Morning Wire - Trump Intimidation Allegations & Youth Riots Rising | 8.7.23

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Federal prosecutors seek to clamp down on what Donald Trump can say in public, a riot involving thousands of young people in New York City leads to injured officers and charges of incitement against a social media influencer, and a disturbing lab with ties to China is discovered in California. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.  NetSuite: Take advantage of no payments and no interest for six months at Http://www.NetSuite.com/MORNINGWIRE  Nugenix: Get a complimentary bottle of Nugenix Total T when you text ‘WIRE’ to 231-231. Black Rifle Coffee: Get 10% off your first order or Coffee Club subscription with code WIRE: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ 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 fail. 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. Federal prosecutors seek to clamp down on what Donald Trump can say in public, while the former president slams the DOJ for election interference. It is an outrageous criminalization of political speech. What moves are both sides making and what comes next in the explosive case?

I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Monday, August 7th, and this is Morning Wire. A riot involving thousands of young people in New York City leads to injured officers dozens of arrests and charges of incitement against a social media influencer. And genetically engineered mice and a number of infectious disease samples were found in an illegally operated lab in California. Who's funding the lab and how is it discovered? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. As the political fallout from Donald Trump's third indictment continues, prosecutors have accused

the former president of attempting to intimidate potential witnesses in the case against him. Here with more is Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips. So Cabot will get to the latest legal developments in the case against Trump. But first, walk us through the political fallout since Thursday's arraignment. Well, as you can imagine, Trump has used the indictment as a chance to try and rally the GOP base around him, saying it's further proof that President Biden has weaponized the DOJ against Republicans. Trump has long argued that the case is an attempt to keep him from running for office, let alone become president again.

and there does seem to be a large portion of the electorate who agrees with him. A CBS poll released this weekend after the indictment shows that 59% of Americans believe the case is an attempt to stop his campaign. 86% of Republicans believe so, while even 31% of Democrats say the same. Here he is speaking at his first rally since the arraignment in South Carolina. They do this to try and win an election. Nobody ever thought it was possible. It's done in third world countries. It's not done in this country.

and those indictments aren't worth the paper they're written on. Now, for their part, Trump's opponents have taken one of two approaches. Those running in the more anti-Trump lane, like Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and Issa Hutchinson, have all said the indictment is more proof that he's not fit for office. But a number of frontrunners, including Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, and Vivek Ramoswamy, have gone the other way, calling out the DOJ for what they view as bias against Republicans. DeSantis, for example, said of the indictment, quote, D.C. is a swamp, and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective

of the swamp mentality. While Ramoswami renewed his promise to pardon Trump, and even went so far as suing the DOJ to prove the, quote, Deep State was out to get the former president. Now, Trump made waves over the weekend for a certain social media post. Could that affect the case against him? Yeah, so on Friday, Trump posted in all caps on his truth social app, quote, if you go after me, I'm coming after you.

Now, Trump was not placed under a gag order during his arraignment last week, meaning that he is still allowed to discuss the case publicly, but he did swear to a judge that he would not make any effort to influence or obstruct the trial or retaliate against witnesses. While that post does not specifically mention the case or any witnesses, prosecutors say that it's a clear attempt to intimidate those who might be called to testify against him. To that point, prosecutors filed a motion Friday evening notifying the court of Trump's post and calling on the judge to issue strict rules for how his team may handle evidence presented to them during the discovery phase. Remember, as part of the trial, Trump's legal team will get to see the evidence the government has

against him. The prosecution says his social media posts, though, raise questions about whether he'll improperly discuss that evidence outside of the courtroom. The Trump team has until 5 p.m. this evening to file a response with the court. They're likely to argue that he was not trying to intimidate anyone or influenced the case and was simply expressing his First Amendment right to speech. Now, there was another wrinkle in the case involving Trump's campaign team, potentially having to testify against him. What do we know about that? So at Trump's arraignment, a federal judge ordered him not to discuss the case with any of the witnesses named in the indictment. But the problem for Trump is that many of those witnesses are still key campaign advisors and

confidants who he presumably needs to speak with regarding strategy on how to handle the charges from a political perspective. There's also the fact that those very advisors could likely end up being called to testify against him in court, which sets up a whole new set of problems for the former president. Trump's team says the court, including his advisors as witnesses, is part of a broader effort from the DOJ to hamper his campaign. According to his campaign spokesman Stephen Chung, quote, Joe Biden knows he's losing to President Trump and is now using his weaponized Department of Justice to attack his campaign team in order to interfere in the election. So what comes next? Well, Trump's attorneys will next meet with prosecutors before the court on

August 28 to begin ironing out specifics on when the trial will take place. And it is possible that they'll also discuss the former president's recent social media posts. And there is a chance the judge could impose further restrictions on what Trump is allowed to say about the case publicly. We'll just have to wait and see. All right. Well, Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. Mayhem erupted in New York City on Friday when thousands of mostly young teens descended upon Union Square for a Twitch streamer's PlayStation giveaway event. The chaos follows a troubling trend of youth violence in Chicago that flared up again last week.

Here to discuss what took place in the two cities and the fallout as Daily Wire reporter Amanda Pressa Jacamo. Hey Amanda. So let's get into this incident in New York City with this Twitch streamer, the 21-year-old Kai Sinat. Tell us about what happened there. Sure. So Sanat, who's very popular on social media with about 15 million followers, he advertised a PlayStation 5 giveaway in Union Square at 4 p.m. on Friday. By 3 o'clock, the park was packed with young people. And in total, there ended up being thousands of mostly young teenagers gathered, apparently trying to take home these freebies. Things became unruly fast. Teens were climbing on top of cars that were stuck in traffic. They were banging on vehicles, throwing rocks and bottles and other materials, and stores were

vandalized and looted. Footage also shows fights breaking out, and in one infamous moment, a young male is dancing on top of a damaged vehicle while a crowd of young people cheer him on and kicking the windows. Here's video from Sonat, which appears to have been taken during this chaos. Everybody for themselves. There's a war out there, man. Welcome to New York, bro. I'm just telling you, it's a lot of y'all out there right now. Everybody who's out there makes y'all safe.

Dozens of officers working the scene were able to quell the chaos by about 6 p.m. But I'll note that Union Square was trashed and completely full of litter. Authorities arrested at least 66 people, about 30 of whom were minors. All right, so dozens of arrests, a lot of them teens. Now, what's going on with Sanat? Police issued him a desk appearance ticket on Friday requiring him to appear in court on August 18th. He's facing charges of first-degree rioting, which is a felony, inciting a riot and promoting an unlawful gathering. I'll note that New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said that he suspects there were outside agitators who attempted to aggravate the situation.

And as we've noted, New York is not the only city that's dealing with this. Chicago has also seen a slew of violence and theft from mobs of young people. when a reporter recently referred to the trend by using the term mob, the mayor actually made the story about language, correct? Yeah, that's right. And just to back up a little, footage from last weekend shows dozens of minors looting a local convenience store and destroying property in the city, and that culminated in the arrest of nearly 40 youths,

including a 12-year-old. And as you referenced, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson became visibly upset when a reporter referred to these, quote, mobs. Here's audio of Johnson's reaction. It's important that we speak of these dynamics in an appropriate way. This is not to obfuscate what is actually taking place, but we have to be very careful when we use language to describe certain behavior.

I mean, to refer to children as like baby Al Capone's is not appropriate. Johnson took some heat for his remarks with critics arguing that language policing should be low on the priority list, given that Chicago residents continue to deal with such high levels of crime. 74 people were shot during the Father's Day weekend, for example, 33 over Independence Day weekend and over Memorial Day weekend, which was really the mayor's first big test. 57 people were shot and 11 were killed. And one of those victims was just two years old. It was the worst death toll since 2015.

Yeah, well, sadly, many have become numb to the weekly death toll from Chicago. Let's hope this new mayor takes a relaxation. Amanda, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. Authorities have discovered a secret bio lab in a warehouse in central California. The lab was owned by a Chinese company and was operating illegally on U.S. soil. Joining us with the details is Daily Wire Researcher Michael Whitaker. So, Michael, what do we know about this lab?

Hey, Georgia. The lab was discovered earlier this year in Reedley, California, a small city about 22 miles outside of Fresno, in a warehouse operated by a Chinese company called Prestige Biotech. The lab was reportedly set up in October, but was not registered, and the company did not have a permit to operate in California. Local authorities fought the facility was vacant until the routine building coat inspection revealed otherwise late last year. Believe it or not, it was an illegally attached garden hose of all things that gave them away. Once investigators got inside, however, the equipment

they found was far more incriminating. What did they find? Well, about 30 refrigerators and freezers, some of which were broken, with thousands of vials of human blood, other unidentified tissues, around 800 chemicals and more than 20 contagious diseases. Those included STDs like HIV, chlamydia and herpes, and malaria, which kills about half a million people every year, mostly children. And of course, they found samples of the infamous COVID-19. Investigators also found about 1,000 genetically engineered mice, and it appears that they were specifically designed to catch and incubate COVID. The mice are reportedly being kept in unsanitary and inhumane conditions. About 200 of them were already dead when the authorities found

them, and the rest had to be euphonized. Local and federal authorities from 14 different agencies, including the CDC, the FBI, and state and local departments of public health, spent 76 days investigating, containing, and cleaning up the site. As of now, authorities believe that the situation is under control, and there is no active threat to public health. But people are still concerned for obvious reasons. Right, of course they are. So this is a completely fly-by-night operation in California.

How did they link it to the CCP? Officially they haven't. The link is only suspected. But we do know that the lease was associated with a Chinese company, and they have admitted to operating the lab. It's not totally clear what they were doing at the lab. The president of the company told local officials that the samples and equipment were taken from a now bankrupt Chinese company

called Universal Meditech Incorporated and that the warehouse was meant to be a testing facility. There is some evidence to support that. In March, investigators found COVID tests in the lab that appear to have been made on site. But authorities have also said that the president has been uncooperative and is withholding information from them. This revelation came at a very inconvenient time for the Chinese government.

After years of debate, several U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the COVID pandemic was probably caused by a lab leak in Wuhan, China. Leaked messages from the offers of a landmark study on the origins of the COVID pandemic found that leading scientists privately fought the lab leak hypothesis was plausible, but publicly denied it for political reasons. Some observers have speculated that the lab may have been used to develop bio-weapons which could be rapidly deployed against the United States. Here's what foreign policy expert Gordon Chang told News Nation. If there's a war in Asia, the first shot will be weeks or months before when China is spreading pathogens around the United States to weaken our ability to respond to what happens in Asia. Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy has weighed in on the California lab, and he expressed concern about how it was allowed to be in operation. My concern is to get to the bottom of what happened here, but also look as where is this happening other parts of this country as well? Remember, last year we found out that China was illegally operating more than 100 secret police stations overseas, including at least four in the U.S., so they do have a history of setting up illicit facilities in other countries.

Well, and the fact that authorities just stumbled upon this makes you wonder how many operations like this there are in the U.S. Michael, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.