Tangle - The surprising Hunter Biden special counsel.
Episode Date: August 23, 2023Hunter Biden's special counsel. On August 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he was naming David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who had already been leading the probe into Hunter... Biden, as a special counsel. The appointment came after the surprising collapse of a plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department.You can read today's podcast here, the Blindspot report on the left here and on the right here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. You can also check out our latest YouTube video here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (2:32), Today’s story (4:56), Right’s take (8:45), Left’s take (12:57), Isaac’s take (17:18), Listener question (22:00), Blindspot Report (24:35), Numbers (25:09), Have a nice day (25:50)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis
Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond
Chinatown.
When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal
web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.
The flu remains a serious disease.
Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.
From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast,
the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little
bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about
the Hunter Biden Special Counsel. This happened on August 11th, right as we head into our vacation,
and a lot has happened since then. I'm actually quite glad that we waited a little bit to cover
this because we've gotten a lot more information since
the special counsel announcement happened and there's been some really good opinion writing
about it. So I think we have a better grasp on the story now, which will make this whole episode a
lot more interesting, I hope. Before we jump in though, a quick reminder on two things. First of
all, if you haven't checked out our YouTube channel, go do that. Tangle News on YouTube.
We've got new content coming out there, stuff, go do that. Tangle News on YouTube.
We've got new content coming out there, stuff that's not in the newsletter, not on the podcast.
Every week, people seem to be really enjoying it.
I'm having fun trying to become a YouTube personality.
It's a great way for us to grow our little media empire.
So if you haven't done that yet, please go check out Tangle News on YouTube.
Second, August is a super special month for us. It is our four-year anniversary of doing Tangle. And as such, I'm always pushing folks to
support our work in August. It's a really big month for us for subscriptions. And this year,
we've been sort of lacking on that push. So this is me asking you to go subscribe to Tangle if you haven't yet.
That means becoming a paying subscriber, $5 a month or $50 a year. Or if you're feeling super
generous, $199 a year. But the $50 a year is the most common subscription. You can do that at
readtangle.com slash membership. And when you become a Tangle member, you unlock Friday
newsletters, you get access to the comments section. We loop you become a Tangle member, you unlock Friday newsletters,
you get access to the comments section. We loop you in on these sort of business related
insidery updates about what's happening at Tangle. And yes, in the future, we hope to link some kinds
of subscription to paywalled podcasts, which I think a lot of people are interested in.
All right, with that out of the way, we'll jump in with some quick hits.
First up, eight Republican candidates will participate in the first GOP primary debate at 9 p.m. Eastern tonight on Fox News. Former President Trump, the 2024 Republican frontrunner,
is skipping the debate and instead sitting for an interview with former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson.
Number two, Republican presidential candidate and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a Republican, suffered an injury playing pickup basketball on Tuesday night and was rushed to the emergency room.
His staff says it is unclear if he will participate in the debate.
His staff says it is unclear if he will participate in the debate.
Number three, a key witness charged in Trump's classified documents case retracted prior false testimony and hired a new lawyer.
He is now implicating former President Trump, Carlos de Oliveira, and aide Walter Nauta.
Number four, U.S. home sales fell 2.2% in July from June
and are down 16.6% from last July as mortgage rates continue to rise.
Number five, UPS employees ratified a five-year labor contract that covers 340,000 workers
and ends the possibility of a strike.
A turn of events for President Biden's son. Barely two weeks after a plea deal appeared to fall apart, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate his business
dealings. The legal cloud hanging over Hunter Biden is casting a shadow over his father's
reelection bid as he hits the campaign trail.
And it appears the younger Biden may be headed to criminal trial.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee the government's investigation into Hunter Biden.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump appointee, requested the upgrade to special counsel after years of investigating the president's son
and seeing a plea deal he helped negotiate fall through.
Garland said Friday it was, quote, in the public's interest to grant Weiss the designation.
Tonight, the president's son now under investigation by a special counsel
and likely headed to trial.
Hunter Biden still in the investigative crosshairs of federal prosecutors,
still clearly in legal jeopardy. I'm here today to announce the appointment of David Weiss as a special counsel.
On August 11th, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he was naming David Weiss,
the U.S. attorney in Delaware who had already been leading the probe into Hunter Biden,
as a special counsel. The appointment came
after the surprising collapse of a plea deal between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department.
With the appointment of a special counsel, Hunter Biden is now more likely to face a trial on tax
and gun-related charges, but the investigation could also expand further into his foreign
business dealings that have long drawn scrutiny. The appointment is likely to stretch Hunter's
legal troubles well into the presidential campaign season, setting up the remarkable
scenario where President Joe Biden's Justice Department is simultaneously investigating both
his chief political rival, Donald Trump, and his son. Garland told reporters that Weiss had
requested a move to special counsel status given where the investigation had led. Upon
considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter,
I've concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel, Garland said.
Generally speaking, special counsel status gives Weiss more autonomy and a larger budget to pursue
the investigation, and it allows him to bring federal charges outside his own jurisdiction in
Delaware. Special counsels are also expected to produce a report at the end of their investigation
explaining decisions they made along the way. However, certain elements of the appointment,
such as the way it could insulate the investigation from congressional oversight,
have left Republicans questioning whether this move will protect the Biden family
rather than spur a deeper probe into
Hunter Biden's alleged crimes. Just a few weeks ago, when a plea deal between Biden and the Justice
Department was headed to judicial review, it seemed a resolution was imminent. But that agreement,
which was criticized by Republicans as a sweetheart deal, fell apart when U.S. District Court Judge
Mary Ellen Noriega raised several concerns about its details.
Among the biggest concerns was a non-prosecution clause for crimes outside of the gun charge,
something that would have insulated Hunter Biden from being prosecuted for other federal crimes
and could have shut the door on any further investigations into his business dealings
from when his father was vice president. Since the deal fell apart and Weiss was appointed special
counsel, there's been an increased scrutiny of Weiss's relationship with the Bidens.
The Washington Post reported on a time period in 2010 when Weiss was working alongside Beau Biden,
President Biden's eldest son and then Delaware Attorney General, on the settlement of a major
fraud case. Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015. Then, the New York Times released a deep dive
into the collapse of the plea agreement, including details based on hundreds of pages of communications
between Weiss and Hunter Biden's lawyers, revealing that Weiss had initially approved of foregoing any
prosecution of Hunter Biden at all, but that his position changed after two IRS whistleblowers
accused the Justice Department of holding up the investigation. Lawyers for IRS whistleblowers accused the Justice Department of holding up the investigation.
Lawyers for the whistleblowers held this as proof of Weiss's preferential treatment,
claiming that Hunter never would have been charged had it not been for their actions.
Today, we're going to review some reactions to the special counsel,
and then the collapse of the plea deal from the right and the left. Then than my take. Today's podcast is sponsored by Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy
dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through evidence-based policy solutions.
As part of their efforts, they also support journalism throughout the United States, including outlets like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and the
Institute for Nonprofit News, among others. To learn more about their work, go to ArnoldVentures.org.
That's ArnoldVentures.org.
First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Many on the right criticized the
appointment, arguing that it could be the latest defensive measure from the Biden administration.
Some say it came too late and that Weiss is the wrong person to continue leading the investigation.
Others argue that it is the latest step in an attempt to cover up Hunter Biden's crimes
until after the 2024 election. The Wall Street Journal editorial board
called it a not-so-special counsel for Hunter Biden. The special counsel may be worse for the
president's son, but better for Joe Biden's re-election campaign, the board said. Yet there's
reason to doubt this special counsel decision will end up reassuring anybody about equal justice.
Mr. Weiss is the same prosecutor who cut the discredited plea deal with Hunter Biden.
The whistleblowers claim Mr. Weiss failed to follow the trail of foreign money that flowed
to Hunter. They say he had previously sought special counsel status from justice but was
denied. The whistleblowers also say Mr. Weiss asked to bring charges in California and Washington,
D.C., but was blocked there too. Even his special counsel keep in mind he is an independent,
and any legal sense he must still report to and have his prosecutions approved by Mr. Garland,
the board said. The special counsel status is also politically convenient for Weiss and Garland
because it means both men can use the excuse of an ongoing investigation to refuse to answer
questions from Congress. Weiss is running up against the statute of limitations on tax and
gun charges, and if he wants to, he could draw out other matters all the way through the November
2024 election. Hunter Biden's many shell companies, President Biden's role in other matters may vanish
into the special counsel's secret investigation. In Spectator, Charles Lipson wrote that the new
special counsel also needs to be investigated.
Weiss's appointment makes sense in one way. Any other choice would have added years to the investigation. Weiss is already up to speed. The question is whether he is speeding down the right
road, Lipson said. Shockingly, the Biden administration did not want to appoint a
special counsel to investigate itself or the president's family. The new attorney general
could have given Weiss those additional powers two years ago, but declined. Important as this new appointment is, it also raises some very
troubling issues. One is that it gives the Department of Justice an additional tool to
block investigations by House Republicans who are conducting several serious inquiries into
the Biden family corruption. The second issue is even more troubling. Weiss's own office needs
investigating. Multiple witnesses have told Congress. Weiss's own office needs investigating.
Multiple witnesses have told Congress that Weiss's office refused to investigate the full extent of
the Biden family's overseas business operations and the income received from them. Several
experienced nonpartisan IRS investigators, all of whom were later taken off the case by Garland's
Department of Justice, have said that Weiss's top aide, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Wolf, explicitly told them their office would not pursue any investigative threads that
might lead to President Biden. All that testimony was given under oath. Weiss's office has not
challenged it. In the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll said Attorney General Garland is just
continuing the cover-up. If Attorney General Merrick Garland thought he could restore trust in President Joe Biden's Justice Department by appointing a special
counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, he should have chosen a special counsel who didn't try and
let Hunter Biden off scot-free just two weeks ago. While Weiss is a Republican who was appointed by
former President Donald Trump, Republicans have every reason to be suspicious of his motives
since it was just two weeks ago that Weiss tried to close out his investigation of Hunter Biden with a plea deal
that was rejected by a federal judge because of its unprecedented nature. The Justice Department
still has never made the terms of that deal public, and it is only because of a leak to the
press that anyone outside of Hunter Biden's lawyers, the court, and the DOJ has seen it,
Carroll wrote. It's obvious why the
DOJ wanted to keep it a secret. As the federal judge who rejected the deal pointed out in court,
the scope of immunity being offered to Hunter Biden by the plain language of the document was
unprecedented. She literally asked the DOJ lawyer if there was any precedent for the breadth of the
agreement not to prosecute, and the DOJ lawyer said no, and Weiss is the man who signed off on
that deal. All right, that is it for the rightist saying, which brings us to what the left is
saying. Many on the left support the appointment, arguing that the collapse of Hunter Biden's plea
deal meant a special counsel was necessary. Some criticize Republicans for getting exactly
what they asked for but continuing to cry foul. Others argue that a special counsel
is no longer sufficient for investigations like this.
Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,
a background character trapped in a police
procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a
witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,
and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th,
only on Disney+.
The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,
which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.
What can you do this flu season?
Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.
Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.
It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older,
and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not
guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. The Washington Post editorial board said this was
the right move and Hunter Biden shouldn't get special treatment. It should encourage Americans
that the process will be independent and transparent, and therefore that it is more likely to be fair, the board said.
Such assurances might not have been necessary at the beginning of the Justice Department's
Hunter Biden probe, but they became important after a plea agreement between Mr. Weiss and
Mr. Biden's attorneys fell apart under judicial scrutiny. Initially appearing reasonable,
the deal turned out to include peculiar details
suggesting critics might have been justified to suspect that Mr. Biden was being given special
treatment. Special counsels should not be appointed lightly. They've tended to overspend and overreach.
One temptation in the Hunter Biden case might be to investigate the president himself,
as many of his critics wish. So far, the records suggest President Biden's behavior was
not spotless, but also not criminal, the board said. Nevertheless, Mr. Garland's move was justified.
Under the special counsel regulations, Mr. Weiss will not only be clearly authorized,
but also required to produce a report almost certain to be made public on his investigation.
The report will allow Mr. Weiss to explain the prosecutorial choices he has and will
make. The fact that he has to write one will also give him a greater incentive to proceed by the
book. In Rolling Stone, Ryan Bort said Republicans wanted a special counsel deal and now they're
upset they actually got one. Trump nominated Weiss to serve as a federal prosecutor in 2017,
with the Republican-controlled Senate confirming him a year
later. Nevertheless, conservatives are pissed, Bort said. The lesson, of course, is that nothing
will satisfy Republicans short of Garland appointing Trump himself to investigate Biden.
Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican from Ohio, whined in February about the Justice
Department's failure to appoint a special counsel before Fox News reported on Friday that he's among those
upset that it actually did, claiming Weiss isn't the right man for the job. Senator Graham was
pushing for Weiss to become a special counsel as recently as last month. Trump and his Republican
allies have been raging at what they allege is favorable treatment from the Justice Department,
despite the fact that Trump appointed the prosecutor responsible, Bort said.
Republicans in Congress reacted similarly as they have been desperately working to dredge up evidence that Biden and his
father were engaged in a bribery scheme. They've been teasing evidence of such a scheme for months,
but so far have produced nothing. Representative Nick Langworthy, the Republican from New York on
Thursday, basically admitted that they don't have anything incriminating against Biden,
alleging on Fox News that he and his colleagues never claimed money went directly to the president.
In Bloomberg, Noah Feldman said we need a better system and suggests bringing back
independent counsels. To be sure, the prosecutors seem to be doing everything by the book.
Yet the fact remains that in a democracy, one candidate shouldn't be able to prosecute another,
and no one should ever be in the chain of command for the prosecution of their own child, Feldman said.
There is a cure, one adopted by Congress after Richard Nixon ordered the firing of special
prosecutor Archibald Cox during Watergate. Congress can pass a law creating a genuinely
independent counsel, one who cannot be fired by the president. This would create a legitimate
distance between the president and the prosecutions and approximate the norm that
exists in most countries. The law existed from 1978 to 1999, but was allowed to sunset after
people thought Kenneth Starr overreached in his investigation of Bill Clinton. Let me be extremely
clear. Acknowledging the need for a renewed independent counsel law is not a criticism of how the Biden administration has been acting under the existing special counsel rules.
To the contrary, the system as it presently exists is working as well as it possibly can, Feldman
wrote. Joe Biden appointed an attorney general of unquestioned probity and has left Mayor Garland
alone to do his job as he sees fit. Garland, Smith, and Weiss are making the best of a bad
situation, but it isn't enough. All right, that is it for what the left and the right are saying,
which brings us to my take. So it's worth briefly recapping my positions here. I've long supported an investigation
of Hunter Biden, and I've been very critical of the way the laptop story was throttled by social
media and handled by the press. Something about Biden's work was so obviously shady and corrupt
that it felt worth looking into from the start. The tax and gun crimes he committed, which he was
ready to cop to in a plea deal,
were worth prosecuting on their own. While it is clear Hunter has long been trying to profit off the family name, it remains unclear exactly why he was being sent millions of dollars,
where that money was coming from, and where exactly it was going. When the plea deal was
initially agreed to, I started my take by noting two big caveats to everything I was about to say. There were major
questions about the integrity of this investigation, and the plea deal shouldn't end the conversation
or investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings. My hesitation mostly revolved around
the IRS whistleblowers who seemed like legitimate, nonpartisan actors trying to warn Americans that
something about this whole thing wasn't up to snuff. I went on to say the plea deal didn't seem out of the ordinary given the charges in question,
but I'm very glad I centered my two caveats at the beginning of the piece.
In July, those whistleblowers delivered testimony to Congress. When we covered that,
I inched out even further, writing that their testimony was not encouraging.
The whistleblowers were clear. They were prevented from taking normal steps to uncover new evidence in their investigation and disagreed strongly with the
pending outcome of the plea agreement. They clarified that they were not accusing Hunter
Biden or the president of serious crimes, only that they were prevented from taking rational
investigatory steps. It was sober and convincing testimony. I argued Attorney General Merrick
Garland and David Weiss should testify under oath and said we can't move forward without hearing from them in such a setting.
Then the plea bargain fell apart and the special counsel was appointed. Since then, we've got
damning reporting, mostly from the New York Times, but also from the Washington Post, about exactly
how that happened. Weiss was prepared to let Hunter Biden off without charging him and with
sweeping immunity for all past other crimes, which was an unknown detail when we initially
covered the plea deal. If the Times reporting is accurate, which it appears to be given their
access to internal communications between Weiss and the Justice Department, the only reason the
deal ended up including guilty pleas and softer language about immunity was because of
the IRS whistleblowers. Had they not come forward, Hunter Biden's deal may have been even sweeter,
and sweeping immunity from federal prosecution in the future may have been granted. That Weiss
was prepared to let Hunter Biden go with no charges and sweeping immunity is actually scandalous.
Even after the IRS whistleblowers came forward and the deal was
adjusted, it was so convoluted and unprecedented that Judge Noriega shut it down. And, clearly,
she was right too. A special counsel investigating Hunter in response to the deal falling apart is
good. But it's clear now that an appointment should have been made a long time ago. And the
idea that Weiss should get that appointment, given everything we just learned, should be unacceptable. The best case for keeping Weiss on is that he has been on the
investigation for five years, and bringing a new special counsel would restart the clock,
putting off any conclusions to it. Which isn't to excuse the Justice Department. If they didn't want
the investigation to drag on for another five years, they shouldn't have mishandled it so badly.
And after reading about
how Weiss led this investigation, how can anyone blame Republicans for not trusting him as special
counsel? Even the reliably left Washington Post editorial board, the same one that rubber-stamped
the plea deal in June, conceded that the deal turned out to include peculiar details suggesting
critics might have been justified to suspect that Mr. Biden was given
special treatment. That's an awfully nice way of saying this was absolutely a sweetheart deal that
stinks to high heaven. Kudos to them for openly changing their position, but the change of tune
is understated given what we now know. So, what now? I'm not really sure. Feldman's suggestion
under what the left is saying that special counsels are not sufficient in scenarios like this, which he wrote over a week ago, is especially prescient
now. Weiss seems locked in, meaning we're all just going to be left with growing suspicions.
The most confounding part, of course, is that Hunter Biden may actually not be guilty of any
serious criminal activity outside of the charges we know about. But if that's true, it will be hard
for Weiss to prove it, since the appearance of a cover-up is setting in. I don't blame anyone
for feeling deeply suspicious. I'm starting to feel that way myself.
All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. Today's question is from Mike in Odenton,
Maryland. Mike said, if Trump is the Republican nominee and is convicted, then what? Legally,
the conviction wouldn't bar him from running, being elected, or being sworn in. Could, would
the RNC replace him? Would it make enough of a difference to not win the election?
Okay, so if he were to be the nominee and get convicted, I think what the GOP would do
depends largely on what exactly Trump is convicted of and where. But let's flesh the scenario out bit
by bit. First, I think it's worth pointing out that there is a robust legal debate happening
already about whether Trump can serve as president. Some legal scholars, and not just the liberal ones,
argue that the Constitution already bars
Trump from holding office ever again. That is debatable, and many don't agree.
Second, the broad answer to your question is that nothing will happen to his candidacy if
he is convicted. Convicted felons can run for president, and being convicted of a crime,
even being in jail, does not bar you from a nomination. In fact, if Trump were to run
for president from jail, he wouldn't even
be the first to do so. That award goes to Eugene V. Debs, who received a million votes in 1920
while sitting inside a prison cell. Third, it still depends on where he is convicted and for what.
If he is convicted in the Fulton County, Georgia case, that would mean mandatory prison time,
unpardonable at the state level. Obviously, running for office from prison is hard, if not impossible. Being president, I can't think of
how it'd work, but maybe I need another coffee. Realistically, I expect the GOP would dump him
if he were staring down a five-year prison sentence. The real question is what happens
if he gets elected president, and the real answer is nobody knows. We'd be in totally uncharted territory, and federal
judges would hold a great deal of power to decide what to do. Ultimately, though, I think all of this
is moot. I'm skeptical the Georgia case will conclude before 2024. A conviction in the classified
documents case in Florida is unlikely to carry prison time, and I don't think it would seriously
impact the logistics of his candidacy. And while Trump appears to already have the nomination locked up, I think the odds of him winning a general election
are still low, given how well Democrats have run against him in the last six years and his
unpopularity with independent voters. All of that aside, I also don't see him going to jail.
As I've said in the past, if he is realistically facing prison time, I think Trump would be very
likely to take a plea deal that requires him to end his presidential campaign.
All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to the Blindspot Report.
Once a week, we present the Blindspot Report from our partners at Ground News,
an app that tells you the bias of news coverage and what stories people on each side are missing. Last week, the right missed a story about the wealthiest 10% of households being
responsible for 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the left missed a story
about the Biden administration allegedly selling millions of dollars of unused border wall in an
online marketplace for surplus government materials. Next up is our numbers section.
Two and five is the number of Americans who said they had heard a great deal or a fair amount about
Hunter Biden's plea deal in June, according to a Reuters Ipsos poll. The percentage of Americans
who said they believe Hunter Biden is receiving favorable treatment because he is Joe Biden's son
is 50 percent. The percentage of Democrats who said they believe Hunter Biden is receiving favorable treatment because he is Joe Biden's son is 50%. The percentage of Democrats who said they believe Hunter is receiving favorable treatment
because he is Joe Biden's son is 33%. The percentage of Republicans who said they believe
Hunter is receiving favorable treatment is 75%. The percentage of Americans who said Hunter Biden's
proposed plea agreement would have no impact on the likelihood of them voting for Joe Biden was 58%.
All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story.
Every two weeks, people participating in a food prescription program in Stockton, California,
receive a special delivery, a box filled with fruit, vegetables, and other essentials.
The boxes are distributed as part of the Stockton Food Bank's Healthy Food Rx program, allowing residents with conditions like diabetes,
kidney disease, and high cholesterol access to fresh and healthy ingredients. Twice a month,
the food bank offers cooking classes in both English and Spanish so recipients can learn
new ways to prepare meals. Another successful program is in Solana County, where a mobile food
pharmacy delivers crates filled with fruits and vegetables to health clinics.
Advocates want to expand programs like these across the state, saying they not only will help improve chronic health conditions, but also lower health care costs and reduce hunger.
The Mercury News has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description.
All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always,
if you want to support our work, go to readtangle.com slash membership. Don't forget this
month, we are always looking for more members. It's our four year anniversary. We want to keep
all this work going. You can become a paid member at readtangle.com. And also don't forget to go
check out our YouTube channel. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one.
Peace.
Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Law.
Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady.
The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager.
Music for the podcast was designed by Magdalena Bukova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle,
please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history,
and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+.
The flu remains a serious disease.
Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,
which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases.
What can you do this flu season?
Talk to your
pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself
from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months
and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions
can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.