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Bolton Arrives in Court; Journalist Tony Frangle Mawad is Interviewed about the Earthquake in Venezuela; Leon Black Appears Before Congressional Committee; Rep. Dave Min (D-CA) is Interviewed about Leon Black's Testimony; Small Plane Crashes into Tallest Building in Beijing; SCOTUS Ruling on Deportations. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 26, 2026 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: And it is really interesting. It does give us a real look into, not just your life, but the family's life and the life of Tupac Shakur, which so many people revere.

Thank you so much, Mopreme Shakur, for coming on. I appreciate you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: Breaking this morning, the death toll spiking. At least 589 people now confirmed dead after those devastating earthquakes in Venezuela. That number doubling in just the last few minutes, with an untold number of people who are still missing at this hour. More on the urgent rescue mission that is going on as we speak.

And we're standing by for President Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton, to appear in court, where he's expected to plead guilty to the mishandling of sensitive national security information.

Also happening today, billionaire investor Leon Black will be on the hot seat, facing questions from lawmakers over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

I'm Sara Sidner, with Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's get to the breaking news this hour.

Former Ambassador John Bolton just arrived at a federal court in Maryland. He is expected to plead guilty now to -- let's watch this video. You'll see it as well. To plead guilty to illegally retaining sensitive national security information. It's part of a plea deal that could end with sending the former Trump national security adviser to prison.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is outside court in Maryland, where this is all supposed to now take place.

What are you hearing? KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Kate, in about a

half an hour, that plea hearing is going to begin. A very significant day for a former ambassador to the United Nations, a national security adviser, as well as a significant day for the Trump Justice Department. This is a man that has been at odds with Donald Trump since his service as national security adviser in the first Trump administration. Donald Trump has wanted to see him prosecuted, and it is going to be resulting in a conviction of such a high-ranking former government official.

What happened here in this case, it's not one of those flash in the pan cases that just popped up because Trump demanded it so and was resulting in a plea. This is a case that had been investigated for years by the FBI and the Justice Department. What they found is that John Bolton, when he was in service of Trump in the White House, he had a very high-level security clearance, and he was taking notes of what he was learning in real time in classified briefings. Those notes, he was sending them to himself and his wife and his daughter, and then he was keeping them essentially in his house after he left the Trump White House. He was keeping it for what he was calling his archives. And he, at times, was talking to his family members as if they were editors on those summations of what he was saying. And some of them said things as specific as, in the briefing today we learned, things like that.

Now, ultimately, John Bolton was indicted in the fall. He was facing 18 criminal counts. They're reducing that as part of this plea deal to just one felony charge. That's for the retention of classified information. Not the documents themselves, but information that he was keeping in those notes. That is still going to be quite a significant charge. Others who had faced this at that level, the form CIA director, David Petraeus, the general, he had faced a misdemeanor version of this. It could potentially be a harsher situation for John Bolton because it is a felony charge.

But his sentencing is not today. That's very likely to be happening at a later date a couple months from now. That's when we will learn what he might face, whether he would go to prison or not. But at this time, this is the plea hearing. John Bolton admitting to his guilt. The allegations that he will be agreeing to, saying he did commit this crime, those are going to very likely be read in court. We'll learn of them today.

He is inside the building. It's going to be starting in just a few minutes. And we'll have to see just how aggressive the Justice Department may be in court today against John Bolton.

BOLDUAN: Yes, it will be very important to hear how both sides speak in court today about what John Bolton admits to, the plea, and how the Justice Department handles it.

It's good to see you, Katelyn. She is outside the court where it's all happening now.

Thank you.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the breaking news this morning, also a huge jump in the death toll from the back-to-back earthquakes in Venezuela. The official death toll is now 589 people, nearly 3,000 injured. That's according to the acting president.

Again, we should warn you, this will likely rise even more, especially based on what we are seeing. So much destruction there.

[09:05:02]

Rescue teams still trying to reach an unknown number of people trapped in the rubble. Time is not on their side. It's been about 39 hours since the quakes hit, and experts say the period between 48 to 72 hours is when the odds of survival are the highest. So, about another 30-hour stretch or so.

We do have new video from the quakes themselves. A plane on the ground, full of passengers, shaking violently at the country's main airport. There we go. This is the video I was just describing. You can see people inside that plane shaking there as the quakes hit.

With us now, Tony Frangle Mawad, a journalist who did survive the earthquake. You were in an elevator, if I heard it correctly, when the quakes hit, which had to be terrifying.

We just got the news, Tony, that the official death toll has doubled. I expect it will rise even more. Based on what you see, based on what is happening outside, what should people be bracing themselves for?

TONY FRANGLE MAWAD, JOURNALIST AND EARTHQUAKE SURVIVOR: Hi, John. Thank you for having me.

Indeed, we do expect the death toll to rise even more. Right now we're talking about almost 600 official casualties. Nevertheless, open source platforms talk about tens of thousands of missing people in Venezuela. It's likely that many of them will appear because the signal collapsed in the country. There's no connection.

But nevertheless, we have reports of hundreds of buildings that collapsed. So, that means there's probably even more hundreds of people trapped in those buildings, especially in La Guaira, outside of Caracas, which is a coastal town on the other side of the mountains that surround the city.

There's also the fact that, considering the years of political crisis, humanitarian crisis, economic crisis in Venezuela has lived in the last decade, we have a quite weakened state with not enough capacity. We have hollowed out institutions and a very important lack of equipment and resources and skilled staff, which is slowing down every effort and rescue effort, even though people are organizing themselves. So, that's probably also taking a toll right now.

So, we do expect that it might -- it will rise. And even though in Caracas the reports of buildings that collapsed completely are just a few and many buildings do have damages, the reports from La Guaira show a far starker situation. It looks like a war zone. We're talking about, again, hundreds of high rises that just fell to the ground with people -- many people in their homes because it was a holiday in Caracas that day.

BERMAN: Yes. Excuse me. What are you hearing? What information is available from La Guaira?

MAWAD: Well, a lot of people are already going in cars and trucks trying to help. I'm actually volunteering later in a relief center to get water and aid for the people of La Guaira. But what we hear and what we're seeing on video is many, many buildings on the ground, people that are alive and still trapped in those buildings that haven't been taken out. Many post of missing people. Many very, very sad videos of people just saying that they lost relatives, that they managed to escape before the building fell on their families.

We've seen that the airport and the highways just cracked open and just people trying to solve and help many people from Caracas going all the way to the coast to help. But still, you know, as I said, the recovery efforts have been slow and difficult. So, you even get videos of people that are trapped or that are in affected areas saying that they haven't yet even gotten help or enough help to just leave the rubble.

So, the situation in La Guaira is very dire right now. We're hoping that the arrival of people from other countries since last night, from the U.S., from Mexico, from Colombia, from Switzerland, might be a game changer in rescuing the people that are still trapped in Caracas and La Guaira and other cities.

BERMAN: And just very quickly, what is the situation in Caracas? Have you been out and about? What have you seen? How are people moving around?

MAWAD: Yes, I live in southeastern Caracas, where, thankfully, the damages were minor. But in the north of the city, we have a few buildings that collapsed. For example, in (INAUDIBLE), which is a neighborhood in the north, we have reports of three buildings that collapsed. In San Bernardino (ph), I think one or two fell. In (INAUDIBLE), one fell. So, a handful of buildings fell. But these were, you know, high rises. So, for example, in the case of the Petunia (ph), which is a tower in (INAUDIBLE), a residential tower from the '60s, they saved, I think, 16 or 18 people, but there's still around 80 missing from the building.

BERMAN: Yes.

MAWAD: So, there's a lot of efforts to help those specific buildings that fell. There's also a lot of people sleeping in parks and in avenues and boulevards. And then there's already an emotional and economic toll that will affect the following months, which is the fact that after, as I said, years of a major economic crisis, the biggest one in modern times in the world, you have a population with not enough savings, with no credit, with no insurance that will need to solve and see how they can actually fix the walls that fell, or the fractures in the buildings. [09:10:18]

So, this is going to be a month's long drama for Venezuelan society as a whole.

BERMAN: Oh, more than a month. It will go on for some time.

MAWAD: Yes.

BERMAN: Tony Frangle Mawad, thank you for sharing your reporting with us.

And for more information about how you can help the victims of this earthquake, go to cnn.com/impact or text "quake" to 707070.

Sara.

SIDNER: Yes. All right. Thank you so much, John.

Very soon now billionaire investor Leon Black is set to face lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee investigating the Jeffrey Epstein case. His name appears hundreds of times in the Epstein files.

CNN's MJ Lee is joining us now.

This is a long time coming. There are a lot of questions that lawmakers want to ask him, really about trying to sort out how to figure out how Epstein was able to run the sex trafficking through amounts of money. What are you learning today about what we're going to not see?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL ENTERPRISE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Sara, Leon Black is the latest in a string of individuals that the House Oversight Committee is trying to interview to get information about what these people in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit knew or didn't know about his past crimes. And we actually, just a few moments ago, got a copy of Leon Black's opening remarks that he will deliver to members of the House Oversight Committee when that interview begins in just about an hour or so. And he is going to say, Sara, in these opening remarks, that unequivocally he knew nothing about Epstein's crimes and that he himself never abused anyone.

This is a part of what he'll say. He'll say, "I have never abused a woman. I have never been with an underage woman. I have never engaged in sex trafficking. I have never paid Epstein for access to women. I was never blackmailed by Epstein. I was not involved with and had no knowledge of any of Epstein's heinous conduct."

Now, Sara, as you know, Black is one of many individuals who continue to associate with Epstein even after his 2009 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. And according to his opening remarks, Leon Black, this morning, is going to try to explain that decision as well. This is what he's going to say. He will say, "I feel terrible for Epstein's victims. I want to state clearly that I did not know about this nefarious activity until Epstein was charged with trafficking in July 2019. I did know that Epstein pleaded guilty in June 2008 to state charges relating to prostitution involving a minor. Epstein told me that it was an isolated incident resulting from a fake I.D. Five years after his conviction, I gave Epstein a second chance, as did many others. I wish I had not."

Just to remind you, just a little more background on the scrutiny that Leon Black has come under recently. There was an internal investigation that Apollo, the investment firm, conducted, which said that there was no wrongdoing, but that Black had paid Epstein some $158 million between 2012 and 2017 and resulted in him stepping down from the firm back in 2021, and also the release of the Epstein files recently by the Justice Department. There are numerous very serious allegations in there from women telling the FBI that they were assaulted and abused by Leon Black. He, of course, has denied these allegations.

But, Sara, just goes to show, you know, you think about the Epstein survivors and how they have felt for so long that there has been no justice and no accountability, and they are watching days like today to see if maybe Congress' actions could lead to more prosecutions and investigations.

SIDNER: Yes. I know that you've been in good touch with the victims and have done so much reporting on and with them. Thank you for your work on this. And we'll all be interested to see, you know, we can't hear it, it is behind closed doors, but, of course, we'll start to learn what was said and what was asked, very important in this case.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it, MJ Lee, for all your work.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: And joining us right now is Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Democratic Congressman Dave Min of California.

Thanks for being here.

REP. DAVE MIN (D-CA): Thanks for having me.

BOLDUAN: I want to get to that opening statement in just one second. But in addition, Leon Black had, as we know, had paid Epstein extraordinary sums that his spokespeople have said was for tax advice and estate planning. Senator Ron Wyden, who heads up the Finance Committee, he has been trying to look into the finances for a long time. And he wrote your committee asking essentially for House lawmakers to help out in this fashion when speaking to Leon Black, because Ron Wyden writes, "to date, I do not believe Black has provided a credible explanation as to why he paid Epstein amounts that vastly exceeded those paid to other professional advisors involved in his tax and estate planning."

[09:15:07]

What questions do you have? Have you gotten any indication about how cooperative Leon Black is expected to be today?

MIN: Well, as MJ Lee just described, in Leon Black's opening statement, he denies any knowledge of anything happening. Basically, like everybody else that we've talked to so far, he's going to basically lie to us and claim he saw no evil, heard no evil, knew nothing about what was happening. And that's just really not credible.

We know from the documents, Leon Black's name is mentioned over 8,000 times in the Epstein files that we have gotten so far. The phrase please call Leon Black has mentioned more than 300 times. He paid, as you've noted, $170 million to Leon -- to Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was giving tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to women and girls that Leon Black was involved with. He was accused by three different women of raping them on Epstein properties. He traveled to all the Epstein estates. So, this is just crazy for him to claim that he had no knowledge.

So, we -- I fully expect that he's going to lie, lie, lie. And I will just say, even though he's not going to be under oath today, it is a lie to -- it is a federal crime to lie before Congress. So, we're going to have to see what happens. But I'm not expecting a lot of honest information today.

I do want to ask him on the record what connections his financial assets might have had with foreign governments. One of the things that's been raised a lot is that Jeffrey Epstein may have been backed by foreign governments. No one would know better than Leon Black, who basically was funding this operation.

BOLDUAN: Leon Black has not been charged of anything -- of any criminal wrongdoing. He has been linked to -- he has been accused in civil lawsuits. Some of them have been dropped, some of them not.

But when you say that you expect him to lie and that you think that others who have come before the committee and have done these interviews, who have said they've seen no evil, heard no evil, you think that they have lied as well? I mean, who do you think has lied to you? From Bill Gates to Bill Clinton?

MIN: I was sitting through Les Wexner, through his accountant, his lawyer, and all of them claimed no knowledge. And that's just, to me, not credible. We know that everybody who knew anything about Jeffrey Epstein knew that he was running a sex trafficking operation. And for the people closest in his orbit, particularly Leon Black, who was accused by multiple women of raping them.

And I will just say, one of the reasons some of those suits were dropped is that he had them sign non-disclosure agreements. Who does that? He settled with the U.S. Virgin Islands for $62 million. They dropped -- forever excluded him from any criminal or civil charges on anything related to Jeffrey Epstein in return for $62 million. And he explicitly acknowledged in that settlement that his money, the $170 million that he had given to Jeffrey Epstein, was used to fund Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation. That's in the actual settlement language.

So, the idea that he knew nothing about what was happening is just, again, not credible. BOLDUAN: The top Democrat on the committee, Robert Garcia, he just,

last week, sent staff to the Texas prison facility that Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to, trying to get information on what has been one enduring mystery, which is who, within the Trump administration, approved the transfer of the convicted sex trafficker to a minimum security facility. Let me play what Garcia said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ROBERT GARCIA (D-CA): Nobody will tell us, or they claim that they have no idea, which is why it's so important that Todd Blanche is not only asked this question in his confirmation hearings, but actually testifies in front of the Oversight Committee, a request that we have made to Republican and to Chairman Comer directly. He has to come in front and explain who made the order for Ghislaine Maxwell.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Is there any headway in this regard?

MIN: I don't believe so at this time, but I know discussions are happening with Chair Comer right now.

Here's the thing that I think is frustrating to a lot of us who are seeking justice. These are all structured as voluntary interviews. They are not sworn depositions. They're not issued as subpoenas. And that means that, for example, when Pam Bondi, the former U.S. attorney came before -- or attorney general came before our committee, she refused to answer questions that had anything to do with Donald Trump. She refused to answer any questions that happened before or after her time as attorney general. Even though there's a lot of pertinent information there. And she set those parameters because she said, this is a voluntary interview. I'm not here under subpoena. It limits our ability to get to the truth, it limits our ability to ask questions and get the answers that the survivors and the American people deserve. This is, honestly, outrageous.

And Todd Blanche's name is all over there. Pam Bondi and others have testified to us that Todd Blanche was responsible, exclusively responsible for the Epstein investigation. We know that he went down there and talked with Ghislaine Maxwell. We don't know everything that was said because not all of it was transcribed.

[09:20:00]

But shortly thereafter, Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to that prison. It sure looks like Todd Blanche engineered that, but we want to get those answers on the record.

BOLDUAN: And it would be a good opportunity, as he is now nominated to be the attorney general of the United States, some opportunities to get some answers, even under oath during confirmation hearings.

MIN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Dave Min, thank you very much for coming in. Leon Black set to get in the hot seat very soon.

John.

BERMAN: All right, we do have breaking news. We're getting some new video just into CNN. You can see debris falling there. What happened is a small plane just crashed into a giant skyscraper in Beijing. There's some new reporting on this. And we are, again, efforting different looks. But you can see right there, that video, that plane just falling down that building.

All right, CNN has learned Luigi Mangione's defense team discussed a possible plea agreement in the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:04]

BERMAN: All right, we are getting breaking news just into CNN.

A small plane has crashed into the tallest skyscraper in Beijing. And we're seeing this video. You can see the video of debris falling down, you know, from the sky. That appears maybe to be the tail of the plane right there.

Want (INAUDIBLE) the scene is Mike Valerio, who is in Beijing, outside, trying to get us a view of that skyscraper.

Mike, what do you seeing?

MIKE VALERIO, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, this is a 108 story building. We're going to tilt up. Apologize for how I look right now. I was on the gym just -- at the gym just before sunset when this happened.

And as you look to this rectangular, there we go, rectangular bank of lights, on the other side of that rectangular bank of lights, on the other side of the building, that is where we believe a small plane, what believe -- what appears to be a light sport aircraft, crashed into this building, in the heart of the business district in Beijing.

When you get to the other side of the building, that's where I was just before sunset, you're able to see at least a small section of windows knocked out, like a black gash in the side of the building.

And we're here now, John, because police have cordoned off around a two block radius, and they have told people to not take pictures of the building. They've gone up to people's phones and deleted pictures that people have been taking from the scene.

Now, we don't know what exactly was behind how in the world this happened, but we can tell you, think of central Beijing like Washington, D.C., in the sense that there are no aircraft allowed except for the flight path that goes to Reagan National Airport. No drones allowed. This is one of the most secure cities in the world. So, to have an aircraft that has crashed into the side of one of the tallest buildings in the world, that is almost, until this point, John, inconceivable that that happens in the capital of China.

So, we're going through photos that we've seen on Chinese social media, like (INAUDIBLE) and (INAUDIBLE) to try to verify the authenticity. And we've seen what appear to be aircraft parts that I've shown Pete Muntean, our buddy, who's at an aircraft competition right now, getting him to weigh in.

But we're just trying to figure out how this aircraft went off course when all aircraft, John, are banned from this area of Beijing. Again, a small aircraft crashing into this skyscraper behind us that dominates the skyline of China's capital.

John.

BERMAN: Mike, if you can hear me, any word of casualties, you know, in the building, on the ground, from the plane? Or is that information just impossible to come by?

VALERIO: We don't have any figures from or any stats -- any information like that from authorities, because information is so tightly controlled here in China, as I'm sure you can imagine. We're going through social media photos where we did see pictures of people on stretchers, again, verifying their authenticity. But we don't have any information in terms of if people lost their lives, at least at this point, John.

BERMAN: All right. All of this still developing. And as you note, as Kate was noting just before we came back and talked to you, I mean, an aircraft hitting a building in Beijing, the fact that the aircraft was even in that airspace in and of itself is a major story here and contributes to all of this situation.

VALERIO: Exactly.

BERMAN: Mike Valerio, we'll let you get back to reporting. Thank you for updating us. Obviously, you were right there on the scene. Keep us posted.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Much more to come on this for sure, John. Glad we have Mike there.

We also -- we are also tracking this, hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have been living and working in the United States legally for years are now facing a very uncertain future. In a -- in a major six to three ruling, the Supreme Court has handed the Trump administration a victory by clearing the path now for them to get rid of the humanitarian program known as Temporary Protected Status, as it relates to people from Haiti and Syria.

Let's get over to CNN's Priscilla Alvarez. She's got much more on this.

What are you hearing about kind of the -- what could be very immediate, real ripple effects and fallout from this? PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, this was a case that

had to do with Haitians and Syrians, as you mentioned. In fact, 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. However, the implications of this are much, much wider and will likely affect more than a million people.

And here's why. The Supreme Court, in their decision, had said essentially that the courts, the lower courts, have no business deciding this issue in the first place. That issue being the administrations revocation of this designation for people in the United States.

Now, already the Trump administration had tried to end the designations for 13 out of 17 countries.

[09:29:58]

Again, this is a form of humanitarian relief that the federal government will extend to certain nationals in the United States if they cannot return to their home country because of natural disasters.