modified or who actually would have testified before a grand jury since Epstein was not actually indicted in that case.

But this is the first of three potential rulings on this, because the judge in Florida got the initial request to unseal these transcripts after the passage of the Epstein Transparency Act last month. And in this case, the judge saying that that act trumps grand jury secrecy rules, which is why the judge ruled that these materials could be unsealed.

There are two rulings -- expected rulings, in New York involving the later Epstein investigation resulting in the criminal charges against him in 2019 and then the charges against Ghislaine Maxwell. In those cases, DOJ has been very explicit of what it contains. The search warrant returns, financial records, interviews, police reports, mugshots, a ton of information.

The judges there are weighing that -- those materials and responses. Just today, a lawyer for some of the survivors filed a letter saying that he hopes that whatever the judge does, he orders DOJ to work with the victims to ensure that their personal information is not made public through a large document dump. They said that the House Oversight Committee in the 20,000-page dump last month that they had inadvertently released information about dozens of survivors, saying some of them had reached out to the lawyers' very concern.

So, the lawyers here are asking the judges in New York to please ensure that DOJ properly redacts the names. That's likely to occur also with the Florida committee, Boris.

[15:10:05] SANCHEZ: Kara Scannell, thank you so much for the update. We know

we'll be watching that story very closely.

Still to come, the U.S. carrying out another deadly attack on a suspected drug boat amid growing scrutiny over the so-called double tap strike that killed survivors.

Plus, how the Trump administration's immigration crackdown is affecting Somalis here in the United States and abroad as well.

And later, who's it going to be? Which countries won the draw to go head-to-head in the first stage of the World Cup? That and much more coming your way next.

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[15:14:56]

SANCHEZ: The U.S. military carrying out another deadly strike on a suspected drug boat, this time targeting a vessel in the eastern Pacific in a strike that killed four people on Thursday. This is video of that boat strike posted to social media by U.S. Southern Command. It comes as we're learning new details about the deadly double-tap strike in the Caribbean back in September that some officials have called a potential war crime.

CNN is now learning that the admiral, Mitch Bradley, who oversaw that follow-up strike, told lawmakers during classified briefings that the survivors did not appear to have a radio or other communications devices. Instead, the admiral, after consulting with a military lawyer who said a follow-up strike would be legal, ordered the second strike because part of the boat, he believed, was still afloat with cocaine. And the survivors, who bobbed in the water for 41 minutes, theoretically could have made it to safety and then continued the operation.

Let's get some perspective now from Leon Panetta. He's a former defense secretary and CIA director under President Obama.

Sir, thanks so much for being with us.

We've learned these two survivors, as I mentioned a moment ago, bobbed in the water for most of an hour while officials decided what to do, and we heard from the admiral that it didn't appear that they were able to communicate with their partners on land. What level of threat, in your eyes, did they pose at that moment?

LEON PANETTA, DEFENSE SECRETARY UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, obviously, it would help if we all looked at that video of the two survivors and came to our own judgment as to how much of a threat those survivors may have constituted. What concerns me is that, frankly, the secretary of defense, whose orders were issued on that strike and who was there for the first strike, for some reason was not there for the second strike. And that took about 45 minutes for the second strike to ultimately happen. And -- and so, the real question is, well, where was the secretary?

And is it the admiral's responsibility or is it the secretary of defense's responsibility as to what happened on that second strike? I happen to think it's the secretary of defense because it was his order and it should be his responsibility.

SANCHEZ: As far as the admiral is concerned, his consulting with a JAG officer who apparently assessed that the strike would be appropriate, does that potentially absolve him of some level of responsibility?

PANETTA: Well, I -- you know, I think, obviously, that the Congress and the committees on armed services are now investigating the situation, and I -- I hope that they do, that they look at the planning, that they look at the discussions about the law that were involved, and that they look at the strategy that was implemented and also look at all the tapes that are involved with this kind of attack.

I'm -- I'm concerned with the theory that somehow if you're a drug trafficker, that somehow you're an enemy combatant. If that's the case and that justifies killing, then what does it mean? Should we start shooting drug traffickers in Colombia, in Honduras, in Mexico?

I think it's a stretch to frankly say that those individuals are combatants who are threatening the -- the -- the United States of America with some kind of military attack. I just don't see the rationale for that conclusion. And it -- it raises a lot of doubt about the -- the mission and the kind of strikes that they continue to conduct.

SANCHEZ: There's also the question of how the calculus may have changed after that September 2nd strike, because about a month later, on October 16th, there were two survivors who were detained by the United States and then sent back to their home countries of Ecuador and Colombia. I mean, does that tell you that the strategy perhaps shifted after what happened in September?

PANETTA: Well, I think that is a very interesting point. It would -- it could very well be that they recognized that the legal justification for killing survivors is questionable and does raise concerns about a war crime. And therefore, with later missions, they basically rescued the survivors and repatriated them to the country.

[15:20:02]

So, something changed -- something changed in terms of the orders and the direction that was provided. And that, I think, is important for the Congress to determine just exactly what were the orders, are they in writing, what do they say and what exactly is, again, the -- the fundamental purpose of conducting these kinds of attacks.

Are we going to continue to do these kinds of attacks? Because, frankly, we have not seen the evidence as to the individuals on board, how much -- how much did they have in terms of narcotics, was it truly headed towards the United States or towards Europe and other areas? We have not seen the evidence to basically back up the purpose of the strikes. SANCHEZ: Former Secretary Leon Panetta, thank you so much for the

time.

PANETTA: Good to be with you.

SANCHEZ: Thanks.

Still ahead, the alleged D.C. pipe bomber appearing in court for the first time, facing criminal charges as we learn details of a new possible motive.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:25:51]

KEILAR: This hour, new details from inside the first court appearance of the man that prosecutors say planted pipe bombs in Washington, D.C., just hours before the January 6th riot. We're learning six members of the suspect's family were on hand when a judge read his rights and charges out loud. The family heard shouting, we love you and we're here for you, when the hearing ended.

SANCHEZ: The suspect, Brian Cole Jr., did not enter a plea today, as possible clues of a motive now emerge. CNN's Evan Perez has more.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, the -- the interesting thing about the family, obviously, that he lived with his family in Woodridge, Virginia. It's a very quiet neighborhood. And the neighbors described him as sort of a loner person who walked around walking his chihuahua. You know, it's just a -- an interesting dynamic when you consider what, you know, the FBI has been searching for this guy for five years, right?

And what we're told is after a day-long session with the FBI, doing a series of interviews, he finally said that he was angry about the 2020 election, that he believed the 2020 election was stolen. Now, it's the first indication of a possible motive that might explain what has happened here. And it certainly goes to what we heard in 2020 from President Trump. He claimed that the -- the election was stolen, and it's the -- it's the mantra, essentially, that drew tens of thousands of people to the U.S. Capitol to attack the Capitol on that day, right about the time when the -- these two bombs were discovered a few blocks away from the Capitol.

And so, that's part of why this investigation has been such an important thing. The FBI spent millions of dollars trying to find this guy, and finally they believe they have him.

KEILAR: No new charges read aloud today, but the attorney general is saying we should be expecting some new charges.

PEREZ: Yes, and I think she's right. I -- and what it gives you a sense of is how much work they still have to do. This affidavit that they unsealed in -- in court really describes some of the technical nature of how they got to this guy. It wasn't a tip. It wasn't anyone turning him in. It looks like his family just had no clue what was happening here. It does seem to be that the FBI used a lot of technical know-how to be able to exploit the cell phone data, the cell phone tower data, in ways that they had not been able to do before.

This happened -- the break in this case, happened only in the last few weeks. This suspect really came on their radar just in the last few weeks, and that's what's incredible when you think about how much work has gone into this over the last almost five years.

SANCHEZ: Also, no plea entered today.

PEREZ: No plea is entered.

SANCHEZ: So, what are you going to be watching for next?

PEREZ: Well, we expect that he's going to be next in there for -- you know, in a couple of weeks for a detention hearing, and by then we might see additional charges from the Justice Department. I think that's one of the things that they're working towards.

SANCHEZ: Evan Perez, thank you so much for that reporting.

The Twin Cities are now caught up in a fight over immigration. After the break, we're going to be joined by a local lawmaker pushing back against this crackdown.

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