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Confirmation Hearing for Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche; Kathy Ruemmler Testifies Over Her Ties to Jeffrey Epstein; Outbreak of Diarrhea-Causing Parasite Grows; Norway's World Cup Star Brings Home a Stuffed Raccoon. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 15, 2026 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:32:29]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": A vote that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche cannot afford to lose says he is still undecided on Blanche's confirmation. Republican Senator, John Cornyn raising concerns at today's hearing. He was specifically concerned about the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, which Blanche says will not move forward as he was sitting for his confirmation hearing to be Attorney General. Listen to this exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN CORNYN, (R-TX): The president of the United States, who was a plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund. And there's no guarantee that he or one of the other plaintiffs might raise that issue by way of a lawsuit -- a breach of contract lawsuit in the future.

TODD BLANCHE, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: Well, Senator, the plaintiffs have no power over the fund. The fund was administered solely by the -- by the five commissioners and through the Department of Justice. So, no, they don't have any power with respect to the fund at all. I suppose they could bring a lawsuit and then we would litigate it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by Democratic Senator, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. He's a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator, thanks for being with us. Your colleague, Republican Senator John Cornyn, was pretty tough there on Blanche about the weaponization fund.

His vote obviously here is key, he is undecided. He was ousted in his primary by his Trump-endorsed opponent. Do you think that Cornyn could actually scuttle Blanche's nomination?

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, (D-CT) SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: He could well scuttle the nomination, and he has good reason to be deeply dissatisfied with that answer, because it's not only confusing, it's disingenuous. Obviously, the president has power over that thug fund, the so-called anti-weaponization fund. And his answer, which seems to take away from the president that power, is really highly disingenuous. Now, Senator Cornyn also dealt with the tax immunity issue.

I followed up on it. Others did as well. Because this grant of immunity, the president worth hundreds of millions of dollars from any tax investigation and his family, is a benefit that is probably illegal under the law.

The through line here is that Todd Blanche is going to enable and embolden the president's lawbreaking, whether it's on cryptocurrency or any of these other issues.

[13:35:00]

KEILAR: He seemed to say that he, Todd Blanche, has repeatedly under oath said that this fund is dead and that the president cannot compel DOJ to act as he wants with the fund. What is your -- what problems do you see with that?

BLUMENTHAL: The president is the plaintiff here. He's the one who's brought the lawsuit. It's his case that's being settled. Todd Blanche is defending against the president. At the same time, he represents the president. He is on both sides of the issue, which led the judge in Florida to refer his potential misleading and highly unusual misconduct to the State Bar in New York for possible disciplinary action. So this answer really is completely unsatisfactory when the president himself is saying he thinks this slush fund is "a great idea."

KEILAR: I want to ask you about the Epstein files and Epstein survivors. Blanche emphasized over and over again the willingness of the department to meet with at least the counsel for survivors as soon as today. Do you take him at his word on that?

BLUMENTHAL: I asked him to meet not just with the counsel but with the survivors, which he could do along with counsel being present. And I also asked him for an apology to those survivors, which grudgingly he seemed to give, again, in somewhat ambiguous terms. But clearly, the Department of Justice has mishandled and misjudged, to the detriment of survivors, the way to handle these files.

KEILAR: Also, Kathy Ruemmler, who is a top lawyer for Goldman Sachs, former counsel in the Obama White House, is in front of House Oversight today as part of the Epstein probe. She announced in February that she would resign from her position after a series of reports, including from CNN, that chronicled her extensive ties to Epstein. That was actually planned for late June, but she's now staying on in an advisory role. Does that make sense to you?

BLUMENTHAL: If I were a Goldman Sachs partner, I would encourage her to leave right away. Her staying longer simply prolongs the potential damage, reputational and even financial damage to Goldman Sachs. But the larger question here is not about any one individual. It is clearly what the United States of America owes to the survivors, which is full disclosure of all the files and protection for those survivors.

That has been our clear, unequivocal goal from the very start, protecting and empowering the survivors.

KEILAR: During this hearing, you heard it, Senator Kennedy asking Blanche to check for him if Jack Smith, the former Special Counsel, had spied on his email, Senator Kennedy's, after Republicans released documents ahead of this hearing purporting to show that Smith had accessed communications from dozens of lawmakers, Republicans and some Democrats. Do you have questions about the emails and/or the texts of the legislative branch that Smith accessed in his investigations of President Trump?

BLUMENTHAL: Like many of my colleagues, I would welcome more information. But as of right now, there's no real evidence of wrongdoing here. And I am hoping that the Department of Justice will focus on real wrongdoing, like the potential bribe I asked Todd Blanche to explain involving a pardon, $2.5 million paid by David Gentile to possibly a priest, Father Mann, who then spoke to Donald Trump. The Department of Justice shut down the investigation.

But the implications are real because that pardon or clemency --

KEILAR: Can you explain why you think there's no evidence of wrongdoing in that? I mean, Republicans are so concerned about this. Why do you think there's no evidence of wrongdoing?

BLUMENTHAL: I would welcome more information. But there's simply been no evidence that there is lawbreaking involved in the emails and lawbreaking of an intentional kind.

KEILAR: What about norm breaking?

BLUMENTHAL: There's simply no evidence. Well, any time there's interference with legislative branch communications, it would violate basic norms.

KEILAR: Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you so much for being with us. Obviously, a lot of attention on this confirmation hearing today.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.

KEILAR: What is it like to be infected with that parasite that is causing hundreds of cases, thousands of cases of cyclosporiasis across the Midwest? We're going to speak with someone who endured what's really been a nightmare, after a quick break

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[13:44:37]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": So Brianna, I have some news to break to you.

KEILAR: You get to say the word this time, Omar. JIMENEZ: I do, and I get to say it to you. Cases of diarrhea are rising, and it is caused by the parasite cyclospora. So it's not just random cases of diarrhea, can't help you there. The CDC reports more than 7,000 possible cases across 34 states. The outbreak in Michigan and Ohio is also confirmed in West Virginia and Kentucky.

[13:45:00]

The source is unknown, but health officials are starting to suspect lettuce or salad greens might be to blame here.

KEILAR: And we're joined now by Chase Strangio, who contracted cyclosporiasis in May. And in a first-person essay about his illness, he writes, I wake up every day and think antibiotics. For my existence, I cook everything now. I am a new evangelist for food safety regulation.

Chase, thank you so much for being with us. Is it Chance? Is it Chase or Chance? Because we have your name up there in two different ways.

CHASE STRANGIO, CONTRACTED CYCLOSPORIASIS IN MAY: It's Chase.

KEILAR: It's Chase. OK, sorry about that.

STRANGIO: Yeah.

KEILAR: It's Chase. Chase, thank you for being with us. This is all anyone's talking about. And I just appreciate that you're giving us the TMI to talk about what you went through here. So let's do that.

I mean, tell us about when you first started to realize, I'm not just like a little sick here. This is something different than I've ever dealt with.

STRANGIO: Yeah, I mean, so first of all, I think everyone in my life is happy that other people are talking about this other than me, because this was something that really impacted my life and I couldn't really stop talking about it, in part because I didn't know what it was for weeks and felt terrible. And it did start with symptoms that resembled a stomach virus. I was tired. I had a low-grade fever.

I started having pretty serious diarrhea, but what was harder was that it didn't go away and I ended up losing my appetite completely, having pretty significant abdominal pain and cramping to the point where I basically spent a week unable to eat and at times not even able to have water.

JIMENEZ: Wow. You know, obviously, you figured, all right, I need to go to the doctor and see what's going on. And as I understand, you had two virtual urgent care visits where you were prescribed anti-nausea medication, but did you get the sense that even the health care providers suspected that this was cyclospora or were they with you, kind of, oh, this might be a stomach virus, like, let's see how this progresses?

STRANGIO: Yeah, and I think this part is really important, which is my providers had no idea what cyclospora was. This was not when this was being widely reported and I was only able to ultimately diagnose the condition because there were other people who shared a meal with me who started to develop the same symptoms and collectively, we were able to identify that it was a particular meal that led a large number of people to become sick. One person tested positive for cyclospora, which then prompted me to go ask to be tested.

That was never something that was initiated and one of the things that has prompted me to speak out is the reality that there is a direct connection to the cutting of food surveillance programs by the federal government and the inability to track this uptick in parasitic infections. I was only able to get this diagnosis and stop losing weight because I had a collective group of people doing the work that the government should have been doing.

KEILAR: Yeah, you're crowdsourcing the information and I wonder, as you were talking to the people that you had had a meal with and you were, I mean, how far in time back had you had that meal to when you all started to have symptoms? And I know that it's sort of hard, maybe, to track exactly what caused it, but do you have suspicions?

STRANGIO: Yeah, we know what caused it and this is just the reality of this particular parasite is, as you know, it doesn't show up right away, which did cause a significant delay in figuring out what was going on and nobody in my immediate life was sick and that ultimately allowed me to rule out the idea that it was Norovirus or some sort of contagious viral illness, and start to think about meals that I had eaten and then I learned that there was a lunch that other people started to show symptoms from this particular lunch and they were not in my everyday life, but we started to communicate about it because it was so anomalous and it was causing us such significant problems, particularly with dehydration and weight loss.

And so we knew exactly where the lunch was from, we all had different protein sources, so it definitively had come from either lettuce or cilantro, which we reported to the New York City Department of Health. Again, this was long before this uptick in reporting on the issue, but the CDC lagged behind in this reporting. So again, you have a federal administration cutting food surveillance programs and there's a direct consequence to that, which is people are sicker for longer. And parasites will happen, that's just part of life, but the uptick is a political choice made by politicians in Washington.

JIMENEZ: You know, we made it to this far in the segment, I should say, without talking about just one of the elephants in the rooms in terms of symptoms, elephants in the bathrooms maybe, if you want to joke about it a little there. You know, everyone, the headline -- one of the headlines that's been grabbing is like, this is parasitic diarrhea cases that have been associated with this. But on a serious note on that front, you eventually went back to the doctor and they did perform a stool test, as I understand.

[13:50:00]

How critical was that to actually understanding what was really going on with you? STRANGIO: So that was critical and I think another reason why I really wanted to speak publicly about this is that the symptoms are lingering and it's really debilitating, and you do have to be proactive.

(CROSSTALK)

JIMENEZ: So you're still feeling stuff now, even all this time later?

STRANGIO: Yeah, I mean, it's been months and I'm still recovering because of the impact on my system, but I needed to go get this test, confirm the parasite, and I needed to ask specifically for the stool sample to confirm the parasite. And another thing to know about cyclospora, which I learned is that because of this cyclical way in which it sheds in your body, it's possible that even one stool sample test will not actually confirm the diagnosis and you should do a series of them.

I will say in my experience, it was one, it was very clear. I went on Bactrim, I'm very lucky to have access to health care, to have access to this medication. Some of the people who were infected were allergic to Bactrim, and so they're still suffering.

KEILAR: Wow. And so tell us exactly what -- you said that you all had different proteins and you were able to isolate it to lettuce or cilantro. I mean, tell us what the lunch was. Was it a salad? Was it cilantro on all of the proteins? What was it?

STRANGIO: So it was a bowl, like a salad bowl with rice and protein. Everyone ordered a different one. It came from this food establishment in New York City where I am based. At first, I was very much intent on blaming the food establishment, but now I realize this is a bigger structural problem that really stems from the government.

But we, as a group of people, traced every single thing that we had eaten, identified the common denominator in the ingredients, the type of epidemiology that you have state departments of health and the federal government doing, and so we were able to say, well, it's not a protein because we all have eaten different proteins, but every single one of these bowls had a lettuce of some kind and cilantro on top.

So I'll tell you, I am not eating fresh herbs --

KEILAR: Yeah.

STRANGIO: -- out in the New York City streets these days.

KEILAR: Is there a reason why you're not saying the establishment? I mean, is this a chain? Is this?

STRANGIO: No, I'm happy to share the establishment. It's called "Lotus & Lime" and this was reported months ago from when we first tested positive, or at the beginning of June, I should say, and so there has already been contact with this --

KEILAR: Yeah. STRANGIO: -- restaurant in New York City. I think my only hesitation is, if I were to say where is the source of the problem, it's not an establishment that got the parasite. It's a lack of surveillance that's causing this uptick, which can be traced to funding cuts at the federal government level.

JIMENEZ: We should mention, as you mentioned as well, folks are still trying to trace --

KEILAR: Yeah.

JIMENEZ: -- where this is coming from and where this is working through the supply chain, whether it's through lettuce or whatever it might be.

KEILAR: Yeah.

JIMENEZ: Still ongoing. Chase, I appreciate you taking the time and spending it with us and sharing with us your experience to the detail, really appreciate it.

STRANGIO: Thanks for having me.

JIMENEZ: All right.

KEILAR: Thank you. That's the scary thing, though, is that --

JIMENEZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- it could be -- the concern is any restaurant --

JIMENEZ: Yeah.

KEILAR: -- that may have perhaps those ingredients, but have we really been able to isolate exactly where it is? They're zeroing in on it, but it's pretty tough here.

JIMENEZ: Yeah, yeah.

KEILAR: So what do you get a soccer star who has everything? Yeah, it gets pretty random. How about a stuffed raccoon holding a whiskey bottle?

JIMENEZ: America, baby.

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: We're going to talk to the owner of the store that sold that souvenir next.

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[13:58:17]

KEILAR: All right, let's get straight to this. You've seen Erling Haaland, what he brought back to Norway. He brought back a stuffed raccoon holding an empty bottle of booze. Have you seen this thing?

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: He joked on social media, it followed me home, a consolation prize, if you will, after his team lost to England.

JIMENEZ: It's a good reminder of America. Souvenir can be traced to Wild Bill's Western store in Dallas, and now that $750 raccoon is sold out on the store's website, because of course it is.

(LAUGH)

JIMENEZ: I want to bring in co-owner of Wild Bill's Western Store, Julie Newport, holding, I think, one of those raccoons. Hey, can you just give us a story? How did this all happen? It started, like, someone called you and the player wanted to come in. Just tell us what happened.

JULIE NEWPORT, CO-OWNER, WILD BILL'S WESTERN STORE: Yeah, so we got word that someone from the Norwegian team wanted to come in, and they had actually been referred by another film crew that had come in from England. So we -- that's how they got to us, but he apparently had said he wanted to get a cowboy hat while he was in Dallas, so we made it happen.

(LAUGH)

NEWPORT: He snuck in after the game, and we had some customers in the store, but we broke off a little section, farmed up the hat bar, and started getting him to fit out with the hat right away. And then the friends started coming in and the other team members started coming in, but I think one of the most, I don't know, iconic in my head is when he walks in the store, he takes a look around, also gets the smell of leather.

It's an old building from the 1900s, and he's like, wow, this place is amazing, and then he honed in on the raccoon.

(LAUGH)

KEILAR: He hones in on the raccoon, and now everyone else is honing in on the raccoon, because there's this iconic photo of Haaland holding that taxidermied raccoon holding the whiskey bottle, and was that originally -- so that was like a store decoration or a floor sample? What? --