Morning Wire - Tyre Nichols Protests & Political Weaponization Investigations | 1.30.23

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Protests erupt nationwide after Memphis police release body-cam footage of beating of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols, GOP house officials are launching investigations into the political weaponization of several federal agencies, and an email found on Hunter Biden’s laptop raises new questions in the President’s classified documents scandal. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.  Birch Gold: Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Protests erupted in cities across the country over the weekend after Memphis police released body cam footage showing five police officers brutally beating 29-year-old Tyrene Nichols. We break down the series of events and the reactions to the newly released footage. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howl. It's Monday, January 30th, and this is Morning Wire. Just weeks after taking power in the House, the GOP is launching investigations into the political weaponization of several federal agencies. This is about the First Amendment. It's something you guys used to care about. What is the committee looking for

and what do Democrats have to say about the effort? And new questions are being raised about President Biden's classified document scandal following the discovery of an email on Hunter Biden's now infamous laptop. What was the subject matter? And why is it being called highly suspicious? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire.

Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. The current administration's New Year's goals are to tax, spend, and turn a blind eye to inflation. If that's at odds with your goals, get in touch with the experts at Birch Gold today. Birch Gold makes it easy to convert an IRA or 401k into an IRA and precious metals. Text wire to 989898 to claim your free info kit on gold and talk to one of their precious metal experts. Birch Gold has an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers, and countless five-star reviews. You can trust Birch Gold to help protect your savings.

Text wire to 989898 today. Over the weekend, Memphis Police released body cam footage capturing the fatal beating of Tyree Nichols, a 29-year-old man at the hands of five police officers. The dramatic video led to nationwide demonstrations and murder charges against the officers involved. Here are the latest on what the footage showed and the response to it around the country

is Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips. Cabot, we've been waiting for this footage to come out all week and it has caused quite the stir after being released for good reason. First, give us the details of this case. So the video comes from an incident back on January 7th, when Tyree Nichols, the 29-year-old black man from Memphis, was pulled over by officers, all five of whom were also black, after driving recklessly. Now, the original story coming from police was that after being removed from his vehicle,

Nichols resisted arrest and then reached for their guns and fled on foot after being tased. When they called up to him, police said they handcuffed him after a brief scuffle, and that he soon began complaining of shortness of breath, at which point he was taken to a hospital where he died three days later. But Nichols family says their son was unrecognizable when he arrived at the hospital and had actually died from wounds suffered after being beaten. And the hour of footage released on Friday appears to justify those claims. All right. So this frankly difficult to watch footage, tell us what it revealed. So by now many listeners have probably seen at least some of that footage. And you're right, it is very difficult to watch. You can see Nichols being pulled over and

quickly removed from his car and then pulled to the ground. Though we appear subdued within the first 30 seconds or so, officers can be heard on video threatening to break his arm, then knock him out as they start to scuffle with him. About a minute in, one officer deploys his taser. As Nichols begins to scream, he then breaks free, running down the street away from the police officers. The footage then shows the officers catching up with Nichols and then knocking him to the ground. At this point, multiple officers begin to punch and kick him in the head and stomach. One officer even begins hitting him with the baton. Another officer picks Nichols up and then holds his arms behind his back as other officers begin taking turns, punching him in the head. At this point,

he's finally handcuffed and dragged semi-conscious to a police car and propped up against the door. After the beating stops, officers can be heard on body cam footage, laughing about the incident, bragging to one another about how many, quote, haymakers they landed on him. I'm working on, though. I'm sorry. So, unsurprisingly, the release of this footage has sparked a lot of outrage. What sort of reaction have we seen across the country? So oftentimes in videos like this come out, there tend to be disagreements about whether officers were in the wrong or if force was justified. But throughout the weekend, there was pretty overwhelming bipartisan consensus that the officers in this case were in the wrong and that this looked a lot more like a group beating than a lawful arrest.

Even many of those who pointed out that Nichols did run from police after initially being tased, still seemed to agree that excessive force was ultimately used. Shortly after the footage came out, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, in cities around the country. A lot of people were really bracing for violence this weekend. What did those protests actually look like? So it depends on the city. In New York City, for example,

thousands of people gathered in Times Square. Ultimately, three people were arrested on charges varying from assault on the police officer to damaging police cars. In Memphis, hundreds of protesters shut down a highway and hundreds of others gathered in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. But it's worth noting, unlike the riots of 2020 following the death of George Floyd, these demonstrations were actually overwhelmingly peaceful. Part of that could be attributed to Nichols' mother, Rovon, who had this message for demonstrators at a vigil on Thursday night.

I want each and every one of you to protest in peace. I don't want us burning up our cities, tearing up the streets, because that's not what my son stood for. And it's also worth pointing out that the story is different from other recent cases like George Floyd and Eric Garner, and that not only was the victim black, but as we mentioned earlier, all five officers involved were also black. So many leaders said Nichols' death was more the result of poor training and overly aggressive officers than racism. However, there were still those who attempted to argue that the incident was ultimately the result of white supremacy. For example, CNN ran a headline that read, quote, The police who killed Tyree Nichols were black, but they might still have been driven by racism.

And President Biden called it, quote, yet another painful reminder of the profound fear and trauma, the pain and the exhaustion that black and brown Americans experience every single day. All right, so a version of the systemic racism argument there. Yeah. What sort of response have we seen from the Memphis Police Department? The five officers involved in the beating were fired last week after the department's investigation into the death concluded. They now each face second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping,

and official misconduct charges. The department also announced on Saturday that they would be disbanding the city's so-called Squirpian unit, which all five officers were a part of. Started in 2021, that unit embedded groups of police in the city's highest crime areas. Officers usually drove unmarked vehicles and made hundreds of arrests. So some moves there from the department to attempt to de-escalate the situation. Exactly. And meanwhile, there are reports that the department's been struggling for years

to hire enough officers to effectively police the city. So another angle to keep an eye on there. And so a tough situation made even tougher with this tragic case. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Anytime. That was Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips. Now fully in control of the house, the GOP is launching a series of intensive investigations, chief among these efforts is the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government,

a wide-ranging inquiry into alleged abuses of Americans' First Amendment rights. Here to break down the subcommittee's aims is Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce. So, Tim, what's the goal of this new committee? Well, the Republicans behind it say they want it to be like the Senate's Church Committee of the 1970s. Back then, Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho led an extensive probe of U.S. intelligence agencies and the IRS, and it uncovered decades of malfeasance by U.S. officials. As for targets, the U.S. intelligence community seems to be in the crosshairs, as well as the executive branch department such as Homeland Security and the Justice Department.

Now, what specific issues will the subcommittee be looking into? Essentially, they're trying to determine if there's a systemic political bias in these federal agencies. FBI election interference will be a major theme. For example, the Mueller investigation into what we know now were false allegations against Trump's campaign. They'll also look at the FBI's meetings with big tech companies ahead of the 2020 election, as well as the Bureau's raid on former President Donald Trump back in August. The committee will also look at the White House and Justice Department's connection with the National School Board's Association. Here's Ohio Congressman and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan describing the effort earlier this month.

A ploy. It's not a ploy when the Department of Justice treats parents as terrorists, moms and dads who are simply showing up at a school board meeting to advocate for their son or daughter. It's not a ploy when the FBI pays Twitter $3 million. Not one, not two, $3 million to censor American citizens. It's not a ploy when the Department of Homeland Security tries to set up a disinformation governance board because we all know that the Department of Homeland Security can tell what's good speech and what is bad speech. Dozens of whistleblowers have come talk to Republican staff on the judiciary committee

don't think this is a ploy. And Jordan has already begun requesting interviews with witnesses. These targets include one current and one former FBI employee, a couple people associated with the National School Board Association, and Nina Jankowitz, the former head of the now disbanded DHS Disinformation Governance Board. Now, what are Democrats saying about this committee? Well, one big difference between this select committee and the church committee is that the two major parties won't be working together on this one. Democratic lawmakers have collectively lampoon the select committee in the press.

They've accused Republicans of doing it for politics or to amplify conspiracy theories about the federal government. New York Congressman Jerry Nadler is the top Democrat opposite Jordan on the Judiciary Committee. Here's what Nadler had to say earlier this month. It aims to undermine the safeguards of our democracy and to embolden MAGA extremists who would rather see our institutions fail than to see Democrats and President Biden succeed. Make no mistake, the destroyed democracy subcommittee will enable the House Republicans to interfere with the free operation of businesses they do not like, to inhibit. the fight against domestic terrorism and to settle political scores on behalf of Donald Trump.

Well, we have reported before. There is a lot of growing concern about this. We'll see what comes out of the investigation. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. That was Daily Wires, Tim Pierce. Joe Biden's classified document scandal is raising new questions about the kind of access his son, Hunter, may have had to America's secrets. The New York Post Miranda Devine reports that Senator Ron Johnson says a 2014 email found on Hunter Biden's laptop looks as if it could have been generated from classified materials. Here to discuss his columnist David Marcus. Hey Dave. So what is the basis of the allegation here? So this is an email from Hunter Biden to his business partner, Devin Archer, and it contains very detailed information about Ukraine, a 22-point memo that Hunter said he

created after doing research. This was at a time when Biden and Archer were courting Burisma for very lucrative contracts, and when then Vice President Joe Biden was taking over the Ukraine portfolio. Johnson wants to know if any of the documents found in Joe Biden's possession pertain to the information in the 1,300 word email between the partners. If there is a connection, that would certainly pour gasoline on this scandal. Yeah, definitely would. Now, this is also around the time when Joe Biden admits he pressured Ukraine to fire prosecutor Victor Schokin by threatening to withhold aid. Is that also connected to these suspicions surrounding the email from Hunter? That's a huge question. And I reached out to Miranda Devine, who told me that, and I'm quoting

here, whatever it was that Hunter was offering, Joe was desperate enough for it not to come out, that he forced Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's former president, to get rid of prosecutor Victor Shokin, who at the time had issued a warrant to seize Burisma owner, Mikola Zlochewski's, in Kiev, and said in an interview later that he had been planning to subpoena Hunter and Devin. Biden could not let that happen because it would come back to him, classified documents and whatever else, end quote. So, yeah, there's a lot of threads that intertwined here, and none of them look good. Do we know if Hunter Biden would have had access to the classified material found in Biden's home in Wilmington? And if so, do we know anything about what these

documents are? I mean, we have a photo of them in a Corvette that was kept in the garage where where some of these documents were found. Clearly, these are things that he could have been shown or just stumbled on while cleaning the garage or something. These new revelations come in the wake of Mike Pence, also finding a dozen classified documents in his home. Is this taking some of the heat off the White House? Yeah, absolutely.

However, there are some key differences. First and foremost, with Biden, we see a pattern of behavior stretching back over a decade, with material found in five separate locations. Also, some of Biden's documents were from when he was a senator. And unlike a president or vice president, there's really no occasion when a senator should have classified material in his home. Senators like Ted Cruz have expressed shock that it was even possible for Biden to get these documents out of the basement of the Capitol. It's also worth noting that this week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen turned down a request from House Republicans to obtain financial documents related to Hunter.

So there are still enormous looming questions about this scandal. Indeed. Dave, thanks for joining us. That was Daily Wire contributor, David Marcus. Another story we're tracking this week. U.S. lawmakers still have questions after Pfizer issued a response to a now viral video released last week that questioned certain aspects of the company's research process. In the undercover video released by Project Veritas, a man claiming to work for the company claims it is considering engaging in, quote, directed evolution research

as a way of getting ahead of the virus with their vaccine development. Pfizer later released a statement denying that they are engaged in gain of function or directed evolution research. But Senator Mike Lee of Utah wants more details from Pfizer. So we can either have them come in and speak to any of the committees I serve on or any of the other Senate committees. Or if they'd like, they can issue a more public statement. They can come and brief all of us.

I'll take their answers in whatever form. They want to submit them. But they need to be answers. And they need to be simple and accurate. Well, 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.