Morning Wire XX
[0] A key contributor to the Steele dossier was arrested on Thursday and indicted on five counts of lying to the FBI.
[1] The now discredited dossier led to a two -year investigation into Trump and Russia collusion.
[2] Who is the man arrested by special prosecutor John Durham?
[3] What claims are now in dispute?
[4] And what are the implications of his arrest?
[5] I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
[6] It's Wednesday, November 10th, and this is Morning Wire.
[7] As the UN Climate Summit wraps up this week, concerns emerge about competing interests between climate activism and human rights.
[8] Is the U .S. compromising on human rights in order to attract China to its climate agenda?
[9] We speak to a government watchdog group who's raising some serious questions.
[10] And Elon Musk is making headlines again, vowing to sell 10 % of his Tesla stock based on, get this, a vote by his Twitter followers.
[11] What is the billionaire's rationale for the stock sale?
[12] And how does it connect to the larger debate around taxation of unrealized gains?
[13] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[14] Stay tuned.
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[25] Another pillar upholding democratic allegations that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia has fallen.
[26] As one of the main sources behind the steel dossier has been indicted.
[27] Special prosecutor John Durham says that Igor Dancino lied to the FBI about the Trump campaign, leading to a two -year national scandal.
[28] Here with the details has been John.
[29] Johnson of the Daily Wire.
[30] Good morning, Ben.
[31] Good morning, John.
[32] So, Ben, who is Igor Dancinko, and why is this indictment so important?
[33] Yeah, Danchenko is a Russian national who lives in the United States and formerly worked at the Brookings Institution.
[34] In 2016, Danchenko worked for Christopher Steele.
[35] He fed Steele unfounded rumors about Donald Trump that formed the substance of the Steele dossier.
[36] The FBI then used the Steele dossier, which was funded by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to petition the final.
[37] a court for four successive warrants to spy on a Trump campaign official named Carter Page.
[38] Danchenko told the FBI that he obtained his information from Russians with direct knowledge of the allegations, but his actual source has stepped forward.
[39] It's an American named Charles Dolan, Jr., who's a PR executive who's had formal roles in the Clinton's presidential campaigns for 29 years.
[40] So the indictment suggests that this was a Clinton campaign -funded dossier based in part on a source that is a Clinton ally.
[41] Yeah, John Durham indicted Danchenko for five counts of making false statements to federal investigators.
[42] If he's convicted, he could face a fine and up to five years in prison for each of the five counts.
[43] Last week, a judge released Danchenko on a $100 ,000 bond with no electronic surveillance.
[44] The defendants indicated that he'll plead not guilty to the charges.
[45] His next court appearance is scheduled for this Wednesday.
[46] Okay, so Danchenko was one of the key sources of information behind.
[47] the Trump -Russian conspiracy theory.
[48] What specific rumors did he feed the FBI?
[49] Danchenko originated the most salacious part of the report that during a trip to Russia before he was president, Donald Trump hired two prostitutes to urinate on a bed that Barack Obama had once slept on.
[50] With this indictment, that allegation is as close to fully refuted as anything can be.
[51] But Danchenko's lies cast a much larger shadow over the Trump campaign.
[52] The indictment says that Danchenko is responsible for, quote, the allegation that there were communications ongoing between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and that the Kremlin might be of help in getting Trump elected.
[53] This indictment is Durham's second indictment of someone involved in the Steele dossier.
[54] Can you remind us of the first one in Israel?
[55] Yes, Durham also indicted Michael Sussman of the Perkins Coy law firm, which funneled money from the Clinton campaign to Christopher Steele.
[56] Durham said that Sussman lied to the FBI when he said he wasn't working for any client as he passed on a now refuted allegation that the Trump business organization had secret electronic communications with a Russia -based Alpha Bank.
[57] Look, as we all witnessed, the Russiagate story consumed the media for two years.
[58] These indictments strongly undermine that story.
[59] How has the media reacted to this latest report?
[60] Well, for the most part, they haven't.
[61] All three major news network broadcasts and CNN's primetime hosts ignored the arrest last week.
[62] Whatever reasons that may be, it's certainly not because they consider the original story unworthy of coverage.
[63] The Big Three Network news broadcasts, NBC, ABC, and CBS spent 2 ,202 minutes covering the alleged Russian collusion scandal in the first two years of Donald Trump's presidency.
[64] And that doesn't include countless hours from MSNBC and CNN.
[65] The only major report of Danchenko's legal troubles came from Rachel Maddow, who said, quote, this indictment is designed to smear Christopher Steele's intelligence reports.
[66] Okay.
[67] That may explain why polls show America's faith in the media has fallen to an all -time low.
[68] Yeah, well, we'll stick to the facts here.
[69] Thanks, Ben.
[70] Thanks, John.
[71] That's Daily Wire reporter, Ben Johnson.
[72] Coming up, the UN Climate Summit raises some serious human rights questions.
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[78] The United Nations annual climate change summit is underway in Scotland.
[79] Here with the details is Eric Eggers from the Government Accountability Institute and the co -host of the Drill Down podcast.
[80] Eric, good morning.
[81] Good morning, Georgia.
[82] So ahead of the global summit, climates are John Kerry's said that this is the, quote, last best hope for the world to combat climate change.
[83] So there's a lot of pressure he's putting on this event.
[84] It sure is.
[85] The global leaders that are in Scotland, including John Kerry, are absolutely convinced that keeping the global temperature from rising another one and a half degrees is essential to global survival.
[86] Remember, that goal was the basis of the Paris Agreement in the 2015 cop.
[87] And John Kerry has said that that goal would be, quote, essentially impossible without China's cooperation.
[88] So when China announced that they were not going to be participants, in this year's summit, hopes were, as you might imagine, muted.
[89] The U .S. climate envoy John Kerry and his team are already downplaying expectations for the climate summit.
[90] Demand for oil is surging during a developing global energy crisis right now.
[91] China and Russia, two of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases are no shows, no shows at this global climate summit here in Scotland.
[92] So given that both China and Russia are major producers of emissions, It seems like it would be a pretty big obstacle that neither were at this summit, just in terms of enthusiasm about the event.
[93] But never underestimate the enthusiasm you can generate when you're in Scotland in November.
[94] Unfortunately, despite initial signs of lowered expectations, Kerry's actually sounded pretty upbeat once the summit began.
[95] This one has greater energy, more focused, an intensity that I have not felt in any of the other cops.
[96] The real issue is going to be follow -up.
[97] And follow -up is exactly the concern, especially given the conflicting Biden administration priorities as it relates to China.
[98] And what do you mean when you say conflicting priorities?
[99] Well, as climate czar, John Kerr has been very clear that relations with China means more cooperation on climate change.
[100] So CARES actually pressed the Biden administration to overlook some of China's human rights issues and its negotiations on environmental policies.
[101] According to Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Chris Smith, CARES actually worked to undermine Congress.
[102] Congress's efforts to hold China accountable for these abuses.
[103] In the letter to the Biden administration, Rubio and Smith have alleged the Kerry, and I'm quoting here, is downplaying genocide precisely because he intends to import solar panels that are produced using forced labor in the PRC to the United States in order to meet the administration's climate goals.
[104] While these claims are difficult to prove or disprove, there have been claims of a conflict of interest within the Carey family.
[105] Now, it's been reported that Teresa Hines Carey has an investment of at least $1 million.
[106] and a hedge fund that specializes in private partnerships and investments with Chinese government -controlled funds.
[107] But beyond that, John Kerry himself has an investment worth at least a million dollars that has documented financial ties to Chinese companies that support surveillance and slave labor in Xinjiang, China, where thousands of Uyghurs and other minorities are interned camps or shipped to other parts of the country to work in factories.
[108] And has Kerry been pressed on this issue?
[109] He's been asked about why the administration isn't doing more to protect against slave labor in China, and he has stated he's trying to, quote, stay in his lane, as in focusing on climate change rather than labor issues.
[110] But it's worth noting that provisions to protect Uyghur Muslims were conspicuously removed from the reconciliation bill in the latest draft.
[111] So definitely some open questions worth investigating.
[112] Eric, thanks for reporting.
[113] Thanks for having me. That's Eric Eggers from the Government Accountability Institute and co -host of the Drill Down podcast.
[114] In recent months, multiple Democrats have been pushing for a wealth tax of some type, with the latest iteration being taxation of so -called unrealized gains.
[115] One person being targeted by these proposals is Elon Musk, who hasn't held back on the subject.
[116] Here to tell us more as DailyWire's Ian Howarth.
[117] Ian, bring us up to speed on the latest with Elon Musk.
[118] Well, no one can ever say Elon Musk's Twitter feed is a boring place.
[119] On Saturday, Elon Musk, who is the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and, according to Forbes, has a net worth of over $300 billion, tweeted out to his 62 million followers, a poll, asking whether he should sell 10 % of his Tesla stock.
[120] He wrote, quote, much as made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10 % of my Tesla stock.
[121] Do you support this?
[122] And the results were fairly unsurprising.
[123] Over 3 .5 million people voted, and over 57 % were in favor of must selling his stock, which would amount to over $20 billion.
[124] Yeah, I guess that's not surprising.
[125] So do we expect Musk to follow through here?
[126] He did say on Saturday that he'll abide by the results of the poll, whichever way it went.
[127] He also added a note, which brings us back to the wider debate over the taxation of unrealized gains.
[128] It said, quote, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere.
[129] I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.
[130] But Musk has been less subtle, particularly when it comes to his ongoing feud with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who's pushing for unrealized capital gains to be taxed.
[131] A few weeks ago, Musk wrote that eventually they ran out of other people's money and then they come for you.
[132] But in another unsurprising but really important change, Tesla's stock fell by 5 % on Monday morning after the markets opened.
[133] And many people have pointed to this one case as an example of yet another consequence of taxing unrealized capital gains, both in terms of people selling the stock and also those whose savings might suffer as a result.
[134] Interesting.
[135] So there's been some reports that Musk is already facing a big tax bill.
[136] with some saying that might actually be the reason he's selling the stock now.
[137] Is that correct?
[138] Yeah, so CNBC reported that Must might have a $15 billion tax bill coming up for the next few months because of his stock options, which they said made a stock sale likely regardless.
[139] But the debate here isn't really why Elon Musk is selling stock.
[140] It's whether taxing unrealized wealth, which isn't liquid, is constitutional or even moral in the first place, let alone the fact that, as I just mentioned, the impact of sudden stock sales to pay for such a tax would impact the market in ways that anyone with a 401k would feel.
[141] The claim being pushed by those who support this form of taxation is that people are escaping taxation by not realizing their gains.
[142] For example, U .S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made this exact argument.
[143] But it would help get at capital gains, which are an extraordinarily large part of the incomes of the wealthiest individuals.
[144] And right now, escape tax.
[145] taxation until they're realized and often they're unrealized.
[146] But this was Elon Musk's point.
[147] Unrealized gains aren't income until they're realized.
[148] Capital gains are also already taxed, and as just the news of the upcoming stock sale showed us, forcing stockholders to sell stock to pay tax on the unrealized gain of that stock only makes the value of that stock go down, which impacts each and every stockholder in the short term and potentially the long term too.
[149] Yeah, lots of important questions about taxation being highlighted here by Musk.
[150] Yeah, there's certainly all.
[151] We'll see what he does next.
[152] Thanks for the update, Ian.
[153] Thanks for having me. Daily Wires, Ian Howers.
[154] Another story we're tracking this week.
[155] A new survey from the National Republican Congressional Committee found that approximately two -thirds of American adults oppose the Biden administration plan to compensate illegal immigrants with $450 ,000 for, quote, psychological trauma related to being separated from, family at the border.
[156] Seventy -2 % of swing voters oppose the plan, whereas 29 % of voters overall support the plan.
[157] The proposal is included in the Biden administration's signature $1 .7 trillion dollar build -back better act.
[158] If you like this episode and are interested in hearing more, subscribe to MorningWire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and give us a five -star review.
[159] That's all the time we've got this morning.
[160] Thanks for waking up with us.
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