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--:-- Georgia Howe: Senator Chuck Grassley is demanding answers as to why Delaware's U.S. attorney hasn't investigated the bribery allegations against President Biden and his son, Hunter. What new details have emerged and how are federal officials responding?
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, July 11th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: This week, several major outlets ran negative stories about President Biden's angry Oval Office outbursts and his refusal to acknowledge Hunter's illegitimate child.
--:-- John Bickley: You think inflation is a political liability ahead of the midterm? That's a great asset. More inflation. What a stupid son of a...
--:-- Georgia Howe: Is the legacy media turning on the president?
--:-- John Bickley: And the center of gravity for America's GDP is moving into the Sun Belt. For the first time ever, southern states have displaced the Northeast as America's economic powerhouse.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Georgia Howe: U.S. Attorney David Weiss sent a letter on Monday to set the record straight on his investigation into Hunter Biden's taxes. But Weiss's letter only seems to raise more questions about his role and his control over the investigation into Hunter.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Hi, Tim. So Weiss is out challenging the story from two IRS whistleblowers. What's he saying?
--:-- Georgia Howe: He wants to, quote, clarify an apparent misperception around his prosecution of Hunter Biden. Weiss is, of course, referencing the whistleblowers to IRS agents who worked the Hunter Biden investigation.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Those agents said that Weiss met with them in October of 2022 and said, quote, I'm not the deciding official on whether charges are filed.
--:-- Georgia Howe: He also allegedly said he requested special counsel status after he was blocked from Charging Hunter in D.C., but was denied.
--:-- Tim Pierce: But on Monday, Weiss said he was never denied the authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction. He also said he never requested special counsel status. He only discussed receiving special attorney powers with DOJ headquarters.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And he reiterated that he was promised unilateral authority to charge Hunter if it was necessary.
--:-- Tim Pierce: All right, so Weiss sort of carefully countering the whistleblower's claims.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Over in the Senate, Chuck Grassley has some questions for Weiss about one of his top assistants. What's going on there?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Grassley peppered Weiss for more details over allegations that Joe and Hunter Biden took bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Grassley broke some news in his letter. The FBI apparently briefed one of Weiss's top prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Wolf, over the contents of an FD-1023 form.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That's the same form that alleged Joe and Hunter took millions of dollars from the head of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Grassley wanted to know what steps, if any, Weiss took to verify the allegations from the 1023, including whether Weiss tried to get a hold of 17 recordings the head of Burisma is said to have made of his conversations with the Bidens.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Grassley also wanted to know why the IRS team investigating Hunter was not included in that briefing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, it's not clear how much effort has gone into investigating the claims in the 1023, but it's worth pointing out that Weiss on Monday said that the 1023 was part of an ongoing investigation.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Okay. So Leslie Wolfe the assistant U.S. attorney has been at the center of quite a bit of controversy over the Hunter Biden investigation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Can you tell us more about her?
--:-- Tim Pierce: Her name appeared quite a bit in the testimonies of the IRS whistleblowers. As IRS Supervisory Agent Gary Shapley told it, she was always hindering the investigation or undercutting it in ways that seemed designed to help the Bidens.
--:-- Georgia Howe: For instance, Shapley told Congress that Wolf told IRS investigators that they could not pursue any leads into Hunter's tax affairs that might also implicate Joe Biden, such as asking questions about who the big guy is.
--:-- Tim Pierce: At one point, Shapley's team prepared an affidavit to search Joe Biden's guest house where Hunter had lived for a time. But Wolf stopped them.
--:-- Georgia Howe: She apparently told them that there was enough physical evidence to justify the search, but questioned whether the, quote, juice was worth the squeeze because of the optics of the search.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. So she didn't want to do due diligence because of who the target was.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's the claim.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Right. Shapley also testified to another time his team prepared an affidavit, this time to search a storage unit in Virginia that belonged to Hunter.
--:-- Georgia Howe: He said Wolf stopped them again, but they appealed to Weiss, and he said they could execute a warrant if the storage unit wasn't accessed for 30 days.
--:-- Tim Pierce: And then that's when Wolf stepped in again.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Shapley said, quote, no sooner had we gotten off a call than we heard Wolf had simply reached out to Hunter Biden's defense counsel and told him about the storage unit, once again, ruining our chance to get evidence before being destroyed, manipulated, or concealed.
--:-- Tim Pierce: That sounds like Weiss needs to start clearing up a lot more misconceptions than he currently has.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Tim, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Tim Pierce: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A spate of recent articles over the last few days have some observers wondering if the legacy media is starting to turn on President Biden.
--:-- David Marcus: Hey, Dave. So let's start with the subject matter itself. How did these articles criticize Biden?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Morning.
--:-- David Marcus: All three were taking aim at very different faults of Biden or his presidency. The Times bashed him in a Maureen Dowd column for failing to recognize his seventh granddaughter born to his controversial son, Hunter.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The Atlantic ran a column flat out saying, Joe, you're 80, hang it up.
--:-- David Marcus: And Axios broke a story yesterday about how the president yells at everyone in the White House and the staff is afraid of him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Needless to say, this is not the kind of glowing coverage that Biden has generally been feted with.
--:-- David Marcus: And the stories taken together really blow a hole in the media's portrayal of Biden as a competent, gentle, grandfatherly figure.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And remember, he came into office vowing to eliminate disrespect.
--:-- David Marcus: I'm not joking when I say this. If you're ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone. I promise you I will fire you on the spot. On the spot.
--:-- Georgia Howe: OK, so why now? What's driving this apparent shift in coverage?
--:-- David Marcus: We see a few things. First and foremost, as we discussed recently, the window for a potential legitimate challenger to Biden, a Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer, it's closing.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So for those Democrats or liberals in the media who want that, it's time to fire all the cannons.
--:-- David Marcus: But I also think there's growing worry, just given how frail he looks right now, how few public appearances he does, that even those who support him are concerned he might not be up to a general election much less four more years in the Oval Office.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Is this actually a message to the president team? Is the Biden campaign itself part of the intended audience of these kinds of pieces?
--:-- David Marcus: It absolutely is a message to Biden world.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And it says that these issues, his age, his temperament, the entire Hunter Biden fiasco from kit to caboodle, are issues that even liberal outlets have to cover.
--:-- David Marcus: They can't just pretend that when Joe Biden whispers, watch me, that that just makes all this go away.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And we've seen flashes of this frustration in the past from the news media when Biden won't answer questions about classified documents or FBI whistleblowers.
--:-- David Marcus: And that frustration could grow.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's not 2020. He can't campaign from the basement this time.
--:-- David Marcus: And the water's starting to get choppy.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We did see some movement on the issue of his granddaughter with news that Hunter will pursue contact with her, presumably opening the way for Joe.
--:-- David Marcus: Will that help? It can't hurt.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But listen, this looks pretty politically motivated.
--:-- David Marcus: Last week, we found out that the four-year-old granddaughter knows that her grandfather is the president of the United States.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Anyone who even vaguely thinks about politics immediately thought, oh, so next October, there'll be a TV interview with a five-year-old girl saying, my granddad is president, but he won't talk to me.
--:-- David Marcus: They can't let that happen. It's like out of a Charles Dickens novel.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And then there was the whole thing about not letting the little girl use the Biden name, which looks especially bad given how often the president says things like, you have my word as a Biden.
--:-- David Marcus: So this is still going to be messy.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, sure. Looks like it.
--:-- David Marcus: Is there anything Biden can do to blunt these criticisms coming from his own side?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Can his doubters be appeased?
--:-- David Marcus: What he can do is be more out there in public, do more interviews and press conferences, do some actual campaigning, allow the media to, in his words, watch him.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But that comes with risk for a president prone to gaffes and falls and all other sorts of mishaps when he does put himself out there more.
--:-- David Marcus: Right now, though, that's looking more and more like a risk that the Biden campaign is going to have to take.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, I guess there's dangers for Biden in both the basement and the stage approach.
--:-- David Marcus: David, thanks for joining us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: After gaining millions of new residents in recent years for the first time ever, southern states now account for a larger share of the nation's economy than any other region.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So Cabot, some surprising new data coming out. Tell us a little bit more.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, so we talked on the show about the population boom in southern states at the expense of those in the northeast and west.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And now we're seeing another mass migration, this one financial. After centuries of dominating the nation's economy, the northeast, from D.C. up to Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, is no longer the largest economic contributor.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That mantle now belongs to the south.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to a new Bloomberg report, this year, for the first time on record, southern states account for a higher percentage of the country's GDP than those in the northeast.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Six states in particular, though, are really driving the trend. We'll call them the southern six. Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and the Carolinas.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So a huge shift with wide-reaching implications.
--:-- Georgia Howe: When did this start?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, from a population standpoint, the trend towards the South has been decades in the making.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In 1950 for example 28 of the country lived in the Northeast while just 16 lived in the South
--:-- Cabot Phillips: By the mid-90s that 12 discrepancy had disappeared. And by last year 26 of Americans lived in the South compared to 19 in the Northeast.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So a flip had occurred over the last few decades.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, historically, though, those transplants were overwhelmingly retirees, fleeing the North in search of warmer weather.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But now the immigration includes Americans of all ages.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And more importantly, it includes a seemingly endless stream of businesses.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The turning point, though, was 2020. When COVID made remote work available for the majority of Americans, a million sold out states with lower taxes and fewer lockdown measures.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And it's worth noting that influx was hardly a blip on the radar that disappeared when lockdowns lifted. It continued on into 2022 and shows no signs of slowing down.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Experts say the gap is actually going to continue to widen in coming years.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, last year, the six states that gained the most new residents were all six of those in the southern six.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And that is creating an economic explosion in the region.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So how much of a wealth transfer are we talking about?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Yeah, the numbers are staggering to say the least.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to new IRS data, in 2020 and 2021 alone, the Southeast gained $100 billion in new income, while the net loss for northeastern states was $60 billion.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But again, it's not just individuals taking their income there.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: According to census data, a record number of corporations have relocated to those southern states, bringing even more tax revenue and job opportunities with them.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, what are the specific factors that are driving the shift?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, it's interesting. There are some who say that weather is the big issue. Like we mentioned earlier, people have sought out sunbelt states for decades now.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But if that were the case, you'd expect a state like California to be leading the way.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But they lost nearly half a million residents last year.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right. We've talked about that quite a bit on this show.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, exactly. And when you look at the data more closely, it becomes obvious that weather does play a role.
--:-- Georgia Howe: But the bigger factor by far is economic.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Nationwide, there is an indisputable correlation between a state's economic freedom and their rate of population and business growth.
--:-- Georgia Howe: For example, the average Southern state ranks eighth in the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom Index, while the average Northeastern state ranks 33rd.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Similarly, the Nonpartisan Tax Foundation has a list ranking each state's business climate based on taxes and other operating costs.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Their bottom five performers are all in the Northeast, New Jersey, New York, DC, Connecticut, and Maryland.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: By contrast, that same list has Florida, which saw the most growth at number four and the average of the other Southern states at 17.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And if you look at taxes, the trend again continues.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: A separate tax foundation study shows that the average state and local tax burden in northeastern states is 12.4% of net state product.
--:-- Georgia Howe: In those southern states, it's 8.8%.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And in a tight economy, that can be the difference between being in the black or the red.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So sort of explains the business migration we're seeing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, Cabot, you and I both migrated to Tennessee, so this all checks out.
--:-- Georgia Howe: We love the volunteer state, don't we?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: We love it.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Another story we're tracking this week, the Justice Department unsealed charges against American-Israeli energy expert Gal Luft on Monday.
--:-- Gal Luft: [audio clip of Gal Luft's statement]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Luft, who is in hiding, alleged in a video statement last week that he is being targeted by the DOJ over his knowledge of the Biden family's dealings with China.
--:-- Gal Luft: [audio clip of Gal Luft's statement]
--:-- Georgia Howe: Prosecutors have charged Luft on eight counts, including acting as an unregistered foreign agent, trafficking in arms, violating U.S. sanctions against Iran, and making false statements to federal agents.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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