Morning Wire XX
[0] Two Loudoun County school officials were indicted by a grand jury following the DailyWire's expose of a rape cover -up.
[1] We talked to the reporter who broke the story.
[2] I'm DailyWire editor -in -chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[3] It's Wednesday, December 14th, and this is Morning Wire.
[4] Crypto CEO, Sam Bankman -Fried, was arrested Monday on criminal charges filed by U .S. prosecutors.
[5] This is really old -fashioned and embezzlement.
[6] This is just taking money from customers using it for your own purpose.
[7] What exactly is Bankman Freed being charged with, and what else have we learned about the landmark fraud case?
[8] And a new report from the Labor Department shows U .S. inflation rates inching downwards.
[9] What's driving the slowdown, and what does it mean for the average American?
[10] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[11] Stay tuned.
[12] We have the news you need to know.
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[19] Last week, we reported that a Virginia grand jury issued a report with troubling details about a Virginia school system's handling of a rape.
[20] Now the superintendent is facing a criminal indictment.
[21] On Monday, criminal indictments were unsealed against former Loudoun County Superintendent Scott Ziegler and spokesman Wade Byard.
[22] Here to discuss his Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak, whose stories last year, the grand jury report said, are the only reason even school board members found out about this.
[23] Luke, this is quite a development.
[24] What do we need to know?
[25] It is, John.
[26] Last week when I asked Wade Byard about the grand jury, he sent me a statement.
[27] that seemed misleading, stating that it found no criminal conduct.
[28] I asked him why he was so sure, and he didn't reply.
[29] It turns out that he himself had been indicted on a Class 5 felony perjury charge, which can bring up to 10 years in prison.
[30] All right, so the guy whose job is giving information to the media could go to prison.
[31] What about the school superintendent?
[32] What's he being charged with?
[33] Superintendent Ziegler, who was fired last week, is facing three misdemeanors, one for false publication on the day that he dismissed parents' concerns.
[34] about a proposed transgender policy by saying there had never been any sexual assaults in the school bathrooms.
[35] He knew full well that a boy wearing a skirt had allegedly raped a girl just weeks prior.
[36] Now, the grand jury report gives a sense that the school system was more concerned about optics and safety, which gave the media spokesman, B yard, a huge role, down to ghost writing an email that went to parents after the rape that falsely said there was no threat to student safety.
[37] He's alleged to have lied under oath in August of this year.
[38] That suggests it was to the special grand jury convened by Governor Glenn Yonkin, who won election in November 2021, a month after the rapist sexually assaulted a second girl in a classroom.
[39] All right, so possible perjury to the grand jury.
[40] Have any of the victims responded to this latest news?
[41] Yeah, you know, we've heard a lot from Scott Smith in the past, and following these indictments, the second family actually broke their silence to come full.
[42] were and really blast loud in officials.
[43] They said, what happened to our daughter could have and should have been prevented, and that over the last 14 months since our daughter was assaulted, not one member of the school board or administration has reached out to check on how she's doing or lend any type of support.
[44] Not one, huh?
[45] Yeah.
[46] And, John, I can share some behind -the -scenes background for our morning wire listeners that I haven't really talked about before.
[47] Some of the left claimed that when I wrote this story, Smith or I timed it to impact Governor Yonkin's election.
[48] You know, the opposite is true.
[49] Smith was reluctant to talk about what happened to his daughter, and we were going to wait until the boy was convicted to tell the story at all in order to let the justice system work.
[50] We told the story when we did, because the moment the boy attacked that second girl, it became clear the system wasn't working.
[51] If I recall, many in the media also suggested that this story was actually fabricated, that New York Times read a headline.
[52] I'll just read it.
[53] The Wright's Big Lie about a sexual assault in Virginia.
[54] What was going on there?
[55] Yeah.
[56] The Times tried to debunk my story by saying that the transgender bathroom policy wasn't in place at the time, so it had nothing to do with the rape.
[57] But my story couldn't have been clearer that the school system had a motive to cover up the rape precisely because it was about to have a vote on such a policy.
[58] And knowledge of this would have made it pretty hard to pass.
[59] Since then, rapist has been convicted and the superintendent has been indicted.
[60] Your work has obviously had a lasting impact.
[61] What was key here?
[62] The wild cart here was the existence of the grand jury.
[63] If Democrat, Terry McAuliffe, had won the governor's race, there likely wouldn't be a grand jury to look at those facts.
[64] Well, just a remarkable sequence of events.
[65] Luke, thanks for all the work.
[66] Thank you, John.
[67] That's Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak.
[68] Coming up, the charges against FTX founder Sam Bankman -Fried are unsealed.
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[75] Disgraced crypto CEO and Democratic.
[76] Democrat mega donor, Sam Bankman -Freed, was arrested Monday in the Bahamas after U .S. prosecutors filed criminal charges against the 30 -year -old.
[77] Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta Giacomo.
[78] So Amanda, Bankman -Fried is now in custody.
[79] What do we know about the arrest and about the charges?
[80] Hi, Georgia.
[81] Well, the Bahamian government said in a statement on Monday that they arrested Bankman Freed, or SBF, as is widely known, after they were notified by the U .S. that prosecutors for the Justice Department's Southern District of New York had filed criminal charges and that the U .S. would likely request SBF's extradition.
[82] Now, on Tuesday, those criminal charges were unsealed.
[83] SBF has been hit with eight counts of fraud, conspiracy, campaign finance law violations, and money laundering.
[84] The indictment accuses the FTX founder of conspiring since 2019 to defraud the federal government by making illegal donations to political candidates.
[85] As we've reported here before, SBF was widely solidly.
[86] celebrated in progressive circles.
[87] He reportedly donated tens of millions of dollars to Democratic candidates over the past few cycles and was the second largest donor behind George Soros.
[88] Damian Williams, the U .S. Attorney for the SDNY, gave us more detail into the charges during a press conference on Tuesday.
[89] All of this dirty money was used in service of Bankman Freed's desire to buy bipartisan influence and impact the direction of public policy in Washington.
[90] The unsealing of these charges followed a civil complaint from the U .S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, accusing him of defrauding FTX investors to the tune of billions of dollars.
[91] Now, is SBF the only one who's going down for this so far, or have there been other arrests associated with this FTX scandal?
[92] Well, no. Right now, we haven't seen any other arrests.
[93] And that's a really great question, because these charges that were handed down by federal prosecutors all refer to SBF allegedly committed.
[94] committing these crimes with others.
[95] Sometimes those others are described as known and sometimes unknown.
[96] This indicates that we'll likely see more arrest on the pike.
[97] I'm sure a lot of listeners right now are thinking of the name Caroline Allison.
[98] This was SBF's ex -girlfriend, who formerly served as CEO of FTX's sister hedge fund Alameda Research.
[99] Unlike her ex, Allison has been staying quiet, completely avoiding the media.
[100] Now, the timing of this arrest is also interesting because SBF was set to testify before Congress on Tuesday, and then that arrest came on Monday.
[101] That's right.
[102] Due to the arrest, SBF was not required to testify, but we did get some interesting information from his former colleagues.
[103] Here's FTX acting CEO, John Ray, being questioned by GOP Representative Anne Wagner of Missouri.
[104] Literally, you know, there's no record keeping whatsoever.
[105] They use QuickBooks, a multi -billion dollar company using QuickBooks.
[106] Nothing against QuickBooks.
[107] very nice tool, just not for a multi -billion dollar company.
[108] Now, tell us about SBF's parents and how they became involved in all of this.
[109] Well, SBF's parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Freed are both professors at Stanford Law School.
[110] And they've been described as sort of a selling point for FTX, especially early on.
[111] Now, it seems at least so far that the father was more involved in the actual business.
[112] The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the senior bankman was a paid employer.
[113] of FTX for about a year, and in one example likely helped influence an investment of about $130 million into the company from private equity in Orlando Bravo.
[114] Bravo was a former student of the elder bankman.
[115] Now, his mother is the co -founder of a super PAC called Mind the Gap.
[116] This pack uses statistical analysis to help determine which Democratic candidates to support financially.
[117] She has since resigned as chairwoman.
[118] Sources say both parents reportedly ran to their son's side when SBF told them in November that he was having issues with his businesses.
[119] They were apparently in the Bahamas when SBF was arrested on Monday, too.
[120] Now, what can we expect next in this saga?
[121] Is he being extradited right now?
[122] Yeah, experts are saying this could take weeks, maybe even months, and a trial will take even longer.
[123] Some people say it could take years.
[124] The bigger the case, the longer it will take.
[125] As for FTX customers, we still don't know if they'll ever get their money back.
[126] Right, not so likely.
[127] Amanda, thanks so much for reporting.
[128] Yeah, my pleasure.
[129] That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestige Acomo.
[130] On Tuesday, a new report from the Labor Department showed U .S. inflation rates falling to their lowest point in 12 months, leaving economists cautiously optimistic.
[131] Here are the latest on what's driving the slowdown and what it means for the average American family is Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[132] All right, Cabot, new numbers are in.
[133] What did we learn this week?
[134] We learned that in the month of November, the consumer price index, which tracks the cost of goods month to month, rose 7 .1 % compared to November of last year.
[135] Now, that might sound bad as it means everything is considerably more expensive than last year, but it actually marks the slowest 12 -month increase of any month in the last year.
[136] For context, the rate is down considerably from its peak of 9 .1 % in June, and also down from the 7 .7 % rate we saw in October.
[137] We also learned that the core CPI, which excludes the price of energy and food prices, which do tend to be more volatile months a month, also slowed down, rising at 6 % compared to this time last year after being an all -time high of 6 .6 % as recently as September.
[138] All right.
[139] So slowing inflation rates, what sort of reaction did this news garner?
[140] Well, it is certainly good news anytime prices fall month to month.
[141] And this is the first time we've had consecutive months of price drops on the core inflation rate since the summer of 2021.
[142] So, as you can imagine, the Biden administration and others were quick to tell the news.
[143] Here's President Biden from the White House yesterday.
[144] We're beginning to see the impact of our economic strategy.
[145] And we're just getting started.
[146] I've said again, I've never been more optimistic about America's future.
[147] And today's news gives me another reason to be optimistic about that future.
[148] All right.
[149] So the White House is clearly viewing this as a win.
[150] They are.
[151] The president went on to say, what is clear is my economic plan is working.
[152] But critics were quick to point out that a year ago when inflation first started to rise, Biden said we were at the, quote, peak of the crisis and you'll see it change more rapidly than people think.
[153] But obviously, every month since that common inflation has risen by at least 7%.
[154] Yeah.
[155] Critics also point out that when it comes to good news on inflation, it's just all relative.
[156] The fact that 7 .1 % inflation is being touted as a win and calls for celebration just gives you an idea of how bad things have been all year.
[157] For context, from 1990 to 2020, there was not a single month with inflation above 7%.
[158] Wow, so three decades.
[159] Yeah, long time.
[160] So even if things do stop increasing now, unless they start decreasing significantly, we're still in a much worse spot than we've been for a long time.
[161] Now, we've been closely tracking the response from the Federal Reserve on all of those.
[162] What's the latest there?
[163] Yeah, as we've talked about on the show, the Fed has been steadily raising interest rates in an attempt to slow the economy and raise unemployment to try and cool investment.
[164] inflation.
[165] In keeping with that trend, they're widely expected to raise rates another half point today, which would bring rates to around 4 .5 percent.
[166] That's their highest level since December of 2007.
[167] And that half point increase is still down from the 0 .75 increases that we saw at the last four Fed meetings, which does seem to be a sign that they could slow down their rate hikes starting in the new year.
[168] There were also some surprising comments by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that made news this week.
[169] Tell us about that.
[170] Yeah, for context, Secretary Yellen has been saying, for well over a year now that inflation was transitory and relief was just around the corner.
[171] But she has started to change her tune.
[172] In a surprising interview on CBS this week, Yellen admitted that inflation will likely persist for at least another year.
[173] It's going to take a year.
[174] Well, I believe by the end of next year, you will see much lower inflation if there's not an unanticipated shock.
[175] Well, a noteworthy shift in messaging there.
[176] Kavana, thanks for reporting.
[177] Anytime.
[178] That's the Daily Wire senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[179] That's all the time we've got this morning.
[180] Thanks for waking up with us.
[181] We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
[182] Used car prices are dropping, which means you should see great deals this holiday season.
[183] But before you walk into the dealership, you've got to check out Carzing.
[184] By partnering with credit agencies, lenders, and dealerships, Karzing provides you with everything you need before stepping foot into a dealership.
[185] Visit carsing .com slash wire today to skip the guesswork and find the best deals for you.
[186] That's carsing .com slash wire.