Morning Wire - Trump Charged with Attempt to Overturn 2020 Election | 8.2.23

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

A federal grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump for his alleged efforts to overturn the election, Democrats downplay Devon Archer testimony, and more than 100 colleges continue Covid vaccine mandates. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Birch Gold: Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit. Genucel: Extra 10% Off Most Popular Package featuring the Dark Spot Corrector – New Customers Only  + FREE SHIPPING https://genucel.com/WIRE   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Don't miss the Devil Wears Prada 2 in theaters. Merrill Street, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci are back. In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. I did not hire you, and all I need to do is bide my time until you've failed. On May 1st, I'm going to make something of this job. Rain. Be the bridges I burn. Night my way. Forever.

I just love my job. Get tickets now, the Devil Wears Prada 2 in theaters May 1st, directed by David Frankel. Conspiring to defraud the United States. States conspiring to disenfranchised voters and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. A federal grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump for his alleged efforts to overturn the election. What are the new charges? And why are some calling this Trump's most perilous case yet? I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, August 2nd, and this is Morning Wire. Allegations of Biden family corruption have ratcheted up after

explosive testimony by Devin Archer. There's a lot of smoke, and whether there's smoke, there's fire. We just heard testimony today that Joe Biden had lied to the American people. We discussed the two parties dueling takes on the testimony and its bombshell claims. And as millions of students gear up for the fall semester, over 100 colleges and universities still require COVID-19 vaccination. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

Former President Donald Trump is under his third. Third indictment in just four months, this time from a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. The grand jury voted on Tuesday to charge the former president with crimes related to the 2020 election and January 6th. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to break down the indictment for us. Hi, Tim. First, what exactly is Trump being charged with here? So as Georgia said, this is related to January 6th and Trump's handling of the 2020 election. I should note off the top that Trump is not charged with seditious conspiracy.

or insurrection, which could have theoretically prevented Trump from running for president. The indictment accuses Trump of three conspiracy charges and one obstruction charge, all connected to what the indictment says is Trump's attempt to illegally overturn the results of the election. On the conspiracy counts, he's charged with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. through corrupt means, conspiracy to interfere with Congress on January 6th, and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one's vote counted. The obstruction charge covers actions Trump took between November 3rd and January 6th to allegedly interfere in the election, and that culminated in the riot at the Capitol.

At least six co-conspirators are referenced in the indictment, and it covers specific actions Trump and his team took across five battleground states, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Smith says that ultimately Trump made knowingly false claims about the election and try to, quote, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and erode the public faith in the administration of the election. Here's special counsel Jack Smith announcing the new charges from Washington, D.C. yesterday. The attack on our nation's capital on January 6th, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.

It's described in the indictment it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government, the nation's process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election. The knowingly false claim is key here. because, as even the indictment says, Trump is free to make all kinds of false claims about the election if he believes them. Here's George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley's assessment of the indictment.

I am really quite astonished by much of this indictment so far. It states the president spent months spreading false rumors and allegations of election irregularities. Really, is that a criminal issue? I mean, is that the basis of this conspiracy? It seems to me rather loose at the joints. All right, so the central claim here is that Trump and his allies took action to overturn the results based on what they supposedly knew were lies about the election being stolen. How does Smith back up that claim?

The indictment repeatedly claims that Trump and his co-conspirators either were told directly by sources that their election fraud claims were false or that they simply didn't have the hard evidence of it before taking action. For example, the indictment notes that even after Michigan officials informed Trump's team that he had officially lost the vote due to insufficient turnout for him, they continued to press for a new slate of electors. Now, Trump has responded, and forcefully so. What did he say? Well, he blasted away.

He accused the administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 presidential election. The statement reads, The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union and other authoritarian dictatorial regimes. So this case was brought in D.C., which is not exactly. friendly ground for President Trump in January 6-connected defendants. What do we need to know about the judge assigned to this case? Yeah, so the case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkin, an Obama appointee who has served on the D.C. District Court since 2014. She's been involved in

J-6 cases before. She's previously denied Trump's plea to withhold records from the House January 6th committee. She also has a reputation as the harshest judge on J-6 defendants, often sentencing them to longer or more severe sentences than the prosecution was seeking. Trump has been ordered to appear in court Thursday at 4 p.m. Well, lots more to impact on this indictment in the days to come. Tim, thanks for reporting. My pleasure. Coming up, the fallout continues from Devin Archer's testimony. On Monday, Hunter Biden's former business associate, Devin Archer, testified before Congress in a closed hearing, which some committee members say was full of bombshell revelations. These included the fact that Joe Biden had spoken on the phone with associates of Hunter on at least 20.

20 occasions and that Ukrainian gas company Burisma pressured Hunter to help get a prosecutor in that country fired. Here to discuss the continuing fallout from the testimony as Daily Wire contributor David Marcus. Hey, Dave, so that testimony has created quite a stir on Capitol Hill. Where do things stand now? Morning. On Tuesday, Republicans were doing something of a victory lap after the explosive testimony and really highlighting how far the goalposts have moved in regard to Joe Biden's claims about his son's business dealings from He never discussed his business at all to, yes, he talked directly to Hunter's business partners, but it was just pleasantries.

But what got almost as much attention and was something of a surprise on Monday was the degree of detail Archer gave about Burisma, basically confirming, according to reports, that the Ukrainian gas company told Hunter to exert pressure on, quote, D.C. to get a prosecutor fired, then lo and behold, not only did Joe Biden get him fired, he bragged about it on video. I look, I said, I'm leaving six hours. If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money. Oh, son of a bit, you're not fired. On Monday night, as reported in Daily Wire, New York representative Dan Goldman exploded

in a news interview insisting that the investigation needs to be shut down because it's badgering a private citizen with no legitimate legislative purpose. That is very close language. He's not saying everything was above board. The argument is that. that this is none of Congress's business, which obviously is not going to convince Republicans to let up. Right. The point, after all, is that this is not just about a private citizen, but also the former vice president and current sitting president.

And there are reports that even more associates of Hunter could be forthcoming. So we're just getting started here. Golden also floated the theory that Hunter and Joe were in such constant contact because they were mourning the passing of Joe's son, Bo Biden, which that seems to be a new wrinkle. Yeah. Now, Dan Goldman isn't new to the Burisma story, having been the lead majority council on Trump's first impeachment, which we will all recall centered around a phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky about Burisma. Is that part of why Goldman's running point on this for Democrats? It's certainly plausible that Goldman is in this highly visible role because he has a lot of knowledge about the case. But he has some skin in this game, too. He was essentially the head prosecutor alleging that Trump had no plausible reason to ask Zelensky to look into the firing of the prosecutor, Victor Schokin. And that's just not a tenable position anymore. If, as Archer claims, Hunter was selling even the illusion, as Democrats put it, of influence, that's a legitimate target of investigation.

So in a very real sense, Goldman is indeed an interested party in all of this. What has the media reaction been to this news? Are we seeing the same disparate coverage of the story, depending on the outlet's political leanings that we've seen with Hunter Biden material? Yes, and that's really no surprise at this point. Media Research Center, which tracks such things, noted that between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Monday, CNN and MSNBC mentioned Archer 48 times, while mentioning Donald Trump a somewhat astounding 759 times.

Many in the left-leaning mainstream media buy into Goldman's basic claim that Hunter's a private citizen, and this is just not a big news story. But House Republicans really are moving the ball here. And the story is getting closer and closer to Joe Biden in ways Democrats denied even six months ago. So there's a point where they're going to have to cover it more comprehensively. Yeah. Finally, are we looking to see action now from Speaker Kevin McCart? in the wake of Orchers' Revelations.

Here's how law professor Jonathan Turley put it. He doesn't want to do what the Democrats did and do a snap impeachment, not hold any hearings, just go straight for the juggler. He doesn't want to do that, and I credit him for that. They clearly have a basis for an inquiry. Bribery is the second-named crime in the impeachment clause. This feels about right for McCarthy, who since his brutal battle to obtain the speakership,

has gotten pretty high marks in the job and has very strong approval. numbers. So yes, an impeachment inquiry looks increasingly likely, but it won't be rushed into. All right. So here we are facing potentially a third presidential impeachment in just four years. Dave, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. As students approach a new academic year, more than 100 colleges and universities will still enforce COVID vaccine mandates. Here to discuss the state of COVID mandates on college campuses is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presto-Giacomo. So Amanda, Amanda, at this point, every state the union has ended their COVID public health emergency, yet dozens of colleges are still enforcing

these vaccine mandates. Tell us about this latest report. Hey, Georgia. A report from a group called no college mandates listed 104 different colleges and universities that are still requiring students and sometimes staff and faculty to show proof of their COVID vaccination before attending or working at the school. Some of the schools on the list also require follow-up COVID booster shots. And where specifically are we seeing these mandates? Well, it might not be surprising to people that of all the schools evaluated, the state with the most mandates was California. New York and Pennsylvania had a lot of schools on the list as well. But it's not just schools from the coasts.

I won't list all 104 schools, but some of them include Shaw University, that's in North Carolina, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins, Rutgers University, DePaul University, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Pittsburgh. in San Diego State University. Overall, the list disproportionately includes elite private schools and few public universities, with the exception being several Cal State schools. Now, given what we now know about COVID as well as the limitations of the vaccine, what's the argument that schools are making for requiring the shot for young people? Generally, these schools cite community health. Harvard cited the need to protect our community.

Rutgers cited the commitment to health and safety for all members of its own community, and DePaul similarly cited the health of our population. But as we've reported before, the vaccine itself is not risk-free. Young men in particular face an elevated risk of heart inflammation after getting the COVID vaccine. Dr. Marty McCarrie, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and an oncology surgeon at the school's affiliated hospital, has highlighted a study from Cedar Sinai that found a 30% increase in heart attack deaths among adults between the ages of 25 and 44 during the first two years of the COVID pandemic. One theory is that that uptick could be the result of the virus itself,

but McCarrie, speaking to morning wire in February, said there's evidence that the vaccine itself could be to blame. The state of Florida did their own study looking at heart attacks after the vaccine in particular and found that there was an 81% increase in sudden death from heart attacks in the months following the vaccine compared to baseline rates. So many people do believe that the vaccine is one of the causes of heart problems in young people. Now, with all that in mind, our school is going to be more flexible with things like medical and religious exemptions now than they were, say, last year or the year before?

Well, some schools permit medical and religious exemptions to the mandate. Yes, and possibly more will expand that option this school year. But that's not really a guarantee. A young woman named Diamond Ellie Poentes, for example, she was expelled from Union College and U.S. April of last year after the college rejected her request for a medical exemption for the COVID booster shot. In her case, Poentes became ill after taking the second dose of the Pfizer COVID vaccine and was advised against the booster shot by her doctor. The 21-year-old is now suing Union College over her treatment and expulsion. Yeah, I think there's still going to be a lot of fallout from that

chapter. Amanda, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know. Thank you.