Morning Wire XX
[0] More internal documents from Twitter have come to light, and they include some explosive claims about the banning of former President Trump and the government's role in the censoring of speech on the platform.
[1] What do the latest Twitter files reveal?
[2] And how is the press covering the scandal?
[3] I'm Daily Wire editor -in -chief John Bickley with Georgia Howl.
[4] It's Monday, December 12, and this is Morning Wire.
[5] Just as Democrats secured their grip on the Senate, Arizona Senator Kirsten Cinema made it.
[6] an announcement that could shake things up.
[7] I've registered as an Arizona independent.
[8] Why is she making the switch now, and what does it mean for the chamber?
[9] And a disturbing new trend shows a pattern of lax sentencing for child sex predators in California.
[10] We break down the surprising numbers.
[11] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[12] Stay tuned.
[13] We have the news you need to know.
[14] One of the best gifts you can give your loved one this holiday season is beautiful, classic pearl jewelry from the Pearl Source.
[15] The Pearl Source cuts out the middleman by selling directly to you and eliminating crazy jewelry store markups.
[16] They even offer free two -day shipping on every order and a 60 -day money -back guarantee, so it's risk -free.
[17] For a limited time, MorningWire listeners can take 20 % off your order with promo code MorningWire.
[18] If you want fine pearl jewelry at the best prices online, then go straight to the source, the Pearl Source.
[19] Go to PearlSource .com and use promo code MorningWire.
[20] Independent journalists have released new reporting on internal Twitter records over the last several days.
[21] The latest installments of the Twitter files revealed that the platform had maintained secret blacklists that targeted conservatives and government critics.
[22] The new reporting also showed that Twitter was not convinced former President Trump was in violation of any policies when executives decided to ban him.
[23] Joining us now to give us more detail on the latest Twitter files is Daily Wire Culture Reporter, Megan Basham.
[24] So, Megan, there's a lot of ground to cover here, but can you just hit some of the key points from this latest reporting?
[25] Yes, a massive amount of ground to cover.
[26] So just to take the last three installments one by one, on Thursday, former New York Times columnist Barry Weiss revealed that Twitter had added secret flags to the accounts of conservative pundits like Charlie Kirk and Dan Vonjino, as well as to some medical experts who criticized COVID policies, people like Stanford Dr. J. Batacharia, who authored the Great Barrington Declaration.
[27] So this kept people from seeing their posts, and even in some cases kept them from showing up in Twitter search results.
[28] Now, these internal communications also showed that they would suspend accounts like Libs of TikTok, a very popular account that criticized transgender ideology, even though they were very aware that the account had not actually violated any of their rules.
[29] And then on Friday, author and former Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibi focused on documents pertaining to Twitter's coordination with the federal government.
[30] Now, this installment is arguably the most explosive, because what it showed was that Twitter's former head of safety, Yol Roth, was talking about frequent meetings he was having with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
[31] And those communications also revealed that the reason Twitter was suppressing and putting warning labels on President Trump's posts was due in large part to guidance Twitter was getting from those federal departments.
[32] And the communications also confirmed that input from those federal agencies led them to suppress reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop, something that's also been confirmed by some other sources.
[33] So Taibi's reporting also showed that Twitter mislabeled accurate information from Republicans about voting issues as false.
[34] And at the same time, it left up false tweets from Democrats, like former Attorney General Eric Holder.
[35] It took action against Trump supporters warning against stolen elections, but took no action against Biden voters who made similar comments.
[36] So then in part four, which was released on Saturday night, journalist Michael Schellenberger showed that Twitter instituted new rules to justify banning Trump, and a lot of internal discussion about that surrounded pressure that Twitter was feeling from some pretty high -profile Democrats like Michelle Obama.
[37] So Roth and other executives were unhappy with directives they were getting from then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to apply Twitter's policies fairly to Trump.
[38] And they admitted that their decision to ban him ultimately stemmed from how they felt his posts on January 6, 2021 were being received and interpreted, not because they actually believed the posts themselves violated any rules.
[39] So Republican Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio was among those Twitter users who were suppressed, and he says he's planning to investigate.
[40] Here he was on Fox News on Friday.
[41] Big tech, big media all colluded here with big government to keep valuable critical information that I think, frankly, changed the outcome of election.
[42] Or you can make an credible argument that it changed the outcome of the election.
[43] And that's the consequences of what they did.
[44] And that's why we fully need to expose everything.
[45] Every single fact, talk to everyone involved with this.
[46] Now, what do you make of the media response or lack thereof to this new information?
[47] You know, I think there is no other way to put it than to say there seems to be something of a blackout going on.
[48] So there's been almost no coverage at NBC, ABC, CBS.
[49] And the Washington Post and New York Times, as far as I can tell, have published only one story each on the very first installment of reporting on these files.
[50] that dropped on December 3rd.
[51] I haven't seen anything since then about the far more serious revelations concerning the involvement of the DOJ and FBI in directing what and who Twitter censored.
[52] And you have to say, even those articles focused on partisan reactions to the Twitter files, rather than on the actual content of the files themselves.
[53] So what we seem to be seeing is something of a unified and rather surprising decision to ignore these revelations.
[54] Well, we are going to continue tracking this story.
[55] Megan, thanks for reporting.
[56] Yeah, anytime.
[57] That was Daily Wire Culture Reporter, Megan Basham.
[58] Coming up, a key Democratic senator abandons her party.
[59] Guys, are you looking for a Christmas gift that's more alluring than lingerie?
[60] Then look no further than Pajagram's exclusive naturally nude pajamas.
[61] It's the ultimate surprise for her.
[62] And right now, when you go to Pajamagram .com to purchase naturally nude pajamas, you get a naturally nude 90 free.
[63] Order today and save $75 and insure delivery before Christmas.
[64] Just go to pajamagram .com to order.
[65] Just days after the final balance of power in the Senate was set, Arizona Senator Kirsten Cinema renounced her Democratic Party membership and registered as an independent, shaking up the chamber and threatening the Democrats' already slim majority.
[66] Here were the details on what led up to the party switch and how it impacts things in D .C. as Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[67] Cabot, just when you thought we had a final idea of what the Senate would look like and then this happens.
[68] So it catches up to speed her.
[69] It is always something.
[70] It is.
[71] So on Thursday, Cinema announced her decision to leave the Democrat Party in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.
[72] You know, a growing number of Arizonans and people like me just don't feel like we fit neatly into one party's box or the other.
[73] And so like many, across the state and the nation, I've decided to leave that partisan process.
[74] Now, while Cinema has mostly voted with Democrats over the last few years.
[75] She's not your typical Democrat senator.
[76] She won back in 2018 after campaigning on being sort of a maverick who wouldn't just tow the party line.
[77] And that has largely been the case, which has angered many on the left.
[78] Yeah, what led up to this?
[79] Well, remember, she was really not in line with the Democrat base on a number of crucial votes over the last two years.
[80] She really held things up on the Democrats' infrastructure bill and Biden's corporate tax hike.
[81] And that's left her as sort of a scapegoat within the party whenever things are stalled or go poorly.
[82] But there's also a political angle here as well.
[83] We've already heard rumblings of Democrats planning a primary challenger running to the left of cinema, and her running as an independent means she doesn't have to face a Democrat primary challenge in 2024.
[84] So a lot of this has to do with political strategy.
[85] Yes, absolutely.
[86] And it's a pretty smart move for her to be able to keep power.
[87] It makes sense.
[88] So you don't see party switches that often, at least at this level.
[89] What sort of precedent is there for this kind of move in the Senate?
[90] actually more common than you might think.
[91] Since 1990, there have been over 20 cases of a DC lawmakers switching party affiliation while in office, but as you mentioned, it's not as common in the Senate.
[92] Most recently, we saw Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, switch from Republican to Democrat in 2009, after his state's electorate shifted blue ahead of his reelection bit.
[93] But what makes this one especially noteworthy is that Sinema's home state of Arizona just elected a Democrat governor and Democrat senator.
[94] So this is different from other instances when the candidate shifted parties more just to keep their power after the electorate shifted hard the other way.
[95] Arizona just has not changed all that much.
[96] Yeah, that's a good distinction there.
[97] So what does this mean for the balance of power in the Senate?
[98] Look, Democrats still have 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tie -breaking vote, so their majority is intact.
[99] But because the Senate is so much smaller than the House, this move by cinema is the equivalent of about five House members switching their parties.
[100] So it is significant.
[101] It's also worth pointing out this isn't necessarily a huge win.
[102] for Republicans.
[103] While she has voted with the GOP on a few things recently and moved Democrats to the middle on other legislation, she's not conservative.
[104] She started politics in the Green Party and is quite progressive on most social issues.
[105] So while she might continue to help Republicans by serving as a sort of thorn in the side of the left, she's not going to switch to the GOP anytime soon.
[106] All right.
[107] So what sort of reaction did Cinema's announcement garner from Democrats?
[108] Democrats have basically said they're not worried about the move.
[109] They say cinema wasn't voting like a traditional Democrat anyway, and interestingly, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that Cinema would retain her committee assignments, which did upset far -left members in D .C. Yeah, I'm sure.
[110] The fact that she was not removed from her committees, it seems to be a sign that Democrats are still trying to play nice with her because they know that she could still vote with them on a number of issues, and you just cannot afford to write potential allies off, given how evenly split the chamber is.
[111] Yeah, well, it's going to be an intriguing couple of years here.
[112] Yes, it is.
[113] Gavin, thanks for reporting.
[114] Anytime.
[115] That's Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips.
[116] The new report reveals that thousands of individuals convicted of sex crimes against children in California will serve just a few months behind bars.
[117] Even offenders convicted of child rape are being released in under a year.
[118] Daily Wire investigative reporter, Maraida Lorty, is here with the details for us.
[119] So, Marade, what did this report find?
[120] Hi, Georgia.
[121] So this new report came from the Daily Mail and looked at data from California's Megan's Law database.
[122] It found that an alarming number of child predators serve very little time for sex crimes against children.
[123] It appears that California has released more than 7 ,000 individuals convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age the same calendar year they were imprisoned, which means, of course, that they served a maximum of a year, but in many cases less.
[124] This included individuals with the most disturbing criminal histories.
[125] For example, 365 of these individuals were convicted of, continuous sexual abuse of a child.
[126] 39 involved cases of sodomy with a child under 16, and three involved cases of kidnapping a child under 14 with intent to commit lewd or lascivious acts.
[127] As I mentioned, the Daily Mail first reported this data, and they looked at the data on nearly 55 ,000 sex offenders who were listed in California's sex offender database in July 2019.
[128] According to the analysis, the average time spent behind bars was just two years and 10 months.
[129] But in many cases, it was much less.
[130] So are these sentences low by national standards?
[131] And if so, what are the conditions of release for these individuals?
[132] Well, every state is different.
[133] The national average for a sex crime against a child is five to 15 years in prison, according to government data.
[134] Florida requires a minimum 25 -year prison sentence for sex crimes involving children younger than 12.
[135] California doesn't enforce a minimum sentence for these crimes, and that has resulted in some pretty shocking incidents.
[136] For example, one individual who was found guilty of continuous sexual abuse of a child spent just two days behind bars and now lives just blocks from a daycare and an elementary school.
[137] California's sex offender database also does not include all sex offenders.
[138] One man who was charged with sodomy by use of force and continuous sexual abuse of a child took a plea deal from Fresno County prosecutors and was released in less than a year.
[139] He has not been free for about six years and is no longer.
[140] longer required to be listed in the current sex offender database.
[141] So you mentioned that some former prosecutors are criticizing this state of affairs.
[142] Are these prison releases getting a lot of pushback?
[143] Yes, they are, but it's not clear anything will change at this point.
[144] Former Los Angeles sex crimes prosecutor Samuel Dordulian said he was shocked by how many child sex predators have been released so quickly and called it, quote, frightening for society.
[145] He said that statistics, quote, clearly show that pedophiles don't get.
[146] reformed and that, quote, letting these people out early, we're allowing for a lot more victimization.
[147] Dordulian said that under Governor Gavin Newsom, there's been a push for resentencing and other changes to minimize the amount of time criminals spend behind bars.
[148] For now, a former convict would likely have to reoffend before getting incarcerated again.
[149] All right.
[150] Well, Marade, thanks so much for reporting.
[151] Thanks, Georgia.
[152] That was Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade Allorty.
[153] Well, that's all the time we've got this morning.
[154] for waking up with us.
[155] We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
[156] One of the best gifts you can give your loved one this holiday season is beautiful, classic pearl jewelry from the pearl source.
[157] For a limited time, Morningwire listeners can take 20 % off your order with promo code MorningWire.
[158] If you want fine pearl jewelry at the best prices online, then go straight to the source.
[159] The Pearl Source.
[160] Go to thepeorlesource .com and use promo code MorningWire.