--:-- John Bickley: Whistleblowers have come forward claiming the FBI buried derogatory information about Hunter Biden, labeling verified evidence as Russian disinformation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: According to these whistleblowers that have come forward to Chuck Grassley, they are acting deliberately to affect the election, to do a favor for the Democratic candidate.
--:-- John Bickley: What are the allegations against the FBI and DOJ? And will the Justice Department take action? I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Wednesday, July 27th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Monkeypox infections rise in the U.S. after the World Health Organization declares it a global emergency. We speak with an expert about how monkeypox is spread and who should be worried.
--:-- John Bickley: And the Senate has now advanced a bill that would pump hundreds of billions into the semiconductor industry. We should be trying to build better conditions for semiconductor fabs to come back home to give better tax policy, not just for semiconductors, but for all technologies.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
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--:-- John Bickley: Highly credible whistleblowers say the FBI downplayed derogatory information on Hunter Biden in 2020. That's what Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, claims in a letter sent to the FBI and Justice Department this week.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here to discuss is the New York Post's Miranda Devine, who authored a book about the Hunter Biden laptop.
--:-- Miranda Devine: What do we know about Senator Grassley's claims about FBI whistleblowers?
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, what we know is that people have started coming forward from the FBI and telling Chuck Grasley about a cover-up of what he calls derogatory information about Hunter Biden, which was happening towards the end of 2020, starting in August and culminating in October 2020 with an even more alleged cover-up by the FBI or by certain elements within the FBI around the time that the New York Post first broke the story about Hunter Biden's laptop.
--:-- Miranda Devine: And particularly our first story was about Joe Biden meeting an executive from that Ukrainian company Burisma in Washington when he was vice president. This was crucial information that was important about one of the two candidates for president. October 2020, when our story came out, was just three weeks before the election. And we saw these 51 former high-level intelligence operatives put out that scandalous letter in which they claimed that the laptop was equivalent of Russian disinformation. They used more fancy words.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And similarly, Chuck Grasley says his whistleblowers are telling him that this was how the FBI censored and blocked any investigation of that Hunter Biden material internally by referring to it as disinformation.
--:-- Miranda Devine: And I think, you know, that explains a lot of things, including why the FBI did nothing with Hunter Biden laptop that was handed to them in December 2019.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Senator Grassley names some names. Who are some of the key players here?
--:-- Miranda Devine: Well, according to Chuck Grassley and his whistleblowers the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, Timothy Feebolt, shut down this line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020, just took it upon himself to do that. And then also, there's another name, an analyst mentioned, Brian Orton, also from the FBI, who also has some links to the Russia collusion dramas that occurred in which Donald Trump was falsely accused of having rigged the election with the help of Vladimir Putin in 2016.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How likely is it that Attorney General Merrick Garland takes any action based on these allegations?
--:-- Miranda Devine: Well, these are pretty heavy allegations. I mean, what Chuck Ravely is saying here has multiple sources. There are people within the FBI who clearly have decided that they have to speak up about this unconscionable conduct in which the elements of the FBI intervened in an election to prevent damaging information about one candidate coming out.
--:-- Georgia Howe: So if Merrick Garland is what he says he is, and a non-partisan professional lawyer attorney general, then he should be putting pressure on the FBI, on Christopher Wray, to investigate these agents.
--:-- Miranda Devine: It really is important for the FBI and the DOJ's own reputations that their leaders stand up and take these allegations seriously.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, lots of pressure and eyes on Garland right now. Miranda, thanks for coming on.
--:-- Miranda Devine: That was the New York Post, Miranda Devine.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Coming up, the WHO declares monkeypox a global emergency. You've heard us talk about the potential for food shortages on this show. Are you prepared? Well, if not, go to preparewithwire.com to save $150 off a three-month emergency food kit from My Patriot Supply. Your three-month emergency food kit gives you breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, and snacks for three full months per person. So go to preparewithwire.com. You'll get free shipping and your order will arrive fast. That's preparewithwire.com.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Monkeypox has been declared a global emergency by the WHO, with the U.S. now leading the way in cases. While most cases appear to be among gay men, at least two young children have now contracted the disease. Board-certified physician and Ph.D. research scientist Dr. Human Himadi joins us to discuss.
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: Thanks so much for coming on.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, in the past few days, the WHO has declared monkeypox a global emergency. What exactly does that mean?
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: You know, when the WHO declares something as a global health emergency, basically they're telling member nations that they are now required or at least very highly encouraged to begin reporting data to them that requires everyone who's part of WHO to submit all of their information, how many cases they have, where they are, all the circumstances, so that they can have a centralized repository, basically, of that information.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's really the first key step. It seems to me that this is mostly an information gathering and extra vigilance sort of step on their part.
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: How widespread is monkeypox at this point? And where are we seeing the most cases just from the preliminary data?
--:-- Georgia Howe: We had a lot of cases in the UK. We've had some across the world in Africa. We've now seen a cluster of cases in New York City. And it's looking like the U is becoming a hotspot.
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: That one of the reasons why it becoming big news here in the States.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now we just saw two small children diagnosed which obviously raises questions about transmission. What do we know about the transmission of monkeypox? Is it possible to get it from casual contact, like shaking hands or hugging, or does it require sexual contact?
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: It's looking like it requires prolonged skin-to-skin or very close contact. More intimate than shaking hands, maybe less intimate than sexual contact. But definitely the more intimate and the more prolonged the contact, the higher the chance of transmission.
--:-- Georgia Howe: How serious of an illness is it and what do the symptoms actually look like? And secondary to that, do the symptoms differ based on how the virus was acquired? For example, I read that it may spread via droplets, but also by body fluids.
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: Yeah, that's a very good question. So this is not a respiratory illness whatsoever. It's a completely different kind of virus. It doesn't go and infect the lung cells or any airway cells, but it does manifest in skin lesions, the little pustules that you see on the skin, as well as, you know, the typical kind of viral prodrome, as we call it. So the fever and the viral flu-like symptoms.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Now, the gay community in New York seems to be panicking about monkeypox, and we're seeing thousands of people line up for vaccines. How severe is this infection?
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: So monkeypox is definitely a self-limited infection. So what that means is that it's not something that's going to carry on forever, last a lifelong period, or cause symptoms beyond its acute infectious period of a handful of weeks.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That's a positive sign. Does it still cause problems? Absolutely. So is there a cause for panic necessarily? I wouldn't say that. But is there a cause for concern among communities that are at risk? Absolutely. Is there a reason to do a focused protection of communities at risk through vaccination and other protective measures? Absolutely.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think in this case, unlike with COVID, where you can get mass community transmission simply by being in the same space as other people and breathing the same air, this is a case where it actually becomes dramatically easier to say we know who is at risk. We can identify those people. We can vaccinate them. We can tell them to take appropriate precautions and pretty much be assured that this is likely going to go away.
--:-- Georgia Howe: All right. Well, doctor, thanks so much for coming on and explaining all this to us.
--:-- Dr. Human Himadi: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was board-certified physician and Ph.D. research scientist Dr. Human Hamadi.
--:-- John Bickley: As tensions between America and China intensify, Congress is debating a bill designed to help America gain ground in the global semiconductor race. The Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act passed Tuesday in the Senate, and President Biden is calling for it to be fast-tracked to the White House.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Here to discuss the implications of the bill is Dustin Carmack, Research Fellow of Cybersecurity, Intelligence, and Emerging Technologies at the Heritage Foundation.
--:-- Dustin Carmack: Thanks for joining us, Dustin.
--:-- John Bickley: First, tell us about this bill that's in Congress right now.
--:-- Dustin Carmack: Yes. So the CHIPS Act is kind of a multifaceted bill that's gone through multiple versions over the last couple of years. But in the end result is a package of around $79 billion geared towards the semiconductor industry for direct subsidies, research and development and tax credits. And then separately a broader package of about $200 billion in authorizations for different types of research and development at the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Stepping back for a second here, why are these chips so important?
--:-- Dustin Carmack: Think of it about everything that powers your life nowadays. Think of everything from your refrigerator to your car to seat warmers in your car in the wintertime to think of the F-35, advanced joint fighters, and the future of artificial intelligence, quantum computing. You know, semiconductors really are the base layer in many of these facets of technology that many people view will be kind of dictate the terms of what kind of world we live in going into the future.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And I think those are very different between China's vision and, say, the United States.
--:-- Dustin Carmack: So this bill directs hundreds of billions to the semiconductor industry. Why is it important to get ahead in chip manufacturing now?
--:-- Dustin Carmack: Well, one of the major concerns that a lot of the stakeholders that are supportive of the bill have shared is concerns that Taiwan is the kind of the leading edge producer of advanced semiconductors thinking, you know, four, five, six nanometer type of chips. And that puts them in direct propensity of possible conflict at some point as geopolitical tensions have risen between Taiwan and China and United States and others.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And so there's been a concern that we should do something to incentivize in some capacity domestic manufacturing or nearshoring or French shoring some of our supply of semiconductors to diversify the supply chain.
--:-- Dustin Carmack: How worried should we be about a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan?
--:-- Dustin Carmack: I believe we should listen to what Chairman Xi has spoken about quite often during his time running the Communist Party of China, in that he hopes to have a reunification of Taiwan. And I believe that to be in his lifetime. And so I think we should take it very seriously. And there will be major ramifications.
--:-- Georgia Howe: I mean, we've seen how, in the case of Russia and Ukraine, what that did to disrupt energy supply chains in Europe. Make that tenfold if you're trying to actually use aggressive sanctions policy.
--:-- Dustin Carmack: Now, clearly, the U.S. is far behind in this chips race. How low is our production capacity?
--:-- Dustin Carmack: It's not that the U.S. doesn't have any capability. I mean, there's current fabrication facilities in Texas. I've been to many of them. A lot of these companies are already saying they wanted to come back to diversify their supply chains. And so we've already seen investments announcements in Arizona, Texas, Ohio, Idaho. So, you know, this is an area that's going to continue to grow because the market need is there. In other words, the free market is already at work here in incentivizing more production.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Dustin, thank you for coming on.
--:-- Dustin Carmack: That was Dustin Carmack, Heritage Research Fellow of Cybersecurity, Intelligence, and Emerging Technologies.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Other stories we're tracking this week. More than 500,000 gotaway migrants have illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the past year, according to multiple DHS senior officials. The DHS has tracked about 900,000 gotaways over the past two years.
--:-- John Bickley: Flash floods and record rainfall hit the St. Louis area Tuesday, submerging vehicles and homes in up to eight and a half feet of water and killing at least one person.
--:-- Georgia Howe: A supervised drug dispensary in Vancouver is now handing out fentanyl and methamphetamine as part of a harm reduction experiment to curb overdoses.
--:-- John Bickley: Thanks for listening to Morning Wire. We created this show to bring more balance to the national conversation. If you love our show and you stand with our mission, consider subscribing, leaving us a five-star rating, and most importantly, sharing our podcast with a friend.
--:-- 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.
