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--:-- John Bickley: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.
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--:-- John Bickley: Hunter Biden surprises his lawyers and offers to plead guilty to federal tax evasion, while Donald Trump's attorneys mount defenses in multiple courtrooms. What's next for the high-stakes legal battles waged in court this week? I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Friday, September 6th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The father of the 14-year-old who opened fire at a high school in Winder, Georgia, is arrested, while new details emerge about the FBI's handling of the case. The shooter was interviewed, and he was speaking with our investigators earlier. And the majority of violent crimes in New York are being committed by illegal immigrants, putting a massive strain on law enforcement. Could this put an end to the city's sanctuary laws?
--:-- John Bickley: We need the cooperation and collaboration with our law enforcement partners here in the city. The sanctuary policies won't allow them to cooperate. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: The current president is dead set on spending the remaining trillion dollars of his agenda before leaving office. Translation, more money printing and soaring inflation. But there's hope. A gold IRA from Birch Gold Group is the ultimate inflation hedge for your savings in uncertain times. And for one final month, Birch Gold is offering an exclusive 24-karat gold-plated truth bomb on qualifying purchases. But you need to text WIRE to 989898 to claim your eligibility before September 30th. Again, text WIRE to 989898 to claim your eligibility and make your purchase today.
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--:-- John Bickley: Hunter Biden's Thursday announcement that he intends to plead guilty in a federal tax case may be the biggest legal story coming out of Washington, but it's hardly the only one. Here are the latest on Hunter's plea, as well as former President Trump's lawsuits, is Daily Wire deputy managing editor Tim Rice.
--:-- Tim Rice: Hey, Tim. So some major action in the courtroom this week, including from Judge Tanya Chutkin yesterday. She said the 2020 election case will not be heard till after the November election. First, what happened there?
--:-- John Bickley: Right. So that case brought by special counsel Jack Smith is now not going to take place until after the election. This all started on Tuesday when Trump officially waived his right to appear at his arraignment before the D.C. District Court, where Smith has revised and refiled charges that Trump sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
--:-- Tim Rice: Trump pled not guilty through his attorney to Smith's new indictment, which, as former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy explained on Morning Wire over the weekend, is essentially the same as the original. Smith just took out certain pieces of evidence to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling that Trump has immunity for all official acts undertaken while in office. So effectively, Smith did the bare minimum to comply with the court's order.
--:-- John Bickley: How is Trump's team reacting to that, these barely-tweeted charges?
--:-- Tim Rice: Well, Trump attorney John Loro has already objected to Smith's revised filing. Loro told Judge Chutkin that the court's decision required a total dismissal of the case and accused prosecutors of rushing to get a guilty verdict before the November election.
--:-- John Bickley: Unsurprisingly, Chutkin dismissed that argument, saying this case has been pending for over a year and that, quote, we're hardly sprinting to the finish here. Now, we also had a legal filing related to the Trump hush money case yesterday. What took place there?
--:-- Tim Rice: Trump sentencing in that case is currently set for September 18th. Remember he was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. But that sentencing may not proceed as planned.
--:-- John Bickley: On Thursday, America First Legal announced that it was suing New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Mershon, who's presiding over the case, for failing to turn over his financial disclosures. New York state law requires judges to turn over their annual financial filings upon request, which Mershon has yet to do.
--:-- Tim Rice: And what's their angle there? What exactly is AFL looking for in the judges' filings?
--:-- John Bickley: Primarily, they're looking for answers about his daughter's work at a Democratic political firm. Lauren Mershon is the president of Authentic Campaigns, which works with both President Biden and Kamala Harris. But more broadly, AFL is looking to prove that Mershon is biased against Trump. The judges reportedly donated to Democratic causes, including the Biden campaign and a group called Stop Republicans.
--:-- Tim Rice: So if the legal group can reveal more of Mershon's bias, the hope is that they can overturn the verdict or at least delay the sentencing until after the election.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, Trump didn't appear in court in person this week, but has he said anything on the campaign trail about the lawsuits?
--:-- Tim Rice: You know, for the most part this week, he's let his lawyers do the talking. Beyond that, Trump's been largely focused on standard campaign messaging, including in a Thursday speech at the Economic Club of New York, where he laid out his economic policies for a potential second term and took questions from the business community for over an hour.
--:-- John Bickley: He also announced that if elected, he would create a government efficiency commission, which would be chaired by Elon Musk. I will create a government efficiency commission task with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms. We need to do it. And Elon, because he's not very busy, has agreed to head that task force.
--:-- Tim Rice: Final question. And we mentioned the Hunter Biden plea at the top, which stunned a lot of people. What's the latest on that front?
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah, the president's son surprised everyone, including his own attorneys, by suddenly doing a 180 yesterday and offering to plead guilty to federal tax charges without a plea deal from prosecutors. Hunter's lawyers were preparing to defend him, but now he's effectively given himself over to the court for sentencing.
--:-- Tim Rice: The judge informed him that he faces a max of 15 years in prison and a fine between $500,000 to $1 million. Meanwhile, conservative analysts say this is ultimately Hunter's attempt to shield his father, the president, from drawing out this embarrassing case any further. The fraud he was hiding, they say, leads in the end to the quote unquote Biden family business in which, as Andy McCarthy put it, Joe Biden was a willing participant.
--:-- John Bickley: No doubt. Lots of Democrats hoping the saga will end sooner than later. Tim, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Tim Rice: Thanks for having me.
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--:-- John Bickley: The 14-year-old boy who opened fire at a high school in Winder, Georgia, as well as his father, have now both been charged in connection to the shooting. Meanwhile, the FBI has revealed that the boy was on their radar for over a year. Here with more is Daily Wire reporter Amanda Presta-Giacomo.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: So Amanda, as we've been documenting just heartbreaking news out of Georgia on Wednesday, and more details have since emerged, what have we learned?
--:-- John Bickley: Right. Well, first, we now know more about the four fatalities. The two students who were killed were 14-year-old boys, Mason Schirmerhorn and Christian Angulo. The two adults have been identified as Christina Irimi and Richard Aspinwall. They were both math teachers. Aspinwall's wife is pregnant. Nine others were injured, eight students and one teacher, and they were all reportedly shot in some capacity.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: It's also been confirmed now that the Appalachee High School received a threatening phone call on the morning of the shooting. They were warned of shootings at five high schools, with Appalachee being the first target. The call is still being investigated, but authorities say there's no evidence right now of other schools being targeted.
--:-- John Bickley: We also learned that officers had a quick response time. They were first notified about an active shooter at around 10 a.m., and they were dispatched to the school within minutes. Barrow County Sheriff Judd Smith said during a press conference that faculty members at the high school used a device called Centegix to quickly alert police.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now, Appalachee High School adopted this alert system just one week before the shooting and it may have helped save lives. The school also has automatically locking classroom doors as another safety measure.
--:-- John Bickley: Here's how one student who was actually in class with the shooter recalled the events during an interview with CNN. They almost let him in, but I'm pretty sure she saw that he had a gun. And so she backed away. And then he turned away. And that's when you hear like the first rounds of fire.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Sheriff Smith also detailed how it was a school resource officer who engaged the shooter before he surrendered. And the shooter quickly realized that if he did not give up, that it would end with an OIS, an officer-involved shooting. He gave up, got on the ground, and the deputy took him into custody.
--:-- John Bickley: This high school has two of these resource officers, and they've been praised for stopping what could have been much more bloodshed. They both have law enforcement training and extensive backgrounds in responding to these types of school threats.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Now, as we mentioned at the top, the FBI has confirmed that the shooter was on their radar over a year ago. What happened there?
--:-- John Bickley: Right. The FBI began receiving anonymous tips in May of last year about the would-be shooter posting threats online to commit a school shooting. The threats, which were posted to Discord, even included photographs of guns.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The FBI's Atlanta field office passed along the information to the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and had them take action. The office interviewed the shooter, who was then 13 years old, and he denied making threats. He claimed his account was hacked numerous times. His father was also interviewed, and he said there were hunting guns in the home, but that his son did not have unsupervised access to those.
--:-- John Bickley: The sheriff's office also alerted local schools about the teen for continued monitoring, but the FBI said in a press release that at the time, there was no probable cause for additional action.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, in one of the biggest developments, the shooter and his father have both been charged for the shooting. What do we know about that?
--:-- John Bickley: The shooter has been transferred to the youth detention center in Gainesville. He will be tried as an adult and has already been charged with four counts of felony murder, but he's being held in juvenile custody currently because he's 14 years old. He's set to have his first court appearance this morning.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: The boy's father is facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children. The father reportedly told authorities this week that he bought his son a rifle for Christmas, which was just months after the pair were interviewed about those online threats. And that was reportedly the same rifle the shooter used on Wednesday.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, as usual, we've seen some political reactions to the shooting as well, specifically from the White House. What are they saying?
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Well, President Biden has been quick to condemn Republicans for the shooting and he's calling for gun bans. In a statement, he said, Republicans in Congress must finally say enough is enough and work with Democrats to pass common sense gun safety legislation. Biden also called for the banning of, quote, assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
--:-- John Bickley: The governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, however, had a different reaction. He stressed on Wednesday that it's, quote, not the day for politics or policy. Today is a day for an investigation and to mourn these precious Georgians that we have lost.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: Right. Well, a real tragedy.
--:-- John Bickley: Amanda, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Amanda Presta-Giacomo: You're welcome.
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--:-- John Bickley: A staggering number of arrests made in New York City are of illegal aliens. That's according to a new report. The crisis clogging up the city's judicial system has been exacerbated by sanctuary city policies that block coordination with federal immigration authorities. Here to tell us about the crime problem plaguing New York and other major American cities is Daily Wire reporter Tim Peer.
--:-- Tim Peer: So let's start with this new report from the New York Post. What does it say?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, it says that illegal immigrants make up a huge percentage of arrests in parts of New York City. The largest portion appears to be in midtown Manhattan where the Post reports that as much as three-quarters of arrests are of illegal immigrants. In Queens, law enforcement estimates that that figure is around 60 percent, so a significant majority.
--:-- Tim Peer: In addition to the crisis at the border, the situation in New York City appears to be inflamed by two factors, sanctuary city laws and lax bail policies. Mayor Eric Adams has been critical of the city's status as a sanctuary for illegals for months now. In fact, here he was last week.
--:-- John Bickley: Migrants and asylum seekers are paroled into our country, so they're here legally. But those who commit violent acts after they serve their time, I think they should be removed from our country. Right now, we don't have the authorization to be able to go and coordinate with ICE. We have to follow the law.
--:-- Tim Peer: The city's bail policies, too, have essentially ensured many illegal immigrants that even if they are arrested, they'll be free soon enough to offend again.
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah. Now, the statistics are certainly eye-opening. How reliable are they?
--:-- Tim Peer: Unfortunately, they appear to be just estimates, though knowledgeable estimates from law enforcement and others in the city's criminal justice system. But this actually highlights another major issue, tracking illegal alien crime. It isn't really tracked in any organized or systematic way, and that's true across many cities and municipalities in the U.S.
--:-- John Bickley: On that, here is Denver's Democratic mayor, Mike Johnston, saying immigrants commit less crime.
--:-- Tim Peer: Any population, you'll have very small subsets of folks that don't follow the rules, and we hold those folks accountable. We actually know, historically, it's always true that we have lower levels of crime around migrants than we do among our general population.
--:-- John Bickley: Critics have questioned how he could claim that, given that there are cases of crime committed in the Denver area where the suspect's country of origin is not listed. A couple of police reports floated around online showed each suspect's country of origin marked as XX.
--:-- Tim Peer: And this, keep in mind, is in the state that just last week made headlines because of gangs taking over residential buildings and extorting residents.
--:-- John Bickley: So local data may not be a good marker, but what about national data? Again, unfortunately, it's not reliable either.
--:-- Tim Peer: FBI statistics on crime are almost entirely an aggregation of local law enforcement reporting their data to the FBI. While most states' law enforcement report most of their data, very few report all of it. And then you have some states that report almost none of it.
--:-- John Bickley: Morningwire spoke with Eamon Blair, a former Border Patrol agent and expert on immigration at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He said that these reporting gaps in sanctuary city policies are going to lead to more cases like Colorado, where criminal gangs become major problems.
--:-- Tim Peer: They're going to operate wherever they can get away with what they're doing. So you're going to see that more so in major metropolitan cities, areas where they can hide and play in sight, areas where it's a sanctuary policies, where unfortunately, no matter what they do, they're going to be released back into the community based off of their race or nationality or immigration status.
--:-- John Bickley: So we may see many more headlines about other gangs with members in the U.S. in the near future. Yeah, pretty unsettling prediction.
--:-- Tim Peer: Tim, thanks for joining us.
--:-- John Bickley: Good to be on. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back later this afternoon with more news you need to know.
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