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Catastrophic Flood Hits TX Hill Country a Year After Deadly Disaster; Texas' Guadalupe River Rises 16 Ft in 1 Hour from Unrelenting Rain; Sources: Trump to Push Foreign Meddling Claims in Election Speech; Official: 30 Plus People Rescued in Gillespie Country, Texas; Blanche: Will See if He Can Meet with Epstein Survivors Today or Soon 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 16, 2026 - 15:00   ET

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

DON RIDDELL, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: I was in the Atlanta fan park and saw the fans absolutely lose their minds when this finale played out. Just incredible. And Farah (ph), what a shot today. Let's just show you the scene in Buenos Aires as just an entire city, an entire country in raptures. They go on to play Spain.

I saw Spain this week and I remember thinking I don't see how anybody beats them. At this point, I don't see how Argentina doesn't win this final. It just seems to be written in the stars.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Oh, written in the stars. I mean, could be some famous last words there, Don. We'll see. I mean, you never know.

RIDDELL: Yes.

KEILAR: We'll see. We'll see. Don Riddell, thank you so much.

RIDDELL: All right.

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

Deadly flooding hitting the Texas Hill Country right now. Rescues are ongoing as water inundates towns hit hard by the devastating floods almost exactly a year ago.

Plus, primetime address, the President teasing a big announcement tonight, including possible claims about U.S. elections. What we're now learning.

JIMENEZ: And suspicious trades. Why officials are now investigating President Trump's longtime teleprompter operator for possible insider trading.

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

One person has died from flooding in the Texas Hill Country a year after the historic flooding killed more than 130 people in the exact same area. This video just in the CNN, I mean, look at the devastation here showing overturned cars down power lines in the town of Ingram. The mayor of nearby Kerrville, if you remember the epicenter of last year's devastation, says the Guadalupe River appeared to be even higher than it was last year.

KEILAR: That was actually my car, not my actual car, but my model of car. So, it's sort of -- for a moment I saw it and thought, my goodness, the person who had that. But thank goodness they're out of it alive.

JIMENEZ: Yes. Yes.

KEILAR: The river rose twenty five feet in one hour. It hit thirty seven feet at its peak.

JIMENEZ: Wow.

KEILAR: Rescue crews have saved scores of people from the rising waters. And early this morning, warning sirens installed after last year's disaster sounded the alarm.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) five, four, three, two, one ...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: CNN Meteorologist Derek Van Dam is with us now. Derek, I think the hope is that these casualty numbers stay low because of what we witnessed last year. It was just so horrific. Give us the latest on where this severe weather is going.

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: We certainly learned a lot of lessons from last year. Look, when we first started to raise the flag on this reporting on the potential of flash flooding, it was earlier this week. We talked about the potential of a summer's worth of rain. Then, it went to a half a year's of rain in a short period of time.

Now, we've surpassed in years' worth of rain in one area, that's causing the flooding that you see on either side of my -- of myself right now. So,, this is just kind of the aerial extent right to my right here. And that gives you an idea of just how far flung this flooding has actually been and how devastating it continues to be as the rivers continue to crest.

But on my left here, this shows you the power of the water. Look at the debris getting carried by the water. That looks like a large tree trunk, for instance. And then, we get into other video that's new to CNN. We showed this a moment ago, but it's so critical to give you an idea of the force behind the wall of water that moved through this area, overturning RVs, flipping vehicles, snapping trees, leaving debris strung about. This is in the Ingram region in Texas.

And the National Weather Service warned of this deadly, large flood wave that was rushing downstream across the Guadalupe and Pedernales rivers. Well, now that has been realized, we've seen it. And you've got to understand the topography of Hill Country to understand what 26 inches of rain can possibly do. It filters down into the creeks, the tributaries, that all moves into the larger rivers like the Guadalupe River, and the water has nowhere to go but up. And it creates this large force of water as it does so because so much

rain falls in such a short period of time. Guess what? It's still raining. We have flash flood emergencies with catastrophic tags attached to them. That's the highest level of flash flood emergency from the National Weather Service. This is the Pedernales River. And then we're going to go a little bit further to the south, this is the Guadalupe River.

We're all so familiar with this from last year's devastating floods coming out of the Camp Mystic region. There's Kerrville. And just downstream from that is Comfort. This is where we saw the river gauge rise 25 feet in one hour.

[15:05:03]

Think of that. That's a two-and-a-half-story building of water in roughly an hour's time. That is incredible. Now, that water is starting to go down. But where the rain fell, that is so critical on who saw the highest crest, right? So, we've broken it down for you. Here's Camp Mystic. Hunt is just to the north and east of that. Kerrville and Hunt did not break the 2025 record, but Comfort did with 37 -- over 37 feet on that river gauge.

There's still several river gauges that are at major flooding. The good news, Omar, Brianna, the rain will come to an end this weekend.

KEILAR: That is good news, Derek. Thank you so much for that.

The White House is saying that tomorrow, during the President's primetime speech, he's going to reveal some new information about the security of U.S. elections. CNN has learned the President will use his address to push claims of foreign meddling.

JIMENEZ: Yes, and that will be happening. CNN's Kevin Liptak is live from the White House for us and joins us now. So, Kevin, what more are you learning about the President's speech tonight? I mean, we're just hours away at this point.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, and the White House is making this out to be quite an important moment for the President. They say he could be tinkering with the text right up until he walks into the East Room.

We don't know exactly what the President plans to claim, but we do understand some broad contours of what he will be talking about as it relates to election integrity, which we know has been a fixation of his. One is intending to reveal some new information about purported election meddling on the part of foreign governments, and that will include China, as we understand it. He also plans to reveal new information about potential vulnerabilities in election systems, including voting machines.

Now, both of these items have been subject to all kinds of conspiracies over the last several years, many of them fueled by President Trump himself. But what the White House says is different now is that the President is coming with new findings and new evidence. Listen to what Karoline Leavitt, the Press Secretary, said just about an hour ago.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It will shock you if you have an honest eye listening to the President tonight, and everything he is saying will be backed by -- by facts and by evidence that will be provided this evening. We should have the safest and most secure elections in the history of the world.

And what the President will be speaking about tonight will show you that perhaps that is not the case, and we need to make some adjustments moving forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: So, we hear her talking about facts and evidence that will be provided. Behind the scenes, there has been, you know, this months- long effort inside the administration to try and find documents to declassify that could potentially lend some credence to President Trump's claim about election irregularities. The timing here is also important. The President trying to rally urgency behind the SAVE America Act, which is that voting bill that he's trying to get through Congress, but so far he's been unsuccessful.

And, you know, the President has been fixated on this issue for a long time. I think it's very, very important to note that the President's own appointees in 2020 and 2021 found that that election was fair, legitimate, and free of major fraud or foreign interference. But the President for so long has contested some of that. And you already hear, I think, some anxiety among both Republicans and Democrats about what the President will say and what he won't say tonight.

From Democrats, you hear questions about whether the President is just trying to undermine confidence in American elections writ large.

From Republicans, you hear some concerns about what the President is not talking about tonight, which is the economy and affordability, quite -- issues that are top of mind for most Americans. What Karoline Leavitt said today was that it's not a matter of importance that, quote, "it was a matter of timing" and that the President could -- could mention both Iran and the economy at the start of his speech, guys.

JIMENEZ: All right. We will be watching it very closely as well to see what is revealed over the course of that. Kevin Liptak, really appreciate the reporting for us there from the White House.

Still to come in several cities, including right here in Washington, officials are telling people to stay inside because smoke from Canadian wildfires is causing a dangerous threat. We'll have more details on that.

Plus, a key Republican senator says if Todd Blanche wants his vote to become attorney general, he's going to have to meet with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein. We'll have the latest on day two of Blanche's confirmation hearings. KEILAR: Then later, the family of a black teenage boy who drowned in

Texas is calling for a murder investigation. Daniel Erving was on the swim team. Why his family says his drowning just doesn't add up. We'll have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: Officials in Gillespie County, Texas say they have rescued more than 30 people impacted by rising flood waters. The Pedernales River in Fredericksburg rising more than 20 feet in three hours this morning. Fredericksburg, Texas Mayor Randy Briley is with us now to talk about what he's seeing there.

Thank you, Mayor, for being with us. Can you tell us a little bit about what conditions are like there in town?

MAYOR RANDY BRILEY (FREDERICKSBURG, TEXAS): A good afternoon. Thank you for taking a few minutes and speaking with us.

Yes, we have issued a local declaration disaster for Gillespie County. We are experiencing flash flooding throughout the entire region. As you mentioned, we've taken on close to 12 inches of rain in the last 24 hours.

[15:20:02]

And two townships in particular are being impacted, Dawson Harper (ph), more in the rural areas outside of the city limits of Fredericksburg are taking it probably the most the most difficult and most serious amount of rainfall, which is slightly west of us.

I will say the Texas resources have been phenomenal and engaging with our local first responders in Fredericksburg. We've been staging and preparing for this since the National Weather Service issued warnings early in the week. So, we've been engaged early on. The 30 rescues that took place, a number of those folks came from a small RV park outside of town and we were doing pre-dawn door to door knocking and removing and safely extracting folks from the rising waters. We have had six airlifts so far extracting people that were waterlocked that could not safely exit their homes.

KEILAR: How much advance -- it sounds like you obviously have been focused on this for days, but as we understand it for a lot of the areas ..

BRILEY: Yes.

KEILAR: ... it was still a matter of the worst of the worst happening kind of in those early morning hours. How much warning did people have that they needed to really pay attention here?

BRILEY: Well, I think -- I think, first of all the -- the National Weather Service did issue warnings early on in the week. So, we've actually been staging and preparing our emergency operations center for several days now. So, I think that we were well prepared. I'm very thankful that our residents also responded to those warnings. And as of -- as of this moment, we have no reported fatalities or injuries that we're aware of at this point in time.

So, thanks to our residents for heeding the warnings and also our first responders and state resources for being on site so quickly and -- and taking care of the -- the -- the issues before they became issues.

KEILAR: Yes, let's certainly hope that those numbers remain very low. I think the governor is saying at this point one person has died. When you think about a year ago, and obviously this isn't exactly the same that was -- the Guadalupe River in a different area. We're talking about the Guadalupe River a little more downstream in the Pedernales River experiencing this as well as a lot of creeks and there are creeks around Fredericksburg.

BRILEY: Yes.

KEILAR: Can you talk to us about how this compares to a year ago?

BRILEY: Well, the Pedernales, you know, what our concern is right now, Fredericksburg, the Pedernales is outside of our city limits. So, unlike our neighbor in Kerrville, when it rises, it's more of a concern about our rural residents, so taking care of those folks.

In town, we have a pretty good infrastructure for water runoff and drainage and electrical things, that nature. So, that's -- that's one perspective of ours, but, again, it speaking to the Kerrville mayor this morning, I know they're going through some very significant issues of their own. I'll let him speak to you on those -- on those issues, but I think for us right now, we're well prepared. We're responding quickly and we have great cooperation from the state.

KEILAR: Okay. So, obviously, we'll be checking in on -- on Kerrville there with what you said there. Can you talk to us about the biggest risk right now and what your community and surrounding communities need?

BRILEY: I -- I think the biggest risk is the rain is starting to let off a little bit, but the -- the concern I have is the headwaters up from the Pedernales. Although the rain is letting off, people may start to think, well, the worst is over. And that headwater is going to rise.

I can tell you, I'm sitting probably a quarter mile from a bridge here. The water has risen. I think 25 feet was the last report I had. It's about four inches below the road. So, my concern and caution is that please don't come out with your cell phones, taking videos and pictures for -- for social media and creating an unnecessary incident that distracts our first responders. So, that's one of my concerns is.

If you're in a safe place, please stay and shelter in place. If you're near the Pedernales River, it's going to rise. Please safely exit. And if you cannot exit, call 911. Our dispatchers literally sit next to our first responders, emergency operations center, and we will quickly get out there and extract you safely.

All right. Mayor Randy Briley of Fredericksburg, thank you so much for being with us.

BRILEY: Thank you. I appreciate it. Brianna and Omar, appreciate it.

KEILAR: All right. Our thoughts, obviously, with the folks there in Texas. Stay safe for sure.

Still ahead, Epstein survivors testifying on Capitol Hill as Acting Attorney General as -- as the Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, hopes to become the nation's top prosecutor. We'll talk to the attorney who represents nearly a dozen Epstein accusers next.

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KEILAR: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appearing on Capitol Hill for the second day as he tries to win support for his nomination to lead the Justice Department. And while he wasn't in the hot seat for the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing, various witnesses were. And that includes Dani Bensky, a Jeffrey Epstein survivor who appeared on our program yesterday.

Blanche's appearance came shortly after Republican Senator Thom Tillis said that Blanche must meet with Epstein survivors before he, Tillis, could support Blanche's nomination. Here's what Blanche told reporters.

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TODD BLANCHE, ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm here today for meetings with senators. My understanding is that there were some victims here who wanted -- who were here, who were in D.C. today, and who wanted to meet with the Department of Justice. I made my staff available.

[15:25:08]

They did not want to meet with my staff. They wanted to meet with me. I rearranged my schedule to try to meet with them. I've been here waiting. It -- it didn't work out. So, we're -- we're going to see if there's a way we can meet, either later today or sometime soon.

KEILAR: Joining us now is Attorney Arick Fudali, who represents 11 Epstein accusers.

Arick, thanks for being with us.

I mean, first, have you learned anything about a potential meeting between Blanche and survivors?

ARICK FUDALI, ATTORNEY REPRESENTING 11 EPSTEIN ACCUSERS: I've heard rumors about there being a potential meeting. I certainly haven't been notified of any meeting. And I would think that if there was going to be a meeting, I would be notified. I am one of the attorneys that was listed on the Senate floor yesterday by Marsha Blackburn as attorneys who are claiming that they had -- that they haven't had a meeting with the DOJ, but have, which is just patently false. I have not had any meeting with the DOJ or Todd Blanche, nor has anyone attempted to meet with me or my 11 survivor of Epstein clients.

The closest we've had is some sort of, you know, correspondence about the redactions, but then they messed up the redactions anyway. So, no, I've -- I've heard rumors that there might be a meeting. We heard Todd Blanche say, maybe he can rearrange his schedule. I mean, how convenient, you know, for him. But no, I have -- I -- I know nothing more than what's being reported at this point.

KEILAR: Okay. So, what do you make of this? Because yesterday, Todd Blanche had said, I'm prohibited from meeting directly with them. Talking about the Epstein victims, I think certainly the expectation is that if he meets with them now, it's -- he's meeting with them and their lawyers. But you didn't walk away from that hearing yesterday thinking that he was going to meet with the survivors, and now you have Senator Tillis saying Blanche has to meet with them or he can't support a nomination. What do you think of all that?

FUDALI: This is very parallel to what happened with the Epstein Transparency Act. It's the same exact thing. Donald Trump, Todd Blanche, Pam Bondi, they could have just released the files. There was no reason -- there was no law against it. They could have just released the files. But then they didn't, of course, until there was a law demanding that they did. And then, of course, they slow-rolled it. They completely botched it. They redacted potential predators. They didn't redact victims. It was -- it was a disaster.

The same thing is happening here. Todd Blanche could have met with the survivors and the representatives at the same time, I can look through my email right now. I have zero emails from Todd Blanche. I know that none of the other attorneys, from what I can tell, who represent victims of Jeffrey Epstein have emails from Todd Blanche trying to set up a meeting. Again, we've had some correspondence with the DOJ about redacting our victims' names, but nothing substantive, no real meeting, no mind-to-mind, heart-to-heart meeting about what the survivors want. So, this is just another example of them pretending to do the right thing when they have to, but with absolutely zero and empathy for the survivors.

KEILAR: We heard Blanche this afternoon say that if victims or counsel have evidence of crimes related to Epstein, DOJ will investigate and prosecute. In yesterday's hearing, Blanche was asked who, if anyone else, did Epstein traffic women to, and he said career prosecutors did ID other participants, some of whom were victims themselves of Epstein's, but they do not have evidence, as of now, of other men that Epstein helped traffic to. How are you thinking about all of this? Obviously, there's a lot of skepticism on the part of victims when we speak to them. What do you think?

FUDALI: Unfortunately, I just can't take Todd Blanche's word for it, and that's why they need to release all of the documents and unredact all of the documents except for the victims' names. Unfortunately, Todd Blanche and this administration, this Department of Justice, has done absolutely nothing to earn my trust, to earn my clients' trust, or to earn the public's trust as it relates to Jeffrey Epstein. I don't trust him.

So, what they need to do is they need to show us, they need to release all the files. Forget about these privileges and irrelevant -- forget about these redactions. Unredact all these files that are completely redacted, except, of course, for the victims' names, and show us. I understand that the state of New Mexico right now, I have been contacted by prosecutors in New Mexico who are trying to investigate, apparently in good faith, about what took place in New Mexico, but my understanding is the Department of Justice is not even cooperating with them.

So, again, it's all just for show. It's all been nonsense. The Department of Justice and Todd Blanche in particular have done absolutely nothing to earn the public's trust or to show that they care at all about the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein.

KEILAR: Arick Fudali, thank you so much for being with us. We appreciate it.

FUDALI: Thank you.

JIMENEZ: All right, coming up, smoke is drifting south from thousands of intense wildfires in Canada, creating what you're seeing here, orange skies with thick haze across the Midwest and the Northeast in the United States. That is causing a major threat to human health which we'll talk about next.

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