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--:-- Georgia Howe: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: In an unprecedented move, the FBI raided the home of former President Trump in Mar-a-Lago on Monday. This is something that was political and politically motivated. The left has been after Donald Trump since he decided to run for president of the United States.
--:-- John Bickley: What was the agency searching for and how has Trump responded?
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, August 9th, and this is Morning Wire. 80% of New Yorkers rely on public transit, but a rash of high-profile crimes have left commuters too afraid to ride the subway. And cities across the U.S. are struggling to fight rising crime as more and more police officers retire or quit.
--:-- John Bickley: Our priorities are resources, recruitment, retention. What's behind the significant officer shortages?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Wire to 989898 and secure the gains you've made while you can.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: In a stunning development, the FBI conducted a raid of Donald Trump's residents in Palm Beach, Florida on Monday morning. The news reportedly comes as part of an investigation into whether the former president illegally took classified documents from the White House after leaving office.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, we have never seen a U.S. president raided by law enforcement and certainly not at their private residence. According to reports, on Monday morning, the FBI notified the Secret Service that they had a warrant to search Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago, and a large team of agents were then given access to the property.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We're told the search was related to material that Trump is suspected of taking from the White House, including documents that allegedly contained classified material and were meant to be sent to the National Archives after his term ended.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, it's worth noting, in order for a warrant to be issued in a situation like this, there typically needs to be intelligence that the evidence that they're looking for is currently in a specific location or is at risk of being destroyed. And a judge was apparently convinced that this was the case and signed off on the warrant.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Let's talk about those documents. What are they looking for?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, we don't yet know exactly what the raid was looking for, but it's reportedly related to a separate incident earlier this year when Trump was forced to return 15 boxes of documents, mementos, and gifts. In February, the National Archives say the boxes they received from Trump also included classified information, which at the time led them to contact the Justice Department.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Keep in mind, this all centers on the Presidential Records Act, which requires all documents and records that have anything to do with official White House matters to be stored at the archives after a president leaves office.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So it appears that agents had reason to believe the president still had classified documents at his home which under the law would be illegal.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, obviously, we've known for some time that the president and members of his inner circle and administration were under federal investigation. But again, this is just a dramatic escalation.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yes, it certainly is. How did President Trump respond?
--:-- Georgia Howe: As you can imagine, he was livid. He wasn't at the property when the raid took place, but he issued a statement shortly after the news broke saying his residence is, quote, currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Nothing like this has ever happened to a president of the United States before. After working and cooperating with relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate. It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the justice system, and an attack by radical left Democrats who desperately don't want me to run for president in 2024.
--:-- Georgia Howe: He went on to say such a raid could only take place in what he called a broken third world country before comparing the raid to the Watergate break-in and then noting that Hillary Clinton was never punished for deleting emails from her time as Secretary of State.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And one thing that really stuck out from the statement is that Trump says the agents, quote, even broke into my safe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right, so Trump clearly views this as being politically motivated. Without a doubt.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He also called the raid a witch hunt, which is generally similar to the message we heard from many Republican officials. They view this largely as another example of the FBI and DOJ being politicized and compared yesterday's incident to the later debunked Russia collusion narrative.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The other general message from many Republicans was that the raid was more of a fishing expedition in search of anything the DOJ could use against Trump.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, in a statement to Morning Wire, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the raid was, quote, another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime's political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the regime is getting another 87,000 IRS agents to wield against its adversaries. Banana Republic.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And in D.C., Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted that Republicans would conduct an investigation into the DOJ if they took power in November, telling Attorney General Garland to, quote, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, we're in uncharted waters here politically. Yeah, we are. We will certainly have more on this to come as more details emerge.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for reporting, Cabot. Anytime.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That was Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Coming up, a rash of violent crime has left New Yorkers afraid to take the subway. Do you have a trusted source for your day-to-day hiring needs? Indeed is an incredibly powerful hiring partner helping you to attract, interview, and hire all in one place. They deliver four times more hires than all other job sites combined. Plus, with Indeed, you only pay for quality applications that match your sponsored job description. Visit Indeed.com slash wire to start hiring right now. That's Indeed.com slash wire. Indeed.com slash wire. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: There's been a lot of talk about crime on the streets of New York, but increasingly that crime is moving under the streets, into the city's subway system. Earlier this year, a shooting in the subway system left 16 injured, and there have been several incidents of riders being pushed onto the track, sometimes to their death.
--:-- David Marcus: Good morning. The answer is pretty bad. So in raw numbers, the rate of crime is right around where it was in 2019, pre-pandemic. But ridership is down 40 percent So your odds of being a victim of crime on the subway have ticked up dramatically and New Yorkers know it Violent crime on the subway is up 57 since last year
--:-- Georgia Howe: And look, I think it's key to note that even five years ago, people were not afraid to take the subway, not even at 3 a.m. Today, they're scared at 3 in the afternoon. And the subway is Gotham's arterial system. If it can't pump oxygen in the form of workers and shoppers to business districts, those districts die.
--:-- David Marcus: Now, there are multiple reasons why ridership is down. Only 39 percent of New Yorkers have returned to work in person. So that's a lot of commuters staying home. However, increasingly, COVID isn't the only reason they're staying home. Multiple large employers are citing dangerous commutes as the reason they haven't brought workers back.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here's Kathy Wild, leader of Partnership for New York City, discussing a recent meeting between Mayor Eric Adams with some of the city's Wall Street CEOs. The executives came out very strong saying, we can't in conscience bring our people back to work and encourage them to ride the subways unless we see tangible evidence that you're doing something about this.
--:-- David Marcus: Now, the Times spoke with 30 people who ride the A-Line that crosses several boroughs over about 31 miles. What did we hear from them? Nothing good. I mean, as I said, people are scared. This is the A train, made famous by Duke Ellington, as big band aficionados know. It cuts through neighborhoods of wildly diverse demographics, some very, very rich, some very, very poor. But to the extent that rich people are still taking the subway, the crime in the system doesn't discriminate. Everyone is a potential target.
--:-- Georgia Howe: One high-profile example is a Goldman Sachs executive, Daniel Enriquez, who was shot in the chest in May while he just sat riding the Q train into Manhattan.
--:-- David Marcus: Now, this isn't just in New York. I understand that D.C.'s Union Station had a Starbucks that closed recently over crime. Why is public transit such a hotspot for crime?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Stations tend to be places where people with no place else to go can go. There's a lot of dark corners where people can sleep or shoot drugs or do, I don't know, other things. It's cheap to enter the system if people pay at all. And there are captive targets. If you're on a subway train car and you're attacked or mugged, there's no place to run. And that really feeds into the fear even more.
--:-- David Marcus: Now, there have been calls for greater policing on the subway system in New York and elsewhere. Is that the only answer here or what other options are there?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, look, it's the main one for sure. Without good, competent policing, nothing else works. But there are other things specifically in how we design these stations and transit hubs that can help.
--:-- David Marcus: So I have a piece up at Daily Wire where I look at this and experts told me that civic planners need to take public safety into account in design. Good example is the new Penn Station in New York. It's big, open. It's an airy space that a cop can see all of in one scan. There are very few places for vagrants to sit or hide.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And look, for better or worse, we're starting to spend the trillion dollars from the infrastructure plan, right? A lot of that goes to transit. And public safety really needs to be front and center as these stations are built or redesigned.
--:-- David Marcus: David, thanks so much for joining us today.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for having me.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Police departments across the country are experiencing staff shortages. Officers are retiring en masse, and departments are struggling to attract enough new recruits. Here to talk about the widespread shortage of police is Daily Wire's Tim Pierce.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So Tim which cities are being hit the hardest by this mass exodus Well several Philadelphia Seattle L Chicago but really shortages are happening in nearly every major American city Police departments across the country are paying out more overtime to make up for staffing shortages, and some cities are offering signing bonuses to attract officers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Some police departments are restructuring to keep response times up, while prioritizing violent crime over other offenses such as drugs or theft. Cold case investigators and officers working outreach or community programs have been reassigned and are put back on the street.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Police department heads are pretty conscientious about keeping officers in high-trafficked and high-crime areas, so those are usually prioritized. But there's no doubt law enforcement is stretched thin and criminals are taking advantage.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How long has this issue been going on and what's behind it?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Cops say low morale and intense scrutiny are the biggest factors. The mass shortage has been going on for a couple years now and traces back to the start of the pandemic.
--:-- Georgia Howe: After the pandemic broke out in March 2020, many state and local governments adopted policies that put criminals back on the street within days of being arrested to keep jails from getting too crowded.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Police in New York City were arresting the same criminal for different crimes within weeks or sometimes even days of each other in a pretty frustrating cycle.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here's New York Mayor Eric Adams talking about that. Time and time again, our police officers make an arrest. And then the person who is arrested for assault, felonious assaults, robberies and gun possessions, they're finding themselves back on the street within days, if not hours after arrest. And they're going to commit more crimes within weeks, if not days.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Then in May, pretty much every single major American city was rocked by protests over the death of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter activists led massive protests that sparked hundreds of violent riots and gave momentum to a movement to defund police departments.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Progressive leaders in cities such as Minneapolis, Portland, and Los Angeles initially embraced the reforms and cut police funding. Many officers took those cuts and the defund the police message to mean their elected leaders no longer supported them.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Can you put some numbers to this? How bad has this shortage gotten?
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Police Executive Research Forum conducted a study of nearly 200 police departments last year. measuring the changes in hiring, resignations, and retirements. Researchers polled departments on how those statistics changed in the year following the onset of the pandemic compared to the year before.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hiring across those police departments fell by a relatively modest 5%. Resignations, on the other hand, increased 18%. And retirements was the biggest blow of all, jumping a staggering 45%.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I'm sure stats like that aren't exactly encouraging to communities where violent crime is on the rise.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, the police shortage paired with the rise in crime seems to be feeding a snowball effect. In Philadelphia, for instance, the city hit a record number of homicides last year, and it's on pace to break that record again this year. At the same time, the city is down about 550 officers.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Dallas is also down about 550 officers. New York City, where the crime rate has jumped nearly 40% this year, is seeing its police officers leave en masse. About 1,600 have left the force this year already, well over 400 more than left the department in all of last year.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, hopefully cities can get a handle on this soon before things get too much worse.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Tim, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for having me.
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--:-- Georgia Howe: Other stories we're tracking this week. Actress and songstress Olivia Newton-John died after a long battle with breast cancer on Monday at age 73. Greg McMichael and his son Travis McMichael, the man who fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery, were sentenced Monday to life in prison for committing a federal hate crime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
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