--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire, I'm Georgia Howe.
--:-- John Bickley: [Out on assignment]
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's Tuesday, June 20th. A new report claims a credible FBI source says Joe and Hunter Biden coerced a Ukrainian energy company to pay them $10 million. The confidential human source spoke directly with the owner of Burisma. So this isn't a second-hand, a third-hand report. And remote work didn't end with the pandemic, leading many workers to leave big cities behind. Which areas are seeing the biggest exodus and where are those workers relocating? Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Several new reports claim that U.S. government sources have identified the first person to fall ill with coronavirus in November of 2019, a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Here to tell us more is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, I'd say there's a lot of converging information starting to come out now. An Intercept report on Saturday detailed documents that had been obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from a transparency advocacy group. Now, those were obtained in 2021, but they're starting to gain new relevancy now as other investigators have been able to confirm them. And what those documents revealed is that the first person to fall ill with COVID, who they're calling patient zero, was a Wuhan researcher named Ben Hu. Now, two members of his team also contracted the virus at that time, and that was in late 2019. We also now know that Hu was among those virologists working on gain-of-function research on coronaviruses and that his research likely did have bioweapon aims. Hu worked directly under Shi Zhongli, who is known in the virology world as Batwoman for her ability to extract virus samples from Chinese cave bats.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, independent journalists Michael Schellenberger and Matt Tybee released a report saying that they were able to confirm with several State Department sources that those 2021 FOIA documents were accurate. This was Schellenberger on the Hill Rising a few days ago. So we have it from multiple people in the U.S. government, very careful not to identify these people, very nervous and afraid this information is classified, which I don't understand why.
--:-- Megan Basham: So when we told experts that had been people arguing that there was a serious chance that it came from a lab, when we told them it was Ben Hu, who was one of three patient zero, as we call the first one to get the disease, nobody was surprised and they were actually more angry that it had taken so long for this information to get out which I think is a big part of the story too which is why was this classified This was a big cover-up that was going on and we know it involved the Chinese government. Why was the United States government not revealing this? And then another aspect of this is that Hu and his team were receiving some financial support from the U.S. government. The documents detailed three grants that totaled $41 million. Two of those grants were active from 2014 through 2019, and then President Trump cut off the third in 2020 after the COVID outbreak. All of those grants came from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And of course, the agency at that time was headed by Anthony Fauci, who denied providing funding for gain-of-function research in front of Congress in 2021 when those FOIA docs first came out.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, do we have any new information about how, who and his team contracted the virus? So for example, were there protocols that broke down? You know, what we're hearing now is that there was a very low level of security in these labs. And so I think what you're starting to see is something of a growing demand to get further answers to those questions. Because it's worth pointing out that right now, gain-of-function research is still occurring. So that raises a lot of public interest questions about what kinds of oversight and regulation should be on the table after everything we've learned. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was on Fox News talking about that on Sunday, and he brought up the fact that Bill Gates has provided funding for the World Health Organization for just this kind of research. And that is still something that's not widely addressed. Bill Gates is the largest funder of trying to find these viruses in remote caves and bring them to big cities. They bring them back to the lab, but then they manipulate them by combining them with other viruses to create viruses that don't exist in nature.
--:-- Megan Basham: So there is a lot of discussion happening now about why this type of information was so quickly labeled as conspiracy theory and who needs to be held accountable. Yeah, there's a lot of aspects of this that are disturbing at this point.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: President Biden and his son Hunter may have coerced a Ukrainian oligarch to pay them $10 million. That's according to a recent report. Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce joins us now to discuss.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So, this latest wrinkle comes from reporting done by the federalist Margo Cleveland. She spoke to sources who told her that the FBI FD1023 form, the document underlying these allegations connecting the president to Burisma, says Biden and his son pressured a Burisma executive to pay them $5 million each. Also, according to Cleveland's reporting, the Burisma executive is none other than the company's founder.
--:-- Tim Pierce: I spoke with Cleveland about this report and what we know about the alleged connections between the president and Burisma. Here's what she had to say. This is coming directly from the individual who claimed that he paid the bribes, although he also claimed he was coerced. And he said that he had recorded 17 conversations. So if there's that many recorded, you would think that there were many conversations that were... [pauses] And of those 17, 15 involved Hunter and two involved Joe Biden.
--:-- Tim Pierce: We also have from the laptop that there was a disclosure of emails in which a thank you from one other Beresma executive was documented showing that Joe had met with one other Beresma executive The difficulty we have here is then Vice President Biden was traveling to Ukraine. That was part of his job. And what we don't know is who all did he meet when he was there? Not necessarily officially. There could have been several unofficial meetings as well. And also, we don't know what was relayed through other parties. So what did Hunter do that Joe was aware of that President Biden told Hunter to do. So we still don't have a full view of how much President Biden was involved in this.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now, how much confidence do we have that those recorded conversations exist and how would they come to light? Yeah, the FBI has known about the alleged existence of those tapes for years now. And as far as we know, the agency never really looked into it. So what about those tapes now? What are the odds they could be located? When I spoke to Cleveland, she was pretty confident that those tapes exist. Essentially, she believed the Burisma executive kept the tapes as a kind of insurance policy. He wanted to protect himself in case he was ever investigated.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Here's Cleveland explaining. He said, I was pretty much coerced into making these bribes and I'm afraid that Trump's going to investigate. At that point, the confidential human source said, well, I hope you have some sort of protection. So it's then that Theodore Brizna makes the point of, I never got money directly to Joe Biden, that it will take them 10 years to sort this out, and that he had made 17 recordings. And while 15 only involved Hunter, he had two involving Joe Biden.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Now let's go to the next step. The recordings were made in probably 2015 and 60. Is he going to still have those seven years later? I would say if that's his protection, he is going to keep those as long as he needs to. As for whether we will ever see those tapes, Cleveland said that depends on whether the Burisma executive ever thinks it's in his best interest to bring them forward.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, that's some insightful analysis from Margo Cleveland. We're going to keep tracking this as it develops. Tim, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Tim Pierce: My pleasure.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The pandemic kicked off an exodus of remote workers from major cities. The increase in people working from home and their decision to abandon cities has had a ripple effect across the country. Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraida Lordi is here with the details.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: So, hundreds of thousands of workers who used to live in major cities and work in person in offices started working from home and moved away once COVID hit. In the two years after COVID began, about one in four workers who moved a long distance away worked remotely in their new location. That's record migration for remote workers. What we seeing is that people are typically moving to less expensive cities, rural areas, and even vacation spots. This is a huge shift for cities like New York and Los Angeles which depend on people needing to live in the metropolitan areas for work.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Now which city saw the greatest exodus of remote workers specifically? That would be New York City, then Los Angeles, San Francisco, then Chicago for the top four. In New York City, 200,000 remote workers moved out in the two years after COVID. In the two years before the pandemic, only 40,000 remote workers moved out of the city, So a five-fold increase. Now, some remote workers have also moved to these cities, but not enough to balance out the losses for many of them. New York ended up losing a net 116,000 remote workers, more than twice as many as Los Angeles, which lost a net 53,000. San Francisco lost a net 32,000 remote workers, and Chicago lost a net 29,000.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Meanwhile, Austin, Denver, Dallas, and Nashville saw an influx of remote workers. Vacation spots like Cape Coral and Naples, Florida also got thousands of remote workers moving to the area. Now, do we know why people are moving to these places in particular? Yes. One big reason is that those places are less expensive. The pandemic essentially helped speed up a trend that started before COVID. Before the pandemic, college-educated workers and high-income workers who are more likely to be able to work from home were already starting to move away from the more expensive cities to more affordable areas.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: This is bad news for the expensive cities because they've lost tax dollars and consumer spending power that those high earners brought them. We should note, too, red states like Tennessee, Texas, and Florida are also seeing lots of migration from blue states in general post-pandemic. Many of those people are attracted by less regulation, more job opportunities, and lower living expenses. We'll have to wait and see how much remote work trends end up affecting cities and migration patterns in the long run, but for now, blue coastal cities are the losers in this situation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, we first reported a similar story in 2021, So this is starting to look like a pretty enduring trend. Maraida, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Maraida Lordi: Thanks, Georgia.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Another story we're tracking this week. A tourist vessel visiting the wreckage of the Titanic has gone missing. Search and rescue operations continue as the sub's oxygen levels draw down and the fate of its five passengers becomes increasingly uncertain. Ocean Gate Expeditions has confirmed that there are five people on board the Titan submersible and that they lost communication on Sunday morning. According to OceanGate, the submersible had a 96-hour oxygen supply when it began its descent on Sunday. Officials say they're working to get a remotely operated vehicle that can reach the depth of 6,000 meters, about 20,000 feet, to the site as soon as possible.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The search and rescue efforts are being conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard in Boston and being assisted by the Canadian Coast Guard. After receiving the call, we launched a C-130 aircraft to conduct an aerial search, both visual and radar of the scene. It is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area, but we are deploying all available assets to make sure that we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board. This is a developing story, and for the latest, head over to dailywire.com.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
