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Blue Origin Rocket Blows Up During Ground Test in Florida; Former AG, Bondi Appears Behind Closed Doors in Epstein Probe; First Survivor Freed From Laos Cave, Rescue Mission to Resume Tomorrow; Crews Rescue Eight Students Stuck on Ride 100 Feet in Air for Four Hours; Shrey Parikh Crowned 2026 Scripps Spelling Bee Champ. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired May 29, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Company starting to look like a true competitor to SpaceX until now. This happened during what's known as a hot fire test, that's when the rocket's engines are ignited on the ground, you can see them there, while the vehicle remains at the launch pad, then the massive explosion.

The biggest headline here is that Jeff Bezos, according to a social media post, says everyone involved is safe. It is important to note, this was not the first test of the New Glenn rocket. The rocket successfully reached orbit on its first flight in January 2025.

Blue Origin then completed additional launches, also successfully recovered some of the boosters, the same reusable rocket technology that helped make SpaceX pretty dominant in this space. Remember, this is not Blue Origin's tourism rocket. The New Shepard is what carried celebrities, including William Shatner and Katy Perry, on brief trips into space.

The New Glenn is Blue Origin's first rocket missions in Earth orbit. It's the centerpiece of the company's efforts to compete directly with SpaceX, expected to launch commercial satellites, government payloads, Amazon satellite internet constellation, a direct competitor to SpaceX's Starlink as well. One of the biggest questions now is whether the explosion damaged the launch pad itself.

Rockets can be replaced, but a damaged launch complex can take months to repair. After the explosion, Elon Musk of SpaceX posted on X, "Most unfortunate. Rockets are hard," to put it mildly. The focus now turns to what caused this failure and whether this could delay future launches at this launch complex at Cape Canaveral.

The Federal Aviation Administration usually would lead an investigation into something like this. That's the agency that oversees private space launches, says because this test was on the ground, it's not really in its regulatory scope, so still sort of unclear who will dig down into the bottom of this and figure out exactly what caused this huge explosion from the start. BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Can you answer a little random trivia question for me? Almost looks like tiny little smokestacks that you see, that are lit on either side before hand, which almost -- you see them? They are right there.

MUNTEAN: Yeah, and some of those are sort of a pilot light there to help ignite the rocket itself. The big concern of damage is to the sort of the towers there on the left and right. And we're just now getting new images sort of showing the scope and the daylight from the air of what the damage was like here.

And so, that's the big question. If this pad is significantly damaged, then this could set back not only future launches for Amazon's Blue Origin, but other companies that use these launches -- use these launch pads at Cape Canaveral. Still some pretty big questions out there --

KEILAR: Oh, yeah.

MUNTEAN: -- about why this took place and really the full scope of this.

KEILAR: Yeah, no doubt. Hard to see how there may not be damage, but we'll be waiting for the official designation on that. Pete, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

MUNTEAN: Anytime.

KEILAR: Still ahead, former Attorney General, Pam Bondi facing lawmakers and defending the Justice Department's handling of the release of the Epstein files. We'll speak with an attorney for several Epstein survivors next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:37:10]

KEILAR: Former Attorney General, Pam Bondi just finished speaking to the House Oversight Committee where she defended the Justice Department's handling of the release of the Epstein files. During the interview, Democrats say Bondi tried to push any blame on the document release process on now acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche.

This comes after Bondi wrote in her opening statement, quote, "As the head of a large department with broad responsibilities, I did not lead every aspect of this effort or conduct that document review myself. I delegated oversight over this process to Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche. The team of professionals who reviewed all of the materials that we collected assured me the only materials that were withheld were either non-responsive, privileged or duplicative."

We're joined now by Arick Fudali. He's an attorney who represents 11 Epstein accusers. I'll ask you about that Blanche part of the statement here in a second, Arick, but first, I do wonder if Pam Bondi were to be fully cooperative in answering questions and trying to answer them to the very best of her ability, what you wish her interview would reveal and what you actually expect that it did.

ARICK FUDALI, ATTORNEY REPRESENTING 11 EPSTEIN ACCUSERS: Well, I certainly expected exactly what happened was for her to, you know, displace blame, for her to deflect, for her to deny that she ever did anything wrong or that the Department of Justice did anything wrong. I mean frankly, that's what she did last time and her temper tantrum on the floor.

So I didn't expect much from her. What I would have liked is for this to have been under oath and live. I don't know what Congress thought was going to happen when they brought in someone who they were very -- who was very obviously, priorities were just to Donald Trump, just to the cover-up and had no, you know, no empathy or anything at all for the survivors.

So, I don't know what Congress expected inviting her in, in a closed- door meeting that wasn't even under oath. I would have liked to really understand what the process was for how these items were redacted or, better said, not redacted because as has been very clear, one of my clients was named over 500 times, many survivors were named many, many times throughout the documents.

So whether it was Pam Bondi or Todd Blanche or some people -- the other people who were delegated, things went very wrong here and the person who was at the top of the Department of Justice when that happened needs to take responsibility.

KEILAR: Yeah, even as she's sort of saying, she's taking the word of other people for how they're saying they did their jobs pertaining to the release, she said to the best of her knowledge, DOJ produced everything required under the law and demonstrated an unprecedented commitment to transparency in releasing the documents. Do you agree with that characterization?

FUDALI: Absolutely not. I mean the commitment to transparency and accountability is laughable. The only commitment has been to Donald Trump and whatever he wanted to come out of this document release or did not want to come out of this document release.

[13:40:00]

So to suggest that there was any effort to transparency and accountability is really, I mean, it's almost offensive to suggest that. I mean, we have to remember that not only were victims' names unredacted, but basically everyone other than Jeffrey Epstein, who may have been a co-conspirator, may have been a facilitator, may have been a co-abuser, people with very suspicious emails, their names were redacted.

No mistakes there, not a single mistake when it came to redacting the names of potential other perpetrators. So, I mean, I would laugh if it wasn't so sad and unfunny at the notion that her commitment has been to transparency and accountability. And she is the person who is at the top of the Department of Justice.

Remember, I'm the managing attorney of my firm. If there's an egregious mistake made at my law firm, that goes directly to me. That's my fault, not the people who I delegated to. The person at the top has to be responsible for what happens, especially when it is something so important as redacting the names of victims in publicly available documents.

KEILAR: So, Epstein victims have said they were trafficked to other men, and there is very little clarity on how investigators actually pursued the leads from Epstein victims who alleged this sexual abuse. Sort of famously, they have said, no, we haven't even heard from DOJ. You know, they've availed themselves, and yet they haven't seen anyone contact them to follow up.

What has DOJ done? What hasn't DOJ done that they should have done as it pertains to this issue, in your view?

FUDALI: So, from my knowledge, the only thing DOJ has done is reached out to my law firm to ask us for the names of our clients who were survivors of Jeffrey Epstein to make sure that they were redacted. I don't know what they did with that information because the names were not redacted. So, that was the only single thing they did, and they even failed in that endeavor.

They have made no efforts to reach out to my clients, to speak to my clients, to do that. None of the Republicans showed up. One of my clients actually spoke at the oversight shadow hearing in West Palm Beach a couple of weeks ago, where survivors were given the opportunity to speak to congressmen at a hearing setting. Not a single Republican showed up to that.

So, there has been no effort, not a single member of the Department of Justice, from my knowledge, was there either. So, from my knowledge, there has been zero effort by the Department of Justice to do anything as it relates to Jeffrey Epstein, other than to cover this up and to try to move on from this and let the story die, because there's been zero effort.

There's been zero criminal accountability. There's been zero real accomplishments here, other than releasing documents that were so haphazardly done that you can't give them any credit for that.

KEILAR: So, just to be clear, your clients, Epstein victims, still have their names publicly in the Epstein files?

FUDALI: Last I checked, there was at least one instance of one of my clients' names still unredacted. I check all the time. When we notify to them that one of the clients has been listed 538 times, they eventually took them all down. But now, as we're back up here, you know, I'm seeing that there's still some names revealed.

The problem is, those names are already out there, right? Once the names are there, you never can truly erase anything from the internet. So, they're there, they are out there. My client has received messages from random people, people trying to contact her.

I mean, her name is out there, and no matter what the DOJ does at this point, they can't change that. KEILAR: Yeah, of course, obviously. Arick Fudali, thank you so much for being with us on this important day. We appreciate it.

FUDALI: Thank you.

KEILAR: Coming up, we're following the latest on that urgent cave rescue in Laos. One survivor has been safely guided out. Four others though are still trapped, and they will remain so overnight. We'll have more next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:48:10]

KEILAR: Back to our Breaking News out of Laos where one survivor has now been rescued from that flooded cave. This hour, four others are still trapped inside, but the mission to free them was suspended for the night.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah. Here is the remarkable moment when that first survivor was safely pulled out by divers. CNN is the only U.S. network reporting exclusively on the ground in Laos and we've learned that the remaining stranded men are over 800 feet from the cave's entrance with two more people still missing.

Joining us now on the live is Cave Rescue Instructor, Rick Murcar. He's the international training director for the National Association for Cave Diving. Rick, thank you so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us. What stood out to you about this rescue operation and how the crew was able to get this first villager out?

RICK MURCAR, CAVE RESCUE INSTRUCTOR: The complexity, no rescue, no recovery is the same. You can only model and then just the logistics and the technological aspect of trying to do this through the restrictions and the confined spaces that they have to work.

KEILAR: I'm trying to imagine, Rick, what it's like for these four men who are remaining. They know that one man has made it out alive and then they have to wait overnight. And we know that they're unwell. We've heard that they're having some gastrointestinal distress. They've got some skin issues right now. What do you think that's like for them as they're now just waiting and having that anticipation of what comes tomorrow?

MURCAR: You know, I can only imagine. The relief must be there knowing that one of their friends got out. There's two still unaccounted for. Out of the four that are remaining, that has got to be a bit of a relief. But at the same time, the anticipation, who's next, how far will it go.

[13:50:00]

We know that they have connection to their family members, to an internet link or whatever, which is awesome. But at the same time, the aspect of having to wait your turn to just know, like, did they draw straws or whatever they did to decide who goes first. The health of the men, let's pray for that because, I mean, it can deteriorate pretty quickly and with the potential of the next coming rainstorm, their anxiety levels may go up.

So it is a bit of a psychological game that they're having to go through right now. And we just -- we can't put ourselves in their shoes without being actually in their shoes, I think. But I imagine it must be pretty stressful.

SANCHEZ: No doubt, especially as you noted, because there is rain on the way if it isn't already falling. Could you give us an idea of what it's like to navigate a cave like this, especially parts where you are underwater with limited to no visibility? And on top of that, as you noted, the health condition that these four men are facing, given that they've been underground for nine days.

MURCAR: Well, just in a general sense of cave diving, when you lose visibility, it's not an enjoyable point. Many divers do different things. I have some of my comrades that will actually sing and hum to themselves, sort of a stress relief method. We have to appreciate that if we assume none of these gentlemen have ever done any scuba diving, here they are being thrown right at, if you will, the pinnacle of what can bring on stress because they have to learn to dive.

Then they're going to do it through a restrictive area. They're going to do it in zero visibility, that their eyes can only see up to the glass of the mask. And breathe, which is instinctually not correct when we put our face in the water.

So from a cave diver that is trained, I think it was one of the earlier interviewee said that, you know, when things go wrong and panic, the things that build up and aggregate on to develop panic and your perception narrows, fight, flight, freeze, whatever, can even take out a trained cave diver.

So for these gentlemen to be exposed to this level of diving that the cave divers themselves would recognize as an extreme amount of stress and the physical contact and the inability to communicate when they're in the water portions of this cave passage, it's a mind boggling thing.

So in cave diving, we train to deal with no visibility. In fact, most of our training is done with worst-case scenario base. And you have to appreciate that when you cannot see something, you have to rely on other senses. So most time that training is in a passage that you can move left, right, up, down a little bit, a little bit of play.

But here they're doing it where, I mean, the very passage that they're moving through will change on them because clay, sand, silt, debris may come down. There's no -- rains aren't going to help that. Current flows will change.

So the cave diver has to be on his game, let alone that he has somebody, hopefully, in contact on his ankle the entire time. And I will assume that there's possibly a second cave diver that's in behind. So if anything goes wrong, you have the potential of one, two, or three people being put at great risk and possibly even fatality. So we don't want that. But I can tell you that when you're in a zero visibility situation, when things are real compared to training, your stress level is going to go up. You have to keep that in check.

Some people get themselves a little bit relaxed mindset and they just realize, I just got to get through this. We have to do our job. And that's what these rescuers have to do. And they have to keep that because that, hopefully, will translate back to the miner. And through that translation of touch or whatever method of communication you're using, it will allow the next gentleman to be brought out safely and then the following three and hopefully, we'll find the other two.

KEILAR: Yeah, this is a feat of survival, a miracle that we're watching and hoping ends well for all of these men. Rick, thanks so much for being with us.

MURCAR: Thank you.

KEILAR: Still ahead, the dramatic conclusion to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. We're going to show you the spell off that sealed the deal.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:59:51]

SANCHEZ: Eight students had to be rescued after being stuck on the Iron Shark roller coaster in Galveston, Texas. Look at this. The malfunctioning ride came to a halt on the ascent, leaving the kids stranded about 100 feet in the air in a completely vertical position.

The kids were part of a middle and high school group on a field trip. The fire department, as you can see there, had to bring in a ladder, bringing the kids down one by one attached to a safety harness. The whole thing took about four hours.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF MIKE VARELA, GALVESTON, TEXAS FIRE DEPARTMENT: You could tell they were shaken up visually. And then, you can see a sense of joy as well once their feet hit the ground. They have been checked for dehydration, and everyone seems to be doing pretty good.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Yeah, shaken up for sure. What's still not clear is what caused the malfunction. A thorough inspection will now be done before the ride gets put back into service. Brianna?

KEILAR: And no thank you to that. Bromocriptine, what is that? It is a medication, and it's a word that some of you have probably never even heard. You've probably never spelled it. But it is the word that helped 14-year-old Shrey Parikh win the Scripps National Spelling Bee and $50,000 along with it. It was a nerve-shredding contest that went into a spell-off.

CNN's Coy Wire was there for all.