Republicans begin Biden investigations, Ukraine’s president visits Britain: 5 Things podcast


On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: Republicans begin Biden investigations

Republicans began Biden investigations with a Twitter hearing on Hunter Biden’s laptop. USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen reports. Plus, Ukraine’s president visits Britain, USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise talks about the water crisis in the West, the death toll rises to 16,000 after the Turkey-Syria earthquake, and the NBA trade deadline arrives with a blockbuster deal.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 9th of February 2023. Today, Republicans have begun probes into the Bidens. Plus, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visits Britain, and we look at the water crisis in the West.

The House Oversight Committee grilled former Twitter executives yesterday. The company blocked links to a New York Post story in October of 2020 about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Executives said the move was a mistake. It happened because of similarities to the posting of leaks from Democratic computers before the 2016 election. Republicans, though, have pointed to possible collusion to help Democrats win the 2020 election. And as USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Janssen told me, the probe is the first in a line of wide-ranging House Republican investigations targeting the Bidens.

Bart, thanks for coming on the show.

Bart Janssen:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

This moment was a couple years in the making. It’s the GOP’s first real chance to put what they call anti-conservative censorship of social media on trial. So how’d it go, Bart?

Bart Janssen:

Well, it was a very contentious hearing, it lasted more than six hours, and it gave Republicans a hearty chance to talk about the Hunter Biden laptop that had been in the news for a couple of years now, and the alleged censorship of conservative news media more broadly, and just to talk about whether big tech is slanted against conservative voices.

Taylor Wilson:

It seems, Bart, like Republicans are really looking to embarrass the Biden family by reviving this topic. Did they succeed in this hearing to do that?

Bart Janssen:

Well, they spent hours and hours talking about Hunter Biden and allegations that his employment by a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, held the potential at least to influence his father. At the time emails were written, he was vice president of the United States. This story about the laptop came out in October of 2020, as the elder Biden was campaigning for president, and now continuing into the Biden administration, questions about whether Hunter Biden’s business dealings might influence his father’s administration.

Taylor Wilson:

So switching to the Twitter side of this, Twitter’s leaders have long admitted that keeping users from sharing this New York Post story was a mistake in that they changed it 24 hours later. Did GOP leaders get any new confessions from Twitter about any possible collusion with Democrats?

Bart Janssen:

There wasn’t much new information about the decision of Twitter to suppress links to the story, so they didn’t really move the ball in that aspect. But one of the witnesses, James Baker, a former deputy general counsel for Twitter, did say that he doesn’t think Twitter violated any First Amendment rights of users of Twitter because Twitter is a private company and only the government can censor.

Taylor Wilson:

Bart, we know this is the first of what Republicans have said will be really many hearings into the Bidens. What did we learn from the GOP’s House strategy on this?

Bart Janssen:

Yes, this was the first glimpse at how the House Republicans are planning to hold, as you say, numerous hearings into the Biden administration. So there are two committees in particular, House Oversight and Accountability, and there’s also a subcommittee of House Judiciary called the Weaponization of the Federal Government. And that panel is also going to be looking at oversight of the Biden administration and whether there is potential corruption there in the administration.

Taylor Wilson:

So what are Democrats saying to this probe and other similar investigations that are upcoming that you just mentioned?

Bart Janssen:

Democrats attacked this hearing in particular and the broader investigation of Biden as silly, as hyperpartisan, as a bizarre exploration of conspiracy theories that have been debunked. So I think this was just basically the opening salvo as we go on through what are expected to be at least two more years of House Republicans holding the Biden administration’s feet to the fire.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Bart Janssen covers the Justice Department for USA TODAY. Bart, we’ll be following along with your reporting over the next few years. Thanks so much.

Bart Janssen:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the UK yesterday for the first time since Russia’s invasion. He met with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and addressed parliament in a bid for more military aid.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy:

And I appeal to you and the world with simple and yet most important words, combat aircrafts for Ukraine, wings for freedom.

Taylor Wilson:

For the first time Sunak said he’s open to providing fighter jets, adding that nothing is off the table. It’s just Zelenskyy’s second known trip outside Ukraine since the war began. He previously visited the US in December. Last night he arrived in Paris to meet with the leaders of France and Germany, and he’s also expected to visit Brussels.

There’s a water crisis in the West, and seven states are struggling to agree on how to deal with it. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise has more.

Beth, welcome back to 5 Things.

Elizabeth Weise:

Always happy to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

Always happy to have you. So a water crisis is looming in the West. How big of a deal is this?

Elizabeth Weise:

It’s a big deal. It’s a lot of people. It’s seven states. It’s California, which is soon to be the… It’s like I think the fifth largest economy in the world. We’re not at a water war yet, but things are getting testy.

Taylor Wilson:

Can you explain to us then what this Colorado River Compact [is] and what it means for water in the Western states?

Elizabeth Weise:

Yeah, so you probably didn’t study this in school and neither did I, but back in 1922 seven Colorado River basin states, that’s Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming, all got together to basically create a treaty on who got how much of the water out of the Colorado. And it came down to a fight between the more populated states at the time and less populated, and California was the most populated. They finally came up with an agreement, which many of those states would tell you California got more water than it should have. California would tell you that it had first dibs on the water because it had had people using it, and that’s kind of the law of the river. That’s been in place since 1922. It goes back to the courts or various places every couple of decades and we’re at another of those points right now because the drought in the West has meant that nobody’s getting the water that they feel they deserve out of the Colorado River, partly because Colorado River doesn’t have enough water to give everybody who wants it.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned California. How is California now complicating the process, especially this week?

Elizabeth Weise:

Yeah, so the Department of the Interior had set a January 31st deadline for all seven of these states to get together and come to an agreement about what they were going to do. The six states, everybody but California, came up with one proposal, and then at the last minute, California came up with its own proposal. And California’s restructuring idea basically minimized losses along the river and along the routes that bring water down from it, but would’ve imposed more stringent reductions, especially on Arizona and Nevada. They were not happy about that. So we’re at this impasse where the seven states haven’t agreed. They’ve blown past the Interior Department’s deadline, and so now the Department of the Interior is probably going to have to come in and come up with something that no one’s going to like. If they can’t come up with a way to work together amicably, then the federal government will do it.

Taylor Wilson:

Beth, one of the big concerns surrounds these so called dead pools. Can you explain to us what is a dead pool and why is this such a big concern when it comes to water in the West?

Elizabeth Weise:

Dead pools are not a movie about superheroes, much as we might want to imagine it is. So this is what happens when you have a reservoir that feeds into a hydroelectric dam, as we have at Lake Powell and Lake Mead, and if the water in that reservoir falls below the intake for the hydro, the whole thing stops. No water can get out of the lake, the electricity stops because there’s no water going through the turbines. And the concern is that if the Colorado gets too low, we could end up with dead pools behind both the Hoover and/or the Glen Canyon Dam. And that would be a bad thing. And there’s concern from water managers that that could happen within the next two years.

Taylor Wilson:

So just a bit of a layman’s question here. We heard about tons of rain across the West this winter. Heard about tons of rain from you, Beth. Did this not improve these conditions at all?

Elizabeth Weise:

It helped, but most of the rain was along the coast, and if you look at a map, the Colorado River starts very far from the coast. Now we’ve been in that drought for more than 20 years, so it’s not enough to make up for that. It helped, but we’re still nowhere near full on especially these big reservoirs.

Taylor Wilson:

All right, Elizabeth Weise, great insight as always. Thanks so much.

Elizabeth Weise:

You’re so welcome.

Taylor Wilson:

16,000. That’s where the staggering death toll from this week’s Middle Eastern earthquake stands as of this morning. It’s the largest death toll from an earthquake in more than a decade. Another 60,000 people have been injured, and the search for survivors beneath rubble is growing more desperate. Two people were rescued from rubble in Turkey yesterday some 72 hours after the quake. Experts say the survival rate in an incident of this magnitude is below 25% after 72 hours, and frigid temperatures in the region along Turkey and Syria’s border make the chances slimmer. Dr. George Chiampas from Northwestern University says a number of factors play a role.

Dr George Chiampas:

This is of a magnitude that is just shocking. If all of a sudden they start having rain, that rain in addition to cold weather can accelerate that hypothermia and can also lead to an accelerated death. The key factors would be underlying medical conditions, any associated traumatic injuries, your underlying physiological state and age, your ability to sustain yourself as long as possible without fluids, nutrition, and electrolytes, and then your durability and your mental capacity and toughness. The hope that someone is going to get to you, I think can provide you one, two, three more days.

Taylor Wilson:

Many have asked how they can help in the wake of this devastating tragedy. We have a link in today’s show notes of a guide to some of the charities working to help victims and recovery efforts in Turkey and Syria.

The NBA trade deadline is today, and you may have missed a massive blockbuster deal while you were sleeping. Superstar Kevin Durant is heading to the Phoenix Suns. The deal will send Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jay Crowder, and four first round picks to the Brooklyn Nets in return. Durant is a 13 time all star and two-time NBA finals MVP. The trade comes after Brooklyn also traded away star Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks. You can follow along with a live trade tracker all day long, up through the 3:00 PM Eastern deadline, on USATODAY.com.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every morning right here, wherever you get your podcasts. I’m back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: House begins Biden investigations, Kevin Durant traded: 5 Things podcast



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