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Florida Hearing Under Way to Determine School Reopenings; Steve Bannon to Appear in Court Soon; President Trump to Hold Scranton, PA Event Tonight. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 20, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, NEWSROOM: Just in to CNN, the CDC out with a new report on COVID testing in the nation's prisons and jails. Health reporter Jacqueline Howard has more -- Jacqueline.

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Anderson, this CDC report shows that mass testing in prisons and jails can identify thousands of COVID-19 cases that would be missed if tests were only conducted on people showing symptoms.

Now, the report looked at 16 correctional facilities before and after mass testing was done. All of the facilities identified at least one case based on people having symptoms. But the mass testing increased the known number of cases from 642 to more than 8,000.

This report says that symptom-based testing can underestimate the true prevalence of COVID-19 in prisons and jails -- Anderson.

COOPER: Jacqueline Howard, thanks very much.

For those who are planning to hop on a plane in the coming days and weeks, a mask may be critical in avoiding infection. Our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us.

So talk to me about this, what have you learned?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, during the pandemic, there have been so many questions about whether or not it's safe to fly in an airplane. Well, scientists at MIT, they decided to do a modeling study. And what they found is that the chances of catching coronavirus on a flight are one in 4,300 if everyone's wearing a mask. Now, that risk goes down to about one in 7,700 if that middle seat is left empty.

So the bottom line is that it appears to be perhaps safer than some people thought. But airlines do require -- and it's a good thing -- they do require you to wear a mask -- Anderson.

COOPER: Thanks very much.

Florida's governor wants schools to open; Florida's largest teacher's union wants to keep schools closed. Now, a judge is hearing arguments from both sides and will decide which way to go next week. All the while, the coronavirus numbers rising. Florida's latest numbers are grim, more than 10,000 people have lost their lives to coronavirus and close to 600,000 people have the virus.

CNN correspondent Rosa Flores is in Miami. So what's happening with this lawsuit?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Anderson, what's going on right now is a temporary injunction hearing that is happening in virtual court. And here's the crux of this case.

On one side, you've got the teachers' union that is arguing that the state emergency order that requires school districts across the state to reopen for in-person instruction is unconstitutional because it is unsafe to reopen these buildings and have students and teachers go inside these buildings for their education.

Now, one of their witnesses was a biology teacher from Orlando who lives with his wife and his 81-year-old mother-in-law who testified that Orlando's schools reopen for in-person instruction tomorrow, and that that puts him in an impossible position. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES LIS, TEACHER, MARTIN COUNTY: I've chosen my kids, my students over so many difficult things. But I can't put my family at risk, I can't put my mother-in-law at risk and it's a serious risk. And for some reason, some people don't think it's a serious risk. But I do not feel that I would be in a safe environment for my mother-in-law's sake. For my sake too, but more so for her. And I would resign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: On the other side, here is what the governor's office is arguing. They argue that the Florida constitution requires the state to provide a high-quality education for children, and that they want to provide parents and children a choice for brick-and-mortar schools.

Now, one of their witnesses is a schoolteacher that teachers special education in Hillsborough County, who explained the shortcomings of e- learning. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINDSEY ARTHUR, TEACHER, HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY SPECIAL ED: I empathize with those who have concern, but I feel like if we follow all the guidelines and CDC and continuous washing, you know, our hands and wearing masks and are six-distancing whenever possible, I do feel safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: Now, Anderson, the judge is expected to rule on this temporary injunction next week, but I have to point this out. This lawsuit was filed a month ago today, and all of these hearings have been virtual for the safety of the court and all of the parties involved.

But the decision, Anderson, that comes out of this virtual court will mean that schools might have to reopen real buildings for face-to-face instruction -- Anderson.

COOPER: Yes. Rosa Flores, appreciate it.

More on coronavirus in a moment. But first, right now in New York, we're awaiting former Trump campaign advisor Steve Bannon who's expected to appear in court soon, after being arrested and charged with fraud earlier today. Bannon, along with three others, have been accused of defrauding donors who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help construct Trump's border wall.

[14:05:09]

Bannon adds his name to the long list of Trump associates who have faced legal trouble, including Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen, his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his longtime ally and advisor Roger Stone.

The president responded to the news earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I feel very badly. I haven't been dealing with him for a long period of time, as most of the people in this room know. He was involved in our campaign, he worked for Goldman Sachs, he worked for a lot of companies but he was involved likewise in our campaign and for a small part of the administration, very early on. I haven't been dealing with him at all.

I know nothing about the project, other than I didn't like -- when I read about it, I didn't like it. I said this is for government, this isn't for private people. And it sounded to me like showboating and I think I let my opinion be very strongly stated at the time. I didn't like it, it was showboating and maybe looking for funds.

But you'll have to see what happens. I think it's a very sad thing for Mr. Bannon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: CNN's senior justice correspondent Evan Perez joins us now.

So let's talk about these fraud charges and what happens next. What do we know about him?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, Steve Bannon was on a boat off the coast of Connecticut when he was arrested by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. We're expecting that he's going to appear in court in Manhattan this afternoon, perhaps in the next hour or so.

But these are fraud charges that arise from a fundraising effort that was led -- Bannon was part of this group led by Brian Kolfage who is a former Air Force veteran who was helping to raise private funds from GoFundMe and other places.

Up to $25 million was fundraised according to the group, and they promised that all of the money was going to help build this privately funded wall on private property along the U.S.-Mexico border. This was to avoid the bureaucracy of the government.

In the end, according to these court documents, some of the money was being funneled to Kolfage and others. And I'll read you just a part of what the documents, the court documents say from the Southern District of New York.

It says, quote, "Bannon, through a nonprofit organization under his control, received over $1,000,000 from 'We Build the Wall,' which Bannon used to among other things, secretly pay Kolfage and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bannon's personal expenses."

According to the court documents, Kolfage also helped use some of the money to fund some of his own personal lavish lifestyle. Again, these are the words of prosecutors in Manhattan. We're expecting that all of these men, these four in all -- Bannon and these three other men -- are going to be making appearances in the next day or so, and we'll see more about what defense they can offer.

But despite what the president says, Anderson, trying to distance himself from this project, his own son, Eric Prince, a lot of people who are very close to the president were extolling this, they were appearing on videos trying to help get funds raised for this project. So despite the president's efforts to say he had nothing to do with it, a lot of his supporters were very, very much involved.

COOPER: Evan Perez, thank you very much, appreciate it.

Joining me now is Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director and CNN's senior law enforcement analyst.

Andrew, first of all, your take on these charges? How serious are they and you know, what do the prosecutors likely have on Bannon? We talked to Preet Bharara in the last hour and it seems like, you know, there's a big paper trail here.

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes, it's a remarkable indictment, Anderson. It's -- there's so much information in the indictment, it's -- you know, it's at once a very simple case, there are only two counts: there a count of money laundering and of course a count of wire fraud.

But it's complex in that it's backed up with some really compelling evidence. So you have multiple public statements by the principals involved in which they are telling prospective donors that none of the money will be used for personal purposes or, you know, that all of the funds would go to the building of the wall.

And then at the same time, prosecutors seem to have communications between the subjects that show that they specifically geared those statements knowing that it would lure in more money, and then they engaged in a scheme to siphon funds out of the charity and into their own pockets, and that is just about as basic a fraud as you can get. It sounds like one that's well based on significant evidence, so it's a very serious charge.

COOPER: I mean, just the hypocrisy -- you know, Steve Bannon's the guy who was, you know, running, along with Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign toward the end, you know, promoting the Build the Wall and here he is now, allegedly -- according to prosecutors -- profiting by lowering people to donate their hard-earned money to something that he's skimming money from.

[14:10:03]

MCCABE: Yes. I mean, the hypocrisy, the profiteering is just kind of reeks off of this indictment. You know, Bannon clearly knew the appeal that an issue like Build the Wall would have to many, many Trump supporters. And in fact, they don't -- they were able to collect over somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million from hundreds of thousands of donors.

So they really went right after that soft spot, knowing that it would cause folks to open up their wallets and contribute to something they believed in, and then they turned around and funneled the money through shell companies and another charity in order to hide that it was actually going into their own pockets. It's amazing.

COOPER: Especially for, you know, a guy President Trump -- who claimed, you know, when he ran, you know, hires the best people, knows how to spot talent, just gets the best -- you know, the smartest minds. This is yet another close Trump ally, you know, who's found himself in handcuffs. You know, given your time in the FBI, I'm wondering what you make of the sheer number of his associates in legal trouble?

MCCABE: There is no coincidence to the fact that numerous Trump associates -- close associates, advisors, attorneys, campaign manager, longtime friends have found themselves in criminal trouble. I think it's a really scathing indictment on at least -- in the least case -- the president's judgment and the people that he surrounds himself. This is clearly not a collection of the best people.

COOPER: You know, the president is now still putting praise on QAnon, which is this, I mean, just insane, bizarre conspiracy theory, believe -- you know, where these people allegedly believe this online, believe that there's a cabal of, you know, Hollywood celebrities and Democratic leaders who are child sex trafficking and drink the blood of children in order to get some sort of a hormone that keeps them young, and they also worship Satan. And it traffics in, like, age-old anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic tropes.

The idea that the president -- I mean, he says he doesn't know anything about the whole blood-drinking side of it, which seems odd that he wouldn't know this because that's pretty much all they talk about. He's embracing it.

MCCABE: Yes. And it's extraordinary. I think there's two really important things for you just to understand here. One, this is a dangerous movement, we know this, it's been proven, right? So the -- at least one QAnon follower was so motivated by what he was reading about, the so-called Pizzagate scandal, that it compelled him to drive from North Carolina to D.C., heavily armed, and start to shoot up the inside of a restaurant being attended by innocent people. So we know it's dangerous.

And the second thing is, you cannot understate the significance of the president of the United States giving oxygen to this incredibly corrosive, dangerous collection of conspiracy theories. He validates this craziness in the same way that he does with white supremacy when he, you know, says things like in the riot in Charlottesville, that there were good people on both sides. It breathes air into this brushfire of conspiracy and false facts, and it really makes the problem a lot worse.

COOPER: Yes. You know, there's plenty of stuff to go after on Jeffrey Epstein. You know, somebody involved with QAnon has put a fake flight manifesto online with, you know, dozens and dozens of people's names on it. They put my name on it too as if I was on board his plane at any time in my life, which obviously I was not.

And yet it seems like people believe this and you know, and -- plus they're selling merchandise. So there is sort of, you know, money being made off this at the same time as it's -- you know, it's making incredibly slanderous and awful allegations about a whole lot of innocent people.

MCCABE: Right. And when the president doesn't come out and forcefully knock it down, when he kind of encourages it and allows these things to move forward simply because he likes the votes that he gets from a lot of these folks, that's how you get a situation like we have now, where you now have several candidates running for Congress and the Senate who are believers -- out-and-out publicly acknowledged believers in these ridiculous conspiracies.

So it is getting worse, it's propagating, it's getting kind of legitimized by more and more people, which is really scary.

COOPER: Yes. Andrew McCabe, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

MCCABE: Thank you.

COOPER: As the president trolls Joe Biden in Pennsylvania this hour, CNN is learning how the president wants to make his convention next week more of a spectacle, with gimmicks and culture wars.

Plus, the most famous opposition leader in Russia, fighting for his life after a suspected poisoning.

And Sharon Stone makes an emotional plea as her sister suffers from coronavirus.

[14:15:00]

BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHARON STONE, ACTRESS: People are dying and fighting for their lives because there's nothing lies.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: President Trump's visits to battleground states this week have broken the tradition of candidates typically laying low during the other party's convention. Today, he'll take it one step further. In the hours before Joe Biden accepts the Democratic nomination for president, Trump will make a stop in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It's the city where Biden was born and spent his early years.

I want to bring in our White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins. So, Kaitlan, the president 's certainly never one to share the spotlight. What will happen during this campaign stop?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: So he's going to come out here, and it is going to be all about Joe Biden and the president criticizing him. We've already gotten a sneak preview of the remarks.

[14:20:00]

And so you're right, it is this, you know, decades-long tradition that has started to erode lately, of where candidates would typically lay low during their opponent's convention. But the president has of course, you know, disrupted that in every single way. And so he's here today, he's going to go after Joe Biden.

One thing he's accused him of is of abandoning Pennsylvania, leaving here at a young age -- though of course he left when he was about 10, that was because his father could not find work in Scranton, Pennsylvania because it was facing a decline then because of coal mine closing, things like that. But the president so far has focused on this.

And the reason he's here is because this is part of this effort by the president, Anderson, to gain back that support of those suburban women, support that the president has lost since he took office. So he's hoping to get that.

But one thing that's throwing a kink into all of this is this indictment of the president's former advisor Steve Bannon, because the president is trying to portray this as why Joe Biden would not be a good president for America, but he's still got his own issues that he's dealing with, given things like what's going on with Biden (sic) as he's even preparing for his own convention next week.

COOPER: Yes. I mean, he's hired a rogues gallery at one point or another of people who, you know, have been arrested, indicted, put in jail, accused. I mean, it's quite remarkable for a guy who ran on, you know, hiring the best people.

The convention's next week for the Republicans. I know you have some new details of what to expect?

COLLINS: Yes, the president has been paying very close attention to what's going on at the Democrats' convention because basically he wants his to outshine theirs.

And one thing that he has insisted on -- according to aides and allies that we've spoken with about this -- is that he doesn't want a lot of taped programming, like you've seen some of the nights at the Democratic National Convention. The president doesn't want any taped programming during the prime-time hours of the Republican Convention.

We're going to hear from a lot of members of the Trump family: Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Melania Trump. We may even hear from Jared Kushner because he wasn't initially scheduled to speak, but we're now being told he is.

And one other thing to think about here is the venue. We know that some of the speeches are going to be at the White House, but the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, this historic building, is also going to be used.

And one thing they're weighing, Anderson, when they're having those live speeches at night, is whether or not there should be an audience. Because they don't want it to be too quiet and come off as flat or deflated, so they are weighing actually having people in the audience.

Now of course, it'll be limited because of restrictions in Washington, D.C. but that is something that they are still discussing right now as they're trying to put the final touches on their convention.

COOPER: All right, a lot to watch for. Kaitlan Collins, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Los Angeles, shutting off power to a mansion that's been holding parties despite social distancing rules.

Plus a group of reporters monitored crowds for a week to determine how many people are following mask rules. We'll show you what they found.

[14:22:40]

And Russia's most famous opposition leader, a fierce Putin critic, is said to be unconscious after a suspected poisoning. We'll go live to Moscow.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Actor Sharon Stone is sharing an emotional plea for people to vote for women as her sister battles COVID. Kelly Stone and her husband have been sick for more than two weeks, but say they're improving at the hospital. The whole experience has made Sharon Stone very upset, obviously.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

S. STONE: They keep saying that the risks are so small, and that you might not die and that it'll be fine. But I'm telling you what's going on with my family. My grandmother died of COVID and my godmother died of COVID. My sister and her husband are fighting for their lives, and my sister is not doing well. When they say there are tests for everyone, they're lying. When they

say there are tests even for the nurses in the hospitals, they're lying.

People are dying and fighting for their lives because there's nothing but lies. And because the people at the governors' houses, the people at the health departments are simply so overwhelmed that they're not answering the phones, they're hanging up, they're not returning calls.

This is the state that we're in. The only thing that's going to change this is if you vote. And if you vote for Biden and if you vote for Kamala Harris. And the reason that's going to happen is because with women in power, we will fight for our families.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Sharon Stone.

Some called it the nightclub in the hills. But today, lights out at a Hollywood Hills residence. Police say they hosted large parties against public health orders. L.A.'s mayor cut power to the home occupied by several TikTok stars including someone named Bryce Hall.

CNN's senior national correspondent Kyung Lah has more.

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, the lights are off, that's the word from a fed up mayor of Los Angeles. The LAPD visited this home in the Hollywood Hills at least twice, according to the city of Los Angeles, in response to large parties.

Now, parties -- according to the mayor and the governor of California -- are a major spreader of coronavirus in the state.

According to a statement from Mayor Eric Garcetti, quote, "Despite several warnings, this house has turned into a nightclub in the Hills, hosting large gatherings in flagrant violation of our public health orders. The city has now disconnected utilities at this home to stop these parties that endanger our community."

The city says this is the first such drastic actions, cutting utilities to a property in order to stop the spread of the virus -- Anderson.

[14:30:07]

COOPER: Kyung Lah. Kyung, thanks very much.