Morning Wire - Billionaire Accused as Informant & NY Limits Migrant Housing | 10.21.23

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

Billionaire Peter Thiel is alleged to be an FBI informant, New York limits shelter stays, and the UK considers immigration restrictions. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A bombshell report claims that tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who was once an avid supporter of President Donald Trump, was an FBI informant. What do we know about his supposed involvement and what kind of intel was Teal allegedly providing? I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's October 21st, and this is a Saturday edition of Morning Wire. New York's mayor announces limits on city housing for migrant families amid a larger push to deter newcomers. It's not if it's when people are going to be sleeping on our streets. And massive pro-Hamas demonstrations in the UK highlight the growing cultural schism in Europe. Is Britain finally ready for strict immigration limits?

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. According to a bombshell new report from Business Insider, PayPal billionaire and prominent Republican donor Peter Thiel has been acting as an FBI informant. The story alleges that Teal began confidentially providing the Bureau information in the summer of 2021.

Here with more is Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham. So, Megan, this sounds like something out of a spy novel. You don't just have the FBI wanting to advise a tech billionaire on something like content moderation. We've talked about that. But according to this story, actually recruiting a billionaire as an official informant,

what can you tell us about this report? So Business Insider says that according to multiple FBI sources, starting two years ago, Teal became an informant for FBI agent Jonathan Buma. He's an LA-based counterintelligence specialist. Now, the term that these FBI insiders used, confidential human source, typically indicates an ongoing relationship with the Bureau. So we're not talking about just a tip here or there. This would be something that was continuing. And according to Business Insider, the FBI had gone so far as to assigned Teal a codename and a serial number to track his reporting. Now, do we know what kind of Intel Tiel was allegedly providing the Bureau?

Obviously, Tiel is known for at least at one time being a Trump supporter. He's also been linked to J.D. Vance's Senate campaign in Ohio. Is it something to do with that? So Buma, the agent that, again, insider says Teal was working with is known for investigating Republicans. To give you just one example, last month, the outlet ran what they've characterized as as a whistleblower interview with him. And in that story, Buma claimed that during the Trump administration, FBI bosses,

dismissed evidence that he brought forward that showed that Rudy Giuliani had ties to Russian agents. So I do think it's worth noting that business insider appears to have something of an ongoing relationship with Buma and they have relied on him for some previous splashy headlines. And yet that Giuliani claims so far hasn't really gone anywhere. And that's not to say that it still couldn't, but it hasn't been picked up by any other major outlets. And you would expect that with something that big were it confirmed elsewhere. But that notwithstanding, their story released on Thursday about Teal says that this info that he passed along to the FBI wasn't actually related to political corruption. Instead, they say it's centered on foreign contacts he had that he had developed thanks to his tech background.

And specifically, they say the FBI was looking for information about a, attempts by foreign governments to infiltrate Silicon Valley. So this story is based on reports from anonymous sources at the FBI, as well as this agent, Buma. Did Business Insider have any other official on record sources for this story? Well, their other key source was tech investor and far-right political activist Charles Johnson. And if you haven't heard that name before, he is a somewhat controversial figure.

And I do think we should probably note he does have a reputation for being somewhat unreliable. So Johnson was at one time an associate of Teal's, and he says he introduced Teal to Buma and encouraged Teal to work with the FBI as something of an insurance policy. By that he meant he advised Teal that simply being wealthy isn't enough anymore to avoid being successfully targeted by the federal government.

So he says he told Teal of the FBI, and I'm quoting here, join up or get crushed. But it then appears that the two had a falling out, and Johnson is open, acknowledging that he provided this information about Teal to Business Insider because Teal didn't invest in some startups that he wanted him to. So Johnson is kind of openly acknowledging that he spoke to Business Insider about Teal out of personal animus. Now, has Peter Teal responded to this?

Not yet. And so while this is making a pretty big splash across social media and in a number of outlets who are at least reporting what business insider has published, I do think a measure of caution may be warranted at this point until we see if Teal is going to have some response to this. There's been significant speculation that this could simply be a calculated takedown of Teal over business interests and that the press was somewhat happy to glom on to this due to Teal's politics. Well, never a bad idea to reserve judgment until we know a little more. Megan, thanks for reporting.

Any time. New York City will now begin. again limiting how long migrant families can stay in shelters. The move comes as New York is dealing with tens of thousands of new migrants. Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade, Alorty, is here with the details. So, Marade, New York is clamping down on amenities even for migrants with kids now, it sounds like. Hi, Georgia. Yes, and they have to. Mayor Eric Adams made this announcement on Monday.

This new policy will require migrant families with children to reapply for housing in the city's shelter system every 16. days. So basically, this is supposed to encourage recently arrived migrants to find new housing. Adam said New York City is still paying to house 64,000 migrants, and thousands more are arriving every week. He said the 60-day shelter stay policy is the only way to help migrants take the next steps on their journeys. A similar policy is already in place for single adult migrants, but their limit is 30 days. So will migrant families actually get evicted at 60 days, or are they just going to have to re-up their application. I imagine there's going to be legal issues with that. Right. That's not really clear yet. As you said, there are several legal issues here.

First, New York City currently has a legal obligation to provide shelter to anyone who wants it. This is known as the city's right to shelter. Adams is currently trying to suspend the right to shelter obligation so the city can force migrants to find alternative housing. City Hall's attorneys are currently fighting the right to shelter issue in Manhattan Supreme Court, and the latest hearing was set for Thursday. So if the right to shelter obligation is not suspended, the city will have to find a place for any migrant who wants shelter. But the loophole here is that they'll have to reapply for shelter every 60 days.

So we'll have to wait and see if this 60-day rule leads to any actual evictions. As you said, that would be legally tricky. But just the fact that the city is even considering a measure like this shows how dire the situation has become in New York. Now, in recent months, Mayor Adams has become a lot more aggressive in discouraging migrants from coming to New York. Has that been effective at all? Has the inflow of migrants slowed at all?

No, not really. Over the summer, the city even resorted to sending flyers to the southern border warning migrants that there's no guarantee of shelter if they come to New York and encouraging them to pick a different city. But that hasn't really moved a needle. Since last spring, more than 118,000 migrants have arrived in the city, and recently the number of daily arrivals has ticked up even more with about 600 migrants arriving in New York every day.

So the fact is, New York has established itself as a destination and sanctuary, and that reputation is hard to shake. But as the mayor has said, it's become completely unsustainable for the city. I'm really calling on legal aid and others. Come up with some tangible ideas. Criticism is not an idea. The city has opened more than 200 emergency shelters with plans to open at least one a huge semi-congregate facility that will house 500 families, but that could conflict with

state regulations that each household get a separate room. The city has now spent more than 1.2 billion on the migrants and is projected to spend up to 5 billion. Last month, Adam said the migrant issue will destroy New York City and that every community in this city is going to be impacted. Well, no doubt this is becoming a very serious issue for New York. Marade, thanks for reporting. Thanks, Georgia. Thousands took part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration last weekend on the streets of London and Manchester, England. More than 1,000 police officers were deployed to maintain order. The groundswell of anti-Israel sentiment highlights the growing cultural schism developing in the UK that some blame on permissive immigration laws.

Here with more details for us is Radimir Talcott, Managing Director of the Logotum Institute in London. Hi, Radha. Hi, hi there. So a lot of debate right now in England as, there is in the US. You're saying many people openly supporting a group, the British state has designated a terrorist organization. Is that concerning? The short answer is yes, certainly it is. There are more voices now who are warning that multiculturalism is failing. During a speech in Washington, the UK's Home Secretary, Suella Brotherman, was one of them, and she has argued that

this multiculturalism has allowed individuals to undermine the stability and security of society in her words. And she's been drawing attention to the fact that multiculturalism has led to segregated communities that resist assimilation and fail to adopt the values of their host nations. Most recently, we've seen some very tense days here in London and some other big cities in the UK because of events in the Middle East. And that's all a symptom, I'm afraid, of a lack of national cohesion. But it's also hard not to connect that to the simple fact that when you're importing about net 600,000 new people every year, as we are here in Britain, you can't really integrate people that fast. Right. Now, you mentioned Home Secretary Swellah Braverman. What were some examples she gave? So there's one especially

stark example, and that's that Braverman criticized the UN's refugee convention for allowing individuals to seek asylum based only on their claim, sexual orientation, she's argued that applicants who simply claim to be LGBT should not be immediately recognized as having grounds for seeking asylum in any country of their choosing. So it's very easy to see how a standard like that can be very easily abused. Right. Braverman was very critical of the UN's refugee convention. Can you give us some background on what that is and some of the dictates coming out of it? Sure. So the UN's refugee convention was established.

to protect people fleeing persecution, war or fleeing violence in their own home countries. It emerged after World War II, understandably, but it was designed to provide refuge for people who are facing really imminent peril. And so what Braverman has done is raise a valid point when she questions whether someone who enters the UK by boat across the English Channel, when they're already in France, which is the country they're leaving, is really fleeing imminent peril at that point. So it's worth asking why these individuals who are traveling across multiple safe countries to claim asylum on the UK's shores, why they're doing that. And you have to say, perhaps the UK's notoriously generous and welcoming system is presenting a sort of a beacon

for people who might manipulate the process to gain entry here to this country. So Braverman's comments highlighted a concern that many, many people increasingly share. And that's basically that more claims of asylum have to be rejected because they're fraudulent, and that's now vital for national security. What do the UK's immigration numbers look like right now? So, bluntly, they're just far too high, especially for an already densely populated country. The UK's net migration numbers have seen a drastic surge, in fact, since then, rising from about 400,000 a year to over 600,000 that's happened in a period of just a couple of years. before 1996, net migration was consistently well under 100,000 people each year.

While the Home Secretary is surely right about the UN, though, I'm afraid the government she's a part of has allowed these numbers in. Has the government been responsive to citizens' concerns about these numbers? Well, they are now considering apparently a hard cap on immigration numbers. That would create more public trust, for sure. there have been broken promises from people like David Cameron, who is the Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016, that he would keep immigration numbers in the tens of thousands. Those feel like they're long in the rearview mirror now.

But with most bets now on the left-wing Labor Party winning the election next year, this is unlikely to be fixed any time soon. So the future for this issue really is up in the air. Yeah, as it is in so many countries, including the US. Rado, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.

We'll be back later this afternoon with an extra edition of Morning Wire.