Morning Wire XX
[0] This episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee.
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[2] China's president is in Russia today to show support for President Putin and to attempt to broker a peace deal in Ukraine.
[3] In China's case in particular, they certainly would like to challenge U .S. leadership around the world.
[4] What would a Chinese brokered peace deal look like and would Ukraine even consider the terms?
[5] I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor -in -chief.
[6] John Bickley.
[7] It's Tuesday, March 21st, and this is Morning Wire.
[8] Ahead of the potential arrest of former President Donald Trump, New York City is installing barricades outside of the Manhattan courthouse.
[9] We talked to a former federal prosecutor about the case.
[10] If this was not Donald Trump, there's no way this progressive prosecutor in New York, who won't lock up real criminals, would actually prosecute this case.
[11] And the federal agency that manages technology for all other agencies has admitted to misconduct that it calls serious and completely unacceptable.
[12] We have the full report.
[13] Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.
[14] Stay tuned.
[15] We have the news you need to know.
[16] Hey guys, producer Brandon here.
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[23] Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow on Monday for what Chinese officials say is a mission to try to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
[24] The trip is China's strongest show of support for Russia since the country invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.
[25] Here to discuss is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presti Giacomo.
[26] So Amanda, she arrived on Monday.
[27] Tell us about the trip.
[28] Yeah, well, when she touched down in Moscow on Monday, he was greeted literally with a red carpet.
[29] A military band was also on the tarmac playing the anthems of the two nations.
[30] In terms of his intentions, she has praised a new era and promised new momentum for Russian and Chinese relations.
[31] He then met with Putun at the Kremlin before attending a formal dinner, and it's been reported that peace negotiations will be held later today.
[32] And how is each nation framing the intentions of this trip?
[33] It's pretty clear that Putin wants to send a message to the West, that message being that Russia has a powerful new ally.
[34] Just a few hours before she arrived in Moscow, a CCP newspaper published a piece from Putin bashing the West for allegedly conspiring to stifle Russia and China's development.
[35] He also claimed the West is to blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, both for, quote, provoking the conflict and diligently fueling it.
[36] For their part, Beijing has framed Xi's trip as a mission of peace.
[37] So what do we know about the kind of peace deal that China wants to broker?
[38] Well, it's been reported.
[39] She has reached out to Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky.
[40] Few details are known about that, but Zelensky has signaled he would be willing to speak to Xi.
[41] We should also keep in mind that Zelensky has said he won't accept a peace deal unless Russia withdraws from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which was annexed by Russia back in 2014.
[42] The U .S. and some European nations are pretty skeptical about a peace deal.
[43] U .S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has said a ceasefire negotiated by China would just ratify Russia's conquests and significantly hurt Ukraine.
[44] Experts are saying China is clinging on to this peacemaker role to cover for its strengthening relations with Russia.
[45] Former DIA intelligence officer Rebecca Koffler has said China in no way wants peace between Russia and Ukraine and stands to benefit from Russia and the U .S. fighting or funding this war.
[46] Here's Koffler on Fox News.
[47] This is all a charade.
[48] China is incentivized to keep this war going.
[49] Why?
[50] It's because two of its top geopolitical adversaries, the United States and Russia, are eroding their respective combat arsenals in this proxy war.
[51] Xi Jinping is transitioning China on a wartime footing so that it can secure control over Taiwan in the next couple of years.
[52] And as long as President Biden is hyper -focused on Ukraine, she believes that he can do whatever we want.
[53] Something else to watch for is whether or not China will be giving weapons, specifically artillery shells to Russia to use in Ukraine.
[54] Here's John Kirby discussing that possibility.
[55] We continue to believe it's not in China's best interest to do that, to help Mr. Putin slaughter innocent Ukrainians.
[56] It would also run counter to what we've heard President Xi talk about in terms of what his ultimate goal here is.
[57] Finding a peaceful way to end this war, providing lethal weapons would seem to be inconsistent with that goal.
[58] I'll add that China could potentially already be arming Russia.
[59] Chinese companies have reportedly sent Russian entities, 1 ,000 assault rifles, and other military equipment.
[60] That's based off of trade and customs data obtained by Politico.
[61] All right.
[62] Well, we're going to continue to monitor over the next few.
[63] few days.
[64] Amanda, thanks for reporting.
[65] Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wire reporter, Amanda Prestichocamo.
[66] Coming up, we talked to a former federal prosecutor about the legal implications of charges against Trump.
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[75] It should be equal justice in America, and stop going after people because you have political differences.
[76] That was House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, referring to reports that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Brad, is set to arrest former President Donald Trump.
[77] House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan sent a letter to Bragg demanding testimony from the DA, all while police set up steel barriers in front of the Manhattan Courthouse.
[78] Joining us to discuss all the legal implications of charges against Trump is Andy McCarthy, a former U .S. attorney to the Southern District of New York.
[79] Hi, Andy.
[80] So first, the apparent allegations from Bragg here is that he's planning to charge Trump on the falsification of business records.
[81] I understand that's usually a misdemeanor with a statute of law.
[82] limitations of just two years.
[83] The alleged hush money to Stormy Daniels was paid back in 2016.
[84] So how would Bragg get around that statute of limitations?
[85] It is a misdemeanor.
[86] Now, it's falsifying business records in the second degree, which in New York is a misdemeanor.
[87] So in order to make this a felony, Brad would have to prove that Trump intended to conceal another crime by falsifying the records with this payment.
[88] And you're quite right to focus on the statute of limitations, because if it's a misdemeanor, the statute of limitations in New York is two years.
[89] If it's a felony, the statute of limitation in New York is five years.
[90] Bragg can be expected to argue that this is a felony so that the stream of payments through 2017, which were no doubt used for tax purposes in 2018, that that would bring him within the five -year statute of limitations.
[91] but he's got to prove a felony for that.
[92] The other thing I would expect him to argue is there are provisions of New York law, which are really intended to go after fugitives and people who abscond intentionally from charges that say if a person has left the state continuously for a period of time, the statute of limitations is told while the person is out of the state.
[93] I would be very surprised if he can argue that that applies to Trump because it, Trump was never a fugitive.
[94] This case was never brought, and there was never any doubt about where Trump was.
[95] So for Bragg to make the claim, he's accusing Trump of deliberately trying to commit a felony through this act.
[96] What is that felony?
[97] Yeah, that's the million dollar question here.
[98] Or maybe I guess it's the $130 ,000 question, right?
[99] It's been suggested that he's talking about a campaign finance violation.
[100] If he meets that in the common sense of that, as we understand that term, I don't see how that works because when the New York statute says to conceal another crime, what it's clearly talking about is New York crimes.
[101] The campaign finance is a federal crime.
[102] I don't think a federal crime works.
[103] This is the New York Penal Code.
[104] It's got to be a New York crime.
[105] I think Trump is going to argue that he entered disagreement because he didn't want Melania, his wife, to find out.
[106] Even though he denies that the sexual liaison took place, he didn't want her to know.
[107] about this non -disclosure arrangement.
[108] And he didn't want to take the political hit for it, which is why this hush money was paid on the eve of the election.
[109] So it would have been personally embarrassing and politically damaging to him.
[110] Those aren't felonies.
[111] Final question.
[112] A lot of legal experts are stepping back from this, Jonathan Turley, for example, and saying this does grave damage to the justice system if Bragg moves forward on this.
[113] What's your perspective on that?
[114] I couldn't agree with it more.
[115] And I think that whatever you think of Donald Trump and his behavior here, it's clear, again, that nobody other than Trump would have been prosecuted for this.
[116] So it's about as blatant a partisan use of the law enforcement power as a political weapon as you could conjure up.
[117] And the rule of law in our society really depends on the perception of the American public that the rules are the same for everyone.
[118] Once the criminal justice system gets a reputation that people are prosecuted based on what their partisan affiliation is or what their ideological convictions are, then we don't have the rule of law anymore.
[119] And if that degrade, you can't have a flourishing society.
[120] Those concerns are much more important than whether we have a misdemeanor falsification of business records here.
[121] An unprecedented legal and political moment here.
[122] Annie, thanks for joining us.
[123] That was National Review Senior Fellow.
[124] Annie McCarthy.
[125] The government's general services administrations, Inspector General, revealed this month that GSA's tech department tricked federal agencies into paying nearly $200 million for software they were told met the highest security requirements.
[126] Without informing anyone, the agency had declined to implement facial recognition, which was required on one million sensitive accounts because of, quote, equity concerns.
[127] Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak found in a four -part series that the GSA's technology transformation service was, quote, grossly mismanaged.
[128] He joins us now.
[129] Hi, Luke.
[130] So what's the impact here?
[131] Why is GSA so important?
[132] Hey, John.
[133] GSA is important because it's the central services agency that does work for all the other federal agencies.
[134] But something went wrong with the technology transformation service or TTS.
[135] The result is that people could have gained access to things they weren't supposed to.
[136] They're in charge of a product called login .gov. To conform with rules, high security accounts were required to have facial recognition or other biometrics.
[137] They decided not to do it because they said facial recognition didn't treat people with different skin tones the same.
[138] But they didn't tell that to clients.
[139] They explicitly told them it did conform, and they raised nearly $200 million selling the product that way.
[140] And how could that happen?
[141] How did so many people inside TTS know that it violated the rules without anyone doing anything about it?
[142] And many people did know.
[143] And when one tried to bring it to the attention of top officials, one of those officials basically told him to mind his own business.
[144] There was a lot of groupthink in this government tech unit.
[145] TTS was losing millions of dollars, but a top manager said he, quote, doesn't give a rip about the losses.
[146] They spent only half their time on actual billable projects, and a lot of time on side projects like creating a social justice robot.
[147] A social justice robot, you're going to have to unpack that for us.
[148] It was a computer program that would monitor the Slack chat rooms that the employees used and correct them when they used problematic phrases like guys, which they said was too gendered.
[149] Another former employee is now a self -declared Marxist organizer.
[150] Clear political bias seems to have been common.
[151] For example, chat records show that the day after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, the team held a meeting that amounted to a sort of emergency session about their safety.
[152] They plotted how to refuse to do work for the Trump administration while continuing to get paid.
[153] Current GSA chief information officer Dave Shive led what a sole dissenter called, quote, the most partisan meeting I've ever attended in government.
[154] They routinely violated all manner of rules who were responsible for multiple security violations and lied repeatedly, according to the inspector general.
[155] Now, computers are obviously pretty important to a modern government, so we need them to be in good hands.
[156] Is there any sign of things improving?
[157] Well, GSA said it moved a manager to a different job after this report, but it didn't say it fired him.
[158] In fact, it brought in a new manager from MoveOn .org, the Democrat fundraising group.
[159] What's notable is this is the fourth time the Inspector General has slammed to this tech group, and nothing ever seems to change.
[160] Now, President Biden is actually reportedly drafting an executive order to bring this login .gov service to all Americans, and the IRS plans to use it for taxes next month.
[161] So a move that could directly impact all Americans.
[162] Right.
[163] Well, Luke, thanks for joining us.
[164] That was Daily Wire investigative reporter, Luke Roziak.
[165] Another story we're tracking this week.
[166] Amazon is planning on laying off another 9 ,000 of its employees over the next few weeks.
[167] The company's CEO, Andy Jassy, announced the, quote, difficult decision in a blog post on Monday.
[168] It comes just a few months after Amazon announced its most sweeping layoffs in its history, impacting some 18 ,000 employees.
[169] Well, that's all the time we've got this morning.
[170] Thanks for waking up with us.
[171] We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.