DOJ Weighs Releasing Maxwell Transcript, Trump on Third Term, Titan Disaster Report: AM Update 8/6

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Good morning, everyone.

I'm Megan Kelly.

It's Wednesday, August 6th, 2025, and this is your AM update.

The DOJ Ways releasing a transcript of the Ghulan-Maxwell interview with Deputy AG Todd Blanche last month.

Are you going to run again?

Probably not.

President Trump once again addressing the possibility of running for a third term in office, saying he's probably not going to do it.

Well, Stockton Rush came from the wrong industry, and he chose the wrong materials and the wrong approach.

The Coast Guard drops its report on the series of colossal failures leading up to the implosion of the Ocean Gate Titan sub, tragically killing five people including the company's CEO.

All that and more coming up in just a moment on your AM update.

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The Department of Justice reportedly weighing whether to release a transcript of the Ghelane Maxwell interview conducted by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in late July.

Three senior DOJ officials telling CNN the administration also has an audio recording of the two-day meeting with Jeffrey Epstein's convicted associate.

Some officials within the White House reportedly believe releasing the transcript could bring the Epstein story back into the spotlight at a time when many officials believe the public has largely moved on.

Some sources saying any release of the audio or transcript would happen sooner rather than later, another saying it could take weeks.

Maxwell currently appealing a 20-year prison sentence for her role in both abusing and sex trafficking victims for Jeffrey Jeffrey Epstein.

She was moved last week to a lower security prison camp in Texas, an apparent concession for her cooperation.

President Trump weighing in Tuesday from the White House.

And did you personally approve the prison transfer for Gheline Maxwell that your Justice Department?

I didn't know about it at all.

No, I read about it just like you did.

And do you believe that she is not a very uncommon thing?

Do you believe that she's credible to be listening to?

Your deputy attorney general sat down with her recently.

Well, he's, let me tell you, he's a very talented man.

His name is Todd Blanche.

He's a very legitimate person, very high,

just a very highly thought-of person, respected by everybody.

And I didn't talk to him about it, but I will tell you that whatever he asked would be totally appropriate, and it's not an uncommon thing to do that.

And I think he probably wants to make sure that, you know, people that should not be involved or aren't involved are not hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair to a lot of people.

Separately, the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday morning officially issued subpoenas for 10 individuals, including former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller, and former attorneys general from both sides of the aisle, Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, Alberto Gonzalez, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, and Eric Holder.

The subpoenas compelling each individual to appear before the committee for depositions across a range range of dates from mid-August to mid-October.

It is unclear if these witnesses will appear before the committee or challenge the subpoenas through legal proceedings or whether they might invoke their Fifth Amendment right not to testify.

The Oversight Committee also issuing a subpoena to Trump's DOJ, compelling the release of key Epstein files to Congress as part of the ongoing investigation into Epstein-Maxwell and the DOJ's handling of their cases.

Those files are due to the committee by August 19th.

President Trump on Tuesday morning dialing into CNBC for fun, resulting in a free wheeling interview covering a wide range of subjects.

Mr.

Trump offering hints on the short list to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Powell has indicated he will serve through the remainder of his term, which expires in May of 2026, despite the president's repeated calls to either lower interest rates or step aside.

Mr.

Trump saying he is considering four possible replacements, former Fed overseer Kevin Warsh, director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett, and two more candidates.

Not on the list, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson.

Well, I love Scott, but he wants to stay where he is.

I will.

I'll take him off because I asked him just last night, is this something you want?

Nope, I want to stay where I am.

He actually said, I want to work with you.

It's such an honor.

I said, that's very nice.

I appreciate that.

But no, Scott wants to do what he's doing.

He's doing a great job.

And he wants to do what he's doing.

So I just take him off.

He does not want it.

President Trump also discusses the possibility of meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping as the August 12th deadline to strike a trade deal looms.

We have a very good relationship, but I didn't call for the meeting.

He called for the meeting.

So the fake news announced Donald Trump wants a meeting with China.

No, I didn't want it.

No, he asked for a meeting.

And I'll end up having a meeting before the end of the year, most likely, if we make a deal.

If we don't make a deal, I'm not going to have a meeting.

I mean, you know, what's the purpose of meeting if we're not going to make a deal?

But we're getting very close to a deal.

China's very reliant on the United States.

My relationship with him is very good.

I think we'll make a good deal.

It's not imperative, but I think we're going to make a good deal.

But no, they had a thing that Donald Trump really wanted to go there.

No, I don't.

It's a 19-hour flight.

It's a long flight.

But at some point in the not-too-distant future, I will.

And just to end this conversation in China, I have a very good relationship with president xi always had in recent years many conservative activists reporting they've been debanked after speaking out politically the administration reportedly crafting an executive order aimed at protecting consumers mr trump saying he was a victim himself of debanking after leaving office in 2021 mate i had uh jp morgan chase i was loaded up with cash and They told me, I'm sorry, sir.

We can't have you.

You have 20 days to get out.

I said, you got to be kidding.

I've been with you for 35, 40 years.

And it's not like, gee, you defaulted on a loan.

You know, geez, if I could understand that.

That's different.

I ended up going to small banks all over the place.

I mean, I was putting 10 million here, 10 million there, did 5 million, 10 million, 12 million.

The banks discriminated against me very badly.

But they discriminated against many conservatives.

And I believe what they did is they went to the regulators.

You know, banks are not afraid of anything but a regulator.

They're regulators and their wives, the high IQ people that are radical left.

I believe they told the banking commission, do everything you can to destroy Trump.

And that's what they did.

And guess what?

I'm president.

How did that happen?

No word yet on when that order will be announced.

President Trump saying, despite his polling, he probably won't run again.

I got the highest vote in the history of technology, a record that they say won't be beaten unless I run again.

Are you going to run again?

The Constitution?

Probably not.

Okay.

Probably not.

And you're not going to fire Jay Powell.

We'll go all talk about all the stuff that.

Hey, Becky, I'd like to run.

I have the best poll numbers I've ever had.

Later on Tuesday, President Trump predicting to reporters a dream team of Vice President J.D.

Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio will carry on the MAGA movement.

Coming up, the Coast Guard dropping a damning report on the Ocean Gate Titan sub, outlining several points of failure and negligence leading up to the fatal implosion.

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The Coast Guard releasing a blistering 335-page report on the 2023 Ocean Gate Titan submersible disaster that led to the deaths of all five on board.

Those who lost their lives were the Ocean Gate CEO, Stockton Rush, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Narjalais, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and his 19-year-old son Suleiman Dawood.

On June 18, 2023, the explorers embarking on a deep-sea mission to explore the wreckage of the Titanic resting approximately 12,500 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

At approximately 10.47 a.m., a.m., the Titan communications and tracking team, monitoring from a ship on the surface, heard a bang.

For days, the nation watched and prayed as it remained not entirely clear whether the vessel had imploded or simply malfunctioned and lost contact.

On June 22nd, debris found on the ocean floor, confirming the loss of the sub and the lives of all on board.

The Coast Guard determining the cause of the incident, quote, was the loss of structural integrity of the Titan's carbon fiber hull.

This loss caused the sudden catastrophic implosion of the hull.

The word failure appearing 99 times in the report, painting a devastating picture of what led to the tragedy, a quote, toxic workplace environment, critical engineering failures, and a series of ignored safety warnings.

According to the report, Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush was negligent in the events leading up to the disaster, noting that Rush's dual role, CEO of the company and master of the Titan, carried a heightened legal responsibility to ensure the safety and seaworthiness of the vessel and its occupants.

Had he survived, criminal charges may have followed.

The report also finding that before the fatal trip in 2023, Ocean Gate had continued using the Titan sub even after, quote, a series of incidents that compromised the integrity of the hull.

Director of the epic film, Titanic, and deep-sea submersible expert James Cameron, last year on 60 Minutes Australia, explaining the Titan's construction was a recipe for disaster from the very start.

You have a particular individual, Stockton Rush.

He was enamored of the sort of the glamour and the exoticism, and he was attracted to it, but he came from the wrong industry.

He came from

aeronautics.

And aeronautical engineering is fundamentally different.

And he chose the wrong materials on the wrong approach because of the carbon fiber.

And there's another issue which is mating dissimilar materials together at a high pressure mating surface.

When you put titanium up against carbon fiber they have what's they have a differential bulk modulus.

I don't want to get too technical here but it means they contract and expand at different rates which causes slippage and stress and strain at that at that interface.

Which under that pressure?

Talking about a lot of pressure and you're talking about certain rules you can't break.

And those rules were broken.

Despite long-standing concerns about the safety of carbon fiber under deep sea pressure, a new Netflix documentary, Titan, the Ocean Gate Submersible Disaster, explores why Rush remained fixated on using it.

He believed it could revolutionize the industry by slashing costs and expanding access.

When I looked at the cost of operating a sub, it's the ship.

The two things that drive the cost of submersible operations.

It's not the replenishing the oxygen or the carbon dioxide.

That's nothing.

It's all about the ship.

And the next most important thing is mobilization.

How do you get the stuff from one location to another?

That's 90% of your cost.

If you can realize that dream of a carbon fiber submersible, you can drop the price.

You can suddenly have fleets of these submersibles operating around the world.

The Coast Guard report also found, quote, OceanGate's safety culture and operational practices were critically flawed.

And at the core of these failures were glaring disparities between their written safety protocols and their actual practices.

One example of that breakdown relayed by former OceanGate Director of Engineering, Tony Nissen, who worked for the company from 2016 until he was fired in 2019.

Nissen testifying in September 2024 to the Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation about a 2018 lightning strike to the vessel.

I believe it got compromised by that event.

That's very difficult to detect.

I mean, it took a lightning strike and it went through all the testing.

So at that point, and at that point, did you cancel the 2018 Titanic expedition?

It had to, yeah, because we gutted it, changed all the electronics in it.

We weren't going to be able to do the

deep diving that we needed in time.

There was no path to get there.

It would have had to leave, I think it had to leave the Bahamas to go to Newfoundland sometime in May, I think it was.

Yeah, and

we couldn't get there.

At that time, did you believe that the lightning strike affected the actual carbon fiber hull?

Yeah, I told Stockton and said that there's probably a good chance that that hull is compromised for sure.

And what did he say?

It'll be okay.

So nothing was done to the hull itself.

From that point on it, you didn't make a new hull.

It wasn't.

The new report also finding Rush was able to push the Titan project forward by capitalizing on the company's favorable reputation to evade regulatory scrutiny.

Quote, By strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges, OceanGate was ultimately able to operate Titan completely outside of the established deep-sea protocols.

OceanGate suspended operations in July 2023.

And that'll do it for your AM update.

I'm Megan Kelly.

Join me back here for the Megan Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 at Noon East, on youtube.com/slash Megan Kelly and on all podcast platforms.

Car problems?

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My Lemon Law Lawyer can get you out of your car and up to three times your car value.

You pay zero.

The manufacturer pays.

And remember, text Lemon to the number 40333.

That's lemon to 40333.

Or go to mylemonlawlawyer.com.

Text rates or charges may apply.