What A Day - Sedition: Possible

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

The House is planning to vote on impeachment today. Democrats and some number of Republicans are expected to support it, like Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney. The FBI and DOJ held the first press conference since the attack on the Capitol yesterday. Their investigation will likely be a months long process that could lead to hundreds of charges.The Trump administration will move to release all available doses of COVID vaccines instead of reserving some for booster shots. As of Monday, about 9 million people are estimated to have received at least one dose.And in headlines: Michigan’s former governor and several state officials will be charged for their roles in the Flint water crisis, Congress set to start fining reps for not wearing masks, and “baby sharks” the size of adult humans.

It's Wednesday, January 13th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick. And this is What A Day, where we treat each episode as our audition for the reboot of Sex and the City. Yeah, we haven't been approached yet to play Samantha, but I just assume that's because y'all have been really busy the last few days. Yeah.

I want to make one thing clear, though. Under no circumstances am I showing my rear end. Oh yeah, totally. He needs a butt days. Yeah. I want to make one thing clear, though. Under no circumstances am I showing my rear end. Oh, yeah, totally. He needs a butt double. Yeah. If you want cake, you got to look for it elsewhere. On today's show,

updates on the investigation into violent rioters at the Capitol and new vaccine plans. Then some headlines. But first, since America can't get its act together, we're bringing back an old favorite segment, the impeachment news blast. One more time. Wow. That was perfection. You know, it's our first time hearing it. And I got to say, I like it. I like the new vibe. Well. I'm blown away.

Yeah. So Democrats are planning to vote on the impeachment article in the House today after Pence said yesterday that he would not invoke the 25th Amendment. As a reminder, the House is charging Donald Trump with the high crime and misdemeanor of incitement of insurrection, and it's expected to pass with some support from Republicans. Yesterday, Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, the number three Republican in the House, pledged her support for impeachment. In a statement, she said, quote, there has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States

of his office and his oath to the Constitution. You know, the Cheneys sure do love regime change wherever they can get it. Two other House Republicans have also gone on the record so far in support, but there's reporting that we could see a dozen or two dozen Republicans joining. So what do we know exactly about how this is playing out on the Republican side behind the scenes? All right. So you may be surprised to hear that GOP leadership isn't actually lobbying members to vote against impeaching him.

The party that has chosen party over country for the extent of the modern era has actually framed this as a vote of conscience, according to reporting. So here's hoping they each have one. I mean, the man did tell the people who actively tried to murder them with bombs and guns that he loved them. You know, I don't think this one should be hard. Plus, yesterday, Trump told reporters that his speech before the riot was, quote, totally appropriate. And over in the Senate, the soon-to-be minority leader Mitch McConnell reportedly told associates that Trump has committed impeachable offenses and that he's happy the Democrats are impeaching him. That's all according to The New York Times. So strong words from the guy who did the bidding of the impeachable ban for the past four years.

But his realization doesn't seem to come from a conscience so much as self-preservation. McConnell reportedly sees this as the route to purging the Trumps from the party and coming out unscathed. Yeah, and preventing him from running again so other Republicans don't have as hard a time in the primary. Yeah, really profiles and courage right here. Well, to that point, it seems unlikely impeachment will remove Trump from office before next Wednesday. So practically speaking, it's more about disqualifying him from office in the future, which is something the Senate could vote to do after they vote to convict him if they do vote to convict him. We'll have more on this tomorrow after the vote in the House.

Yes, more news blasts on the way. OK, then on to other fallout from last week's attack on the Capitol. Yesterday, we finally had the first news conference with the FBI and DOJ going over what has happened in the past week. Better late than never. And we learned quite a bit here. We're looking at significant felony cases tied to sedition and conspiracy. Just yesterday, our office organized a strike force of very senior national security prosecutors and public corruption prosecutors. Their only marching orders from me are to build seditious and conspiracy charges related to the most heinous acts that occurred in the Capitol.

And these are significant charges that have felonies with prison terms of up to 20 years. In addition to that, we're looking and taking a priority with cases in which weapons were involved and cases in which destructive devices were involved. As people know through news reports, there were pipe bombs found outside the Capitol. The ATF is working on that. Metro Police is working on that. FBI is working on that to find that individual or individuals who planted those devices. So in addition to just those road cases we're looking at, we're going to focus on the most significant charges as a deterrent, because regardless of if it was just a trespass in the Capitol or if someone planted a pipe bomb, you will be charged and you will be found.

Whoa. Yeah, that was the acting U.S. attorney for D.C., Michael Sherwin, describing the severity and depth of where this investigation is going. So as he referenced there, the DOJ and FBI have reportedly created a sedition and conspiracy task force to handle this. At least 70 people have been charged by Sherwin so far, and something like 170 people have been identified as suspects. He also said that he expected those arrest numbers to grow vastly. As a Washington Post report put it, a lot of the charges so far appear to be minor, like unlawful entry and curfew violation. But Sherwin and the FBI were making the case that that is only the beginning, and they're investigating much more serious crimes like theft from congressional offices,

felony murder, and assault on law enforcement. Yeah, so likely it's going to be a month-long process, which could reveal more details that further pressure Republicans to distance themselves from Trump or even denounce him. Yeah, definitely. And Sherman is really emphasizing the size and scope of this operation. And at one point, he described the entire Capitol grounds as, quote, essentially a crime scene. Woof. Also, Stephen D'Antuano, the head of the FBI's Washington field office, spent some of his time defending their actions leading up to the attack. He claimed that intelligence disrupted the travel of some of the people who had planned to go to D.C. and the arrest of the leader of the Proud Boys. Yeah. And he was talking about that because there's new reporting about what the FBI may have known before the mob descended on the Capitol.

Yes, there's this big story in the Washington Post with new details on all of this. And basically, they found that there was an FBI office in Virginia that put out an internal warning about violence that was planned in D.C. the day before it actually happened. So they reportedly warned that violent extremists were using words like war and that maps of the Capitol complex's tunnels had been shared in some cases. So that's the intelligence piece of this. But Stephen Sund, the Capitol Police chief who recently resigned, claimed that he wasn't made aware of this FBI warning.

And then Sund also criticized the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms, who have both recently resigned as well, for not granting requests to put the National Guard on standby leading up to last week. So quite a few players to keep track of here and a lot of finger pointing that is still going on. Yeah, it doesn't look like we're going to just move on from this like the Republicans seem to want. Meanwhile, security is continuing to ramp up in D.C. with enhanced security measures set to begin today instead of January 19th, which was the original plan. Yeah, and you have hotels and airports in the area that are talking about tightening security. And Senator Chuck Schumer said yesterday that people

involved in the violence of last week should be placed on the no-fly list. The ACLU and others are more iffy on that than he is. There was a report in The New York Times as well about a briefing House Democrats received on Monday night about current threats that apparently left some concerned about actually returning to the Capitol this week. And then a metal detector was also recently installed outside the House chamber, and some Republicans were apparently already skirting it as of Tuesday night. Wow, geez, just like anybody is allowed to be in the reps. All right, well, so we're going to stay on the story, but I want to shift gears quickly to COVID. We heard a pretty significant update from the CDC on vaccine plans yesterday, and this comes as the rollout has been disappointingly low and the U.S. has exceeded 4,000 daily deaths in some recent days. So let's explain the update.

Right. So the big shift here is that the current administration is saying they're going to release all available doses of the vaccine instead of reserving some for second doses, which had been the plan before. They've also said that they want states to begin vaccinating everyone 65 and older, as well as certain individuals with high risk medical conditions, which pretty quickly expands the priority pool to about 184 million people potentially. So I better be part of that. Yeah, over 50%. So yeah, hopefully, that includes us and people we know. HHS Secretary Alex Azar also mentioned that states could lose some of their allotments if they don't use their doses fast enough, and that there is going to be a new reallocation based on states populations of

people 65 and older. But it's kind of hard to say what is and is not going to happen here, given that Biden is going to be taking over in a week. Yeah, I mean, I just want to take a second to pause and let that settle in. You know, we haven't got to talk about Biden being president because all this other crap's happening. So, yeah, that's going to be happening soon. Pretty excited for it. Might be news to our listeners, but yeah, he's going to be president. Biden has said something similar, though, about releasing all available doses, and we're anticipating him talking more in depth about his plans later this week. So to back up here for a second, we know, of course, that in the clinical trials of

the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, they tested two doses. They did not test just the one. So you're kind of hearing two important and different arguments that are happening right now. One is that this strategy is hugely crucial to save lives, particularly as cases are still through the roof. And we know that a more contagious variant has been spreading. But the other concern that exists is that if there were a manufacturing delay in the future, in the process of getting more doses ready to go, it could actually lower the efficacy of the vaccines overall, if people just take the one and potentially lead to more confusion as to when people need to get their second. It's very complicated. As of Monday, though, there were about 9 million people estimated to have received

at least one dose of the vaccines in the US. So the pace is going to have to continue to accelerate no matter how we end up doing this. So the pandemic never ends and we'll have more on it soon, but that's the latest for now. It's Wednesday, WOD Squad. And for today's temp check Check we're talking about crypto. An amazing new article in the New York Times featured interviews with several Bitcoin millionaires who would be living the high life if not for the unfortunate fact that they lost their passwords and can't access their Bitcoin. One guy in San Francisco reportedly has $220 million in Bitcoin that he can access using a small hard drive,

but he only has two more tries to guess the password on the hard drive before it locks him out forever and encrypts its contents. Around $140 billion in Bitcoin seems to be inaccessible in the same way, in an apparent consequence of Bitcoin's unregulated nature. So giddy. My question for you, does this make you want to invest in Bitcoin? I'm lost a little bit on how they're messing up their passwords so many times. If you knew that you have this amount of money in Bitcoin, no matter how you could access it, wouldn't you make sure you can access it when you need to?

Well, that's the thing, though. They probably did it when Bitcoin was $16. You buy a domino's pizza and then after all this time they're like damn i'm an idiot but like i write down any password connected to my money like i'm sure that's not smart and someone could absolutely come and get it but like i would rather have the money like i would be 220 million dollars richer if i was that dude so you know right or use a password keeper or have something that like unlocks with a fingerprint. Or is there a means of getting in here if, say,

we are forgetting our passwords? I just I'm very confused about the thought process that went into this, even if it was. They're careless. I will just say it. Millionaires cannot manage their money and therefore it should be mine because i would not be having this problem at the i would figure out bitcoin and then i would ensure the fact that my password was not lost the time but in fact just mine that nobody else could ever see so that's my that's my stance yeah well i mean are you gonna invest then you're gonna you're gonna bitcoin it up i mean i think that the trade here should be, I can manage these people's passwords or I can give them some advice on how not to lose passwords. That's how you'll make

the money. Yeah. And they can teach me how to Bitcoin and then we'll have a nice little handoff and things will be all copacetic. But same question for you, Akilah. In this situation, are you more inclined to get involved in this scheme? Well, I mean, I wouldn't say it's the biggest deterrent. For me, it's the like $33,000 buy-in, right? I don't see that happening. I am a millennial. I graduated into the recession. I don't foresee me just having an extra 30 grand that I can blow on Bitcoin in the event that it keeps getting more expensive. Like, look, I tried that one time back when it was like six grand. And I was like, I'll just get like a tenth of a Bitcoin. And then it went down to like 50 cents.

And I was like, OK, I'm an idiot. And so I had to wait for like a year and a half for it to get back to the base level where I bought it. And I'm like, I'm out. This is garbage. So, you know, had I just waited a hundred years, maybe I, too, would have lots of money now. But I just don't have that kind of patience. You know, I'm trying to get rich quick. And that's not the Bitcoin way. Yeah, it definitely doesn't seem like it.

Yeah, I don't I don't like the fact that, you know, all this. Do they lose this if they can't get in if they can't get into their accounts? Well, how else are they going to get it? I mean, it's not like there's like a Bitcoin bank with a manager. They can be like, hey, this is my email. Like they're just screwed. I know. But like where where could it where could it go to benefit? It just stays there, rotting away. I don't like that. I don't like that. I'm perturbed by this story on a number of different levels. Yeah. And as soon as we jump off, I'm actually going to be contacting all of these fellows who

have forgotten their passwords and trying to see if I can get a little bit of access myself. I mean, I dig it. Well, just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe. If you're Bitcoin rich, why don't you just give us some of that money and we'll be back with some headlines. Headlines. The ex-governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, and several former state officials are going to be charged for their roles in the Flint water crisis. Under Snyder, state officials in 2014 switched Flint's water source to the city's river without treating the water properly. That decision had a disastrous impact on the city's majority black population, with lead-contaminated water and a deadly outbreak of Legionnaire's disease. The crisis was seen as an example of blatant environmental racism resulting from the failure of all levels of government.

One of the public health officials involved in the disaster was ordered to stand trial for manslaughter and for failing to inform the public about the mishandling, but that case was thrown out in 2018. This latest investigation is being handled under a new attorney general and includes a new set of charges for Snyder and the official. Snyder is expected to face questions about when exactly he found out about the disaster before informing the public. Soon, members of Congress who refuse to put on their masks might have to pay up. The House is set to adopt a new rule today, fining lawmakers who don't follow the chamber's mask requirement $500 for the first offense and $2,500 for the next. The money will come straight out of their paychecks and no, they won't be allowed to expense it. The new rule comes after several Republican representatives refused to put on

masks while everyone in Congress was confined to a secure room during the lockdown last week. Officials sent lawmakers warnings that they might have been exposed to COVID-19 during the lockdown and three Democratic lawmakers have since tested positive for the virus. Representatives Pramila Jayapal from Washington, Bonnie Watson Coleman from New Jersey, and Brad Schneider from Illinois. They have all since expressed their anger and have called out their GOP colleagues for being selfish. I think the same rule actually applies to people that I see in public who don't wear a mask. They have to give me $500. $2,500 the first time. Yes. Education Secretary and pyramid scheme heiress Betsy DeVos resigned last Thursday masks they had to give me 500 little did they know 2500 the first time yes uh education secretary and pyramid scheme heiress betsy devos resigned last thursday after realizing with seconds left

on the clock that her boss was bad but she got some classic devossing in under the wire on the same day as her resignation she issued a policy memorandum that will encourage discrimination against transgender students trying to live as their gender rather than sex assigned at birth. DeVos's memorandum interpreted a 2020 Supreme Court decision banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender so as to limit its applications to Title IX education law. So in effect, this interpretation makes it okay for schools to assign students to locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports teams based on their biological sex rather than their gender and basically ignores the gender identities of students in favor of biological sex. Activist groups are calling on the Biden administration to throw out DeVos' harmful

final policy once the new president takes office. Following her tenure as education secretary, DeVos is expected to focus on her family of 10 beautiful yachts, six grand yachts, and an adorable yacht crispannul. Oh man. She's the worst. All right. Well, over the past few years, a cute, funny song has washed away all the fear and respect we once had for, quote, baby sharks. A new study shows why that's a problem. According to scientists at DePaul University, some ancient baby sharks weren't cute or funny at all and actually emerged from their mother's wombs at the size of adult humans. The study specifically focused on megalodons, extinct prehistoric sharks that could grow to be 50 feet long and have heads the size of cars. To conduct the study, scientists examined one 15 million year old vertebrae from an adult megalodon, determining that the shark the

bone belonged to was six and a half feet long when it was born. To reach that size in the womb, scientists think the giant baby shark behaved the same way its contemporary descendants do, by enjoying a big feast in utero on the unhatched eggs of its brothers and sisters. These child sharks were huge. They were ruthless. And if the last couple weeks were any indication, they will find a way to return in 2021. Being huge meant the shark babies could defend themselves against potential predators from day one. At what cost to their souls? The only ones who can say are the shark cannibals themselves. These scary, scary babies. Get them out of my face. Yep. Jaws was a documentary and

those are the headlines. Quick correction before we go. On yesterday's show, we said Michigan had put restrictions on guns at the state capitol. They are banning open carry. That is all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, respect baby sharks, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just your Bitcoin password over and over so you don't forget like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com

slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. And we'll see you on Sex and the City. Yeah, I won't be Samantha but I will be someone who just is good looking and walking around in the background. Yeah, I'm an extra. With a butt double.

I don't know how you got that contract, man. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tan is our assistant producer. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Katie Long, Akilah Hughes, and me. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kshaka.