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The Situation Room

Congressional Push to Release all of the Epstein Case Files; Trump Says New Epstein Emails a "Hoax" by Dems; Former CDC Chief Weighs in on MAHA. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 13, 2025 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, a congressional push to release all of the Justice Department's Jeffrey Epstein case files has advanced in the House and now House Speaker Mike Johnson says he will put the controversial bill up for a vote on the floor next week.

Yesterday, the GOP-led House Oversight Committee released 20,000 pages of documents it received from the late convicted sex offender's estate. Democrats on the committee first released a series of emails showing Epstein had referred to President Donald Trump by name in multiple private messages before he took office.

Here's what James Marsh, an attorney representing victims of Jeffrey Epstein, had to say just moments ago in response to the latest document drop.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES MARSH, ATTORNEY REPRESENTING VICTIMS OF JEFFREY EPSTEIN: It's the fact that this was normalized by these individuals, this was joked about, this was, you know, commented on, and there's no respect for the victims. And I think that really goes to what they've experienced. Why didn't anyone help me? Why didn't anyone stop this from happening? Why didn't anyone listen to my report, as Maria Farmer said, in 1996 and investigate what was happening? That's the government files. That's what we need to know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The White House claims Democrats have been selectively leaking emails to embarrass President Trump. President Trump, we should note, has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.

Joining us now is Haley Robson. She is one of the Epstein survivors who has advocated for the release of all of the Epstein files. Haley, thank you for coming back on the show. I want to just start by getting your thoughts on the group of emails that House Democrats released yesterday that mentioned President Trump by name before he took office.

HALEY ROBSON, JEFFREY EPSTEIN SURVIVOR: I mean, obviously all the emails that are coming out are, you know, appalling and concerning at the same time. But this is just more proof on -- and evidence on why there needs to be clarity, there needs to be transparency. We need to rip the Band-Aid off and allow all the emails to be released and to be released at one time instead of slowly ripping the Band-Aid off and going through these drizzles of information that, you know, unfortunately the survivors have to relive. And it would just be easier if we could just be transparent, just rip the Band-Aid off all at once, give the public what they need and give us what we need, which is transparency.

And I think the emails that are being leaked as of now, we're just getting a very small window and more clarity and a very small fragment of what really was going on and the players that were involved. And when I say the players that were involved, I want to be clear, I mean also including the people that knew about the abuse and were complicit and didn't do anything to stop it.

BROWN: And you have publicly stated, we should note, you are a registered Republican, right? So, I want to get your reaction to President Donald Trump's post on social media where he says, quote, "The Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again because they'll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they've done on the shutdown and so many other subjects. Only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall into that trap."

What is your message to the president and to other Republicans who have resisted releasing the files up to this point?

ROBSON: I mean, my direct message to President Trump is still going to be the same message. Sir, with all due respect, this is not a hoax. And I have been very clear and very concise not to mince my words. I am more than happy to meet with you and to meet you halfway so we can work together to make this horrific ordeal end in a way where everybody can get what they want, which is transparency.

I think the only embarrassing thing is the fact that he's still calling it a hoax. The only embarrassing thing is that you would send Todd Blanche to interview a known perjurer, liar and a pedophile and not invite the victims and survivors to have a conversation with you. The only embarrassing thing I see is the way the government has handled this since Maria has, you know, come out in 1996 and her, you know, complaint was never investigated.

The way they've been handling this entire case has been a disgrace and nothing short of an embarrassment. And I want to add that the world is watching. So, I guess the comedy show and the entertainment that Trump is providing with calling us a hoax, it's at our expense, of course, once again.

[10:35:00]

BROWN: CNN is also reporting that yesterday, top Trump administration officials met with Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert in the Situation Room in the White House about the effort in the House of Representatives to release the Justice Department case files related to Epstein. What message does that send to you? Do you feel like the administration is hiding something? ROBSON: Clearly. I think that's very obvious. The way this tragedy and the way that this investigation has been handled, like I said, is very obvious that something is being hidden. And obviously, if you've been paying attention since the very beginning to the people that were involved, I know Massie hit the floor in a congressional hearing with, I believe, Kash Patel, and he named a couple people and made a couple comments about some of the men that were in the files.

And all I have to say is, unfortunately, with the way the investigation has gone, it's inevitable and it's obvious they're hiding something. But everything in the dark does come to light. The cat is out of the bag and the cat is not going back in the bag. So, I'm not going away. The other survivors, my survivor sisters, they're not going away. And there are power in numbers and we are not giving up until we get what we need.

BROWN: I want to just put up one of the emails that came out yesterday. It was from 2011, April 2nd, 2011. Hopefully, we can put that up here on the screen where Jeffrey Epstein is emailing with Ghislaine Maxwell. And he says, I want you to realize that the dog that has embarked is Trump victim, who Republicans say is Virginia Giuffre, spent hours at my home with him. He has never once been mentioned, police chief, et cetera. I'm 75 percent there.

We should note, Virginia Giuffre has said, and she wrote a book, she's never accused Trump of any wrongdoing. But how do you read that email? And does any of it ring a bell to you?

ROBSON: What I find fascinating is that not only did Virginia Giuffre write a book stating that there was no wrongdoing on Trump's behalf, personally, myself, and I can speak for myself, I've never, you know, pointed fingers at Trump saying he abused me, which makes everything so much more confusing on why they're going to great lengths to resist on releasing the Epstein files and signing the discharge bill.

None of this personally rings a bell for me. I've never met President Donald Trump. I was never around Ghislaine Maxwell. So, I'm not sure, you know, his position in all this. But as these emails are coming out and as we're getting more information, it's becoming more clear the amount of people and who those people were that were complicit in us being abused and not taking the initiative to, you know, help us.

BROWN: Right. And just to reiterate what I said earlier, President Trump has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing. But you pointed out some of the things that this administration has done that, in your view, is not being transparent. And we are just learning from a House Democrat that a whistleblower came to the Oversight Committee and said that Ghislaine Maxwell is being given preferential treatment.

As you know, she was moved in this administration to another facility that is known to be more lax than where she was before. And I'm wondering what your reaction is to these reports that she's been given this sort of pampered treatment.

ROBSON: You know, it's really heartbreaking and disgusting to see that the perpetrators such as Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein, you know, and the other gentlemen in the Epstein files, if I want to call them gentlemen, but I will be polite, that are involved in the Epstein files have been given grace. They have been given immunity. They have been given platforms to talk to members of Congress, including doing interviews with people like Todd Blanche.

Her being moved from a prison, which, by the way, landed her there because of her own criminal involvement in trafficking and exploiting and partaking in the abuse, and then she gets preferential treatment. And you know what? I'm going to take this time to call out Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. How is it possible that in the great State of Florida -- and I love my governor, how is it possible that she was moved to Texas and nobody said anything and nobody knew?

Surely the local government in Florida had to know something was going on. And yet again, nobody reached out to the survivors. Nobody reached out to the victims. Nobody told us what was going on. Nobody kept us in the loop.

[10:40:00]

So, of course, there's preferential treatment. And I think that's part of the disgusting, disturbing part. But it also just goes to prove the amount of corruption in this investigation.

BROWN: When you say corruption, what specifically do you mean?

ROBSON: I mean, corruption with the cover-ups all the way back in 2008, 2009, when it was Acosta that gave him a whack plea deal, which was barbaric and unfit, undeserving. And all the way through the corruption of Jeffrey apparently committing suicide and the issue with the cameras, the non-issue with the cameras, nobody was charged. And then, now the corruption with Ghislaine, where you're sending Todd Blanche, who knows nothing, to interview her for two hours.

There was no forensic psychologist, to my knowledge, that accompanied him. God only knows what really the conversation was about. All the way up until her being moved to a summer camp. I mean, come on, of course there's corruption. If this was a normal, ordinary case, and it just happened to be a lower-middle class perpetrator, he would be in prison.

BROWN: I want to ask you, we had Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene on our show recently. As you know, she's a Republican who has been advocating for Epstein's victims. And she said she would go on the House floor and read the names of the perpetrators. And I'm just wondering if there's any effort for that to happen, if you all are still compiling a list. I know that there was that press conference on the Capitol Hill steps a while back, where one of the survivors said that that was happening. Can you bring us into that?

ROBSON: So, for me personally, again, I was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein. I was not trafficked to anybody. So, I wouldn't really know whose names to release, because that wasn't my experience. However, and I love Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, what a powerhouse. I would be more than happy to stand with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, Ro Khanna, anyone who wants to stand on the House floor and read those names. I would be more than happy to stand right beside them during that time to show solidarity.

If you're going to put your livelihood and your neck on the line for us, I'm willing to do the same for you. And the only way that we are going to make these waves and make this possible is if the collective comes together, because there are power in numbers, as we saw at the Capitol. And I would be more than happy to accompany Marjorie Taylor Greene and any other member of Congress that wants to stand on that floor and read names. You support me, and I will support you till the end.

BROWN: What else does accountability look like for you?

ROBSON: Accountability for me at this point is just to keep using my voice, to keep sounding the alarm, to keep asking and moving along in this journey of justice. And honestly, accountability to me would be great if Donald Trump could stand up and acknowledge us, at least acknowledge us and say, I see you, I hear you, instead of trying to pretend that we don't exist.

BROWN: And just to be clear, you haven't heard from the administration or the White House, right?

ROBSON: It's been crickets. I have not.

BROWN: OK. Hayley Robson, thank you so much for your time. We will, of course, keep in touch. And we also want to note for our viewers, if you or anyone you know is struggling after a sexual assault, help is available. The National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-656-4673.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And that was a very powerful interview. I'm so glad you spoke to her. She's a very impressive woman.

BROWN: Very powerful.

BLITZER: Yes. All right. Coming up, a former CDC director weighs in as public health workers react to the so-called Make America Healthy Again Summit right here in the nation's capital.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:45:00]

BROWN: Happening now, public health workers are reacting to the Make America Healthy Again Summit here in the nation's capital. Vice President J.D. Vance appeared alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: We've got to be comfortable challenging some of these old orthodoxies, and part of that is welcoming people who are a little unusual, because unless you do that, like, you're not going to solve America's problems with McKinsey consultants who say everything the right way all the time. No offense, no offense. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And joining us now, the former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield. He's the author of an important brand-new book entitled "Redfield's Warning: What I Learned But Couldn't Tell You Might Save Your Life."

Let's start with your book, Dr. Redfield. Thanks so much for joining us. You write about being ignored during your career. What are Americans maybe overlooking right now when it comes to public health?

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: You know, I think there's really two main things. One is, I think there's a lack of appreciation that biosecurity is really a critical national security threat. And, of course, the threat that I'm most concerned about is the threat of bird flu. The second thing I think that the American public needs to grab onto more is that you really can't have public health without public trust.

And so, working together to try to rebuild that public trust that was lost during the COVID pandemic is really, really important.

[10:50:00]

BROWN: I want to talk about the trust aspect a little bit more because the CDC, you know, made its mistakes, right, during the handling of the coronavirus pandemic as information evolved as well. When you look at the masking guidelines, a lot of people look back and criticize sort of the mandates that were in place, what states did. Trust in our public health agencies is certainly wavering. Do you have any regrets for how you personally handled the pandemic?

DR. REDFIELD: Well, we made mistakes, and I talk about them in the book. I mean, I think we have to be honest about our mistakes. You know, obviously the first mistake we made was saying that this was SARS-like and very transmissible and you didn't have asymptomatic infection, and so we looked for infected individuals and then tried to isolate around them. The reality is most of COVID was asymptomatic, so we missed the entire public health response, was on the wrong track.

Secondly, I couldn't agree with you more that all mandates did, particularly the vaccine mandate, is enhance vaccine hesitancy in this country and make it even harder to get people to embrace vaccines. Obviously then the other issues you talked about, closing down schools, closing down our government, closing down churches, these were all government overreach and these were really big mistakes.

And so, you know, I will say those of us that were in the arena tried to do our best with the information that we had, but we would be really not doing our job if we didn't admit the mistakes that were made because they were quite significant. And I do try to highlight those in the book because I think it's an important part of public leadership to be able to acknowledge the mistakes we made so that we hopefully don't make them again.

BLITZER: Interesting. In September, Dr. Redfield, multiple former CDC directors wrote a rather scathing opinion piece arguing that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services is, quote, "endangering," their word, "endangering American lives." You did not sign on to that. How do you evaluate the job he's doing?

DR. REDFIELD: Yes. Wolf, if I think there's a real reason I didn't sign that letter, although they did ask me to, is that I didn't agree with it. I happen to think that Kennedy is really going to become the best public health -- Secretary of Health that our nation's ever had.

Yes, he's disruptive. He sees things differently. But he's passionate about trying to return America to a state of health. I mean, you know, in my medical career, we went from, you know, maybe 3 percent of people with chronic disease and obesity to now we're over 50 percent of people with obesity.

You know, I used to tell President Trump the reason so many people died of COVID in the United States is opposed to Taiwan is because we're not a healthy nation. So, I have a lot of confidence in Kennedy. And I think that my colleagues, unfortunately, were incorrect in their assessment.

BROWN: And, of course, you know, a lot of people agree with what he's doing to make America healthier with chronic disease and so forth. But at the same time, you're worried about a future pandemic, potentially. HHS has cut back the budget for the Hospital Preparedness Program and other pandemic preparedness related programs. Does that concern you?

DR. REDFIELD: Well, we'll have to see how it flushes out, you know, when we see what budget Congress really gives you. I mean, everyone said that the NIH budget was substantially decreased to $28 billion. But I've met with Jay Bhattacharya a number of times, and he told me the budget, and I saw the bill that went through actually gave NIH $48 billion. So, let's see. Let's see.

Some of the changes are where they're repositioning different aspects of health. For example, when I was CDC director, probably 60, 70 percent of my effort at CDC was in chronic disease. And you might add that our primary mission is, as you point out, is pandemics and infectious disease outbreaks and epidemics in response. So, a lot of the chronic disease is moving to a new program in MAHA and HHS.

So, I'm just going to see how it shakes out to how much resources are really there to meet the mission that the CDC needs to meet.

BLITZER: The former CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, thanks so much for joining us.

BROWN: Thank you so much.

DR. REDFIELD: Yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you.

BROWN: And still ahead here in the Situation Room -- thank you -- Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins joins us. We're going to ask her when Americans who need help buying food will get their full benefits back now that the government is open again. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:55:00]

BLITZER: Breaking news, as source now tells CNN that the top Border Patrol official in Chicago has left the city. Gregory Bovino has become the face of President Trump's efforts to surge federal troops in major cities around the country, but federal judges have rebuked Bovino over his handling of protesters.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is joining us right now. She has brand-new reporting on where Bovino is now headed. Priscilla?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, I'm now told that Bovino has left Chicago and is on his way to Charlotte, North Carolina, and later he is expected to go to New Orleans, all of this unfolding over the next several weeks. As you mentioned, he has become the face of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Earlier this year, he was in Los Angeles, then in Chicago, in both places, facing litigation over his tactics, his heavy-handed tactics as well as the way that him and his agents were approaching immigration enforcement. Now, Bovino is the chief patrol agent of the El Centro Sector, which is along the U.S. Mexico border. He's been with the agency for nearly three decades.

But currently, he is really serving as the lead of the immigration crackdown in cities across the country. The Department of Homeland Security and the White House has touted the work that he has done and the arrest. That he has accomplished in each of these cities.

Now, I did ask the Department of Homeland Security for comment on his movements and was told that they are not commenting on his exact whereabouts. Citing the hits that he has had on his head. There was an arrest on this front several weeks ago when the Department of Homeland Security announced they had arrested someone who had put a bounty on Bovino's head. But now we are learning that he has left Chicago and that he is moving on to Charlotte with other plans to go to New Orleans thereafter.

And of course, as the administration continues its cracked down, it's entirely possible that there are other cities on the list down the road.

BLITZER: All right. Priscilla Alvarez reporting. Excellent reporting as usual. Thank you very, very much. Pamela.

BROWN: And the next hour of the Situation Room starts right now.

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