--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Thursday, July 27th.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for waking up with us. We've got a lot to cover today, but let's start with the news that's been making headlines. Hunter Biden's sweetheart plea deal abruptly unraveled Wednesday, resulting in the president's son pleading not guilty for now.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Why did the judge delay her decision and what's next in the controversial case?
--:-- John Bickley: We'll get to that in a minute. But first, bombshell testimony during a Wednesday hearing alleged that the government has been operating an extensive UFO retrieval program under the radar. Are you aware of any individuals that are participating in reverse engineering programs for non-terrestrial craft?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Personally, yes.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We break down the major takeaways from the hearing. And New York officials say the city's reached its breaking point in the migrant crisis.
--:-- John Bickley: There are no laws that prevent people from waiting wherever they can find a place to wait. But right now, we have no space.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Hunter Biden's plea agreement fell apart during a chaotic hearing in a federal courthouse in Delaware on Wednesday. The hearing ended after the judge refused to sign off on the plea bargain over concerns about its constitutionality and unusual structure.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Daily Wire reporter Tim Pierce is here to tell us what happened to the plea deal and what happens now.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So, the Department of Justice and Hunter's legal team spent weeks on this deal. How did it unravel so quickly?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Yeah, how did it unravel at all? Like you said, prosecutors and defense attorneys worked for weeks to hammer this out. And for it to fall apart now is highly unusual.
--:-- Tim Pierce: U.S. District Judge Mary Ellen Narika sent the two sides home to file briefs later to clear up a number of odd details about the plea agreement.
--:-- Tim Pierce: One of the judge's concerns had to do with a half of the agreement involving Hunter's felony gun charge. The two sides had agreed to let the charge, which carries a maximum 10-year sentence, drop if Hunter completed a two-year diversion program.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Basically, he has to stay off drugs for two years and he isn't allowed to own a gun. However, the judge raised issue with a clause that said, in the event that the two sides disagree over whether Hunter violated that diversion program, she, the judge, would be the decider.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Prosecutors said they wanted an independent third party to make the call on whether the DOJ should bring the gun charge after all. But Norika said her involvement raised separation of powers issues.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The other concern she raised, and it's unclear if this will be resolved or not, is the statute under which the plea agreement was made.
--:-- Tim Pierce: She said prosecutors and Hunter's attorneys are trying to get her to rubber stamp the agreement by negotiating under a statute that really restricts how she's able to rule.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Typically in plea agreements, the judge has flexibility to sign off or reject parts of the agreement. In this case, the deal appeared to force her hand, so she either had to accept it as is or reject it all.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But it's hard to know the exact details here because the written agreement is not public.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So what were the first signs that things were kind of going off the rails?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Well, earlier in the day, there was an episode that really emphasizes how strange this hearing was.
--:-- Tim Pierce: It wasn't just the judge who didn't understand the plea agreement. The Justice Department and defense disagreed on what they had supposedly already agreed to.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The signs of trouble started when Narika asked the two sides about the limits of immunity granted to Hunter Biden in the plea agreement.
--:-- Tim Pierce: The two sides disagreed over whether or not the plea bargain protected Hunter from future prosecution under the Foreign Agent Registration Act or FARA.
--:-- Cash Patel: The specificity that she went to FARA tells me she knew in the discovery process of this case that that issue had come up.
--:-- Cash Patel: And if that issue was going to be legally precluded from being prosecuted in the future, she as the jurist has the responsibility to demand that answer from the DOJ.
--:-- Cash Patel: And it looks like Hunter Biden's lawyers thought that the FAR registration, which they can't get a deferral on, which he has to go to federal prison on, which is a felony.
--:-- Cash Patel: They thought they had negotiated their way out of it. And it looks as if they just canned the plea agreement because having been over there on the defense side, you quietly know when you've lost.
--:-- Cash Patel: And they lost on the FAR point.
--:-- Tim Pierce: So what happens now?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hunter left after pleading not guilty to the charges, but his attorneys and the prosecution have been directed to get together and clarify the agreement for themselves and for the judge.
--:-- Tim Pierce: We should learn more about that in the coming weeks.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for joining us, Tim.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Coming up, a congressional hearing on UFOs, sparks fireworks, and more questions. On Wednesday, Congress held a groundbreaking hearing on UFOs, hearing from military pilots and a top-ranking official in the U.S. intelligence community who says the federal government is covering up a vast UFO retrieval program.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So, a few years ago, talking about UFOs might get you left out of a room, but now it is being openly discussed in the highest levels of our government.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the national security threat posed by UAPs. That's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. That's the government term for UFOs.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Committee members heard testimony from three men. Two were experienced Navy pilots who'd had firsthand encounters with unidentified craft, while the other was a recently retired senior intelligence official who claims the U.S. government has recovered craft of, quote, non-human origin.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We'll get to that testimony, but it's important to note just how serious the tone of this hearing was.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: There were no E.T. jokes or discussions of little green men. The topic was mainly discussed in terms of national security.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So what prompted the hearing?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, the topic first went mainstream back in 2017, when the New York Times broke a story that the Pentagon had a top-secret program for researching UFOs reported by military and intelligence personnel.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Since then, a number of those officials have come out as whistleblowers, telling the public about their experiences with unidentified craft.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: One of those men is retired Navy Commander David Fravor, who encountered a craft with his F-18 squadron back in 2004.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Fravor says his team tracked a craft visually and on multiple radar systems that, in his words, appeared to defy the laws of physics, descending from 80,000 feet to sea level in a matter of seconds, turning at right angles, and accelerating in ways that our pilots could only dream of.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here he is answering a question from Tennessee Rep Tim Burchett.
--:-- David Fravor: We have nothing that can stop in midair and go the other direction nor do we have anything that can like in our situation come down from space hang out for three hours and go back up.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We heard a similar sentiment from retired Navy Lieutenant Ryan Graves who says that his team off the coast of Virginia observed UFOs every day for months on end.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In some cases, the craft nearly collided with our own planes.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: How do you know that these were not our aircraft?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: These objects were staying completely stationary in Category 4 hurricane winds.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: These same objects would then accelerate to supersonic speeds, 1.1, 1.2 Mach.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: They would do so in very erratic and quick behaviors that I don't have an explanation for.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And importantly, according to Grush and Graves, many of these objects are able to disable the tracking and photo software of our planes, making it difficult to get clear images during encounters.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, the witness that got the most attention was the government whistleblower.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Tell us about him.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, the dam really broke on this issue last month when David Grush, the retired senior intelligence officer for the National Reconnaissance Office, filed a whistleblower report alleging that the Pentagon was concealing a secret UFO retrieval program.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to sworn testimony from Grush, the U.S. government has recovered, quote, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And importantly, Grush says those programs have been intentionally withheld from congressional oversight, which is illegal.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Grush elaborated on those claims under oath before Congress.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: If you believe we have crashed craft, do we have the bodies of the pilots who piloted this craft?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Biologics came with some of these recoveries, yeah.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Were they, I guess, human or non-human biologics?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Non-human, and that was the assessment of people with direct knowledge on the program I talked to that are currently still on the program.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, were there any skeptics in the hearing?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So, if any of the committee members doubted the legitimacy of these witnesses, they didn't express it, at least publicly.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The overwhelming sentiment from lawmakers was that they believed the testimony and wanted to get to the bottom of whether the Pentagon was illegally withholding information from Congress.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That's not to say there aren't any skeptics, though. Plenty of lawmakers and others believe the objects are most likely drones, birds, or commercial airliners, while others say it's likely some sort of off-the-books government technology.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But the witnesses testified to that point as well, noting that many of these sightings have occurred over international waters where anyone, including our adversaries, could observe them or recover them if they went down.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For that reason, they say classified technology is almost always tested over land or over American waters.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And they were also adamant that what they've seen and documented goes far beyond anything in our arsenal and that they're hardly the only pilots who have seen these things.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Here's Congressman Tim Burchett questioning Fravor on that point.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: You're not aware of any other objects that anybody in the world has in this world that has those capabilities.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: No, I think it's far beyond actually our material science that we currently possess.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, this is a fascinating story. I'm not quite sure even how I feel about it just yet.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: That makes two of us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for reporting, Cabot.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: New York City appears to be at its breaking point as it tries to account for the tens of thousands of illegal migrants who have streamed into the city over the past year.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Daily Wire investigative reporter Marietta Lordi is here with the details for us.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: So, Marietta, how bad is the migrant situation in New York?
--:-- Marietta Lordi: The city is pretty much at crisis level.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Since April of last year, more than 90,000 migrants have arrived in the city.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: And as of this month about 55 are still being housed on the city dime.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: That caused New York homeless shelters to burst at the seams Combined with the homeless population the city is now sheltering a record 105 people.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: And it's already poured $1.2 billion into helping the migrants since last summer.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Mayor Adams said earlier this month that the city's seeing about 2,500 asylum seekers arriving every week, which he called a silent crisis for the city.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Now, as we touched on before, this has really flustered him.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: He's blamed everyone from Texas, the White House and the state government for sticking the city with this emergency.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: In April, Adams called out President Biden by name and said he and the White House have failed New York City on this issue.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: But then the next month, Adams accused Texas Governor Greg Abbott of supposedly targeting black mayors by sending migrants to their city specifically.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: However, the 7,900 migrants Texas has bussed to New York are only a tiny portion of the migrants arriving in the city.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Then on Monday, the mayor said that it's going to get worse before it gets better if we don't get help from the national government.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Here he was last week sounding the alarm of the situation.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: We don't want to reach the point, and we won't reach the point, where families and children are living on our streets like you're seeing in other municipalities.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: So as New York waits for federal help that may or may not come, how is the city handling the crisis so far on its own?
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Well, so far, New York has opened more than 188 new shelter sites to house migrants, but the city is still struggling.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: This month, Adams even resorted to sending flyers to the southern border warning migrants that there's no guarantee of shelter if they come to New York and encouraging them to pick a different city.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: The flyers actually tell migrants that food and necessities in the city are more expensive than any other city in the country.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Dr. Ted Long, senior vice president at NYC Health and Hospitals, which heads up most of the emergency housing, summed up the situation last week.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Our compassion is infinite, but our space is not.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: On Monday, the city said it's now seeking private contractors to build new emergency long-term shelters.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: However, the new large-scale shelters will not be ready for weeks or even months.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: There's also the problem of public disturbances.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Right, tell us about that.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: We've seen some reports on migrant-related crime, correct?
--:-- Marietta Lordi: That's right.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Just this week, migrants outside a shelter in Harlem allegedly started throwing objects at pedestrians and punched and kicked two New Yorkers who intervened, pushing one man through a glass door and sending both to the hospital.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Business owners in Manhattan say their businesses are suffering significantly due to chaos spilling out of the migrant shelters and onto the streets.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: And pictures of migrants sitting on busy sidewalks during the day have been circulating online, while there are a lot of reports of migrants attempting to sell various items on the street.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: In Brooklyn, some migrants who were kicked out of shelters for brawling set up a mini tent city under a highway.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Some businesses in that area have hired private security to stop migrants from coming into their stores.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, this certainly looks like a situation that's spiraling out of control fast.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Hopefully the city can find a more long-term solution.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for reporting, Marietta.
--:-- Marietta Lordi: Thanks, John.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
