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Heavy Rains Causing Life-Threatening Floods In California; Department Of Justice Finds More Than A Million More Jeffrey Epstein Document. Aired 2-2:30a ET

Aired December 25, 2025 - 02:00   ET

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

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[02:00:36]

RICHARD QUEST, CNN HOST: And a very good Christmas morning to you, wherever you're joining me around the world. I'm Richard Quest in London, and you are in the Christmas CNN NEWSROOM.

It is now Christmas day in most of the world, and the Christian faithful are celebrating the birth of Jesus. Look at the pictures, live images of the Church of the Nativity and Manger Square in Bethlehem in the West Bank. It's around 9:00 a.m. the birthplace of Christ.

Now, these are Bethlehem's first festivities since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and the fact they're taking place has been made possible by the cease fire that is largely holding.

A millions of worshippers -- millions of people all over the globe are feeling Christmassy. Let's take a moment and remember it's not a holiday that's not an easy time for everyone.

Many people, of course, are alone, working or missing loved ones, and others are facing risks to their lives.

For instance, tonight in Southern California, millions of people are under a state of emergency as a powerful storm hounds the region, there have been evacuation orders issued to dangerous floods and debris flows. Northern California is also getting blasted by heavy rain and winds. I'll bring you fully up to date on that in a moment.

And bearing in mind, in California, it is still Christmas Eve, eight hours behind me here in London, so it's not midnight yet. And if you go further across to Hawaii, it's even earlier on Christmas Eve, 8:00 in the evening.

To spin the globe and down to Australia and Sydney, cross the date line. And the weather, it looks -- it's picture perfect at Sydney's Bondi Beach, and there a deep sadness lingers barely two weeks after the deadly massacre. Visitors to the beach are honoring the victims and their families.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARK CONROY, TOURIST: I think it's tragic, and I think everybody respects and very sad for what happened. And I think people here are out on the beach because it's like a celebration, but everybody has got it in the memories, and everybody is respectful of what happened, and everybody, and I mean everyone, is feeling for their family and friends who are going through the worst possible thing you could imagine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: To Rome now, where Pope Leo is marking his first Christmas since being chosen to lead the world's 1.5 billion Catholics. Live pictures for you from the Vatican City.

And last night, a Christmas Eve sermon focused on the plight of the vulnerable, including the migrant -- immigrants, children and those living in poverty. The pope quoted one of his predecessors, Pope Benedict.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POPE LEO XIV (through translator): while a distorted economy leads us to treat human beings as mere merchandise, God becomes like us, revealing the infinite dignity of every person.

While man seeks to become God in order to dominate others, God chooses to become man in order to free us from every form of slavery.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Now, in the hours ahead, the pope will deliver his famous Christmas Day, urbi et orbi, which to the city and to the world, message and blessing.

So, where is Santa at the moment? NORAD Santa Tracker, we always follow closely. Yellowknife, northwest territories in Canada. He's heading for Tuktut Nogait National Park in the north. So, he's over Canada, and he'll be over the Northwest Territories in one minute, 51 seconds.

If you're interested, he's delivered just over seven billion, 7,100,000,000 gifts so far. We track him through NORAD as always, the tradition here on CNN.

President Trump took part in a long standing presidential tradition on Christmas Eve with the First lady at Mar-a-Lago, they spoke to children whose calls to NORAD to track Santa have been patched through to his Florida resort. This is some of the calls he took.

[02:05:16]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We track Santa all over the world. We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa is a very good person. We want to make sure that he's not infiltrated, that we're not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.

So, we found out that Santa is good. Santa loves you.

What would you like Santa to bring?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not coal.

TRUMP: Not coal. No, you know what, well, coal is, you mean clean, beautiful coal. I had to do that, I'm sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: Even a political message from the president on Christmas Eve, those -- following those calls the president and the first lady attended Christmas Eve dinner at Mar-a-Lago, as you can see from the main dining room there.

A new CNN poll shows Americans don't have a lot of faith in their political leaders, and they care what they have to say.

When asked about President Trump, much of what they had to say about him is concerning the economy. What would you tell President Trump to make life better in the U.S. for people like you, 32 percent said something about improving the cost of the economy or reducing the cost of living. 16 percent said the president should resign or leave office.

The latest in a series of storms and powerful storms lashing California with very high winds and rains producing life threatening flooding, at least two deaths so far reported.

Look at the map, Southern California is being especially hard, with more than seven million people under a high-risk flooding threat, which is quite rare, and officials are saying the dangerous scenario is unfolding in the region.

The governor, Governor Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in least six counties, including Los Angeles County, that allows the activation of emergency resources.

Firefighters are reporting an uptick in swift water rescue calls in some areas. Look at the way they -- the results of all of this. The video showing crews in Ventura County rescuing a hiker stranded by the flooding.

In the U.S., the National Weather Service is warning the severe weather continues throughout Christmas Day.

Joining me is Chris Prater, the San Bernardino County Fire Protection District. Sir, a difficult time. I wish you seasons greetings, obviously at this time of the year, and thank you for the amazing work that you and your colleagues are doing, keeping people safe. But how bad is the situation?

CHRIS PRATER, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT: Yes, sir, thank you for having me. It's a pretty severe situation out here. We've been experiencing prolonged periods of rain, and that rain has led to mud and debris flows and flooding in some of our communities here in San Bernardino, primarily Wrightwood and Lytle Creek, we've been out there since 7:30 this morning, helping people get out of harm's way, going door to door, helping them evacuate and all the while still having to affect rescues with people that are stuck in their vehicles.

QUEST: What -- I mean, that the size -- that the size of the flooding and the amount of rain is quite exceptional. So, what are the greatest risks in these circumstances?

PRATER: So, with these prolonged periods of rain, this problem has been compounded by some burn scars from fires that we've experienced in the past year. The greatest risk we have is when people don't heed to evacuation warnings or orders and they stay in the area.

All this does is really it makes them more prone to danger, because these rain flooding situations, mudslides, they come at no -- with no warning at all, and so, the sooner we can get people to evacuate, the better off we are to help make them safe.

QUEST: Which is more of a threat, is it the mudslides? Is it just the sheer volume of water? I know, obviously if power lines come down, then that creates a truly additional problem of electrocution.

PRATER: Yes, when we have these storms, they pose a bunch of different problems. You have the volume of water, which by itself, anything up to six to 12 inches of water is enough to sweep your vehicle off a roadway when you get the mud and debris flows. Oftentimes, those can contain large rocks, boulders, logs that take out everything in its path, and then the winds. We also have the problem of possible electrocutions and life power lines being down.

So, the best case scenario is us getting people out of harm's way so we can go in there and make sure everybody is going to be OK.

[02:10:01]

QUEST: Sir, I'll thank you and let you get back to your duties, and wish your colleagues well, and thank them for their service and for get a -- get a bit of Christmas if you can before the day is over, I suspect it will be difficult. Thank you, sir.

Captain Adam VanGerpen is with me now as well with the Los Angeles City Fire Department. Same good wishes to you and your colleagues and thank you for the -- for the magnificent work you do. It's a 24-hour day, seven day a week, 365. So, what's the biggest problem that you're facing at the moment?

CAPT. ADAM VANGERPEN, LOS ANGELES CITY FIRE DEPARTMENT: So, right now, we are still concerned with our burn scar areas, our hillside communities. We are still monitoring the weather very closely. We had three river rescues today. One of them, we had to hoist somebody out via helicopter. So, we're still keeping a very close eye on the weather.

QUEST: From what you understand, is it going to improve? Stay the same, or get worse?

VANGERPEN: Well, we're having a lull right now, but we are anticipating another cell coming through tomorrow, so we think we probably went through the worst of it, but we're standing by. We have about five additional fire engines with off-road capabilities. We have additional brush patrols. We have helicopter resources. So, we are standing by anticipation of the worst.

QUEST: There are those people that will just be bloody minded and ignore the warnings and the advice. And then you've got those who think that they're over confident that think, oh, well, I'll be able to cope in this scenario. How bad can it get? Both of those are a nuisance to you, and both of them are potentially lethal.

VANGERPEN: Well, that's why we're really trying to get messaging out, letting people know that if you do have somewhere to go, we understand it's the holiday season. We understand people want to go see their families, but we want you to prepare in advance. We want you to leave early. Give yourself lots of time to get where you're going. Try and avoid areas that are around hillside communities, avoid the beach areas and avoid our burn scar areas.

So, if you do need -- if you do need to go somewhere, leave yourself plenty of time.

QUEST: Captain, grateful for you, sir. When Christmas arrives in the next few hours, I wish you and your colleagues and families well. Thank you for joining us, and Merry Christmas to one and all. Thank you.

VANGERPEN: Thank you very much.

QUEST: Now, the U.S. Department of Justice says the release of files in the Jeffrey Epstein case is about to grow substantially. It has uncovered more than a million additional documents, which it's now reviewing and expects to release in a few weeks.

CNN's Marshall Cohen with the details.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARSHALL COHEN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, you could call it a Christmas Eve bombshell. The Justice Department announced Wednesday that there are potentially one million new additional documents related to Jeffrey Epstein that need to be processed and will be released.

That announcement came as we were all expecting more materials to come out, but perhaps not quite such a massive volume of material still out there.

The Justice Department, in a post to X, formally called Twitter, said the following, "We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible." They went on to say, due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks pleading for some patients, which it has been difficult to come by in the past week. A bipartisan array of outrage from Capitol Hill in the last few days about the heavy handed redactions, the various documents that still haven't been released. And we saw a flurry of responses to this tweet on Wednesday afternoon.

House Democrats said that they believe this was an outrageous admission from the DOJ. Now, the Justice Department said that these new materials came from the Southern District of New York, which, of course, was responsible for the Jeffrey Epstein investigation that led to his federal sex trafficking indictment in 2019.

He never stood trial on those charges because he died by suicide that year. But it was that office, SDNY, that prosecuted Epstein's former girlfriend and longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. And she was found guilty, convicted on sex trafficking charges by that office that were filed by that office in 2021.

So, the big news here is there's a lot more to come in what seems like a never-ending saga over the Epstein files.

Marshall Cohen, CNN, Washington.

[02:10:11]

QUEST: Today in the United States, the Trump administration is congratulating the winner of the presidential election in Honduras. Nasry Asfura, a right-wing businessman and former mayor of the country's capital. He also got a key endorsement from President Trump, which some jurors are calling election meddling.

After weeks of vote counting delays, officials say Asfura defeated Salvador Nasralla by about three quarters of a percentage point.

Now, Santa is still out there. He's still delivering gifts. He's somewhere over Canada heading towards west. You know, look, it's not even midnight in Los Angeles, San Francisco and the U.S. and Canadian west coast. Never mind getting to Hawaii, where it's only 8:00-9:00 in the evening. So, we're going to be watching exactly and seeing you where it is.

And also, don't forget, we have, haha, a tradition that you must not forget. We've got quest Christmas crackers. Pull a cracker with us before the show's over.

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[02:20:04]

QUEST: North Korea has released new images of what it claims is its first nuclear power submarine. The photo shows substantial progress has been made since it was first revealed in March. Leader Kim Jong Un can be seen inspecting the craft at an indoor construction site, suggesting the sub has not yet been launched. In its report, state media is noting South Korea is pursuing a

nuclear-powered sub, and the Europe with the U.S. pressing calling it a violation of North Korean security and a threat that needs to be countered.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin is praising North Korea for coming to his aid in the Kursk Region, sending a message to Kim Jong Un, the leader, ahead of the new year. According to the North Korea state news agency, President Putin applauded what he called Pyongyang's heroic role in Kursk, where Russia claimed victory earlier this year.

Kyiv estimates around 11,000 North Koreans fought in the region following Ukraine's cross border incursion there.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is indicating he's ready for compromise on the territory in the east of his country. He says he could withdraw his forces from parts of the Donbas region that Moscow wants, but only if Russia does the same thing on its side of the front line. That would leave a demilitarized area in the middle where the U.S. has suggested creating a free economic zone.

Mr. Zelenskyy said he was expecting to hear back from Moscow after its contacts with the U.S.

Look now at some of the Christmas celebrations around the world. In Ukraine, some displaced families had a traditional Christmas dish on Wednesday, saying they're hoping for peace and reunification with relatives.

Ukraine moved its Christmas holiday to December the 25th two years ago, distancing itself from the Russian Orthodox Church, which of course, celebrates in January.

Palestinians in Gaza are also hoping for peace and better lives for their children. They gathered at DeLa (ph) church for Christmas Eve mass with cease fire entering its second month.

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris held Christmas Eve mass for the second year since it reopened, a catastrophic fire. You'll remember, of course, in 2019 had nearly destroyed the historic cathedral.

And up there above us, look up. Yes, there they are, astronauts above the International Space Station celebrating Christmas in their own way, orbiting the Earth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WILLIAMS, NASA ASTRONAUT: One of the special things about the holidays is traditions, and while we're all away from our traditions at home, we get to enjoy some new traditions on board.

So, as you can see, we've got a little bit of decoration here. We've got a little tree, and we've also hung some boots by the air lock with cheer. So, you know, we get to make some new traditions here. And that's

something that's really nice and special, and we're really glad to be able to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

QUEST: And millions of people in the United Kingdom and indeed across the Commonwealth, we'll tune in to watch the king's annual Christmas Day speech. It was recorded at Westminster Abbey. The landmark speech has been seen more than a thousand years of royal events, including coronations. That's the Abbey, not the message of weddings and traditions.

And now, the best of Christmas, the tradition that we always find, the Christmas cracker with me. Good morning to you. Are you ready?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, ready.

QUEST: Ready to pull the cracker. Who are we going to win? I do. Story of my life. There we go. But never mind. There we go.

Now, what we've noticed is they don't have jokes anymore. All right. Oh, hang on a second. Hang on a second.

You know what? I'm fine. You know what I'm looking for. I'll do it. I will save you the ritual humiliation. All right, you read the joke.

Oh, you don't have the glasses on. All right. Well, I'll read it then.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Who is Santa's favorite singer?

QUEST: Who is Santa's favorite singer? I don't know who is Santa's favorite singer? Elf is Presley.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Elf is Presley.

QUEST: Elf is Presley.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Another one.

QUEST: One more. Cheap crackers, they're not what they used to be, gone. Do you know? And the other thing we've noticed in our Christmas crackers this year is they have these who said it, what am I to have these horribly politically correct things, charades, trivia, all of that. Go on. Oh, you got it. (INAUDIBLE).

OK. What do you call I say, I say, I say, what you call -- not sure I understand this one myself. What do you call a frozen elf?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you call a frozen elf?

[02:25:01]

QUEST: An Elfcicle. And that was pretty awful. Thank you very much. And a very happy Christmas to you. I know I realize it's hard to take me seriously now I'm wearing a silly hat. British T.V. viewers saw a special musical moment at the beginning of

annual Christmas Eve, according to Kensington Palace. Catherine Princess of Wales and her daughter played a due -- a festive piano duet during the extravaganza. It was filmed in Westminster Abbey in London earlier this month, with around 1600 people in attendance. A selection of British artists sang and speakers, including the Prince of Wales, actors, Kate Winslet, delivered poignant readings all around love, compassion and connection.

And a sand artist in India created a giant sand and apple sculpture of Santa Claus. Sudarsan Pattnaik said he's attempting to break a record using 1.5 tons of apple. Why do people do this?

The installation measures around 60 feet long and 45 feet wide. Last year, he created a sand and chocolate sculpture and made it into the week (ph). Who wakes up in the morning and thinks I'm going to make a large Santa of apples?

A look once more at NORAD and where Santa is at the moment. He is traveling his -- across the globe. He's in Arizona now heading towards the west coast of the United States.

So far, more than seven billion gifts are said to have been delivered. We will have more of these awful jokes. More -- oh, here we go. Here's a question for you. Question for you.

I'm essential to life, yet I can take your breath away. I am both in you and around you. What am I? Water.

I'm Richard Quest. We have more news in 30 minutes. "CALL TO EARTH" is next beyond the lens, Because the news never stops, neither do we.

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