Morning Wire XX
[0] The January 6th committee voted Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump.
[1] We discussed the committee's claims and what comes next for Trump and the DOJ.
[2] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor -in -Chief John Bickley.
[3] It's Tuesday, December 20th, and this is Morning Wire.
[4] More than 80 ,000 illegal immigrants have been released into the streets of El Paso, Texas since late August.
[5] And now, the Supreme Court will weigh in on whether to end Title 42.
[6] And more details emerge on the FBI's campaign against misinformation on social media that critics say could violate the First Amendment.
[7] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[8] Stay tuned.
[9] We have the news you need to know.
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[16] The January 6th Committee on Monday recommended that the Justice Department bring criminal charges on four counts against former President Donald Trump.
[17] Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo.
[18] So Amanda, tell us about the charges that are being recommended.
[19] Hey, Georgia.
[20] the committee has recommended Trump be charged with obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to make false statements to the feds, and inciting an insurrection.
[21] Now, that insurrection charge, which carries up to 10 years in prison, that could be grounds to ban Trump from holding public office if he were indicted and then convicted, though some legal experts say that there's a loophole if you're running for president.
[22] Notably, Trump is the only Republican who's formally announced that he's running for president in 2020.
[23] The statute applies to anyone who incites, assists, or engages in insurrection against the United States of America, and anyone who gives aid or comfort to an insurrection.
[24] An insurrection is a rebellion against the authority of the United States.
[25] It is a grave federal offense.
[26] In addition to these recommendations, the committee also voted to recommend four members of Congress, Republican reps Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Andy Biggs to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with subpoenas.
[27] These Republicans refused to comply when they were subpoenaed back in May, and they basically said this committee was part of a partisan witch hunt.
[28] We don't expect much to happen here, since the GOP will soon take over the House.
[29] Now, what does all this mean for Trump?
[30] Right now, nothing.
[31] This committee, which was assembled by Nancy Pelosi and is made up of seven Democrats and two anti -Trump Republicans, they can't actually charge the president, of course.
[32] Any charges would have to come from the Justice Department.
[33] It's fair to say the committee's goals have been twofold.
[34] One, to influence Attorney General Merrick Garland to take down Trump, and two, to convince the American people of the threat that Trump and Republicans pose to the country, especially ahead of the midterm elections.
[35] As for any influencing of Garland or Tapp Special Counsel, Jack Smith, who's investigating in this matter, we'll just have to hang tight.
[36] Now, what kind of reactions are we seeing to this recommendation to actually charge Trump?
[37] Well, we're seeing the expected partisan responses here.
[38] Even conservatives who spoke pretty harshly against the riot at the Capitol see this as an unfair and unprecedented targeting of the de facto leader of the opposition party.
[39] Trump on Monday, we posted a video on truth social that he originally published to Twitter on January 6th telling protesters to, quote, go home and be peaceful.
[40] Democrats are cheering the recommendations as the next step in justice over the Capitol breach.
[41] Speaker Pelosi said she respects the committee's findings, adding, quote, our founders made clear that in the United States of America, no one is above the law.
[42] Now, what do we expect to happen with these charges?
[43] That's still not clear.
[44] Special counsel, Jack Smith, is currently investigating the Capitol breach and the matter concerning documents found during a raid at Marlago.
[45] Those investigations are ongoing, and we just don't know if these recommendations, from the J6 committee will be influential at all.
[46] Regarding the big question of indictment, experts have gone both ways here on their predictions.
[47] National Review columnists and legal expert Andy McCarthy was not impressed with the Monday hearing.
[48] In connection with Trump's speech, he took pains in the speech to say that, you know, he wanted them to march peacefully.
[49] The fact that the committee doesn't broadcast that he said that doesn't make that go away.
[50] So, you know, again, this is a theatrical exercise.
[51] All right.
[52] Well, certainly something we're going to be keeping tabs on.
[53] Amanda, thanks for reporting.
[54] Yeah, my pleasure.
[55] That was Daily Wire reporter, Amanda Presta Jocamo.
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[63] On Monday, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the planned end to Title 42 restrictions at the border.
[64] Thousands of migrants were already gathering at the U .S. border in anticipation of the policy change that was set for Wednesday.
[65] At least 84 ,000 migrants have already been released in El Paso since August 22nd.
[66] here to discuss the expected migrant surge as daily wires Tim Pierce.
[67] All right, Tim, so first, when is Title 42 expected to end?
[68] It was set to end tomorrow, but the Supreme Court ordered the policy remain in place until the court can consider a challenge brought by 19 GOP -led states.
[69] If Title 42 is eventually rescinded, officials are expecting a massive increase in migrants seeking asylum.
[70] The Department of Homeland Security estimates the migration over the southern border could more than double.
[71] Now, Title 42 was enacted to limit the spread of COVID, allowing agents to stop and deport migrants without processing.
[72] But it's continued to remain in place.
[73] Why is that?
[74] Why has it lasted so long?
[75] Well, because it's useful.
[76] Title 42 is one of the strongest mechanisms that the government has consistently used to restrict immigration.
[77] As you mentioned, even with it, border authorities and local governments are swamped with way more migrants than they can take care of.
[78] And now it could get worse.
[79] One border agent told me that officials are processing migrants so fast right now that screening is effectively worthless.
[80] They said that migrants are being led into the country without knowing what their backgrounds are, their reason for coming to the U .S. or their intentions.
[81] Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned over the weekend that repealing Title 42 would result in total chaos.
[82] And Republicans aren't the only ones warning about this.
[83] El Paso's Democratic mayor declared a state of emergency over the weekend because his small border town has been overwhelmed by migrants already.
[84] And he expects to see thousands more crossing the border if Title 42 goes away.
[85] What's motivating all these migrants to come in such record numbers.
[86] Well, part of it is because the U .S. offers a better standard of living.
[87] That's the biggest longstanding reason.
[88] Some also come because they have legitimate asylum claims because of the level of violence and danger in their home countries.
[89] But the other reason that migrants are flooding in now is that they monitor how the U .S. immigration system operates.
[90] So they decide to come when they think they have a good chance of getting in.
[91] Tim, thanks for coming on.
[92] Thanks for having me. That was DailyWire's Tim Pierce.
[93] The most recent revelations from the Twitter file, are raising sharp questions about the degree to which the FBI was driving the platform's censorship decisions and whether the Bureau was attempting to influence the 2020 presidential election.
[94] Here to drill down on what's new in the latest information drop is Daily Wire Culture Reporter Megan Basham.
[95] So, Megan, there were some bombshells on Monday.
[96] What did we learn?
[97] Well, yeah, and there's been some bombshells over the weekend as well.
[98] The overall picture that's developed is that the FBI maintained constant and pervasive communication with Twitter's content moderation team.
[99] So in two separate Twitter threads over the weekend, independent journalist Matt Taibi found that, in addition to those weekly meetings with federal law enforcement agencies that we have been talking about, Twitter's head of trust and safety, Yol Roth, exchanged over 150 emails with the FBI between January 2020 and November of 2022.
[100] So Roth himself seemed to grow fairly alarmed at how aggressive the FBI's social media task force team, which by that point had grown to around 80 agents, was becoming at demanding particular actions.
[101] He noted that when he told the FBI that Twitter actually wasn't seeing much evidence of foreign disinformation, the Bureau didn't seem to like that answer.
[102] So special agent Elvis Chan pushed back with articles from big media outlets claiming foreign propaganda was a problem, even though there was little specific evidence of it.
[103] In fact, at that point, Chan asked Twitter to provide written answers to a series of questions like how the platform defines propaganda actors and just what type of metrics they were using to judge volume.
[104] Roth then forwarded those questions to other Twitter executives, and he noted, and I'm going to quote, these seem more like something we get from a congressional committee than the bureau.
[105] So what did we learn in this latest drop yesterday?
[106] Yeah, again, quite explosive.
[107] Key highlights are that the FBI pressured Twitter to provide data about users without a search warrant.
[108] In December of 2019, Agent Chan asked Roth to revise Twitter's terms of service in order to allow a vendor that was then working with the FBI to have access to private user information.
[109] And this is where we finally see some clear resistance from Twitter.
[110] At that point, Roth did pretty flatly say no. In fact, he said that if government law enforcement or intelligence agencies wanted that kind of information, they needed to do it in accordance with valid legal process.
[111] And that also goes along with the fact that we now know there were numerous FBI agents working at Twitter, so many, in fact, that they started their own Slack channel to onboard former agents taking Twitter jobs.
[112] It was also revealed that the Bureau paid Twitter at least $3 .4 million for the partnership.
[113] And then getting back to the Hunter Biden laptop story, this latest drop also showed that immediately after the New York Post reached out to Hunter Biden, seeking comment for the story they were going to publish on October 14th, 2020, which we'll remember was about his foreign business contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, the FBI contacted Twitter.
[114] They did that within a matter of hours, warning that a Russian leak operation would be coming.
[115] So almost immediately after the post made that call to Hunter Biden, that was on the night of October 13th, a month before the presidential election, the FBI contacted Twitter via a special encrypted communications network that the Bureau had set up specially.
[116] So it sent Roth and at least one other Twitter staffer, 10 documents Chan then asked Roth and his colleagues to confirm they had received.
[117] Now, we don't know what those documents were yet, but what we do know is that after that, Roth then led the effort to suppress the story on Twitter.
[118] And he was particularly spurred on by former top FBI lawyer James Baker, who was by then working for Twitter.
[119] Now, what has the FBI said about all this?
[120] Still not much.
[121] In a statement, they did tell Taibi, quoting here, the FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors, subversive, undeclared, covert or criminal activities.
[122] But Taibi pointed out that the FBI was not just providing information about potential threats.
[123] They were demanding Twitter take action.
[124] In fact, Taibi said Twitter's relationship with the FBI had something of a master canine quality.
[125] Those were his words.
[126] And the Bureau treated the platform like a subsidiary.
[127] Now, the FBI seems to have taken pains to craft their requests as requests to punish accounts for violating Twitter's terms of service.
[128] So perhaps they're thinking a way to get around First Amendment violations there, but a lot of legal experts are saying this is a fig leaf.
[129] In fact, this was law professor Jonathan Turley telling Fox News exactly that.
[130] They're just saying, well, we did nothing but correspond with companies.
[131] That is not what these new files are suggesting.
[132] They're suggesting censorship by surrogate, by proxy.
[133] There's very little runway left for the FBI to continue to deny that there isn't a serious problem here.
[134] No doubt, though, we are going to see some investigations and lawsuits come out of all of this as there are some massive constitutional implications here.
[135] Right, and it could become more complicated if it turns out this was going on at Facebook as well.
[136] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[137] My pleasure.
[138] That was Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.
[139] Other stories we're tracking this week.
[140] TSA officials announced Friday that the group blocked a record 6 ,301 firearms at security checkpoints in airports this year, almost 10 % up from 2021's record number.
[141] Freed Russian arms dealer, Victor Bout, visited the Russian -occupied city of Lujansk in Ukraine on Saturday.
[142] Bout told RT News that he supports Moscow's military operation in Ukraine and that he would go as a volunteer fighter.
[143] The so -called Merchant of Death was traded for WNBA player Brittany Griner earlier this month.
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[148] Thanks for waking up with us.
[149] We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.