Morning Wire - NBA Scandal Unveiled & Another Drug Boat Dusted | 10.24.25

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

The FBI unveils a massive, Mafia-tied gambling scheme involving big names in the NBA, the U.S. strikes another drug boat bringing “poison to our shores,” and sparks fly at the final debate for New York City mayor—but will it sway the race? Get the facts first with Morning Wire. - - - Wake up with new Morning Wire merch: https://bit.ly/4lIubt3 - - - Today's Sponsor: Beam - Visit https://shopbeam.com/WIRE and use code WIRE to get our exclusive discount of up to 40% off. - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy morning wire,morning wire podcast,the morning wire podcast,Georgia Howe,John Bickley,daily wire podcast,podcast,news podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to the world entire. Trouve of little enterprises like on our own.com. A massive mafia-tied gambling scheme and the NBA leads to charges for dozens of people, including some of the league's biggest names. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars

in fraud and theft and robbery across a multi-year investigation. I'm Daily Wire, Executive Editor John Bickley, with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, October 24th. This is Morning Wire. The U.S. military strikes again, hitting another drug boat the administration says intends to bring poison to our shores. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We're going to kill them.

You know, they're going to be like dead. And how much will this week's fiery debate for New York City mayor sway the high-stakes race? I have not yet taken a position on those ballot minutes. Oh, what a shocker. All right. What a shocker. We're gonna move on. Once he takes it, it'll change it anywhere.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Quality sleep, that most elusive luxury. We've all experienced those nights where you can't sleep. You're just lying there breathing as the minutes tick by and frustration ensues. Those nights were all too familiar for me. But then I found Beam's dream powder.

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Sleep better, wake up stronger, and show up ready for your family, your work, and your country. Because when you're well-rested, you're unstoppable. And this country needs more people like that. A sprawling NBA gambling scandal was announced yesterday, resulting in dozens of arrests, including former and current NBA players and coaches and members of the Italian mafia. Here are the details as Daily Wire Reporter Amanda Pressage, Jacamo. Hey, Amanda, just an absolutely wild story coming just days after the NBA tipped off its 2025 season. What exactly is the scope of all this? How far reaching is this? Well, we're talking about over 30 people who were arrested just yesterday, and that included Miami Heat Point Guard, Terry Rozier, and Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups.

He was a former player himself and in the NBA Hall of Fame. And, you know, people connected to the mafia were arrested as well. Charges from the entire investigation include wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery, and illegal gambling. Here's FBI director Cash Patel with a general overview during a press conference yesterday. The FBI led a coordinated takedown across 11 states to arrest over 30 individuals today responsible for this case, which is very much ongoing. We also entered and executed a system of justice against La Casanoosa, to include the Bonano, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese crime families. Now, there were two separate indictments here.

The first relates to an insider betting scheme. Defendants charged in this scheme allegedly received non-public information, like when certain players would be sitting out for injuries or planned absences, and they would use that to try to profit from gambling bets. Here's New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. One example occurred on March 23, 2023, in Charlotte, Terry Rozier, an NBA player, with the Miami Heat, but at the time, playing for the Hornets, allegedly led others close to him know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury. Using that information,

members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers on his under statistics. Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes, and those bets paid out generating tens of thousands of dollars in profit. So you mentioned a second indictment. Tell us about that aspect of this. Yeah, this one relates to mafia-backed fixed poker games where more than $7 million was stolen. This apparently included a lot of new technology, and current and former NBA players like Chauncey Billups were used to draw people into play these rigged games. Here's United States Attorney Joseph Nosella on that. The defendants in this case orchestrated a scheme to use wireless cheating technology to run rigged poker games across the United States.

The victims, the fish, didn't know, is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam. Once the game was underway, the defendants fleeced the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game. Some of the technology included in these games were self-shuffling machines that had been secretly altered. poker chip trays that read cards using a hidden camera, special contact lenses or eyeglasses that could read pre-marked cards, and an x-ray table that could read cards face down. The poker games that were played in the New York area, they were backed by at least four of the five so-called five families, the Bonano, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese, Italian crime families. Now, as for the reverberating effects from all of this, Morningwire was able to speak to David Cohn, co-host of Crane and company. He really emphasized how this could further put a spotlight on legalized gambling. Legalized gambling has been a hot-button issue for many across the country over the last few years,

and that contention will certainly be exacerbated when you're talking about gambling schemes at the highest levels of sports, such as the NBA. And no doubt there will be more fallout in the days to come. Again, Cash Patel did say that this is an ongoing investigation. Yeah, it won't be surprised if this is. ends up being even more widespread than they've already uncovered. Meanwhile, a massive scandal for the NBA. It's pretty hard to overstate how big this is. Amanda, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. The U.S. military carried out its ninth strike this week against what it said was a drugboat from a known terrorist entity heading toward the United States. Meanwhile, President Trump

has enacted new sanctions on Russia for the first time since he took the Oval Office. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to talk about the latest moves the president has made on the international stage. Tim, let's first start with these kinetic strikes on drug boats. This time it was in the Pacific. What do we know so far? Right. War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday the 8th and 9th strikes that the U.S. military has carried out against these drug boats. And like you said, these strikes took place in the Pacific Ocean, and that's a first. Here's Daily Wire reporter Jenny Tare with more on that.

Up until now, the strikes have been targeted in the Caribbean, which is a known smuggling corridor for narco-traffickers in Venezuela and Colombia. The Trump administration has taken. carried out strikes in international waters, but that hasn't stopped the leaders of the Latin American countries from criticizing him. The Colombian president Gustavo Petro even called to potentially, quote, get rid of Trump over his campaign of pressure. Trump has accused Petro of playing a role in the drug trade and has pulled U.S. funding to Colombia over the issue. On Thursday, Trump responded to the Colombian president's threats, telling Daily Wire White House correspondent Mary Margaret Ollahan that the Latin American leader is a, quote, thug and bad guy who should

quote, watch it. For now, the strikes will continue. Secretary of War, Pete Hegset says. Now, they're still pushed back to these strikes for moral and legal reasons. But the White House is defending them. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio. If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States. Because it matter if it's in the United States. Well, these are all in international waters. The boat... Do you do a strike in the United States or if we're... Well, that's a different man. You're talking about a law enforcement matter. In this particular case,

they are people traveling on international waters, headed towards the United States with hostilities in mind, which includes flooding our country with dangerous, deadly drugs. And they're going to be stopped. And that's what's happening. So a pretty clear message there from Rubio. Now, President Trump recently levied some pretty harsh sanctions on Russia. What do those sanctions do? And how are they expected to affect Russia? So the Treasury Department announced the first new sanctions on Russia since Trump took office in January. The sanctions target Russian oil giants Rosneft and Luke oil and dozens of their subsidiaries. And it came alongside additional sanctions from the East, as well as sanctions from the UK last week.

This was a welcome move in Washington and across Europe. Here's House Speaker Mike Johnson. You have to compel Russia to engage in the peace process. They've shown they cannot be trusted. There's a big appetite in Congress to have sanctions like this, and I think it's a very important step. NATO Secretary General Mark Rudah said that Trump is the only person who can bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table,

and that these sanctions will help make that happen. Alaska happened when the president decided to put secondary tariffs on India. We saw a phone call last week. That happened when the president started to contemplate yes or no sending Tomahawk missiles into Ukraine. So it means you can change Putin's calculus. More important than the sanctions is the message that they send. It's worth pointing out that in the Treasury's announcement of the sanctions package, it also threatened secondary sanctions on any entity that does business with Rosnaft or Luk oil. That threat will probably have a bigger impact than the sanctions themselves on Russia's bottom line.

Now, pivoting a little bit to domestic news, President Trump was going to send the National Guard to San Francisco, but he's since reversed on that. Why did he make that reversal? Well, Trump said he was talked out of it, essentially. He said in a post on true social that friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with a surge in that the mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress.

He said he also spoke to Lurie, who is a moderate Democrat who took office in January, and decided to give him a chance to turn the first. city around, which means Trump could change his mind in the future if he doesn't like what he sees in San Francisco. Well, hopefully new leadership can make a difference there. Tim, thanks for joining. Good to be on.

The frontrunner in New York's mayoral debate, Zoran Mamdani, faced a barrage of criticism in the final televised debate on Wednesday. The question now, did his performance manage to shake his lead or reinforced doubts about his readiness for the job? Here to break it all down is Daily Wire Culture reporter Megan Basham. Hey, Megan. So obviously, New York's last mayoral debate was highly contentious. Plenty of viral moments are coming out of it. I think the big question is, what's the fallout for Mom Dani? Does this impact him? Yeah, John, you know, the atmosphere was very much charged here. And I would say that that wasn't just because of some of the policies that were on the table, but also because Andrew Cuomo really kept up the pressure on Zoran Mamdani. He obviously had good reasons for that. Mom Dani is far and away the leader in the polls. But we are also seeing some polls that if Curtis

Sliwa were to shock the world and drop out, that they would actually be neck and neck. A lot of media analysts and politicos were saying that Mom Dani looked uncomfortable, that he looked nervous. Just to give you my own particular analysis of what I saw, I thought he looked very rushed. At moments, it almost looked like he was a video that you were watching at double speed, like just speaking very, very quickly. Then some of what these outlets have said, like the New York Post, they wrote that he broke a sweat, that he failed to give specifics, and that his rivals repeatedly pinned him into corners.

That said, you did have some left-leaning outlets like Politico saying that they felt that Mamdani won this debate. And then he had the New York Times saying that even though Cuomo did score some points here, they don't feel like it's going to be enough to change the trajectory of this race right now. But I do want to note that a lot of viral clips from this debate have received brutal responses, and they're circulating prominently on social media, painting MomDani as an unprepared left-wing extremist. And I would say one of the most damaging that's circulating out there came when Cuomo directly confronted Mom Dani on his inexperience. You have never had a job. You've never accomplished anything.

There's no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million. You don't know how to run a government. You don't know how to handle an emergency. And you've literally never proposed a bill on anything that you're not talking about in your campaign. You had the worst attendance record in the assembly. And you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America. You went from $110,000 to $140,000. And then you never showed up for work and you missed 80% of the votes.

Shame on you. Cuomo also pinned Mom Donnie down on his rent freeze policy. basically painting it as blather. Zoron is a great actor. He missed his calling. Freeze the rent. Sounds great. Yeah, it affects about 25% of the number of housing units in the city of New York.

It's not a new idea. Bill de Blasio did it. It turned out to be a debacle. And then there were other times that Mom Dani really didn't help himself. Like when he described his policy plans for 911, basically he said that dispatchers will first have to decide whether it's appropriate to send police or maybe they should send mental health care providers instead. Yet what we have in our city is asking those same police officers who are being asked to respond to shootings,

respond to murders, to also respond to these calls. I trust the dispatchers would be receiving these calls to make the determination as to whether there was any indication of violence. If there is no indication of a threat of violence, then we would set the mental health experts and providers to respond to those same incidents. Of course, the problem is you can't always predict when violence might occur. So this policy proposal raising a lot of eyebrows. It's not hard to see why that is. So has this debate taken any of the error out of Mondani's lead? I would say it's a little too soon to tell when we're looking at polls.

His team maybe seems a little bit nervous. And at the same time, we're seeing reports out there that Chinese-owned TikTok is deliberately pulling out stops for Momdani, that they're boosting clips that paint him in a favorable light, and that Andrew. Cuomo clips are getting de-emphasized. The New York Post is one of those outlets that's saying that this is part of TikTok's algorithmic thumb on the scale. So, you know, that might be something to read into. Well, if Mom Donnie does hold on to this lead, it will certainly mean an even further left turn for New York. There's no doubt about that. Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thanks for waking up with us. And for those listening to the show, you can now watch us on Daily Daily Wire Plus and Spotify. We'll be back this evening with more news you need to know. Thank you.