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The Situation Room

Trump Answers Questions at White House; Epstein Victims React to Ghislaine Maxwell Interview. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired August 25, 2025 - 11:30   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Well, new developments in the Jeffrey Epstein case. His victims and their families are reacting to the transcripts and audio from the deputy attorney general's interview last month with Ghislaine Maxwell.

The family of Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein and Maxwell's most prominent accusers, who died by suicide earlier this year, says the Justice Department gave Maxwell a platform to rewrite history.

CNN crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz is here.

So what more is the family saying?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, the family of this very prominent accuser of both Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, they say it's a travesty of justice how this interview was conducted by the Justice Department.

Here's the quote from the statement that they released over the weekend after that interview between Ghislaine Maxwell, still a criminal defendant, and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, was released. They did that interview at the end of July.

Virginia Giuffre's family says: "During DAG Todd Blanche's bizarre interview, she is never challenged about her court-proven lies, providing her a platform to rewrite history. This travesty of justice entirely invalidates the experiences of the many brave survivors who put their safety, security, and lives on the line to ensure her conviction, including our sister."

And what they're underlining here is how Ghislaine Maxwell, in this interview with a prosecutor, says she never witnessed anything inappropriate and she herself denies being part of any child sex trafficking, What she is convicted of in serving a 20-year sentence.

Now, she is appealing that conviction in court, but she also doesn't add much to what is publicly known about the situation around Jeffrey Epstein here. So, the victims -- this family is speaking out, and they're very unhappy with the entire circumstance of how the Justice Department is handling Ghislaine Maxwell.

They also are unhappy that she's been moved to a lower security prison camp in the Bureau of Prisons system. But one of the things to remember here in this Epstein saga is, we have been watching for the Justice Department saying things, publicly releasing things, but the victims' families do keep saying, the victims should have a voice, they should be heard as well.

And not only is her family releasing a statement. A publisher did come out over the weekend and say that Virginia Giuffre is also releasing a memoir after her death that she worked on with a journalist. That 400- page book, it's called "Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice," is scheduled to be out in October.

It is supposedly about her time in this Epstein ring as she was accusing him. And she wrote a letter to her co-author saying that, just before her death by suicide, that she wanted this book to come out for the sake of justice and for public awareness.

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BROWN: All right, Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much.

And joining us now to further discuss this is James Marsh. He is an attorney who represents Epstein's victims, including Maria Farmer, who testified that Ghislaine Maxwell recruited and sexually assaulted her.

So, James, I just want to start with what we were just talking about with Katelyn, this transcript and audio from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's interview with Maxwell. Now that the victims that you work with have had a few days to process all of this, how are they feeling about that interview?

JAMES MARSH, ATTORNEY FOR EPSTEIN VICTIMS: Yes, thank you for having me on again, Pamela.

This is disappointing, but not a surprise. Ghislaine Maxwell is guilty. She was convicted. Any of her statements at this point are going to be self-serving and, I agree, a chance to rewrite history to minimize her contributions, to plead in the court of public opinion for some kind of sympathy.

But the victims that we work with, our clients, are not fooled by this. They are disappointed, obviously. And, like I said, it's not surprising. It's not surprising that Ghislaine is trying to appeal to a higher court. She's trying to appeal to the public. She's trying to appeal to the president.

And in that context, anything she says, any truthful statements or revelations are going to hurt her. So she's got really no incentive here to tell the truth, to be transparent, to take accountability. And it's a disappointment, but not a surprise.

BROWN: Given what you laid out, and now that you have seen what was actually discussed in this interview by Blanche with Maxwell, why do you think the Trump administration had him do it in the first place? MARSH: I think the drumbeat of anger and outrage, not only by the

base but by so many Americans, and, of course, the victims and survivors of this horrible crime, meant that they had to do something. This is sort of a no-brainer.

My take on the transcript that I read, she's very well-prepared. You have to remember she has counsel present. She, I think, has three lawyers present with her during the interview. And many of her statements are extremely qualified: No one looked like a child to me. I didn't see this myself. I didn't understand this myself.

These are all highly prepared, qualified statements that don't reveal anything except someone who is trying to escape justice.

BROWN: And, as a lawyer, those are the things you would look out for, right, because you advise all different kinds of clients. So you know how potentially they would be prepped.

In addition to the audio and the transcript of the Blanche and Maxwell interview, the Justice Department on Friday also turned over some Epstein-related records to the House Oversight Committee to comply with that subpoena. Democrats on the committee said that there was very little new information in those documents and that most of what was turned over was already public.

Do you have any insight into whether that was actually the case?

MARSH: I haven't seen the documents and I haven't talked to anyone on the committee, but as we have seen throughout a long history with Jeffrey Epstein and documents, binders and revelations, the real story has yet to be told.

There are 300 gigabytes of information. That's hundreds of thousands of pages. There are files and records dating back to the 1990s, the Towers Financial, this lease deal that Epstein had with the State Department. There's perhaps millions and millions of pages and records and financial statements and records at the SEC, records in the Southern District of New York, things that have never seen the light of day.

And so 100 pages here, 100 pages there, this is all recycled, old news. And, like I said, my clients are not surprised.

BROWN: OK. James, I'm sorry to interrupt, but President Trump is speaking in the Oval Office. Thank you so much.

We're going to listen in...

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PAM BONDI, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: ... part of this operation here in D.C., we have also taken off MS-13 members. We have taken -- I think just last night we got a TDA guy off our streets right here, right around from where we all work, another TDA member gone because of this project.

So we're going to keep America safe from all of these foreign terrorist organizations, including Abrego Garcia.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Mr. President, if we could get your reaction, sir.

The Israelis bombed a hospital in Gaza that killed 20 people, including five journalists.

TRUMP: When did this happen?

QUESTION: This happened overnight, today.

TRUMP: I didn't know that.

QUESTION: Well, any reaction to this? Are you going to talk to the Prime Minister...

TRUMP: Well, I'm not happy about it. I don't want to see it.

At the same time, we have to end that whole nightmare. I'm the one that got the hostages out. I got them out, all of them. Steve Witkoff has been amazing. He's done a great job. But I'm the one that got them all out through my people and through me. And now we're left with probably a little bit less than 20, because I think one or two are gone.

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And I said a long time ago, I'm going to get them out, but when we get down to that final 10 or 20, these people aren't going to release them because they're dead after they release them.

So it's a nasty situation, very nasty, horrible thing.

Yes.

QUESTION: Mr. President, could you please elaborate on your post on South Korea? What were you referring to?

TRUMP: Well, I heard that there were raids on churches over the last few days, very vicious raids on churches by the new government in South Korea, that they even went into our military base and got information. And they probably shouldn't have done that.

But I heard bad things. I don't know if it's true or not. I will be finding out. As you know, your new president is coming in just a couple of hours, coming here. I look forward to meeting him. But we won't stand for that. I just won't stand for that.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Are you prepared to order National Guard troops, though, into American cities if those governors don't request the federal deployment? TRUMP: I am. But I also think that, look, Chicago, everybody knows

how bad it is. Everybody standing there knows. We know. You don't have to be doing any studies.

They should be saying, please come in. Pritzker should be saying that. I did a favor for Christie (sic) -- for Christie Whitman -- Whitmer, a good favor, I think, with the fish, the carp, the China carp. Did you ever hear of it, China carp? And it's taken over your Great Lakes. You know about that, right?

And she came, and she wanted to know if it's possible for us to do something about it. And I said, well, I will do it. But I think it's appropriate that the person from Illinois, the governor from Illinois, asks also. It's a tremendously expensive project, actually.

It's invasive. It's horrible what's happened. And we can do it with GSA and various people. But we can do it. We're going to just have to see what happens, OK? We're going to have to see what happens.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

TRUMP: But the governor of Michigan came, was very respectful, asked for it. She's done a good job. We -- I did that. I opened the Air Force base, kept it open for F-35s and various planes, F-22s too.

I did that for the state of Michigan at her request. And I will -- and also and our congressmen. We have congressmen that are unbelievably pro-Michigan up there. But some of this stuff, like the lakes, the Great Lakes, this is a big problem that nobody ever talks about, most of you probably have never heard of.

We have a very pretty violent fish that has -- comes from China, China carp, Chinese carp. And you see them jumping out. They jump into boats and they jump all over the place. They have got a lot of energy. And there's a way of getting rid of them. It's very expensive.

And we -- I didn't get a request from the governor of Illinois, is affected maybe more than anybody else, right? And I think until I get that request from that guy, I'm not going to do anything about it. And I feel the same way about crime.

We go in, we will solve Chicago within one week, maybe less, but within one week we will have no crime in Chicago, just like we have no crime in D.C. But I don't like to go in and do it and then have somebody stand up and say, what a great job he's doing on crime and we don't want the military in our state. We don't want the military.

Do you understand? Do you understand that?

QUESTION: Yes, these governors will say there was no emergency to respond to.

TRUMP: So I don't know. We're going to have a little meeting, I think.

I feel like we go in and we do it, like here, to a lesser extent with the mayor. She hasn't been terrible, but she hasn't been exactly saying, oh, great. She said -- she did say -- last night, I heard her say that, well, we really don't want the military in D.C.

Well, that's not very nice, I guess. That's a little bit of a hit. But she's not as bad as some. We saved Los Angeles, and all we did is get criticized by this idiot that's running the state into the ground, right, where people are leaving. He should be thanking us, and he should be requesting us to be there.

And the governor of Illinois should be. Chicago is a disaster. And the governor of Illinois should say, President, would you do us the honor of cleaning up our city? We need help. They need help. They need help.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: We may wait. We may or may not. We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do. The problem is, it's not nice when you go in and do it, and somebody else is standing there saying, as we give great results, say, well, we don't want the military. They need help badly. Chicago desperately needs help.

And just look at the crime statistics. Look at the statistics that J.D. said about -- even I didn't know it was that bad. That's terrible. But all I know is, we're being celebrated because we went an entire week. Now it's 11 days. We went an entire week without a murder.

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And I said, boy, that sounds terrible. I didn't know how to -- I actually made a speech. I didn't know how to say it, because it's a great number. It's a great thing, but it sounds so bad. I mean, supposing you're from a foreign country which is properly run, and they don't have murders and things, right, so much, or, in some cases, virtually at all.

And you have somebody saying, I'm proud to announce that nobody was murdered in the capital of the United States this week. It sounds terrible.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Mr. President, Gavin Newsom -- you mentioned Gavin Newsom.

TRUMP: Gavin Newscum. Yes?

QUESTION: Is there a federal mechanism you're hoping to use to fight back against his redistricting constitutional amendment, or is that...

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, I think I'm going to be filing a lawsuit pretty soon. And I think we're going to be very successful in it. We're going to be filing it through the Department of Justice. That's going to happen.

And we're also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue-slipping. Blue slips makes it impossible for me, as president, to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney because they have a gentleman's agreement, nothing memorialized. It's a gentleman's agreement that's about 100 years, where if you have a president like a Republican and if you have a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney, in particular, those two.

Those are the two, I guess anything, but those are the two that are very important. So we have numerous states where we have unbelievable people. Now, Jay Clayton was just approved in the Southern District, but he was so good. He was a top student, top schools, top everything, went to Sullivan & Cromwell, became the head of Sullivan & Cromwell, came down here with Securities and Exchange Commission, ran it for four years during my term, like, impeccably, beautiful job.

He did an incredible job. And we went to court. And the judges, Democrat judges, voted that he could -- that's the only way you get by it. But, generally speaking, you can't do that because you will have judges from the other party.

So, Jay Clayton just got approved, and he's in, but he didn't get approved by the senators. He got approved by the court system in New York, which was a great thing. And I had a big victory in New York, I might add. I saved myself $500 million with a fake, corrupt attorney general, a really corrupt person with a corrupt judge who was disgraceful.

And they're being mauled right now by everybody. Just -- it's so corrupt. And it kept business out of New York, stuff like that, but the Appellate Division vacated all of that stuff that you read about. And we're going to do a big number on that whole thing.

You can't have a corrupt court system. You can't have that. You have to have borders and you have to have a free press. Otherwise, you don't have a country. But you will be hearing about the blue-slipping, because if you have not -- you don't need two senators. You just need one Democrat senator with a Republican.

The only person that I can get approved are Democrats or maybe weak Republicans, but we don't want that. But the only person I will be able to get approved in any of those states where you have a Democrat will be -- I can't get a U.S. attorney. I can only get a Democrat U.S. attorney.

And this is based on an old custom. It's not based on law. And I think it's unconstitutional. And I will probably be filing a suit on that pretty soon.

Yes, please.

QUESTION: During the campaign, you called Kamala Harris a communist, but the Biden/Harris administration, they never called for nationalizing a private company with the federal government like you're proposing with Intel.

What do you say to some who say this is a bit hypocritical? And is this the new way of doing industrial policy? TRUMP: Yes, sure it is. I want to try and get as much as I can. And

people come in and they need something.

As an example, as a real estate person, if I have an agreement and I have a -- any form of a stopgap where I can stop somebody from doing something, right, I have a covenant in an agreement and they come to me and they say, we would like you to -- we like to do something, but you have us restricted, if I do that, they usually have to pay.

Now, in the case of Intel, it was interesting, but I hope I'm going to have many more cases like it. Intel came in. I met with a gentleman. I had a lot of respect for him. He came in under a little bit of a cloud. I liked his story. I thought he was good. I think he really means to do a good job with Intel.

I said, I'd like to ask whether or not you would give -- you know, give, because it kind of -- a lot of people said I invested in Intel. I didn't invest, but I invest my heart in it and my soul because I want the country to be strong. But I said, I'd like you to give 10 percent of Intel to the United States of America, not to me, to the United States of America.

[11:50:05]

And I said, if you have them as a partner, you have the United States as a partner, I think that would be a very good thing for Intel. And he thought about it a little bit different. And he said, I like that idea very much. We have a deal.

And that's -- I just made $10 billion or $11 billion for the United States of America. And, yes, there will be other cases. If I have that opportunity again, I would do that. And then you do have stupid people say, oh, that's a shame. It's not a shame. It's called business.

If somebody is willing to give you 10 percent of a company and you're not paying for it -- and I will tell you, with a company like Intel, as you know, it's had difficulty. I want them to do well. I have a -- I want them to do well anyway, but I want them to do well in particular now.

QUESTION: But isn't public ownership of a private company a new way of doing business in the business of the United States?

TRUMP: Yes.

QUESTION: Isn't that what you were sort of rejecting?

TRUMP: So are tariffs. So are tariffs.

So, as you know, the stock market went up almost 1,000 points on Friday. And it went up not because of this very, I think, terrible -- hello. Who is that? Who is that back there? All right, get out of the room.

(LAUGHTER) TRUMP: It went up because of something much different. It went up because it was announced, CBO announced the numbers. And, as you know, they gave no credit to tariffs. They said they made a mistake, that the trade deficit will be reduced -- because of Trump's tariffs, will be reduced by $4 trillion, right?

Is that what they said, right? They said $4 trillion. And the market went up like a rocket ship because the tariffs are good. Well, tariffs aren't that usual. The seven wars I stopped, four of them were because of the fact that I had tariffs and trade. And I was able to say, well, if you do this, if you go fight and you want to kill everybody, that's OK.

But I'm going to charge you each 100 percent tariff when you trade with us. You know what? They all gave up. I stopped seven wars. Numerous of them was because of tariffs. So you never knew the word tariff. It didn't exist really, essentially, in this country until actually in the 1870s up until 1913 it existed.

And we were the richest country. We were richer than -- proportionately than at any time in the history of our country. And then, stupidly, in 1913, they said, let's go to the income tax way of life. Let the people pay, instead of foreign countries. No. We're taking in trillions of dollars in tariffs, and we're stopping wars because of tariffs.

So that's not so normal either. But you know what? Other countries did it to us, and now we're doing it to other countries.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: You ruled out boots on the ground in Ukraine, but how would air support as part of a security guarantee be any different? Those U.S. airmen...

TRUMP: Boy, you really went from one question to the next. You go from one...

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: That's -- I expected he would at least challenge me a little bit. Now we're talking about boots on the ground.

QUESTION: But U.S. air assets over the skies of Ukraine as part of a security guarantee, wouldn't those U.S. airmen also be in danger?

TRUMP: Well, you don't know what security guarantee is because we haven't even discussed the specifics of it, and we will see.

Number one, Europe is going to give them significant security guarantees, and they should because they're right there. But we will be involved from the standpoint of backup. We're going to help them. And I think, if we get a deal, and I think we will, but if we get a deal, you're not going to -- I don't believe you're going to have much of a problem.

But we will back it up because I want to stop seeing people being killed. But when Biden was here, he gave $350 billion. You know this from covering business, $350 billion to Ukraine. I said that Zelenskyy is the greatest salesman I think I have ever met, better than P.T. Barnum, because he'd come to the country and walk out with $50 billion every time.

And he actually came here. Once, he walked out with $100 billion. We're up to $350 billion. I got a trillion dollars worth of rare earth that we have from the country because I felt badly for our taxpayer. But I did something else at the NATO meeting. They are wealthy countries, but they weren't paying.

And we don't pay any money to Ukraine anymore. Do you know that? In fact, it's the opposite. They request through NATO -- we deal with NATO. We don't deal really with Ukraine. NATO requests missiles. They want Patriots. They want missiles. We give the missiles to NATO. NATO pays us in full and does what they want.

I mean, I think they give them mostly to -- they can do other things with them too, because we're dealing with NATO. We pay no money to Ukraine. We gave $350 billion to Ukraine. If we didn't give that kind of money -- and I was the one that gave the Javelins, if you remember. I gave the Javelins. They were very effective.

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They say Obama gave sheets, and Trump gave Javelins. They were very effective with those tanks right at the beginning. But you would have never had a war if I were president. You would have never had a war.

Just to finish, we spend no money on Ukraine anymore. We were getting fleeced by a president that didn't know what he was doing, to be honest. I don't blame Ukraine, I mean, if they come and ask for $100 billion and they get it.

But we were in for $350 billion. Now we make money. I don't want to make money on Ukraine. I want the war to end because I want to save all those lives. I want to just save -- but just so you understand, we're no longer losing money on that thing. We were losing money hand over fist. And now we don't lose any money.

Now we sell weapons to NATO. Because NATO agreed, because of me, to go to 5 percent -- they had 2 percent and didn't pay. Now they have 5 percent and they're all paid up. So they have trillions of dollars and they give us that money. But I really want the war to end. And we're going to get it ended.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: ... historic summit here with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and European leaders all met here with you at the White House, you said you wanted to get this done, bilateral as soon as possible.

Have you spoken to Putin since last Monday? TRUMP: Yes, I have.

QUESTION: What is your conversation? Or can you share...

TRUMP: Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation. And then, unfortunately, a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or someplace and then I get very angry about it.

I think we're going to get the war done. It's tough. I thought that would be -- of the seven that I settled, I thought that would be the easiest of the groups. See, you never know what's going to happen. War, strange things happen in war. The fact that he went to Alaska, our country, I think was a big statement that he wants to get it done.

That was not easy for him to go to Alaska, for him to come here. But the fact that he showed up on a very successful -- that was a very successful day for other things, because we're also talking about missiles, nuclear. We're talking about a lot of different things. We're talking about limiting nuclear weapons.

We will get China into that. We have the most. Russia has the second most. And China has third. But China is way behind, but they will catch us in five years. We would like to denuclearize. It's too much power. And we talked about that also. That's part of it. But we have to get the war over with.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Thank you.

On Baltimore, you said that you are going to have to reconsider bridge funding. Is that contingent on Wes Moore cleaning up the streets?

TRUMP: No, we were very generous to him on a bridge. A boat ran into a bridge and the bridge came down like I have never seen anything. The boat was just -- it just shows you the mass of that boat, the power of that boat.

People were up on that bridge, painters. They were painting the bridge and they were watching it happen. And they thought they were very safe. They all died. They were painting the bridge. Can you imagine? And they watched the boat. The engines were off. And they watched the boat. And the power of that boat, the mass of that boat went right through that steel just like it was nothing.

It's amazing. It's called mass. Mass is a big deal. But the mass of that boat, those people all died. But they were -- they thought they were totally safe. Two of them were eating their lunch. They were whatever, watching it. They could have gotten off.

Somebody did a very good job. A police officer called in and said, close the bridge. And he did it with power. Get everybody off the bridge. Close that. That guy should get a medal because he stopped the bridge -- a lot of people would have died. A lot more people would have died. The ones that died were the workers on the bridge. And they were just -- they thought there was no danger because it's a

big steel bridge. And it came down like toothpicks. It was incredible to watch that. It was just -- and they died. They all died. But that police officer -- again, the police do a great job. The police officer did an amazing job.

And I heard the tapes. He would say, get everybody off it. Most people wouldn't have said that. When you see a thing like that, you assume it's going to tap the bridge and it's going to be rebuffed. That thing just came down. I'd never say anything like it. So he did a good job.

In fact, I think we should get him in for a medal. The man that gave the warning, I listened to him. Everybody get off, screaming, everybody off. He had the sense to realize that this could be a catastrophe, as opposed to a ship that's -- because the engines weren't working. It was just floating.

It's an amazing thing, that a thing floating like that with no power just knocked it right down like it was nothing.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Let's do that. Let's give him a medal. I have been thinking about it.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Mr. President, do you plan to investigate Chris Christie?

TRUMP: Say it. What?

QUESTION: Do you plan to investigate Chris Christie?

TRUMP: Look, Chris is a slob. Everybody knows it. I know Chris better than anybody in the room.