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Trump's Legal Losses Pile Up; U.S. Hospitalizations Hit Record Saturday; Iran Accuses Israel of Killing of Top Nuclear Scientist; Conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray Region; Trump Rhetoric Could Backfire in Georgia Runoffs; Dark Money and Phantom Candidates; Anti-Lockdown Protests in London; Sarah Fuller Makes History in College Football. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired November 29, 2020 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Live from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I am Paula Newton and this is CNN NEWSROOM.
Coming up, emergency rooms across the U.S. are bracing for a post- holiday spike in coronavirus cases. Experts fear Christmas could be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Fury on the streets of Iran as the country vows to avenge the killing of a top scientist. What this could mean for the Biden administration.
And one unprecedented play: see the moment when this athlete made college football history.
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NEWTON: So Sunday will be a peak travel day in the United States. About 1 million Americans flying home after the Thanksgiving holiday. And health experts fear that it will lead to a disastrous rise in COVID cases in the weeks ahead; 13.2 million Americans have tested positive since March.
And almost one-third of those cases, more than 4 million people, have been infected this month alone.
The toll has been absolutely staggering because hospitals are getting overwhelmed with COVID patients. This is a key metric here. A record 91,000 Americans are now being treated in medical facilities right across the country.
And in a desperate bid to slow the rate of infection, Los Angeles County will impose a three-week stay-at-home order. And that is beginning on Monday. It's just one of the many U.S. communities reimposing restrictions.
The pandemic has left millions of Americans out of work and struggling to feed their families. Compare that to President Trump -- you're looking at it there -- spent an enormous time golfing during this crisis. By CNN's count, Mr. Trump has been at the golf course one day of every five since taking office.
For those counting that's 20 percent of his presidency spent swinging a club, almost always at one of his own properties. That's not all he does. CNN's Jeremy Diamond has more.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: When he wasn't on the golf course, President Trump on Saturday continuing to make baseless allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. The president's focusing his ire this time on the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two key battleground states that President-Elect Joe Biden recaptured from President Trump in this latest election.
But the president's continued allegations of widespread voter fraud and his conspiracy theories that he's been spreading, they now come against a mounting legal backdrop that is disproving the president's case.
More than 30 cases now brought forward by the president's campaign or their allies have been dismissed in state and federal courts or withdrawn by those legal teams.
The latest blow is coming from a Trump-appointed judge, Judge Stephanos Bibas, writing for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, denying the campaign's appeal to try and decertify the results of the Pennsylvania election, essentially trying to throw out millions of legally cast ballots in that key battleground state.
Judge Bibas wrote, quote, "Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. The campaign's claims have no merit."
The president is also running into roadblocks on the recount front. After his campaign paid $3 million to have two key counties in the state of Wisconsin conduct recounts, one of those counties, Milwaukee County, certified the results of its election on Friday. And the results of that recount actually found more votes for Joe Biden.
Joe Biden coming up with a 132-vote gain in Milwaukee County after that recount went through. The state of Wisconsin is expected to certify the results of its election Tuesday.
The question is how much longer does the president keep this up?
We know that privately he and his advisers recognize that it is almost impossible for him to overturn the results of this election. But the president has been charging ahead, trying to at least delegitimize this legitimate victory by President-Elect Joe Biden.
One key date that the president's advisers are looking at, that is December 14th.
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DIAMOND: That's when the Electoral College will actually vote for the next President of the United States, locking in President-Elect Joe Biden's victory -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, the White House.
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NEWTON: Unfortunately, we mentioned at the top, health experts in the United States are bracing for what they fear will be a dramatic increase in coronavirus infections and deaths in the coming weeks. CNN's Miguel Marquez tells us where the country stands right now.
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MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in New York City and testing sites across the country, people are still being tested. But those lines and the length of time it takes to get tested is going down because we're in the middle of a long holiday weekend.
This is something that epidemiologists expected during the weekends, the numbers sort of go down. The number of cases, the number of deaths, the number of people getting tests, those all go down.
But during the week, they all go up. They expect that same pattern with the long holiday weekend we're in right now.
It is stunning to consider that the U.S., in the last week, has added over a million cases of coronavirus. That is something that used to take weeks, if not months, to get to, not only here in New York when it was horrible in the spring. The numbers are rising, not as fast as South Dakota or Iowa or Texas.
But they are rising and rising everywhere. Doctors and nurses working so hard and epidemiologists who follow this disease fear that Christmas is going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons -- back to you.
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NEWTON: Dr. Peter Drobac is an infectious disease and global health expert at University of Oxford in England.
Good to see you. You just heard Miguel. Obviously the case count has been staggering in the United States. I have to say, unlike the first wave here, there is nowhere to hide in the United States. The issue here, the key metric to look at, is what is going on in hospitals.
And what is your worst fear about hospitals right now and what they face in the coming weeks?
DR. PETER DROBAC, OXFORD UNIVERSITY: Thank you for having me, Paula. It's grim and it's going to get really, really bad. Hospitals are already struggling with the tide of COVID-19 patients, on the top of what's always busy in the winter. But they're about to be hit with a tidal wave. This weekend,
Thanksgiving, is a national superspreader event. Millions traveling, gathering, households together. All of these little transmission events are going to turbo charge what's happening right now as we approach Christmas.
We're going to be in a situation where ambulances are driving around, trying to find a hospital that can take their patient; doctors are having to make horrible decisions about which of two patients can get the last ventilator; where PPE shortages are going to cause more doctors and nurses to be out sick.
It's going to be horrible. All that's going to drive the death rate up to levels that, unfortunately, we haven't even seen yet. It's hard to contemplate.
NEWTON: It's a key point. We've been hearing from professionals like you for so long that we cannot do our best if we are inundated and flooded with patients all at once.
I do want to talk about the situation in Europe where you are right now. Those countries have announced that they will ease some restrictions for Christmas. It has to be said that they have flattened -- haven't flattened the curve; they have in some sense been able to bend it a little bit.
Do you think lifting any of those restrictions for Christmas is a good idea?
DROBAC: Yes, there's some modest but hard-won gains in Europe. Many countries have now been through it, like here in the U.K., brief, soft lockdowns. We've seen some progress.
I understand the sentiment. Everyone's desperate to see their loved ones over the holiday period. Governments are afraid, if they tell people to stay home, they'll go out and flout the rules.
The reality is that kind of mixing is going to cause a rise in transmission again. My perspective is that we are so close, we've seen positive news about three vaccines. People are going to start getting vaccinated potentially in the next couple of months.
By next year, by next Thanksgiving or next Christmas, next holiday season, the most vulnerable people in a lot of the these countries are going to have been vaccinated.
Let's make sure they're all still around to enjoy those holidays. So I'd rather keep our foot on the gas pedal and have to understand we need to celebrate differently this year in order to make sure that we can make it through.
NEWTON: It really is a shame, Doctor, that something that is supposed to be such a joyous, restorative moment for so many families may turn out to end up in tragedy by January or February.
Before I let you go, I do want to try and harp on this a little bit. When this pandemic started, we were told that therapeutics, drugs that we could be treated with, that would mean that the disease wouldn't progress severely, would be in the offing.
And yet how do you think we're doing now, getting towards the end of the year?
The death rates in both Europe and the United States still seem to be frightening.
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DROBAC: Yes, the death rates are high. The number of deaths are high because the number of cases is so high. The actual fatality rate, the number of all the infected people who die has gone down significantly.
That's because we've learned a lot. We've learned, with drugs like dexamethasone, those can reduce mortality by 50 percent. Anti- coagulation, some of the ventilation techniques, all this hard-earned knowledge over the last year has really driven down the fatality rates.
Unfortunately, when we see cases spreading in an uncontrolled fashion, that's just not going to be good enough.
NEWTON: Not good enough indeed. As you said, some progress on the actual rate of mortality but some people, unfortunately, it is going to be eye-watering to see some of those numbers in the weeks to come. Dr. Peter Drobac, University of Oxford, thank you so much.
DROBAC: Thank you.
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NEWTON: Still to come on CNN NEWSROOM, these people are defying a ban on gatherings, breaking the very law they're protesting. Live in London as anger over the lockdown spills onto the streets.
And Ethiopia is claiming a key victory in its battle in a restive northern region. The latest after the break.
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NEWTON: We're tracking fury in Iran after the brazen killing of one of its top nuclear scientists. Protesters torched U.S. and Israeli flags Saturday after the apparent assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
A funeral is reportedly planned for Monday and Iran is vowing revenge, firmly blaming Israel for his death. So far, Israel isn't saying much. At least two Israeli ministers say they don't know who's responsible. But one called it, quote, "very embarrassing" for Iran. CNN's Alex Marquardt has the latest.
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ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Iran is saying it will avenge the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and is pointing the finger squarely at Israel for carrying out this attack.
A list of actors who could mount such a brazen, well-coordinated killing of one of Iran's biggest scientific figures in broad daylight is quite short. Israel is neither confirming nor denying any role.
The Trump administration for its part is being very quiet. The question now is how or whether Iran responds.
That the attackers were able to reach into Iran and take out the country's senior-most nuclear scientist is very embarrassing for them. It comes almost 11 months after the United States killed Iran's most famous military commander, Qasem Soleimani, in an airstrike.
There's been no major reaction to that either. So there is pressure on them to respond. If Iran were to respond in a significant way against U.S. or Israeli targets in the region, for example, it could set something off.
At the same time, Iran knows Joe Biden is about to become president and he wants to engage with them. He wants the U.S. to get back into the nuclear deal, to ease sanctions and the maximum pressure campaign of the Trump administration. So Iran could hold off. Meanwhile,
Israeli president prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees the clock ticking down on the Trump administration and knows that he will have less leeway with a President Biden when he's sworn in.
Biden is not eager to inherit a war with Iran and is almost certainly hoping things will be calm when he's sworn in in January so there can be a fresh start -- Alex Marquardt, CNN, Washington.
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NEWTON: For more I'm joined Sanam Vakil in London, the deputy head and senior research fellow on the Middle East at Chatham House.
Nice of you to be here to try and parse this. It has been very interesting to see the fallout. I'm sure there's still more to come. There's no question that this has been humiliating for Iran. And yet far from de-escalating the situation, this might actually make Iran more dangerous.
If you're the Biden administration, how do you handle this going forward?
SANAM VAKIL, CHATHAM HOUSE: Thank you for having me, Paula. It's a very important question. The Biden administration, it's sort of cautiously trying to design a strategy on how to re-engage Iran after the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign, that was directed to sanctioning Iran into new negotiations.
In the climate of this latest assassination attempt, of Iran's foremost nuclear scientist, this is going to make things much harder. I think there is an opportunity, though, for the Biden administration, of course, to work with its allies in Europe, the European countries that have tried to hold together the deal, to message the Iranians, to call for calm and wait for a proper statement with regard to how they plan to re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement and use that forum to air grievances and manage Iran's return to compliance in exchange for the Biden administration's return to compliance.
NEWTON: And while the Biden administration already has said that they're determined for this to go that way, is it really possible to go back to a nuclear deal that is now five years old?
It's aging poorly; of course, it has to be reframed.
But now that Israel is opposed to the deal and has really gotten ammunition after the last four years with Donald Trump, how can they possibly evolve this relationship, especially when they do have to appease Israel as well?
VAKIL: It is possible to go back to the deal. And actually, most of the signatories of the deal think that returning to the deal is the first step. By returning to the deal, you try to build back some trust.
And you see Iran return to compliance, which is of foremost interest to the international community, including to the Israelis.
Then over time, with a bit of confidence, you can broaden the spectrum of negotiations and try to address some of the deal's deficiencies, which, of course, are the timelines of the deal, the fact that the deal didn't address Iran's missile program or role in the region.
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VAKIL: But that's going to require sustained international investment and it's also going to require Israeli engagement. So they're going to have to be a party to whatever comes next in this sort of covert action. It doesn't bode well for its early relationship with the Biden administration. I think it will make things quite tense for them.
NEWTON: And in so doing, Antony Blinken, Biden's nominee for secretary of state, if he gets his way -- he said a few days before the election, before he knew he would be nominated for this position, he was absolutely categorical, as if a stroke of a pen would do this.
But what do they have to see from Iran in return?
Because it's still unclear to me whether Iran is actually going to come back to the table with the same terms.
VAKIL: The Iranians actually have demanded that the first steps have to be mutual compliance. So from their end, they will be rolling out -- rolling back all of the increased uranium enrichment that they have put into place over the past 1.5 years.
They will be basically halting all of the progress they've made to the nuclear program. And in exchange, they're demanding that the Biden administration remove all of the sanctions.
You're quite right, it's not that easy. It will take a couple of months for both sides to return to compliance. But that will sort of level the playing field, where, from there, both the Biden administration but also, again, the European signatories of the deal -- Great Britain, France, Germany -- can carry some water and begin to lay the groundwork for future discussions.
Those discussions are not just going to be between Iran and the signatories of the nuclear agreement. I think the intention is to broaden the parameters, bring in other regional actors that are also opposed to the deal or opposed to Iran's role in the region and have much more of a multilateral engagement on regional issues.
NEWTON: Right. That is quite an ambitious plan you rolled out there. You can see that the Biden administration has its work cut out for it. Sanam Vakil in London, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
VAKIL: Thank you.
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NEWTON: Ethiopia's federal forces are looking for leaders of the Tigray People's Liberation Front after taking control of the regional capital, Mekelle, on Saturday. Witnesses described fierce bombardment earlier in the day.
Fighting began in the northern Tigray region on November 4th. The conflict has forced thousands to flee across the border. Aid groups say more than 43,000 are in neighboring Sudan.
Ethiopia's government promises humanitarian corridors will be set up in both directions in Mekelle. Our senior national correspondent Nima Elbagir is tracking developments from London.
I want to underscore, you can't really report on this the way you want to. There are communications blackouts, the government will not allow journalists to see things for themselves.
What I want to make clear is that, when we talk about humanitarian corridors, what is happening there?
Because some of the early stories that I have read about what people have already gone through in the region are absolutely terrifying.
NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, absolutely horrifying, the stories that are coming out from across that border. But even those stories -- and this is the heartbreaking thing -- even those stories are beginning to dry up.
The refugees crossing from Ethiopia into Sudan went from being several thousand a day to being 700 a day. Even that now has stopped. We have a CNN producer and a CNN camera man on that Sudan-Ethiopia border, waiting to gather testimony from civilians fleeing Mekelle. And they have not arrived.
Humanitarian sources we're speaking to said their worry is that they are being blocked from leaving Mekelle. So not only do we have this complete communications blackout but even people are not being allowed.
In addition to that, although now the Ethiopian government says that it will open government-managed -- that's the key word there -- government-managed emergency corridors -- they still have not allowed aid groups in to do assessments.
The UNHCR has said there is a camp of Eritrean refugees in the northern Tigray region, almost 100,000. And they have two or three days' worth of food left. So without getting in there, at this point in time, we simply don't know what we don't know. Even the few reports we were able to get out of this region are beginning to dry up.
NEWTON: Frightening to think of, especially given everything everyone's been through there. Nima, I can't think of a better person to help us take a step back, trying to explain what's at stake in the Horn of Africa.
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NEWTON: It is difficult for me to even fathom that this is going on in Ethiopia, especially since, when we talk about the TPLF, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, they are not just going to melt away.
ELBAGIR: That's the key question, where are the TPLF?
This was a group that actually ruled Ethiopia for years, for decades. They were in control of one of the largest army contingents up in that northern Tigray region. Somehow they vanished into thin air.
The worry is the contagion effect for the entire region. Reuters was reporting from U.S. diplomats yesterday that further rocket strikes hit the capital of Eritrea. There's a very new peace deal in place. Sudan itself is in a shaky democratic transition. It has the second highest inflation rate in Africa.
It's hosting tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees. That's without bringing in the resurgent Al-Shabaab element in the Horn of Africa, in Somalia and north of Kenya. This is a region that doesn't need this right now.
And for this to happen, with a Nobel laureate, no less, Abiy Ahmed was given the Nobel Peace Prize for making a peace deal with Eritrea just two years ago. With a Nobel laureate at the helm, the international community was not prepared for this and they are scrambling to respond.
NEWTON: It is a good point, almost as if the award has emboldened him, because he has basically told the international community to butt out. Nima Elbagir, I know you'll stay on top of this along with our CNN teams. Appreciate it.
After a break, we'll take a look at the pivotal Senate runoffs right here in Georgia and tell you about a Republican campaign event in the Atlanta metro area that didn't go as planned.
Plus a phantom candidate, I said that right, a phantom candidate, who did not even campaign, played spoiler in a Florida state Senate race decided by just 32 votes. CNN investigates the dark money mystery behind it.
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NEWTON: A warm welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Paula Newton and this is CNN NEWSROOM.
The state of Georgia now ground zero in the battle for control of the all-important U.S. Senate. And Republican strategists and state leaders are getting increasingly worried that Georgia's GOP voters may not turn out to vote in the January 5th Senate runoffs there, specifically because of the party's own baseless attacks on the integrity of the election.
President Trump on Twitter trying to find a work-around, telling his supporters they must show up and vote for GOP senators David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler, even though the election was a, quote, "total sham."
Of course that is not true. CNN's Ryan Nobles was in Atlanta for an unusual exchange between the Republican National Committee chairwoman and some Georgian Republican voters.
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RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Winning at least one of these races in Georgia is crucial for Republicans. They need to do that if they want to retain the majority in the United States Senate.
But things are off to a bit of a rocky start. On Saturday, the Republican chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, was in Marietta, Georgia. Her goal was to fire up Republicans to get behind David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler, the two candidates running for reelection.
Instead she was peppered for about 20 minutes by Trump supporters demanding that she do more to help Donald Trump overturn the results of the election, not only across the country but specifically here in Georgia. Listen to an exchange during that event.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How are we going to use money and work when it's already decided?
RONNA MCDANIEL, CHAIRWOMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: It's not decided. This is the key --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know?
MCDANIEL: It's not decided.
If you lose your faith and you don't vote and people walk away, that will decide it. So we have to work hard, trust us, we're fighting, we're looking at every legal avenue.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, we have to get that word out, because people are losing here.
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NOBLES: You hear that supporter say, "Why should I vote if the election's already been decided?"
McDaniel pleading with these Trump supporters that it hasn't and it's important for them to get out.
But it shows the tightrope Republicans are walking here. They desperately need these Trump supporters to support their candidates. But at the same time, they can't make it seem as though they're not 100 percent behind Donald Trump, even while he works to sow discord and distrust in the election system in Georgia.
Republicans hope, when the voting actually comes around on January 5th, that they will come home and support the Republican candidates. The demographics have changed a lot here in Georgia, as evidenced by the fact that Joe Biden was able to win in November.
The Republicans are hoping that they still have the edge going into the runoff election -- Ryan Nobles, CNN, Atlanta.
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NEWTON: Leslie Vinjamuri is the director of the U.S. and the Americas Programme at Chatham House and joins me now live from London.
Ronna McDaniel, she so typifies the impossible situation President Trump has put the Republican National Committee in, especially that chairwoman. Not to be missed, she is senator Mitt Romney's niece, one of the most vocal opponents of the Republican Party to the president.
She is now in a position to almost have to plead with voters, saying, trust us, we're fighting with you.
And yet the voters are saying, trust what?
You told us the election is rigged.
LESLIE VINJAMURI, CHATHAM HOUSE: Thank you for having me, Paula.
I think you pointed out exactly the dilemma. We've seen the polling. By some polls, more than 70 percent of Republicans across the country feel like the elections haven't been legitimate, that there has been fraud. That makes it difficult to get people to turn out and vote.
The backlash against Donald Trump's own rhetoric, his own Twitter feed, is turning out. I think one of the questions in Georgia, as we lead up to -- remember, that race is very crucial for who holds the Senate. That matters for what policies the next president, President- Elect Biden, will be able to get through.
So it's an absolutely critical race for the state, for the country.
And one real dilemma is how much will President Trump need to turn up to really persuade his base to vote?
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VINJAMURI: He's seen as being very critical for getting people to vote. But there have been a number of people who have said, in Georgia in particular, there's also a dilemma, which is that, when people from outside of the state campaign, it sometimes has a negative effect.
So the difficulties in persuading voters within the state, Republican voters, to turn up when they think the results aren't credible, who do you send to the state to help out?
Those are really challenging questions for the Republican Party. But I think the broader point is the critical one for the nation, which is that, as the president continues to sow discord, to sow doubt, to -- despite the more than 30 legal challenges that simply haven't held up in the courts, no evidence; the judges have turned them away -- he continues to contest the election result.
And it looks like it's going to have some negative effects for his own party.
NEWTON: Yes, and not just negative effects for his own party because, when you look at it, you could be talking in excess of 50 million or 60 million people in the United States, according to polls, who believe that Biden somehow won in some illegitimate way, even though there's no proof of that.
If you are President-Elect Biden, how do you begin to compromise with the GOP, who believes that, look, most people in our party don't even believe you're the legitimate president?
VINJAMURI: Well, I think that President-Elect Biden sees this as his number one priority. This was even before the elections took place. It was clear that America is divided, has been divided, that we need to build bridges across people, across the rural and urban communities, across Democrats and Republicans, across any number of divides.
I think it's been very clear to Biden. So he will take that on board. What we will see is that a president, who is very constrained by the need to respond to the deep crisis of the pandemic, the economic crisis but who is going to be really taking on board this priority, which is, you can't get anything through Congress but you also can't get the electorate to really support these policies.
And it's really information, disinformation and building those bridges, which will be critical to his ability to govern. For those watching this from around the world, from outside the United States, it's clearly the most distressing part of an election that many people across the world are pleased with the results.
But they're very concerned at how close the vote was. Even with 80 million votes, the fact that Donald Trump received more than 70 million and is contesting the election causes a lot of concern across the rest of the world.
NEWTON: Yes, absolutely, because they certainly want a strong American government to go forward at this point in time. Leslie Vinjamuri from Chatham House in London, thank you for your insights.
VINJAMURI: Thank you.
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NEWTON: Troubling questions emerging about the role of so-called dark money in some close 2020 races. In particular, Democrats are eyeing candidates in three tight Florida state races, who did no campaigning and held no fundraisers.
Were they even real?
Or were they phantoms planted by Republicans to siphon votes from Democrats?
Senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin has this ghost story.
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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): It was the closest of races, incumbent Democrat Jose Javier Rodriguez lost his Florida state senate seat by just 32 votes. The Republican challenger who won, Ileana Garcia, a founder of Latinos for Trump. But there was a third candidate in the race playing the role of spoiler.
His name, Alex Rodriguez, sharing the same last name as the Democrat in the race and promoted as a liberal. Alex Rodriguez got more than 6,000 votes. Jose Rodriguez says the straw candidate cost him his seat by pulling away Democrat votes.
GRIFFIN (on camera): Have you met him, seen him, talked to him? Has he been involved in any debates?
JOSE JAVIER RODRIGUEZ, FORMER FLORIDA STATE SENATOR: I didn't even know what he looked like until after the race and investigative reporters tracked him down.
GRIFFIN (voice over): In state senate district nine, Democrat Patricia Sigman lost to a Republican by just 2 percent of the vote. Here, once again, no one ever saw the supposedly liberal third candidate.
PATRICIA SIGMAN, FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC SENATE CANDIDATE: She had no website. She never participated in any of the debates or forums. Never showed up anywhere. She wasn't even registered to vote until she filed.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): In these races and one other, ghost candidates in Florida were supported by mysterious PACs, which sent out hundreds of thousands of dollars in mostly identical advertising mailers making those candidates seem liberal. Yet CNN has learned the people behind the mailers were all Republicans.
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BEN WILCOX, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, INTEGRITY FLORIDA: This is a new one for me.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): Ben Wilcox, research director of the non- partisan watchdog group, Integrity Florida, says no doubt someone running a dark money campaign impacted at least one state senate seat, possibly two.
WILCOX: Florida is so loosely regulated when it comes to financing of campaigns, but it's probably legal. But, you know, it really shouldn't be.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): Here's what we know.
Two brand new political action committees registered on the same date at the same minute and one day later received a combined $550,000 in donations from the same company. The paperwork says the packs were started by two young women who's social media is filled with pictures of beaches and boats, but CNN could find no evidence either of them or their PACs had ever been involved in politics.
Then, on the very same day both PACs paid the same printing company all of that $550,000 for the flyers. It's their only expenditure. The printing company and one of the PACs are linked to this man, Alex Alvarado, a Tallahassee-based Republican consultant and former Republican congressional intern. The printing company is run out of this house, owned by his mom and stepdad.
The PAC started by a friend of his girlfriend's. And despite being involved in ghost candidate advertising with very liberal and progressive ideas, every one of them is a registered Republican. That even includes the ghost candidate, Alex Rodriguez, who was registered Republican until this election. And none of them are talking.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've been looking for Alex. Is he around?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. He'll be back tomorrow, though.
GRIFFIN (voice-over): That's actually Alex Rodriguez, who lied here to a local Miami TV reporter about his own identity. The money flowed into the PACs from one company, Proclivity. It's registered in Delaware as a corporation under the name Richard Alexander.
GRIFFIN: What or who is Proclivity? The trail ends here at a strip mall in Atlanta, Georgia. This is where Proclivity has a mailbox drop but nothing else.
GRIFFIN (voice over): Democrats like Patricia Sigman are calling for an investigation into who paid for all of this.
SIGMAN: They don't run in order to win. They run in order to just try to siphon off votes. And, you know, they don't have a website, they don't campaign, they don't show up, they -- they're ghosts.
GRIFFIN: Florida's Republican senatorial campaign committee denies any knowledge whatsoever of the mysterious money that helped in three of their races. CNN has repeatedly reached out to the ghost candidates, the political action committees, the Republican strategist, even the company that supplied the more than $500,000. And none of them are talking -- Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.
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NEWTON: There were clashes in the streets of France on Saturday all because of a controversial bill and allegations of police brutality. We'll have that story for you after the break.
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NEWTON: Protesters took to the streets of London Saturday to register their anger over the coronavirus lockdown. It wasn't altogether peaceful. Metropolitan Police say they arrested more than 150 people for various offenses, including defying a ban on protests during the pandemic.
The Met had asked people to stay home as England is in the middle of a national lockdown, set to continue until December 2nd. Scott McLean is in London following it all.
Tense moments there on the streets of London. The chant that you heard from many people was "Freedom."
What's at issue here, especially, as we noted, some of those restrictions will be lifted in the coming days?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Paula, it's a fair question. You're right, on Wednesday the lockdown across England will end. But that doesn't mean the restrictions will end, not by a long shot. After that, there will be a patchwork of rules for different parts of
the country. In the vast majority of places, even socializing with people outside of your own household indoors will be a big no-no.
This protest was organized by a group called Save Our Rights U.K., created in response to the pandemic. Their core belief is that the coronavirus restrictions have been unreasonable and disproportionate and that they've been passed or gone through the parliamentary system without any pushback or any oversight.
And that last part is true, because parliamentarians actually gave the government the right. They voted to give the government the right to make its own coronavirus restrictions without consulting them.
The London police, though, made clear before this gathering got started that they believe it was illegal under the lockdown restrictions that limit gatherings to two people. The protest organizers believed they were covered under an exemption.
Either way, there wasn't a whole lot of social distancing or mask wearing. There were clashes between police and protesters, more than 150 people arrested for a range of charges, including breaching COVID restrictions.
That last part is pretty rare, because police in this country have taken an extremely lax approach to enforcing the laws. So while there were fines, tickets being issued to protesters, you could have gone to any other part of the city and seen people openly in violation of lockdown rules.
NEWTON: Interesting. Some of the pictures I'm looking at, it looks like 2019, not 2020 during a pandemic. I want to talk about where some of the sentiment is coming from. Describe what it's like to be in Britain right now because you see people in Britain and the U.K. are frustrated.
Many people are confused; at worst, some people are saying it's been negligent.
MCLEAN: Yes, I think, broadly speaking, there is certainly COVID fatigue. People are a little bit sick and tired of rules. There's plenty of complaints about how this government has handled the pandemic.
But I don't think these are unique to the U.K. by any stretch of the imagination. In this country, it's been especially complicated because of the four nations that make up the U.K. There are different rules in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales.
Wales had its own lockdown first, then England had its later on; Northern Ireland had begun a lockdown after England's ending its. Scotland hasn't had one as well.
Over the summer, there were differences city to city. After this, there will be different rules for different places. I was out for a walk yesterday afternoon along the Thames River. You
saw plenty of people, hardly anybody wearing a mask, out socializing in groups bigger than two. Not a lot of social distancing; obviously, not a lot of police enforcement either.
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NEWTON: Yes ,and I think that's really important. I'm happy that you gave us the perspective of what it's like to walk around London in terms of trying to adhere to restrictions. CNN's Scott McLean in London, really appreciate it.
Some protests in France turned violent yesterday as French officials estimated more than 130,000 people took to the streets across the nation. Protesters in Paris erected barricades and lit fires as police fired tear gas and used water cannons. Crowds were marching against the security bill. CNN's Melissa Bell explains.
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MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a protest against the global security bill currently before the French parliament. Already it had attracted a great deal of controversy as it went before the national assembly because, essentially, one of its provisions would make it a punishable offense to publish pictures of police men with the intent to cause them harm.
That was already the subject of a great deal of controversy. Then this week, two separate investigations opened into allegations of police brutality, have further fed the anger that led to the crowds here today.
The bill so far has passed the national assembly. It should be before the Senate in December.
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NEWTON: You are watching CNN NEWSROOM. We will be right back with more news in a moment.
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NEWTON: An all-important first for U.S. college football and Americans everywhere.
Sarah Fuller breaking down barriers with an unprecedented kickoff. Fuller made history yesterday when she appeared with the Vanderbilt University men in their game against the Missouri Tigers and kicked off to open the second half. The 21-year old is the first woman to play in one of the five
strongest conferences in the U.S. college football league. Fuller sent this message.
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SARAH FULLER, VANDERBILT COMMODORES KICKER: Honestly, it's just so exciting. The fact that I can represent the little girls out there who have wanted to do this or thought about playing football or any sport, really, it encourages them to be able to step out and do something big like this. It's awesome.
I just want to tell all the girls out there that you can do anything you set your mind to. Like you really can. If you have that mentality all the way through, you can do big things.
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NEWTON: Great, huh?
Fuller even put a sticker on the back of her helmet that reads, "Play Like a Girl." She also tends goal for Vanderbilt's women's soccer team. She got her shot at football when several male players were ruled out due to COVID-19 contact tracing.
One final note on CNN NEWSROOM: the man behind the mask of one of the greatest cinematic villains has died. You never saw his face or really even heard his voice but the presence of David Prowse as Darth Vader commanded the screen from the moment he appeared in the first "Star Wars" movie.
Prowse played the Sith lord in the first three films that were released. But of course, it was another actor, James Earl Jones, who did the voice, including telling Luke Skywalker, "No, I am your father."
Prowse had a vast acting career that stretched decades. He said his favorite role was actually as the Green Cross code man, part of a British road safety campaign in the mid-1970s. David Prowse was 85.
That does it for this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Paula Newton and I'll be right back in a few minutes with more news.
