Morning Wire - Violent Threats Against Loudoun Parents | 5.13.23

Episode Date: May 13, 2023

Loudoun County activists create secret group that threatened conservative parents, conservative party gets overwhelming victory in Chile, and Saint Louis circuit attorney resigns. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Ramp: Now get $250 off when you join Ramp. Go to http://www.ramp.com/WIRE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Loudoun County schools are in the news again. This time, for shocking messages posted to a private parents' Facebook group where members schemed about doxing political rivals. I would say to all of them, you need to come out today, find a microphone, and ensure that everybody knows that you disavow this kind of activity. We have an exclusive report. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's May 13th, and then.

This is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. In a landmark election, voters in Chile overwhelmingly rejected a new left-wing rewrite of the country's constitution. What caused the dramatic conservative shift in voting? And controversial St. Louis circuit attorney Kim Gardner announced that she's stepping down after calls for her resignation in efforts to remove her.

Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Two summers ago, Loudoun County, Virginia made national headlines for a series of controversies in the local public schools, including the rape of a freshman girl by a boy who wore a skirt and used the girl's restroom. Many viewed Loudoun as emblematic of the culture wars playing out across the country. Now Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roziak has uncovered a disturbing new wrinkle to the Loudoun County story. Hey, Luke, thanks for coming on. So what did you find?

Hey, Georgia. So I found that activists with close ties to local politicians were coordinating in a secret face Facebook chat called the Loudoun Love Warriors to, quote, disassemble the lives of conservative neighbors. Now, who exactly were they targeting and which politicians were they coordinating with? The Love Warriors were trying to protect local leaders in Loudoun from facing consequences for the rape cover-up, including Commonwealth Attorney Buda Bibirai and multiple progressive members at Loudoun County School Board. Their strategy was to docks and get fired anyone who posed a threat to those leaders. Quotes from their chat include, somebody going to get hurt on their side. and I hope I get to do it.

I'm so ready to show up with guns, L.O.L. And if he had said that, expletive, about black kids or autistic kids, I would shoot him. One member posted a picture of himself with a gun and the caption, quote, All this love is waiting for you. A group member also made a handwritten list of 115 Loudoun residents they called bigots,

mostly private citizens, and described them with individual labels such as pedophile, psychopath, and antichrist. They said they wanted to curb, Kemp, Alicia Brand, a sexual assault survivor who had advocated for the ninth grade rape victim. Here's what Alicia told us. I was terrified when I saw what the Loud and Love Warriors had threatened me with. Kermb stomping is such a violent act.

I can't imagine hating people so much that you would resort to threatening violence. Now, who was in charge of the Love Warriors group? A lead participant was a campaign staffer for Bibrii named Andrew Pihonak. Pohonac is a gay man who spent weeks trying to destroy the life of a 65-year-old man whose wife was dying of cancer after claiming the man told the school board that gay children should be killed. The man had quoted Matthew 18, saying, If a man or a woman causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for a millstone to be put around the neck and thrown into the lake.

Reviewing comments from the group, it seems like the group, had really worked itself into our frenzy believing that conservative neighbors wanted them dead, and in the words of one group member, reciprocation is our only move. Commenters in the group suggested that Bibberi's soft on crime policies could work in their benefit. Quote, I don't even think you go to jail the first time, just fine in community service. So worth it. One member said of assaulting a dad named Scott Maneo, a parent who has sued the school district for racial discrimination against white students. Maneo eventually lost his job after the group members repeatedly wrote to his

employer calling him a white supremacist. WJLA 7 News spoke to one of the members of that Facebook group, Heather Gottlieb, who sent some of those emails. Here's her defending her actions. We are standing up for those in our community that are disenfranchised, those in our community that are bullied, students, teachers. I mean, we've been doing this for a couple years. So no one in this group actually committed physical violence, though, but there was a lot of doxing in efforts to get people fired, it sounds like. That's right. The group was pretty fixated

on keeping the school board members in place. A school board employee named Kristen Gorsick, the aide to school board chairman Ian Sorokkin, was a group member and pointed out the stakes. It's going to be extremely difficult for these school board members to hang in, she said, we really need to hold the line. The group even targeted the lawyer

who represented the ninth grade rape victim and then decided to run against Bibri for prosecutor. That lawyer is a lifelong Democrat and former public defender, but they said she was a problem and obsessively researched her. What are officials saying now that this group's been exposed? The Democrat Party chairman put out a statement saying, quote, anyone who makes, condones, or tolerates violent rhetoric of any kind is not welcome in the Loudoun the Loudoun County Democrat Committee. Those involved will be asked to resign. However,

there's no indication that school board chair Ian Surotkin or prosecutor Buda Biberi have fired their staff members who were in the group. Meanwhile, the Loudoun County Sheriff Department announced Wednesday that they're investigating the threats. Virginia lieutenant governor, winsome seers, says elected officials, including Bibri, need to disavow these tactics. When you hear what this group is trying to do, they're trying to destroy lives. They're going to make sure you definitely have loss of employment. You will possibly lose your life.

There's nothing but hate in that group. Well, Luke, thanks for reporting. Thank you, Georgia. That was Daily Wire investigative reporter, Luke Rosiak. This week, right-wing candidates scored an overwhelming victory in Chile in a crucial election to decide who will rewrite the nation's constitution. The stunning results come after years of leftward drift in the South American country. Here with more on the ramifications of the election and what it means for Chile is Daily Wire's Senior Editor Cabot Phillips. Cabot, this was an important election that could impact the entire region.

What can you tell us? So this all dates back to 2019 when Chile was rocked by a series of violent riots and protests with left-furt. wing demonstrators demanding mass, social, and economic reforms. The movement was led in large part by the country's resurgent Communist Party, which essentially called for a political revolution. Facing overwhelming public pressure, the government agreed to hold a vote and begin the process of rewriting the nation's constitution, which had been in place since 1980. As part of that process, voters elected a constitutional assembly to write a new document. That assembly was overwhelmingly leftist and presented a first draft last year that included a number of pretty radical provision.

The new constitution would eradicate the country's Senate and replace it with a more, quote, equitable regional chamber. It would replace the country's health care system with a single government-funded service, and it would create a parallel court system for indigenous Chileans. But when the draft went to a vote in 2022, it failed overwhelmingly. That prompted the election of a new constitutional assembly, which took place Sunday. So this election was really the culmination of years of political battles. Exactly. And the conservatives came out on top. Yes, they did. That's putting it lightly.

34 of the 51 spots on that new assembly were won by members of the country's various right-wing parties. That gives them an all-important supermajority, which will allow them to offer a new draft constitution that will likely scrap the vast majority of the reforms that leftists have been calling for. For more on that, I spoke to DeLio Paya, who founded one of Chile's largest right-wing parties and spent 16 years as a member of Congress there. As a whole, we elected 34 of the 51 members of the assembly. With this addition, That gives the right two-thirds to basically control and have veto override, whichever way you want to look at it, powered and control of the new convention.

So what's behind the apparent shift among voters in the course of just a few years? Yeah, there have been a few factors at play. First, many felt that the left just overplayed their hand. Voters initially supported their promise to reform the government in a more equitable way. but the Constitution they presented was far more radical than most Chileans were comfortable with. And according to Paya,

the vote was also a referendum on Chile's left-wing president, Gabriel Boric. Boric appointed a number of Communist Party members to his cabinet and supported the controversial first draft constitution and has become deeply unpopular this year

with an approval rating in the mid-30s. I think it is quite evident that this result implies a rejection of a government itself. and a desperate cry of help by vast sectors of Chilean society. Pia says Chileans have also been plagued by two issues very familiar to Americans, high crime and poor border security. 87% of Chileans say crime has gotten worse in the past year,

and there's been a substantial increase in carjackings, homicides, and burglaries. And there's also been an influx of illegal immigration, especially from Venezuela, where hundreds of thousands of migrants have fled across the border after the collapse of the socialist state. The crime crisis and protecting our borders to control immigration, those two things were very, very much present in people's minds when they voted. And in those two fronts, the current government is held responsible. So now the question becomes whether the conservatives will be able to present a constitution

that can win the support of Chileans and address their growing concerns or whether it'll fail and start this entire process over again. Well, fascinating political shifts going on in Chile. Cabot, thanks for reporting. Any time. That's Daily Wire's senior editor, Cabot Phillips. amid growing calls for her resignation and a campaign by the Missouri Attorney General to have her removed, Kim Gardner, the controversial St. Louis Circuit attorney, has announced that she will be resigning on June 1st.

Gardner was elected after promising to reform the criminal justice system. But after six years in office, she chose to resign, as the Missouri legislature was looking to strip most of her power. Here to discuss the resignation is Daily Wire Senior Editor Ash Short. So Ash, how did we get here with Kim Gardner? Well, Gardner came into office promising to hold police accountable, reduce the jail population, reduce punishment for low-level offenses, and to use more diversion programs. But she really wasn't able to accomplish anything in six years.

She couldn't keep or hire qualified staff. There were numerous ethics violations lodged against her office, and she couldn't seem to win the high-profile cases she'd, did prosecute. Why wasn't she effective? Well, Gardner blames everyone else, including judges, police, and anyone who resisted or criticized her agenda. But others say that kind of pushback is normal and that Gardner was just a bad manager, at least according to one former employee. Her reforms, however, were in line with many other progressive prosecutors around the country who are also seeing issues with their reforms. We spoke to Barry Latter, a criminologist and author, who said the

limited available data show these type of reforms just aren't working. Here's Latter. We have to keep in mind who's most affected by this kind of policy. Minority communities, the low-income communities, where most of these low-level crimes occur, are most impacted. And then people won't feel comfortable walking in the streets, taking their children to school, going shopping. They're going to feel afraid because disorder breeds fear. And worse still, disorder also encourages more serious offenses. It's just a very ill-advised series of policy. So it doesn't surprise me that prosecutors such as San Francisco's and now St. Louis's have run into trouble.

The public doesn't understand why offenders shouldn't be prosecuted and incarcerated. Now, Gardner also made some nationwide headlines for some very high-profile cases, What were some of those? Right. So Gardner first made headlines for her decision to prosecute Mark McCloskey and his wife for waving guns in the air on their own property as Black Lives Matter protesters approached their home. A lot of people saw that as an attack on law-abiding citizens in favor of left-wing activists. In another high-profile case, she declined to prosecute 21-year-old Daniel Riley,

who was out on bond for a robbery and didn't have a valid driver's license when he crashed into a teenage age volleyball player, causing her to lose her legs. Gardner's critics argued that this tragedy could have been avoided had Riley been locked up in the first place. In that case, she was accused of being soft on crime. What ultimately caused Gardner to resign? Well, in her resignation announcement, Gardner blamed a variety of factors, including racism. But she had made that claim before, in February, after her longtime ally St. Louis Mayor Tishara Jones said she lost faith in Gardner. Gardner also mentioned during her resignation that she had been taking nursing classes on the side, which is technically illegal for her to do while holding public office.

Latser also reminded us that elected officials like Gardner have to be re-elected, which means they have to maintain a fragile coalition of voters. In Gardner's case, that base is progressives who want lighter sentences for criminals, but also moderate voters who tend to push the DA at the ballot box if they perceive an increase in crime. That's a hard balance to strike. Well, it sounds like she has a new nursing career lined up. Ash, thanks for reporting. You're welcome.

That was Daily Wire Senior Editor, Ash Short. That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with an extra edition of Morning Wire.