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Critics Question Who is Being Protected by Epstein File Redactions; Talks with Ukraine, Russia and U.S. End with Little Progress; Bad Bunny to be First Spanish-Language Artist to Headline Super Bowl Show. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired February 05, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL ENTERPRISE CORRESPONDENT: ... photo may have been doctored, but in these latest files released by the DOJ, there is this 2015 e-mail to Epstein written by Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted co-conspirator of Epstein. And the subject line is draft statement. And this is what it says.

It says, "It was in London when" (redacted) and we happen to know from other e-mails that this is Virginia that they're talking about, "met a number of friends of mine, including Prince Andrew. A photograph was taken as I imagine she wanted to show it to friends and family." And then she goes on to write to Epstein again.

"They need me to say I was not aware of massage with Andrew in my house." It's just impossible to fully understand the full context of these e-mails. But it sure does appear that Maxwell and Epstein were at least discussing Virginia Giuffre and sort of the messaging about Virginia Giuffre.

Giuffre's family is looking at this message and saying, you know, this is vindication for our family member that we lost. You know, she has been telling the truth this entire time. And meanwhile, of course, all of this has really rocked the Royal family in the UK with Prince Andrew no longer being prince and having to be forced out to leave the Windsor estate as well.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A stark difference between the ripple effects that you're seeing in the U.K. versus what you're seeing in the U.S., just in the language that we heard there from Keir Starmer in comparison to what President Trump is saying.

LEE: Yes, I thought even hearing the words I'm sorry from the prime minister was kind of striking. You know, over there, there's talk about whether the prime minister himself might lose his job over the Peter Mandelson scandal. But here in the U.S., we have had some trickling out of information, of course, about some very public and prominent figures who clearly had dealings with Epstein.

And some of those people have paid a price. I'm thinking about a Larry Summers, who basically is no longer a public facing figure for now. Somebody like Brad Karp, who was chairman of Paul Weiss, a very prominent law group, he had to abruptly resign. But if you look at some of the individuals who are in either Trump's orbit or even his administration, for now, we are not really seeing sort of that level of sort of punishment or public punishment, their jobs being affected. Somebody like Howard Lutnick, who was the Commerce Secretary, he wanted to connect with Epstein on, apparently, his private island in the Caribbean. Those were documents that were in the files released by the DOJ.

Elon Musk, who previously said he refused Epstein's invites. Well, the files actually show that Musk was trying to visit Epstein, and even asked at one point, which night on the island is going to have the wildest party. Somebody like Stephen Bannon, frequently discussing Trump with Epstein, and sometimes even sort of reveling in the fact that he was close to Donald Trump.

Certainly, some different reactions we are getting in the U.K. versus here raises a lot of questions about what accountability looks like.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And it's important to note, none of the people you mentioned have been accused of wrongdoing. But I think what's also important to note is that by 2008, Jeffrey Epstein has taken a plea deal.

LEE: Yes.

KEILAR: He is a child sex offender. He is registering, right? He is known as that, and there are people still associated. Those things that you mentioned, those actually happened in the 2010s.

So these are people associating with him after he is a known child sex offender, and big questions being raised about that and what the DOJ is and is not investigating here. MJ, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Coming up, fears of a nuclear arms race rising as a key treaty between the U.S. and Russia is about to expire. What the president is now saying about a future treaty. We have that next on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

[15:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: A second round of trilateral talks aimed at ending Russia's war on Ukraine ended earlier today with scant signs of progress. U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff, who led the U.S. delegation in talks with Russia and Ukraine, called the meeting constructive, focusing on how to create a durable peace. He says another round of talks are set to happen in the coming weeks.

Also today, we got some scenes of joy rarely seen on the front lines in Ukraine, the two sides conducting a major prisoner swap, each returning 157 prisoners of war.

Let's get some perspective now with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Obama administration, Joel Rubin. He's also the author of "The Briefing Book" on Substack. Joel, great to see you as always.

JOEL RUBIN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: You too, Boris.

SANCHEZ: So, Witkoff calling them constructive talks, the prisoner exchange. How do you see it?

RUBIN: Look, the negotiations need to see an American presence that is strong and tough. President Trump needs to get tougher, quite frankly, for Steve Witkoff to be effective at the table.

It's wonderful to have the prisoner exchange that should never be looked to scant, but that's not a replacement for a negotiated end to this war. And I just fear that we're allowing the Russians to continue to leg it out and Vladimir Putin continues to avoid any harsh penalties from the United States while he continues to kill many Ukrainians on the ground.

SANCHEZ: So the recent announcement of this deal with Modi to reduce --

RUBIN: Yes.

SANCHEZ: -- oil purchases from Russia and the U.S. seeming to chase down these unnamed Russian tankers with oil on them from around the world, is that not significant enough?

RUBIN: You know, Boris, it's nibbling at the edges. For example, there is a bill right now sitting in the Senate that would quintuple the sanctions on Russia.

[15:40:00]

It's a bipartisan bill that has over 80 co-sponsors and the president doesn't want to move on it. He says, no, I don't need that. I can resolve this. Remember he said he could resolve it in a day and that 24 hour clock has long since passed.

He needs to get tough on Putin. Putin's seen -- and this is remarkable, 1.2 million casualties over the last four years of Russians. So it's clear he doesn't seem to worry about Russian casualties. So we need to make him feel real pain because the casualties don't matter to him.

SANCHEZ: When it comes to the nuclear treaty with the U.S. that expired today, the Kremlin seems fairly concerned about this. They've talked about taking steps to sort of mitigate any national security threats. Trump basically said, if it expires, it expires.

He doesn't seem quite as concerned.

RUBIN: Yes, that new START treaty really provided guardrails for strategic stability between us and Russia for a number of years. And of course, it's antecedent started in the late '80s, the START treaty. It's in our national security interest to have strategic stability. We need insight into the Russian arsenal. Right now we're losing it. I'm not necessarily worried about Russia building up its nuclear arsenal.

It doesn't have the resources for that. But we need to know what they have. We need to monitor them effectively.

And by not having this treaty, we're losing that. And we're losing also global confidence in arms control treaties writ large. And there's China just over the horizon.

We need to get them in the treaty too.

SANCHEZ: I was actually about to ask you about China because they weren't part of the new --

RUBIN: No.

SANCHEZ: -- START treaty. And notably, they're also one of the largest purchasers in the world of Russian oil.

RUBIN: Yes.

SANCHEZ: And President Trump had a conversation with President Xi just a few days ago. It doesn't seem like the U.S. is very eager to put pressure on Xi when it comes to Russia.

RUBIN: You know, this is the crux of the problem is that President Trump does not want to find avenues that put the pressure on. And when it comes to China, we have a muddled policy. I got to say, I'm confused, quite frankly, about what President Trump is trying to do with China.

He might go out there in a couple of months. What's his agenda going to be? Is it going to be opening up markets for American exports?

Is it going to be curtailing their nuclear program? Is it going to be putting pressure on Russia? We don't really know.

And so these ins and outs with China, in particular related to nuclear issues you've just described, there's a lot of uncertainty and not a lot of clarity about how we get to a better end state.

SANCHEZ: Aside from Nicolas Maduro being --

RUBIN: Yes.

SANCHEZ: -- an authoritarian who is cruel to his people and there being legitimate evidence of his being involved in narco-trafficking, the U.S.'s actions in Venezuela, the argument, the justifications that are being made about having dominion over this hemisphere, it sounds a lot like what you would hear from Xi when it comes to Taiwan, what you would hear from Putin when it comes to Ukraine. So how does the U.S. President go and make these arguments on behalf of Ukraine and Taiwan when he's essentially saying, you guys got to stay out of my backyard? RUBIN: Well, I think the problem we have here, Boris, is that our own national security strategy seems to validate spheres of influence. It seems to imply, if not overtly state, that we, the United States, we have dominion in the Western Hemisphere. Russia, you get broader control in Europe.

And China, you can have Asia. And it talks about that in a very colloquial 18th century, 19th century way, in a manner that we have not had in the United States, certainly not since World War II. And so for the Chinese, they can say, well, you did Venezuela, maybe we'll just do Taiwan.

Anyways, it's in your national security strategy, isn't it? And that's the big fear about where we are right now.

SANCHEZ: Joel Rubin, appreciate the analysis.

RUBIN: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Still more news to come this hour. The road to the Super Bowl leads to one of the most anticipated halftime shows ever. And today we're finally getting some clues as to what we may see from Bad Bunny, what he's saying about the gig next.

[15:45:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Bad Bunny's highly anticipated Super Bowl halftime show is just days away now, and he just appeared at a special pregame and halftime show event in San Francisco.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BAD BUNNY, SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW PERFORMER: It's been a lot. Of course, there's a lot of gratitude. It's how I've been feeling this whole year with the album.

The biggest feeling is being grateful. Like (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) I feel I'm happy, but I'm just processing and taking one day at a time and just leaving. You know what I mean?

So I'm excited about this performance. I'm excited. But at the same time, how I said before is I feel more excited about the people than even me, about my family, about my friends, people that I know that they always have believed in me, and they happy because this moment, the culture.

I don't want to give any spoilers. It's going to be fun and it's going party. It's going to be easy, and people only have to worry about dance.

I know that I told them that they had four months to learn Spanish. They don't even have to learn Spanish. It's better if they learn to dance, but I think there's no better dance than the one that comes from the heart. (END VIDEOTAPE)

[15:50:03]

SANCHEZ: Dancing needs no language.

KEILAR: That's right.

SANCHEZ: Right, yes, of course. Bad Bunny is going to become the first Spanish language artist to headline the halftime show. We have Sabrina Rodriguez here to discuss. She is the politics reporter for the Wall Street Journal, also the Duchess of Hialeah, Florida, and seemingly one of our key Bad Bunny contributors because we've had you on to talk about this --

SABRINA RODRIGUEZ, POLITICS REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Come on.

SANCHEZ: -- multiple times now. Is it going to be impossible to see politics in this no matter what he does, even if he comes out and doesn't make any overt political statement?

RODRIGUEZ: Yes, I think at this point, we're at the point in this conversation and looking at the Super Bowl where no matter what he does, it will be political. You know, we've talked about this before, but Bad Bunny's existence is political in many ways. He's been shaped so much by the culture, you know, of his native Puerto Rico, of him wanting to highlight it.

And his music highlighting the challenges that the island faces as a U.S. territory. I mean, so much of his artistry is grounded in some level of politics, maybe not the traditional U.S. Democrat and Republican politics, but he is. And just the fact that he is the first Spanish language artist to be headlining the Super Bowl, the fact he is exclusively -- you know his music is exclusively in Spanish.

So I think regardless of if he goes and like does some kind of big overt political statement, just the fact that he's on that stage in this moment in America and we're having the conversations we're having around immigration, and he has made his position on that public, makes this political.

KEILAR: But if he's promising then, he said easy, he said he promised an easy performance, right? There's going to be dancing. And he seems like he's promising kind of a joyous, fun performance.

I wonder how the response might look because at this point, President Trump has said the selections of Bad Bunny and Green Day sow hatred. You have Turning Point USA hosting this alternative halftime show. How much does what he does determine what that sort of pre-buttle, what it looks like really?

RODRIGUEZ: Well, I think it might turn out to be, I mean, if we don't see some type of overt political statement from Bad Bunny, it might turn out that like the conversation before ended up being more hyped up and dramatic than the conversation afterwards. I was talking to a few Republican consultants, you know, for a story earlier this week about the backlash. And they were saying there was sort of an acknowledgement that, yes, if it goes through and he doesn't do anything crazy by their standard that, you know, it'll just go on as like not a great choice from the Super Bowl, not a great choice from the NFL and from rock nation to have him, but it won't keep the conversation going necessarily.

SANCHEZ: Roger Goodell doesn't think it's a bad choice. He defended the selection saying he's one of the greatest artists in the world. And that's one of the reasons that we chose him.

Clearly, it's good business as we've discussed before for the NFL.

RODRIGUEZ: 100 percent. I mean, at the end of the day, we know that this is a business choice. And even just seeing the coverage today of the press conference and him addressing the media today.

I mean, I saw videos of reporters lined up like two hours early and, and one sports reporter on social media was talking about how he has never in all his years covering the Super Bowl had to wait in that long of a line to cover, you know, a headliner. So I think that it's clear that they're doing this for numbers. There's, you know, it's well-established that the NFL, that Roger Goodell really wants to expand the global footprint.

And this is an effort toward that.

SANCHEZ: Sorry. Can you remember a halftime show that has ever been discussed this way before it happened? Obviously, the Janet Jackson, Justin Timberlake thing.

KEILAR: After, yes.

SANCHEZ: But that was after, right?

RODRIGUEZ: Not really. I mean, this is definitely historic in that nature going into it. You know, I remember last year with Kendrick Lamar, there was some conversation about, oh, you know, it was right after Donald Trump being elected president.

Is there going to be some type of political statement? But even then, it was not to the level and the magnitude of the conversation. I mean, the fact that we are days out having these segments, having these conversations, it's because of the amount of conversation happening around it.

And we haven't really seen that before a Super Bowl.

KEILAR: Yes. We're going to be watching. It's going to be interesting no matter what.

Sabrina Rodriguez, the Duchess of Hialeah.

SANCHEZ: We're going in the lower thirds.

RODRIGUEZ: It would be an honor. KEILAR: All right. Thank you so much.

And this weekend ahead of the Super Bowl, don't miss the new CNN original film, "BAD BUNNY AND THE HALFTIME SHOW, RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE." That airs Saturday at 10 p.m. Eastern in Pacific only here on CNN. It streams the next day on the CNN app.

And we'll be right back.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Now, to some of the other headlines we're watching this hour. A top Cuban diplomat says his country is ready for meaningful dialogue with the White House. Deputy Prime Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio tells CNN that Havana is exchanging messages with Washington. He says his country is not willing to discuss a change in its system of government.

His comments come just days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he would love to see regime change in Cuba.

KEILAR: And a high altitude rescue at a popular ski resort in the Adirondacks. Rangers in upstate New York lowering dozens of people to the ground after a gondola cable got stuck at Gore Mountain yesterday. Management company there describing it as a non-emergency mechanical issue, saying more than 67 people in 20 different cabins were rescued.

No injuries reported.

SANCHEZ: Also, Lindsey Vonn. All right.

KEILAR: Wow.

SANCHEZ: Anyone thinking there's no way she could possibly ski at the Olympics with a torn ACL has to see this Instagram video she just posted. Squats, box jumps, other rigorous exercise. The 41-year-old says she will compete in the women's downhill this Sunday, despite a serious knee injury that she suffered in a race less than a week ago.

[16:00:00]

Vonn's coach told the Associated Press he's pretty confident she can still pull off this dream. How does that not hurt? How does that not hurt?

KEILAR: I need her to hold up a newspaper to show that that wasn't done before. Right? Wild.

"THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

END