Florida Republican Candidate Targeted With Fake Texts
TAPPER: In our national lead: A Florida congressional candidate almost had his campaign derailed after fake text messages were sent to voters and a YouTube video falsely claimed he had dropped out of his primary. It's just the latest sign of the potential problems with last-minute misinformation. In this case, the candidate, Byron Donalds, went on to win the Republican primary for Florida's 19th Congressional District. But, nonetheless, this raises huge questions about misinformation and election security. CNN's Alex Marquardt joins us now. Alex, what does the campaign know about the attack and who might have been behind it?</s>ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, they haven't offered any evidence, but they certainly have their suspicions and they have made accusations. I spoke with the campaign manager for the Donalds campaign. He accused what he called desperate opponents who lobbed a Hail Mary. And they specifically named the rival campaign of Casey Askar and his consultant Jeff Roe, saying that they were behind this. We spoke with both the Askar campaign and Roe. They roundly denied this. I also spoke with the Florida GOP. They did not weigh in on the accusations, saying only that this was a dirty campaign tactic. But, Jake, as you know, this couldn't have come at a more decisive time. This was a very tight race. This came in the morning, as voters were going to the polls. I want to read you just part of one of the text messages that went out to voters in that district. It says: "This is Byron Donalds. Frankly, I hoped I wouldn't have to do this. But, today, I am officially dropping out of Southwest Florida's race for Congress." And then there's a link to a fake video, part of which Donald says is from 2012. Take a look.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Byron Donald has had a change of heart.</s>BYRON DONALDS (R), FLORIDA CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: You want to make sure that things in your personal life are settled before you make a run like that. And in my life, with my family, everything is great at home, but we're in the middle of a lot of things and the timing just didn't work out for us.</s>MARQUARDT: So, again, that was a fake video. And Donalds responded to those fakes text messages very quickly on Twitter, saying: "I did not drop out of the race. This illegal text sent to the whole district is absolutely false and old edited footage from 2012." Jake, we saw the numbers from which these text messages were sent. They were traced back to a company called Twilio, which is used for people to blast out mass text messages. They are working with the Donalds campaign, but the user information that they have handed over so far has not been useful in pinpointing exactly who is behind this. Now, of course, this was -- this kind of backfired. It was all for naught, because Donalds did go on to win the race, but it just goes to show what can happen in very tight races in the last moments as voters are going to the polls -- Jake.</s>TAPPER: Yes, a cautionary tale. Alex Marquardt, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Coming up next: a crucial resource for doctors studying the coronavirus. I'm going to talk to a woman who has brought together nearly 100,000 people who are still feeling the effects of the virus months later. Stay with us.