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Bombshell House Ethics Report On Matt Gaetz Released; Trump Addresses Criticism Over Musk's Role On His Team; Mangione Pleads Not Guilty To State Charges In New York; President Biden Commutes 37 Federal Death Sentences; Some Refugees Return Home After Fleeing Assad Regime; Stars Voice Support For Actor Over Harassment Complaint; CNN Tours Warner Bros. Making Of Harry Potter Exhibit. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired December 23, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:44]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: It's 11:00 p.m. in Damascus, 8:00 p.m. in London, 3:00 p.m. here in Washington. I'm Jim Sciutto. Thanks so much for joining me today on CNN NEWSROOM.

And let's get right to the news.

The report that former U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz never wanted to see the light of day is finally released to the public and includes just alarming findings about the man president elect Donald Trump initially chose to head the Justice Department.

The 37-page report from the House Ethics Committee, which is a bipartisan committee, by the way, says it has found, quote, substantial evidence that Gaetz violated House rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape and illicit drug use. One of the most damaging findings, evidence that Gaetz paid a 17 year old girl for sex in 2017.

Gaetz, who resigned from Congress and withdrew his nomination for attorney general last month, is fighting back against the charges via social media. He had made a last ditch effort in federal court Monday to block the release of the report.

Katelyn Polantz joins me now from Washington.

And, Katelyn, one of the most things from this report are the text messages from the women involved, detailing Gaetz's behavior.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim. There are text messages that the committee obtained and that they document in this report that show that Representative Gaetz was asking for women to bring drugs to him. And in all, the committee says that they found at least 20 times between the years of 2017 and 2020, all years when Matt Gaetz was a member of congress, where he was meeting with women who were being paid either with the expectation that he would be having sex with them or for drugs, all of that put together in this House ethics report, where the House says they believe that Matt Gaetz engaged in commercial sex, meaning paying for sex with women, statutory rape that is specifically related to the incident in 2017 at a party that summer where he had sex twice, allegedly with a woman who at the time was an underage girl, 17 years old, heading into her senior year of high school.

The House believes that may be a violation of Florida law, though Gaetz has not been charged with any crime. The Justice Department looked at some charges on the federal side, declined to bring any case against him. The House also say that they also say in this report they believe Matt Gaetz was using illicit drugs.

And so they have compiled this all, not just in a narrative of what they found, documenting the evidence, the text messages, the payments that the House has been able to trace, but also testimony they received from more than a half dozen people, and that woman who was an underage girl, having sex with him when she was 17. They have all of that together. They also have put out the evidence in the report released today that Matt Gaetz has been unable to stop. He wanted to stop the release of that report. It did not happen.

SCIUTTO: Now, this committee by design, is split evenly along party lines. So its release would have required at least some Republican support to release it.

POLANTZ: That's right. And in this report, there's even a page at the end where the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, Michael Guest, says that he doesn't have any issue with the findings in this report. He takes issue with the fact that the committee was releasing it.

Now, the committee did take a vote to decide to put this out there. This report was something that they had been working on for several years of this investigation, essentially picking up the work of the Justice Department after the Justice Department looked at Matt Gaetz, declined to charge him, and then the House Ethics Committee began doing much more in interviewing the witnesses, gathering the evidence, putting together this report.

And they are deviating from what the past expectation was here, releasing this after matt Gaetz resigned from Congress. One thing that they found here and Gaetz does deny a lot, if not all, of these allegations that the committee has made, just flat out saying they are false.

[15:05:04]

They are saying that they did not find any violations of federal sex trafficking by the former congressman. But this is all notable sitting here out in the public when Gaetz is still a prominent person in the conservative movement. He is now on a right wing news network.

And then on top of that, he is a person that Donald Trump wanted to have as his attorney general and withdrew just eight days after receiving that nomination just a couple of weeks ago -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: So the Justice Department had looked at some of the evidence here specific to sex trafficking. Prior made a decision not to prosecute. Given the details here, perhaps there are details that were uncovered

by the House committee that prosecutors did not uncover, we don't know, is there an additional opportunity for prosecutors to look at this, whether at the state level or the federal level, to say -- well, there might be something he can be charged for?

POLANTZ: Well, Jim, I'll answer on the federal question because that is that open investigation we knew of, that was then -- there was ended up with no charges in that situation. When the House looked at it, they found that the federal sex trafficking code, it's about having -- moving people across borders who would be underage.

And in the instance where Matt Gaetz was traveling with women who were receiving some sort of reimbursement and having sex with him repeatedly, that was a trip he was taking to the Bahamas with women who were of age adults. And so that's why they found there was not a violation of federal sex trafficking charges.

The Justice Department did not provide much information at all to the House committee, and it comes out in the report how frustrated the House committee was with the Justice Department not being able to get their evidence, having to recreate it on their own.

And so, all we know is that the Justice Department is not charging. Gaetz did not find enough there to bring any charges in court, and, of course, would be very unlikely to pick it up again with Donald Trump coming into the presidency, given that he was being investigated at the end of the previous Trump presidency and then into the Biden administration.

SCIUTTO: Katelyn Polantz, thanks for clearing it all up.

Another story we're following, call it a Panama Canal sized war of words over the future of the canal. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump suggesting over the weekend that the U.S. should regain control of the canal, calling its shipping fees, quote, ridiculous. Panama's president defended the fees and said that he will never hand the canal back.

Trump made news on a number of other different fronts during a speech to the conservative group Turning Point USA. On Sunday, he pushed back on those who say Elon Musk has become a de facto shadow president, showing some sensitivity there. In fact, he called it the latest in a long line of hoaxes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Arizona, it's great to be here.

The new one is President Trump has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk. No, no, that's not happening. But no, he's not going to be president, that I can tell you.

And I'm safe. You know why? He can't be. He wasn't born in this country. (END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, joins me now.

And, Larry, it strikes me that Donald Trump could have chosen to just ignore some of that, particularly online commentary about the prominent role Elon Musk is playing, not just in the administration, it seems, but in the budget negotiations on the hill, could have ignored them. He didn't. Democrats were deliberately stoking his jealousies or his emotions on it by referring to Elon Musk as President Musk.

Why do you think he commented publicly?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Well, the Democrats pushed his button, and not just Democrats. Even some Republicans were referring to musk as co-president or prime minister.

Look, it doesn't take much to get Donald Trump to say what you want him to say if you irritate him enough. And that was very irritating. Lets remember that Elon Musk already has a record that Donald Trump would dearly like to have, and that's richest man on the planet Earth. He's worth, you know, $430 billion, they say. I don't know how you count that high for individuals. Trump is worth a great deal less. Let's leave it at that.

So I don't think he appreciated these comparisons, and he wanted to clear that up right away.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about another issue, because the Matt Gaetz report is quite and of course, for a time he was Donald Trump's pick to be the attorney general, although he withdrew. There are other allegations of impropriety that relate to current picks, including Pete Hegseth, Trump's choice to lead the Pentagon.

I just wonder, in your view, given the many allegations that Trump himself faced, as well as being found liable for sexual misconduct himself, whether in the current political environment that those charges, investigations, revelations just have less impact politically than they might have in the past.

[15:10:21]

SABATO: Oh, that's absolutely true. We can all remember scandals involving nominees for this, that or the other. Even presidents that would have been dismissed under today's standards. And the standards have been created mainly by Donald Trump's dominance of the political stage since 2015.

There have been so many scandals connected to him, whether they were proven or not, that I think it's just much more difficult to eliminate somebody from public office for some of the offenses that have been cited, even the ones cited for Matt Gaetz, although it's a stunning list, that's quite a list of sins, Jim. It's really amazing to go through this.

And again, he hasn't had a chance to adjudicate it to maybe he could have presented witnesses to the contrary. But boy, that's -- that's a report that's going to be widely read.

SCIUTTO: I want to ask you about what the Democratic Party is going through right now. You saw Joe Manchin, now a former Democrat, calling the Democratic Party's brand toxic. And he's not alone. I mean, there's been a lot of, inward looking. Self-criticism, if you want to call it that, as to what led to their losses in this election.

And I just wonder, do you see in this election, given the margins were particularly they were tight, particularly for the House, less so, certainly than many imagined for the president, is the party itself in need of major overhaul to win in the future, particularly given that parts of its base have migrated to the right to the Republican Party, particularly working class voters, many, many among Latinos and Black men? Or if you saw this as just a moment in time and things likely to swing back in the next cycle?

SABATO: I've read so many theories of why Democrats lost. If you put them all together, basically, the party would have to simply disintegrate and reform as something else, which is ridiculous because it was extremely close in the House. The Democrats actually did better than most observers expected in the senate, because there were nearly three other seats lost. And given the margin that Trump had in some of the swing states, it's a surprise that Republicans didn't get a bigger margin.

And even for president, I agree with you completely. He -- Trump swept the swing states and carried the popular vote, which few really expected, even some in his own camp. However, it's still a very close margin.

And Joe Biden refused to step aside for so long and should never have run for reelection in his physical condition. We all see that now. And Kamala Harris had 107 days, and we can go all through it.

The one thing I'd cite, though, Jim, if they focus on nothing else, they need to focus on the working class, on what we used to call blue collar workers or union workers, because they were the heart of the Democratic Party. When I was growing up for decades and now pretty overwhelmingly, at least for the whites in those categories, they've been voting for Donald Trump. They need to focus on that because they're not going to win again until they correct it.

SCIUTTO: No question. They can't -- they can't make up for that with urban voters, right?

Larry Sabato, always good to get your point of view. Thanks so much.

SABATO: Thank you, Jim. Sure.

SCIUTTO: Well, Luigi Mangione, who is suspected not charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO, has pleaded not guilty to state murder and terrorism charges. Earlier, the 26-year-old made an appearance in a New York courtroom. He faces 11 criminal counts in New York, as well as four federal counts.

Mangione faces life in prison if convicted on all those state charges, and he could receive the death penalty if he were to be found guilty on two of the federal charges.

John Miller, our chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, joins me now from New York.

John, first to see video from inside that arraignment hearing today, not something we typically see, was that a surprise?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: It was a surprise. The judge had arranged to allow a camera in when the arraignment was expected to be last Friday. So we did have a hint that he might have a view towards broadcasting this when he found out that the parties had no particular objection, the prosecution and the defense, he allowed it. So we have reached the place in New York state where so many other states find themselves routinely, which is the cameras in the courtroom again, which we haven't had for a long time.

[15:15:03]

SCIUTTO: Would we expect that during a trial?

MILLER: I think the judge is sending us a signal here, which is he is not averse to this. And frankly, when you listen to the complaints made by the lawyers, by the prosecution today about statements being made outside the courtroom, a lot of people believe that the best way to cure that is to get the statements that are going on inside the courtroom and cameras in the courtroom is one effective way to do that.

SCIUTTO: So that's an interesting because its almost counterintuitive to some degree, right? Because when you heard the defense lawyer today, she's talking about all the public attention, which happens for a case like this. Not the first time.

Listen, we saw the then former president, now president-elect, tried in a New York -- in a New York courtroom. What was your answer to the lawyer's questions there about whether he can get a fair trial?

MILLER: Well, it was an interesting pronouncement on her part. So Karen Friedman Agnifilo, who is the lawyer in this case, and some of our viewers may know her as a CNN legal analyst, she was saying that, you know, you have this spectacle of my client being paraded in front of the cameras with the mayor trailing behind him in heavily armed police. And, you know, the counter to that is, is that going to affect his ability to get a fair trial?

I think when you then balance that against the fact that, a picture of her client allegedly holding a silencer at the end of a pistol and shooting a man who is the father of two in the back, coupled with a picture of his smiling face at a youth hostel where he's checking in, could be determined to be far more prejudicial than a shot of him walking in the custody of law enforcement. But I think the bottom line is, Jim, people who are supporters of his

and there are strangely too many of them out there online and people who are against what he did probably were not swayed by seeing him walking in handcuffs.

SCIUTTO: Yeah. Final question, one particular piece of that perp walk caught the attention of a lot of folks, and that is Mayor Eric Adams choosing to be in that photo. Unusual or that photo in the video, I should say unusual. The right thing, the right place for him to be.

MILLER: So very unusual. We'll start with that. Statistically, doesn't happen much.

I don't think we've seen a mayor, you know, present for the announcement and capture of somebody on this level since maybe Mayor Beame and the son of Sam back in 1977. But I think the point that was being made here was a television point, which is this was a killing that gripped the attention of the city. It was a manhunt that, you know, went national. And I think the mayor's presence there was a public statement to say, as the leader of this city, we will use every resource we can to capture somebody who commits an assassination for political reasons or social reasons in our streets. I think it was intentional.

SCIUTTO: John Miller, I imagine it's not the last powerful photo in that category we've seen. Thanks so much.

MILLER: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, President Biden has commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners who are on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 inmates. They will serve now life in prison without the possibility of parole. Just three have been are now left on death row, all of whom carried out mass killings, comes just a month before Donald Trump takes office. He has promised to restart federal executions.

Kayla Tausche is at the White House.

And I wonder how the White House, how Biden administration officials are explaining these commutations here. And is it a taste, to some degree, of their view of the incoming Justice Department? And it's quite different approach to cases like this?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's certainly a part of it, Jim. And the president, in his own words, said that he made this decision based on his own good conscience and his breadth of political experience leading up to this point.

But there were certainly many, many warnings by activists that were discussing this with the White House and suggesting the possibility that when President-elect Donald Trump takes office once again, that there is the potential for what they feared would be a spree of executions of the remaining inmates on death row, leading these activists to urge the Biden administration, in no uncertain terms, to shorten or downgrade the sentences of the individuals that he has now gone and done that for. The three inmates who will remain on federal death row, as you mentioned, are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Dylann Roof and Robert Bowers, who respectively carried out the mass killings at the Boston marathon at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston and at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

So certainly excluding those individuals from this decision is one to try to shield the administration from criticism.

[15:20:08]

But it does represent a significant evolution on behalf of President Biden and the broader Democratic Party when it comes to the death penalty, Biden was a vocal and staunch supporter of the death penalty at earlier parts of his career, but certainly the party has moved in a direction where they have wanted to suggest more sympathy for some of these individuals who they believe have been wrongly incarcerated.

But some Democrats are also critical of this move. They say that in some cases it could make the party appear soft on crime, and it could also appear that the Biden administration is trying to challenge the authority of the judicial system. That was the criticism that House Democrat Mike Quigley specifically levied at the administration earlier today.

So, Jim, there's not universal support for the direction that President Biden went in. But the administration has been clear that they are reviewing and weighing thousands of clemency petitions. They continue to do so with the expectation that there will be more actions before President Biden leaves office -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: It's been quite busy so far. Kayla Tausche at the White House, thanks so much.

When we do come back, now that the Assad regime has fallen, will the many Syrians, millions of them who fled the country during the war, return home? The secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Turning now to Syria. Jordan's foreign minister is in Damascus for meetings with Syrian leaders, including the country's de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, previously known as Abu Mohammad al- Jolani, led the group of rebels that ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al- Assad earlier this month. In a matter of weeks, the Jordanian officials visit comes amid a flurry of diplomatic meetings between Syria's new leaders and regional powers, as well as powers around the world, including the U.S.

On Sunday, al-Sharaa met with Turkey's foreign minister in Damascus as well. He said then that all weapons in Syria will now be controlled by the state. As Syria works to try to build a new post-Assad future, many refugees are returning home after years in exile. Some worry, however, there could be more chaos waiting for them if they go back.

CNN's Salma Abdelaziz reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Before Ahmad Morjan hugs his mother for the first time in 13 years, they both kneel in prayer.

(CRYING)

[15:25:10]

ABDELAZIZ: Gratitude for a reunion they never believed would come.

This is one of many emotional homecomings across Syria after the sudden fall of the Assad regime.

At just 19 years old, with security forces hunting him down, Morjan fled his family's home in Aleppo. Here he is in 2016 --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!

ABDELAZIZ: -- reporting for an opposition based-media network as barrel bombs rained down from the sky. Later that year, Morjan filmed the exodus as thousands withdrew from the last remaining rebel enclave in Aleppo.

We are leaving with our dignity, Morjan says in this clip, and we will return one day. That promised return is now finally on the horizon. Morjan says he is planning to move back to Aleppo from Gaziantep, Turkey, where he currently lives with his wife and their two young daughters.

What is your dream now for Syria's future?

I'm optimistic about the future, he says. And I have huge hope that the country will be better than before.

But not all are keen to hurry back to an unstable country with an uncertain future, says this human rights defender.

HUSSAM KASSAS, SYRIAN ASYLUM-SEEKER: There's no sustainable peace. And which makes me really afraid of getting back there.

ABDELAZIZ: Hussam Kassas, who is seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, is among tens of thousands of Syrians whose applications for asylum were suspended after the UK and other European countries paused the process to reassess, now that the threat of Assad is gone.

For years, Kassas has documented potential war crimes committed by all major parties to the conflict. If he goes back, he says, his family could be targeted or worse.

Why do you not feel safe to return?

KASSAS: We expected a lot of revenge-killing will happen.

Those soldiers will seek revenge from the people who were trying to hold them accountable actually.

ABDELAZIZ: Many Syrians in the diaspora longed to return and rebuild, but this moment of great hope brings with it great uncertainty.

Salma Abdelaziz, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: The U.N. expects more than 1 million Syrian refugees to return home in just the next six months or so. They will, however, face dire conditions when they arrive. Ninety percent of Syrians live in poverty today, and it's not the only place crushed by the weight of war, of course. There's Sudan, Gaza, Haiti, Myanmar, Lebanon, Ukraine, some of the countries that have sent many civilians fleeing for their lives and now in need of international attention and help.

Jan Egeland is the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, and he joins us now from Oslo.

Thanks so much for joining.

JAN EGELAND, SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE NORWEGIAN REFUGEE COUNCIL: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: I want to talk about, first, the potential for return to Syria. Of course, developments there are welcome. Assad has been horrible to his own people. But the NRC estimates that nearly 17 million Syrians need aid, the highest figure ever. That's inside the country. So can you imagine more coming in? Does the country have the ability to support people coming home?

EGELAND: No, they do not. I was there now in November. Syria is really having an economic crisis beyond belief, in part because the rest of the world, the Western countries, have had them under sanctions. Some of the toughest sanctions there is.

On top of that, as you said in your report. Large parts of the cities are completely destroyed and its there. I'm shocked every time I go. There has been no rebuilding. I think the internal displacement that has taken place will, will, will now lead to people returning from within Syria, from Idlib to Aleppo, from outside of Damascus to inside of Damascus, 6 million were displaced within Syria.

But I think it will take time before the refugees will return from neighboring countries. It will happen, perhaps next summer, and then only if there is some help to rebuild and get the economy going again.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you about Syrian refugees in Europe because, as you know, many, many hundreds of thousands fled to Europe as well. And at the time, that was quite destabilizing.

[15:30:03]

And it's even been blamed to some degree, whether rightfully for the rise of some of the populist politics there.

Do you see Syrian refugees currently living in Europe as possibly returning home in large numbers?

EGELAND: Not in large numbers. Now, later on, I think some will indeed return voluntarily. But of course, here is the paradox that the same countries that say you should go home, you should rebuild. They are still having economic sanctions and being part of the strangulation of the Syrian economy. They've listed the new rulers, the HTS that you referred to as a terrorist organization. So how can you force people back to a place that you're boycotting and where you have declared the new rulers terrorists? There has to be a reckoning here and a more logical policy.

SCIUTTO: I want to ask you about two more places before we go. The first is Gaza, because you've been to Gaza several times since October 7th last year, and you were there in November.

How has Gaza changed? And I might even say deteriorated during that time? And is it getting anything close to the help it needs for civilians? There?

EGELAND: No, it's not. And again, Gaza is like no other place on earth. I mean, Syrians could flee to Lebanon. Ukrainians could flee to Poland. Where can the Palestinians in Gaza flee? Because Israel, which is the country, bombarding them day and night and also a holding back all aid and the aid that gets in is looted with Israel watching? Egypt is also not letting them in, not neither Israel nor Egypt.

And they are bombarded constantly. 80 percent of all homes are either destroyed or damaged, and it's winter and we're not getting even tents. And it's -- I -- my heart breaks for the women and children of Gaza, totally innocent of the atrocities of the 7th of October.

SCIUTTO: And more civilians died there just in the last 24 hours.

EGELAND: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about Ukraine now. 6.8 million Ukrainians remain abroad as we approach close to the three-year anniversary of Russia's full scale invasion. You were just in Ukraine as well, traveling across the country.

Is Ukraine at all -- let's just imagine a ceasefire, which is perhaps a long way off. But if there were to be a ceasefire tomorrow, is Ukraine, after all the damage that Russia has unleashed there, ready, able to welcome back those millions of refugees?

EGELAND: I think they will. But again, this is the age of destruction really. The -- you wouldn't believe how destroyed cities villages are in the south, in the east and in the northeast of the country.

I was in Kherson. It's a provincial capital. It was -- was first captured by the Russians. It was retaken by Ukrainian forces. And it's now pummeled every single day.

There is 140,000 people. Some of them have returned even from Poland and western Ukraine. But most who fled from Kherson will not go back until there is a ceasefire, and then massive help for the rebuilding. And we're ready to do that as NRC were in all of these places. But we are overstretched and underfunded. Those who would like people to return need to help us to rebuild.

SCIUTTO: Well, Jan Egeland, we certainly appreciate the work you and your organization does. Thanks so much for joining us.

EGELAND: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: And we'll be right back with more.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:36:25]

SCIUTTO: A number of Hollywood stars are voicing their support for the actress Blake Lively, as she accuses one of her male costars of sexual harassment. Lively has filed a civil complaint against Justin Baldoni, who also directed the movie. It ends with us. In the film, they play a couple haunted by the cycle of domestic abuse.

Lively's complaint says Baldoni, created a hostile workplace on the set. She also then accuses him of trying to destroy her reputation. He denies those allegations.

Elizabeth Wagmeister is here with more.

And, Elizabeth, when you go into the details of what Lively describes here, she describes sexual harassment, violating her physical boundaries, and then after the fact, reputational retaliation -- I just wonder what the details are of that, if you could explain them and how Baldoni explains all this.

ELIZABETH WAGMEISTER, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. So this is a lengthy and incredibly detailed complaint, Jim. So, as you said, there are different allegations. First, there are the allegations of sexual harassment and a hostile, unsafe working environment that Blake Lively alleges that she was subjected to. She says that Justin Baldoni not just as her costar, but as the director of the film, and it was his production company that was behind this film and acquired the rights to the book to make this film.

She says that he made numerous inappropriate sexual comments to her, and that he and another male producer who are named in this complaint, entered her trailer uninvited many times, sometimes while she was undressed and another time while she was breastfeeding her newborn child. So that's the piece of the allegations of sexual harassment.

Then the other big piece here is, she says, because she raised these issues and these concerns in an effort to achieve a safer work environment for herself and her employees, that then she was retaliated against. And you ask about the details and the proof.

Well, in this lawsuit, there are hundreds of screenshots of text messages between Justin Baldoni's team, which Blake Lively's team says proves that they had a sophisticated and coordinated campaign to essentially take her down behind the scenes. Now, Baldoni's team is fiercely denying this. They are saying that it

is completely normal for publicists to have private communications behind the scenes, and they say the reason why they even hired a crisis management firm is because they allege that Blake Lively's team was planting negative stories about him.

So his team has denied this. And one last point. I do want to make, Jim. Over the weekend, I confirmed with the source that Baldoni has now been dropped by his talent agency, WME, which is one of the biggest agencies in the entertainment business and also represents Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds.

SCIUTTO: It's a notable change, no question. Elizabeth Wagmeister, thanks so much for this report.

Well, on a lighter note, instead of arguing over which Christmas movie to watch on TV, which my family does, Harry Potter fans can now get outside and see the home of Hogwarts for themselves.

Anna Stewart takes us on a magical behind the scenes tour of the Warner Brothers Studios, just north of London.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Happy Christmas, Harry.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Happy Christmas, Ron.

[15:40:01]

ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's that time of year when we all rewatch family favorite movies, but this time, I'm taking it a step further.

Could there be a more magical place to spend the Christmas holidays and Hogwarts? Ahhh.

This is the great hall all decked out for a festive feast.

Laura, nice to meet you.

LAURA SINCLAIR-LAZELL, HEAD OF SHOW EXPERIENCE, WARNER BROS. STUDIO TOUR LONDON: Hello, nice to meet you.

STEWART: You're going to give me the grand tour?

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: I am indeed. Welcome to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London, the making of "Harry Potter". I'm Laura Sinclair-Lazell. I'm head of show experience.

STEWART: You are the person who's going to tell me everything about this place. And I should tell you, I'm probably CNN's biggest Harry Potter fan or nerd, depending on how you view these things.

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: Amazing. Well, you've come to the right place. STEWART: It feels like we have walked into a Harry Potter movie,

minus one enchanted ceiling and two tables, which allows more room for visitors.

In the movies, Professor Flitwick made light work of baubles. Its a lot more work for the muggles working here.

Those aren't real peas?

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: No, sadly not.

STEWART: None of the food is real.

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: Not real. Not this time. No.

STEWART: With stomachs rumbling, time to move on.

Now, you may remember this scene, Hagrid lugging a Christmas tree across the Hogwarts courtyard.

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: So this is very reminiscent of that moment. And this would have been the original costume as worn by Martin Bayfield.

STEWART: So this is what was worn by the body double.

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: Absolutely. Yeah. Any of the long shots that you see were usually worn by him.

STEWART: Time for a little retail therapy. And it's been snowing.

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: We use shredded paper. This is shredded paper or shredded plastic. Yes. And then on top we sprinkle some glitter to give it that kind of real life snow effect.

STEWART: From Ollivanders to Flourish and Blotts, Diagon Alley has everything the witch or wizard needs.

OK, if you could go into any of these shops for real, which one would you go into?

SINCLAIR-LAZELL: Oh, I'm torn. Probably, I'd want to hang out with the twins, so I would want to go to the wizard wheezes. Yeah, okay. Don't pick up a few jokes.

STEWART: Maybe the Quidditch shop for me. Yeah. Once I've got my wand.

And clearly, it would be a Firebolt.

It's the Firebolt, the fastest broomstick in the world.

Although, sadly, no holiday sales here.

And to end the tour, a breathtaking view of Hogwarts in the snow.

Anna Stewart, CNN, Watford. (END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Our thanks to Anna Stewart there.

We should mention that Warner Bros. is part of Warner Bros. Discovery, of course, the parent of CNN.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Jim Sciutto.

"LIVING GOLF" is up next.

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