Mornings on the Mall 01.30.20 / Bill Gertz, Christopher Caldwell, Byron York

Mornings on the Mall

Thursday, January 30, 2020

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

Bill Gertz, Christopher Caldwell, Byron York joined WMAL on Thursday!

5am – A/B/C Elizabeth Warren proposes criminal penalties for spreading voting disinformation online (CNBC) Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday released a plan to fight disinformation and to hold tech companies accountable for their actions in light of the 2016 election. “Disinformation and online foreign interference erode our democracy, and Donald Trump has invited both,” Warren said in a Tweet Wednesday. “Anyone who seeks to challenge and defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 election must be fully prepared to take this on – and I’ve got a plan to do it.” Warren proposed to combat disinformation by holding big tech companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google responsible for spreading misinformation designed to suppress voters from turning out. “I will push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating this kind of information, which has the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote,” Warren said in a release. As president, Warren said she would reinstate the position of cybersecurity coordinator at the National Security Council, a position crucial to protecting the U.S. She added she will also open up data for research so that academics and organizations can provide the public with knowledge on disinformation. “The stakes of this election are too high — we need to fight the spread of false information that disempowers voters and undermines democracy,” Warren said. “I’ll do my part — and I’m calling on my fellow candidates and big tech companies to do their part too.”

5am – D Former Trump aide Michael Flynn says he ‘never lied’ and ‘I am innocent’ as he seeks to undo guilty plea (CNBC)  Michael Flynn, former national security advisor for President Donald Trump, claims in a new legal filing that he is innocent as he seeks to undo his guilty plea for making false statements to the FBI about his talks with Russia’s ambassador to the United States in the weeks before Trump’s inauguration. “In truth, I never lied,” Flynn said in the document, which was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Later Wednesday, federal prosecutors said in their own filing that they do not object to Flynn receiving a sentence of probation, with no jail time, if Judge Emmet Sullivan rejects his pending request to withdraw his guilty plea. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said it agrees that a sentence of between zero and six months in jail “is appropriate and warranted in this case, agrees with the defendant that a sentence of probation is appropriate and does not oppose the imposition of a sentence of probation.” The filings came two weeks after Flynn formally petitioned Sullivan to withdraw his guilty plea. Prosecutors are opposing that request. Flynn in his filing claimed that “I never would have pled guilty” if his first set of lawyers had told him that FBI agents wrote that he had a “sure demeanor” and “did not give any indication of deception” in a report they prepared after questioning him about the nature of his conversations with then-Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Instead, Flynn said that “I tried to ‘accept responsibility’ by admitting to offenses I understood the government I love and trusted said I committed.” And he claimed that at the moment he does not recall whether he discussed sanctions on Russia with Kislyak, as the FBI has alleged. However, Flynn has previously affirmed at two court hearings that he had falsely told FBI agents in January 2017 that he did not ask Kislyak to refrain from escalating sanctions in response to the imposition of sanctions against Russia by the Obama administration. “I am innocent of this crime, and I request to withdraw my guilty plea,” he wrote in the filing Wednesday. It is not clear whether Flynn’s statements in the filing will be enough to convince Sullivan that he should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea. Lawyers unconnected to the case say that Flynn, who is still tentatively scheduled to be sentenced next month, faces very long odds in getting Sullivan to undo the plea.

5am – E Pizza shop owner takes down sign that says ‘fat people are harder to kidnap’ (Fox News) A pizza place in Ohio came under fire for posting a sign with a joke about kidnapping on it. Unfortunately, the owner apparently didn’t realize that January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Jeremy Clemetson, owner of East of Chicago Pizza in Barberton, Ohio, posted a sign advertising his pizza place with the slogan “Fat people are harder to kidnap,” Fox 6 Now reports. While he’s reportedly used the slogan before at his restaurant and on their Facebook page with no issues, this time was different. “I thought it would be a good idea to put up some funny signs,” he explained to the news outlet. “Most people seem to like them. I scour the internet for different signs that people have had. Sometimes I use them. Sometimes I reinvent my own. I also have got some of my funny signs from customers.” This sign, however, reportedly inspired someone to write an email to corporate headquarters complaining about the joke being in poor taste due to January being Human Trafficking Awareness Month. “I never even thought about it in that way, and as soon as I thought it, because kidnapping is not a joke, we are taking it down,” Clemetson explained. “I have seven kids of my own,” he continued. “I’m from the community here. I’ve lived here pretty much all of my life. I live in Barberton. I have strong roots here. I never even thought about it as the kidnapping aspect. I just meant it to be funny.”

6am – A/B/C IMPEACHMENT NEWS:

• Schiff, in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, denies knowing whistleblower House impeachment manager Adam Schiff, D-Calif., denied knowing the identity of the Trump whistleblower during the president’s trial on Wednesday and claimed that no one from the House Intelligence Committee was ever involved in coaching them.
• Lev Parnas Showed Up On Capitol Hill But Was Barred From Senate Trial By Ankle Monitor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday gave American businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, tickets to attend the Senate impeachment trial, however, he was not allowed in due to the electronic ankle monitor on his ankle.
• Justice Roberts blocks Sen. Paul from naming whistleblower, source says and Paul may force the issue

6am – D Vanessa Bryant Breaks Her Silence Following Husband Kobe Bryant And Daughter’s Death

6am – E PETA calls for Punxsutawney Phil to retire, be replaced with AI robot for Groundhog Day (FOX 5 NY) PETA is calling for Pennsylvania’s most famous groundhog to retire and be replaced with an animatronic version ahead of Groundhog Day 2020. The animal rights organization wrote in a letter to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club that it was time to change the decades-old tradition in which Punxsutawney Phil predicts whether we’ll see an early end to winter. PETA suggested that instead of live animals, the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club use “technologically advanced electromechanical devices such as animatronics” with artificial intelligence could reliably predict the weather.

6am – F Jay Sekulow and Schiff spar over witnesses

7am – A INTERVIEW – BILL GERTZ – National Security Correspondent, The Washington Times and author of “Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy”

TOPIC: CHINA – Latest on the coronavirus and Chinese espionage

• • -Criticism of China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak is breaking through its censorship machine, prompting Beijing to work harder to squelch dissent
  • China spurned CDC offer to send team to help contain coronavirus: US Health Secretary
  • The S. government is chartering a flight out of Wuhan, China — the city at the center of the novel coronavirus outbreak — for U.S. personnel, their families and some U.S. citizens on Wednesday.
  • Hong Kong restricts border to contain Wuhan The Hong Kong government announced they are restricting some of its border crossings with mainland China to block the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.
  • China‘s first coronavirus hospital OPENS after just two days of construction
  • South Koreans Call in Petition for Chinese to be Barred Over Virus
  • Maryland reports possible coronavirus case; In Virginia, George Mason student’s results still under review
  • DC Testing 2 People for Coronavirus
  • Feds charge Chinese army lieutenant as spy at BU; arrest of Harvard professor

7am – B/C JOHN BOLTON:

• • • White House tells Bolton his manuscript has classified material, cannot be published The White House has informed former national security adviser John Bolton that his book manuscript appeared to contain “significant amounts of classified information” and could not be published in its current form. The letter from the White House National Security Council to Bolton’s attorney, Charles Cooper, and seen by Reuters, said the manuscript contained some material that was considered “TOP SECRET.” “Under federal law and the nondisclosure agreements your client signed as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” the letter said.
    • ‘GAME OVER,’ Trump declares, as old Bolton, Schiff videos surface amid Senate impeachment trial A string of newly resurfaced video clips of former national security adviser John Bolton spurred President Trump and his supporters Wednesday to highlight what they described as serious credibility questions — raised by both Democrats and Republicans — amid the Senate impeachment trial, as the president tweeted, “GAME OVER!” In his tweet, Trump linked to an interview of Bolton in August 2019 where he discusses Ukraine In the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty interview clip, Bolton made no mention of any illicit quid pro quo, and acknowledged, as Republicans have claimed, that combating “corruption” in Ukraine was a “high priority” for the Trump administration. Bolton also called Trump’s communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “warm and cordial,” without mentioning any misconduct. Separately, Fox News has identified clips of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., now the lead House impeachment manager, in which he says Bolton had a distinct “lack of credibility” and was prone to “conspiracy theories.” This week, Schiff said Bolton needed to testify in the impeachment trial as an important and believable witness. “This is someone who’s likely to exaggerate the dangerous impulses of the president toward belligerence, his proclivity to act without thinking, and his love of conspiracy theories,” Schiff told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on March 22, 2018, when Trump named Bolton national security adviser.

7am – D/E INTERVIEW- CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL – author of new book “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties” — IN STUDIO FOR 30 MINS

TOPIC: Discuss his book “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties”

ABOUT BOOK: A major American intellectual makes the historical case that the reforms of the 1960s, reforms intended to make the nation more just and humane, instead left many Americans feeling alienated, despised, misled—and ready to put an adventurer in the White House. Christopher Caldwell has spent years studying the liberal uprising of the 1960s and its unforeseen consequences. Even the reforms that Americans love best have come with costs that are staggeringly high—in wealth, freedom, and social stability—and that have been spread unevenly among classes and generations. Caldwell reveals the real political turning points of the past half century, taking readers on a roller-coaster ride through Playboy magazine, affirmative action, CB radio, leveraged buyouts, iPhones, Oxycontin, Black Lives Matter, and internet cookies. In doing so, he shows that attempts to redress the injustices of the past have left Americans living under two different ideas of what it means to play by the rules. Essential, timely, hard to put down, The Age of Entitlement is a brilliant and ambitious argument about how the reforms of the past fifty years gave the country two incompatible political systems—and drove it toward conflict.

8am A – INTERVIEW – INTERVIEW – BYRON YORK – chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner

TOPIC: Latest on the impeachment trial

• • • Schiff, in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, denies knowing whistleblower House impeachment manager Adam Schiff, D-Calif., denied knowing the identity of the Trump whistleblower during the president’s trial on Wednesday and claimed that no one from the House Intelligence Committee was ever involved in coaching them.
    • Lev Parnas Showed Up On Capitol Hill But Was Barred From Senate Trial By Ankle Monitor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday gave American businessman Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, tickets to attend the Senate impeachment trial, however, he was not allowed in due to the electronic ankle monitor on his ankle.
    • Justice Roberts blocks Sen. Paul from naming whistleblower, source says and Paul may force the issue
    • White House tells Bolton his manuscript has classified material, cannot be published
    • ‘GAME OVER,’ Trump declares, as old Bolton, Schiff videos surface amid Senate impeachment trial

8am – B/C     ABORTION NEWS:

• • • Virginia lawmakers vote to repeal mandatory ultrasound, waiting period for abortion New Democratic majorities in the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate voted this week to roll back abortion restrictions the GOP put in place in 2012 mandating an ultra-sound and 24-hour waiting period. “These restrictions were not designed to protect women, but rather to suppress their ability to make their own choices regarding their bodies,” said House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, who carried the legislation in the House. “This bill concerns an incredibly important decision that should be left up to a woman and her healthcare provider.” Among the code sections to be struck is a requirement that women be offered a copy of the ultrasound image and an opportunity to listen to the fetal heartbeat. The legislation would also eliminate heavily-litigated building code restrictions (referred to by opponents as TRAP laws, for “targeted restrictions on abortion providers”) that threatened to shut down many clinics by mandating hospital-style standards including wider hallways and doorways but were never fully implemented by the state Board of Health. The bills cleared the Senate on Wednesday and the House on Tuesday. They were unanimously opposed by Republicans, who passed the requirements when they last controlled both chambers of the General Assembly and the Executive Mansion — a status currently enjoyed by Democrats following sweeping electoral victories in November. Two Democrats split with their caucuses to oppose the legislation, Del. Cliff Hayes, D-Chesapeake, in the House and Sen. Joe Morrissey, D-Richmond, in the Senate, where Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) broke the 20-20 tie vote. Ralph Northam (D) has endorsed the legislation.
    • Commercial Featuring Abortion Survivors Blocked from Super Bowl, Group Claims Jason Yates, the CEO of My Faith Votes appeared on the Tuesday afternoon edition of CBN’s Newswatch to discuss the efforts of his group and the group Faces of Choice to get a pro-life commercial to air during the Super Bowl. CBN’s Newswatch is seen weekdays on the CBN News Channel. For a programming schedule, click here.  The founder of a nascent pro-life advocacy group has been working since last summer to get a Super Bowl ad approved to run on Fox Sports during the February game. But with less than a week until kickoff, Lyric Gillett is accusing the network of censoring her commercial. Since July 29 of last year, Gillett told Faithwire she and her ad buyer have been in frequent communication with the sales and legal departments at the Fox Corporation. From that point forward, she claimed, staffers at Fox have continually piled on requests before agreeing to consider her ad, which features men and women who have survived abortion asking if their lives are “a mistake.”

8am – D  FAKE NEWS:

• • • ABC News suspends correspondent Matt Gutman for falsely suggesting all of Kobe Bryant’s children on helicopter ABC News suspended its reporter who inaccurately suggested Sunday that all four of Kobe Bryant’s children were on the helicopter that crashed and killed the NBA legend and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. The Disney network’s chief national correspondent Matt Gutman said amid the breaking news Sunday that Bryant’s daughters Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and Capri, seven months, were “believed” to have been involved in the deadly accident. “You know, we grew up with Kobe, and the fact that four of his children are believed to be on board that helicopter with him, all daughters, one of them a newborn, is simply devastating,” Gutman said. That reporting was quickly refuted by local news affiliates and TMZ. Gutman issued a correction and an apology later in the day. “Today I inaccurately reported it was believed that four of Kobe Bryant’s children were on board that flight. That is incorrect. I apologize to Kobe’s family, friends and our viewers,” Gutman stated.
    • Tennessee Rep. Van Huss files bill to recognize CNN, Washington Post as ‘fake news’ State Rep. Micah Van Huss (R-Jonesborough) filed a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly that would recognize CNN and the Washington Post as “fake news.” The proposed resolution said it would recognize “CNN and the Washington Post as fake news and condemns them for denigrating our citizens.”

8am -E A trans female Virginia delegate, who was biologically born a male, got an arm tattoo of the first 24 words of the Equal Rights Amendment. Democratic Manassas, Virginia, Del. Danica Roem tweeted a picture Wednesday showing Roem smiling with an arm tattoo of the words “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”