Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty. Greetings, A good morning, pleasure being with you.
Speaker 2: We will talk about the latest tariffs coming up here
Speaker 2: at seven thirty and swatting the law in about fifteen minutes. First,
Speaker 2: let's let's go back to one of the biggest stories
Speaker 2: that we've had in a while. Call it a White
Speaker 2: House scandal if you want to call it a witch
Speaker 2: hunt if you like, as the President does. And that
Speaker 2: is the mixed signals we're getting. This is the signal
Speaker 2: group chat that was laying out plans for attack on
Speaker 2: the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the National Security Advisor
Speaker 2: invited in a reporter from the Atlantic, which is awkward.
Speaker 2: So what happens now, Well, you better believe that Trump
Speaker 2: and many of his accolades are scrambling to figure out
Speaker 2: what's the angle that we can use on this in
Speaker 2: order to push back. Democrats are pouncing as you would expect.
Speaker 2: Even Jesse Kelly, who's a radio host, says, we made
Speaker 2: a mistake, a bad mistake for which someone should be fired.
Speaker 2: That said, we gave them forty eight hours of the
Speaker 2: news cycle with our own stupidity. No need to give
Speaker 2: them seventy two. It's done.
Speaker 1: Move on.
Speaker 2: It's not a life sentence. So even people who are
Speaker 2: part of MAGA are saying.
Speaker 1: Look, it's.
Speaker 3: Over.
Speaker 2: Let's just move on. Nothing to see here. Don't pay
Speaker 2: any attention to this. This is not a massive security breach.
Speaker 2: This is not a huge issue with security protocol, something
Speaker 2: that we threw a temper tantrum about when Hillary Clinton
Speaker 2: had a BlackBerry phone when she was a Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: Just granted it's thirteen years after that, but we don't
Speaker 1: worry about it. This is no big deal.
Speaker 2: Don't give them more of a news cycle, more of
Speaker 2: that US v Them approach to things. So, what's the
Speaker 2: latest on the fallout from the signal debacle from maybe.
Speaker 4: As the White House and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
Speaker 4: say no war plans were sent to a journalist on
Speaker 4: the messaging app Signal.
Speaker 5: Nobody's texting more plans because of I know exactly what
Speaker 5: I'm doing.
Speaker 4: The journalist satitor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg
Speaker 4: today publishing what he says Hegseth sent to President Trump's
Speaker 4: national security team and inadvertently him and a group message
Speaker 4: ahead of airstrikes in Yemen. Earlier this month, The Atlantic
Speaker 4: reports Hegseth notified the group of a planned timeline for
Speaker 4: flights of F eighteen fighter jets, MQ nine Reaper drones,
Speaker 4: and Tomahawk cruise missiles that were launched for the mission.
Speaker 2: Now, one of the things that the administration is saying
Speaker 2: is these are not war plans. These were battle plans.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's it.
Speaker 2: So it's semantics. These are battle plans, not war plans.
Speaker 2: We're not at war. We're at battle. This is akin
Speaker 2: to me getting caught cheating on my wife and saying, Honey,
Speaker 2: I didn't have an affair. I had an entanglement. So
Speaker 2: what's the big deal. It's not an affair, babe, that's
Speaker 2: an entanglement. You shouldn't be so upset with me. It
Speaker 2: doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Let me Dean
Speaker 2: is a News Nation reporter who's been covering the story
Speaker 2: for a while. Let'd be great to have you on here.
Speaker 2: The President says, this is nothing more than a witch hunt.
Speaker 2: Is it something that we need to move on quickly from?
Speaker 2: And is it nothing more than a distraction for the
Speaker 2: American people from things we should really focus on, like
Speaker 2: are we getting enough vitamin A to fight off measles.
Speaker 6: I think there's a lot of concerns for Americans right now,
Speaker 6: and this is certainly one of them, because the new
Speaker 6: U Gov. Pole actually showed that seventy five percent of
Speaker 6: Americans are very concerned about this signal group chat, so
Speaker 6: that being the latest that we're in day four here,
Speaker 6: of course, the talk is getting a little nuanced of
Speaker 6: this group chat. But the reason it's continuing is because
Speaker 6: yesterday the Atlantic released these details the full conversation, in
Speaker 6: part the full conversation of what was discussed in the
Speaker 6: signal group chat with nineteen members of the Trump administration,
Speaker 6: while one of those, of course being Jeffrey Goldberg, the
Speaker 6: journalist from the Atlantic who was included in this. So
Speaker 6: of course there's a lot of concerns on that front.
Speaker 6: I also just spoke with the Press secretary here at
Speaker 6: the White House who said that they never denied the
Speaker 6: mistake was made when this group chat was made. Kind
Speaker 6: of a little bit of a messaging shift from the
Speaker 6: White House there rather than saying this was a witch
Speaker 6: hunt like President Trump was calling it yesterday.
Speaker 2: All right, Livy, So how many countries do we suppose
Speaker 2: they're trying to gain access to private phones right now
Speaker 2: of some.
Speaker 6: Of our officials, Well, I don't have a number for
Speaker 6: you on that. But of course national security is the
Speaker 6: utmost concern when it comes to this, and that's why
Speaker 6: intelligence officials were questioned in Congress. These hearings were already planned,
Speaker 6: but of course they shifted to focus all on this
Speaker 6: group chat. And yesterday I got very fiery in the
Speaker 6: House Intelligence Committee when Director of National Intelligence TLCI Gabbard,
Speaker 6: as well as John Ratcliffe and Cash Pttel were all
Speaker 6: questioned about this group chat and they ultimately admitted that
Speaker 6: they were a part of it, some of them overseas.
Speaker 6: When they were a part of this group chat. Typically
Speaker 6: you would find these officials operating in this sense and
Speaker 6: a skiffs they do say that these weren't classified things
Speaker 6: included in this. But if they weren't classified, why didn't
Speaker 6: they release them in the first place?
Speaker 1: And obviously they've kind of painted themselves into a corner.
Speaker 2: They can't be angry with UH, with Atlantic for printing
Speaker 2: this group chat if in fact it was not classified, right.
Speaker 6: Right, That's a big question in the big back and
Speaker 6: forth that's been going on all week. If it was
Speaker 6: classified or not. But you can look at the messages
Speaker 6: for yourself and determine your thoughts on them. But of
Speaker 6: course that one message from Pete heegsas the Secretary of
Speaker 6: Defense really stands up to me where he gives timing
Speaker 6: of when bombs are going to be dropped. He said
Speaker 6: at one point, this is definitely when the bomb is
Speaker 6: going to be dropped. They detailed who was being hit
Speaker 6: when they were hit, not something that you would typically
Speaker 6: expect in a signal group chat. Look, I've talked to
Speaker 6: Trump officials on signal before. I think this is a
Speaker 6: very common app that is used within the Trump world,
Speaker 6: but I don't think it has been used in this
Speaker 6: sense with a journalist privy. Who knows how many times
Speaker 6: it might have happened without a journalist privy.
Speaker 2: So that was going to be my next question. Then,
Speaker 2: is there any word on whether or not signal will
Speaker 2: be used in the future. Are we clamping down and
Speaker 2: using skiffs moving forward, or is anybody.
Speaker 6: That really interesting development?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was an interesting development here at the White
Speaker 6: House yesterday when the White House Press Secretary did a briefing,
Speaker 6: she said that signal is approved on government device It's
Speaker 6: something that I didn't even realize was the case. And
Speaker 6: of course they said actually that they aren't backing away
Speaker 6: from signal and they plan on still using it. The
Speaker 6: President Trump yesterday when he was speaking to the press,
Speaker 6: actually said that there might have been some kind of
Speaker 6: glitch with signal, trying to blame signal for this journalist
Speaker 6: being added, when Mike Waltz clearly took the blame for
Speaker 6: adding Jeffrey Goldberg to this chat. So signal moving forward
Speaker 6: definitely a question on if the Trump administration plans on
Speaker 6: using it. It sounds like they do at this point.
Speaker 6: But of course national security officials are going to have
Speaker 6: to be more tight lipped and not go adding journalists
Speaker 6: to One of the things.
Speaker 2: That we've heard Libby Diner, a News Nation reporter, is
Speaker 2: that this editor for The Atlantic was a disgraced journalist
Speaker 2: from a two bit magazine, that he's no good. And
Speaker 2: if that's the case, why why would Mike Walls, the
Speaker 2: National Security Advisor, have his info in his phone in.
Speaker 1: The first place.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And Mike Waltz was asked about that during an
Speaker 6: interview and he basically said that this was in put
Speaker 6: it into his phone or sucked into his phone or something,
Speaker 6: is how he described it. He didn't give a very
Speaker 6: clear description on his relationship with Jeffrey Goldberg. I saw
Speaker 6: that Goldberg did an interview where he also wouldn't detail
Speaker 6: his relationship, but he basically said, look, my phone number
Speaker 6: is in Mike Walltz's phone for a reason, and if
Speaker 6: he wants to discredit me, he can. And that is
Speaker 6: what the Trump administration has spent all week doing. It
Speaker 6: seems like they're kind of taking a shift with their
Speaker 6: messaging here saying that they're admitting it was a mistake,
Speaker 6: but also yesterday we heard them rail, and the day
Speaker 6: before and the day before that, we heard them rail
Speaker 6: against Jeffrey Goldberg. That was their main line of attack.
Speaker 6: We'll see if that continues throughout the day today.
Speaker 2: And is there any word on whether or not that
Speaker 2: messaging is hitting home with the with the the.
Speaker 1: Mag of faithful Look.
Speaker 6: I think that attacking the media is certainly something that
Speaker 6: lands with the Trump base. I think that they're very
Speaker 6: familiar with that kind of attack, and people can make
Speaker 6: up their mind on if that's credible or not. And
Speaker 6: Jeffrey Goldberg has criticized President Trump in the past as
Speaker 6: a journalist, so I think there are things to look
Speaker 6: into in this fact, but he was involuntarily added to
Speaker 6: this chat and now he's just reporting the facts and
Speaker 6: part of us with the chat.
Speaker 2: So indeed, Levy Dan, here's nation reported Lebby, thanks for
Speaker 2: the great reporting, Well done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank yous appreciate that. Yeah, very good. All right.
Speaker 2: We know that we've had a couple of high profile
Speaker 2: swatting incidents in southern California here and the last few
Speaker 2: weeks we're actually seeing a number of swatting incidences, incidents incidents.
Speaker 1: Growing nationwide.
Speaker 2: In fact, one happened to a radio host, syndicated host
Speaker 2: out of Texas, and the FCC.
Speaker 1: Chair Brendan Carr, actually got in on this.
Speaker 2: He was mentioning that it was politically motivated, but he
Speaker 2: says he called it political violence, saying that he had
Speaker 2: been in touch with law enforcement to ensure that they
Speaker 2: have access to trace back resources that locate the calls
Speaker 2: originating point. Bad actors will face accountability that according to
Speaker 2: the FCC, when it comes to some of these others
Speaker 2: incidences incident SI. But what about closer to home, Well,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, you can't do a whole lot.
Speaker 2: If somebody swats, and by swatting, I mean they call
Speaker 2: in law enforcement and they file a false claim saying oh,
Speaker 2: there's a bomb or something, you can't really do a
Speaker 2: whole lot about it if it's if it's done against
Speaker 2: an institution. Now, if Amy were to say that that
Speaker 2: Chris Merrill has a bomb, then she would be committing
Speaker 2: a crime. If in fact, she were to say that
Speaker 2: something's happening at the radio station right now in the state,
Speaker 2: you can't do a lot as far as prosecution goes,
Speaker 2: Which brings us to what we saw in Clarmont where uh,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're saying it's happening at a hospital
Speaker 2: or a college or something of that sort, what can
Speaker 2: be done well? Legislators aren't tackling the matter. Cakew was reporting.
Speaker 7: That Claremont Peedee says the intent to prosecute the people
Speaker 7: who recently pulled a swatting incident here, but they're often
Speaker 7: hard to track down and to prosecute. They're hoping some
Speaker 7: new laws will change that. Massive law enforcement responses at
Speaker 7: both Claremont McKenna College and Lowilinda University Medical Center last
Speaker 7: week after two separate swatting calls or hoax at nine
Speaker 7: to one one reports in two days required both campuses
Speaker 7: to be evacuated.
Speaker 6: Then here there's like a potential shooter, Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: that's It's also quite disruptive too.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're not just disrupting one person. You're talking
Speaker 2: about disrupting the operations of a hospital.
Speaker 7: Send students in Claremont into a panic.
Speaker 1: Everyone else was kind of running around and leaving campus.
Speaker 7: So it's definitely scary, very freaky.
Speaker 1: I was on the phone calling all of my friends.
Speaker 7: At a time when swatting calls are on the rise
Speaker 7: across the country.
Speaker 1: I just said that.
Speaker 7: Why are police departments here in California struggling to hold
Speaker 7: the suspects account of the.
Speaker 8: Why you can hide your regular phone number, your IP address.
Speaker 8: You can basically use a voiceover for you your own voice,
Speaker 8: so it disguises your voice. So any that type of
Speaker 8: evidence we're looking for is very hard to track down.
Speaker 7: But it's also because of California laws that require.
Speaker 2: At some point, speaking of disguising your voice, at some point,
Speaker 2: one of us is gonna get wrapped up in a
Speaker 2: in a legal matter. You know that, right at some
Speaker 2: point they're gonna they're gonna take samples of Bill's voice
Speaker 2: or Amy's voice, or Neil Savadra's voice, and they're gonna
Speaker 2: use AI to process it, and then they're gonna have
Speaker 2: what sounds like Neil or Amy or Bill may could
Speaker 2: dastardly call and.
Speaker 1: Then there's gonna be a knock on the door.
Speaker 2: Ah, yes, mister handle, we'd like to talk to you
Speaker 2: about a recent phone call you made. And Bill's gonna go,
Speaker 2: I don't even know how my cell phone works. I
Speaker 2: have and make the calls for me. But this is
Speaker 2: gonna happen. You're gonna you're gonna start getting You're gonna
Speaker 2: start getting uh, crank calls from Keanu Reeves, from Taylor Swift,
Speaker 2: You're gonna start getting crank calls from all kinds of
Speaker 2: celebrities whose voices have simply been emulated by AI.
Speaker 1: Mark my words.
Speaker 7: But it's also because of California laws that require perpetrators
Speaker 7: here to threaten specific people instead of just an entity
Speaker 7: like a school or a hospital in order to prosecute.
Speaker 8: So what do we do, Tom, Especially since ore now
Speaker 8: reaching across the us A, people are realizing this is
Speaker 8: a bigger issue than what we're actually thinking about.
Speaker 9: This Bill really is going to tackle that loopo where
Speaker 9: you don't need to mention a person and it's still
Speaker 9: against the law.
Speaker 7: Senator Susan Rubio, who represents Baldwin Park, authored a new
Speaker 7: built SB nineteen which allows prosecutors to charge people who
Speaker 7: make any credible threats of mass violence at schools, houses
Speaker 7: of warship.
Speaker 1: I mean, this one seems like a no brainer. Why
Speaker 1: did it take so long?
Speaker 9: Children deserve better, our students, our communities deserve better. So
Speaker 9: hopefully you know this will set a strong message.
Speaker 7: Students we spoke with think threats of violence should not
Speaker 7: be tolerated.
Speaker 5: If it negatively impacts the community that it affects. It
Speaker 5: negatively impacts the police because they could be doing a
Speaker 5: myriad of other things.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this is not a free speech issue because
Speaker 2: this is intended to incite immediate reaction.
Speaker 1: For those of you that say, well, I was my
Speaker 1: speech not protecting.
Speaker 2: No, no, this is the definition of an exception to free speech.
Speaker 2: It is intended to incite immediate reaction here and in
Speaker 2: this case violence or at the very least, disruption by
Speaker 2: the authorities.
Speaker 1: So no false threats, not okay.
Speaker 7: And Senator Rubio says these swatting calls often cost one
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars in police response when you factor in
Speaker 7: things like helicopters and getting responding agencies out to help
Speaker 7: clear campuses. She says it's important for parents to talk
Speaker 7: to their kids about how serious it is to make
Speaker 7: a threat. But you know, sometimes the people who do
Speaker 7: these swatting calls are adults reporting in claremont nicolecom Stock
Speaker 7: Kkel News.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think oftentimes we and I'm glad you made
Speaker 2: that point because oftentimes I think we say, oh.
Speaker 1: The kids these days, here's what they're doing. I don't
Speaker 1: think so.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes you've just got some disgruntled or off
Speaker 2: kilter people that they're bored. They like the challenge or
Speaker 2: the adventure. They like to make people jump. Maybe they
Speaker 2: are sitting alone in their home and they feel powerless
Speaker 2: and this gives them some element of control. I'm sure
Speaker 2: there's a psychological factor to this, but either way, we've
Speaker 2: got to tighten the laws up so that we can
Speaker 2: track these people down and stop the sort of nonsense
Speaker 2: in the future. So if you missed it, the President
Speaker 2: introduced tariffs on all vehicles that are produced outside of
Speaker 2: the United States and tariffs on all car parts that
Speaker 2: are produced outside of the United States. This is going
Speaker 2: to have an impact. It's going to have an impact
Speaker 2: on the new car market, and I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: you in a minute that it's going to have an
Speaker 2: impact on the.
Speaker 1: Used car market as well.
Speaker 2: NBCLA was doing a breakdown on what this means to
Speaker 2: you inside.
Speaker 10: The Oval Office. President Trump explains what he just signed, so.
Speaker 3: Will effectively be charging a twenty five percent tariff. But
Speaker 3: if you build your car in the United States, seris
Speaker 3: no tariff.
Speaker 10: The tariff's go into effect permanently on April second, when
Speaker 10: it comes to trade. That's the day the President has
Speaker 10: referred to as Liberation Day in America.
Speaker 3: This is the beginning of Liberation Day in America.
Speaker 2: Oh wait a minute, hold on, So March twenty sixth,
Speaker 2: and will you just mark down March twenty six for
Speaker 2: our Liberation Day celebrations moving forward, Thank you, we'll just
Speaker 2: call it l Day.
Speaker 3: We're going to take back just some of the money
Speaker 3: that has been taken from us.
Speaker 5: And this is a direct attack, to be clear, a
Speaker 5: direct attack.
Speaker 10: Autos are Canada's second largest export, and tonight Prime Minister
Speaker 10: Carney says he will assess the details of the Trump
Speaker 10: decision before taking retaliatory measures.
Speaker 1: Oh, they're coming. There will be retaliatory measures.
Speaker 10: But vowing to protect hundreds of thousands of Canadian auto workers,
Speaker 10: we are going to.
Speaker 1: Stand up for Canada. We're going to be united.
Speaker 10: In Japan, autos make up twenty eight percent of the
Speaker 10: country's total exports to the US.
Speaker 1: Wow, I realized it was that much.
Speaker 10: Ichibun, Japan's Prime Minister Isshub telling lawmakers he is strongly
Speaker 10: requesting the US not apply these tariffs to Japan and
Speaker 10: is quote considering all options in response to them. President
Speaker 10: trum said he expects auto firms to relocate to the
Speaker 10: United States and build new side or expand existing ones.
Speaker 1: And of course there are some here.
Speaker 2: We know that Honda's open site, Hyundai's open the site,
Speaker 2: Toyota's got a plant here.
Speaker 1: But still parts.
Speaker 2: Aren't necessarily being manufactured here. In fact, many parts for
Speaker 2: domestic automakers are manufactured elsewhere.
Speaker 10: These twenty five percent terrace will almost certainly increase the
Speaker 10: cost consumers will pay to buy new vehicles affected by
Speaker 10: the duties. We wait to see how the stark market
Speaker 10: will react when it opens, but shares of the top
Speaker 10: us automakers did fall sharply in after hours trading. So
Speaker 10: just how will these tariffs impact you? Well, according to autoweek,
Speaker 10: prices will go.
Speaker 1: Up and be passed on to buyers.
Speaker 10: Autoweek says, depending on the model you purchase, expect to
Speaker 10: pay between four and twelve thousand dollars more.
Speaker 2: I'm Robert Cavosik, all right, so four and twelve thousand
Speaker 2: dollars more. By the way, I'm looking at the market
Speaker 2: right now, and the Dow is pretty flat four it
Speaker 2: is down four percent, so we are seeing that there
Speaker 2: are some some of these movers that are moving.
Speaker 1: In the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: But overall, let me see, S and P is up, no,
Speaker 2: slightly up, it's about flat and NASDAK is just up
Speaker 2: thirty five points. So what does this mean to your pocketbook?
Speaker 2: It means that if you want to buy a car,
Speaker 2: it's gonna cost you more. And that doesn't just go
Speaker 2: for new cars. That's gonna go for used cars too.
Speaker 2: And here's the logic, it's pretty basic economics. The price
Speaker 2: of the new cars goes up four to twelve thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: So you say, well, I'm not gonna give four to
Speaker 2: twelve thousand dollars more for that new car. I'm gonna
Speaker 2: buy a gently owned, a gently loved used car.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a.
Speaker 2: Certified pre owned, doesn't matter. You're not the only one
Speaker 2: doing that, which means that demand for used cars goes up.
Speaker 2: If new cars are up four to twelve thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: you're gonna start looking at a gently pre owned vehicle,
Speaker 2: and so everybody else. If demand goes up and supply
Speaker 2: remains the same, then you're gonna see.
Speaker 1: The prices go up.
Speaker 2: Expect supply, however, in the used car market to decline,
Speaker 2: and the reason is if you are considering a new vehicle,
Speaker 2: but all of a sudden, that new vehicle price goes
Speaker 2: up four to twelve thousand dollars, you might say, let's
Speaker 2: see how say much longer I can push this one?
Speaker 2: Because there is no cost in new car payments if
Speaker 2: you're still driving the old car now. The old car
Speaker 2: costs might go up because of maintenance, but your other
Speaker 2: costs they don't increase. So the best way to save
Speaker 2: money is to not buy a new vehicle.
Speaker 1: The longer you.
Speaker 2: Make your car last, the more value you get out
Speaker 2: of it, and as a result, fewer cars will be
Speaker 2: entering into the used car market, which means supply drops
Speaker 2: at the same time that demand is up. Expect to
Speaker 2: see US cars increase in price in the same way
Speaker 2: that we're about to see these vehicles go up in price. Now,
Speaker 2: one interesting little tidbit too on the side here is
Speaker 2: that Tesla is the ones least likely impacted by the
Speaker 2: US tariffs on vehicles because Tesla does their manufacturing here
Speaker 2: in the United States. So some are gonna You're gonna
Speaker 2: hear people screaming about how this is an unfair trade
Speaker 2: advantage being granted to Tesla, and this is all elon
Speaker 2: musk and YadA, YadA, YadA. I don't I don't buy
Speaker 2: that this falls under the president's tariff philosophy. It just
Speaker 2: happens that his top advisor is a South African born
Speaker 2: in Canada and doing business in the United States, and
Speaker 2: he will benefit from this to a degree because as
Speaker 2: soon as there are retaliatory tariffs, that's when Tesla's gonna
Speaker 2: get stung. And where do you know that he's been
Speaker 2: trying to crack into the Chinese market that hasn't gone
Speaker 2: very well. Chinese byd auto manufacturer actually just introduced some
Speaker 2: new charging technology, new battery technology that is superior to
Speaker 2: anything that we have stateside. If Japan all of a
Speaker 2: sudden says, oh, you're gonna tear if our cars, We're definitely.
Speaker 1: Going to hit any vehicles that are coming out of
Speaker 1: the United States.
Speaker 2: That's gonna have an impact on US automakers, including Tesla,
Speaker 2: and Tesla of course wants to see growth in Europe,
Speaker 2: and Europe's going to say, uh.
Speaker 1: New the take a long wump of a shoot bridge
Speaker 1: and then it's gonna hit.
Speaker 2: It's gonna hit him, but not until there are retaliatory tariffs,
Speaker 2: and when there are expect to hear more bad French
Speaker 2: accents from yours. Truly, there is an issue with some
Speaker 2: of the DNA samples that the La County Sheriff's Department
Speaker 2: had tested in the past. Now they have to retest
Speaker 2: them all because somebody didn't get an email.
Speaker 1: Oops.
Speaker 5: So very bizarre situation about how all of this went down.
Speaker 5: So here's the thing. The Sheriff's partment over at their
Speaker 5: science lab has a series of DNA tests that they
Speaker 5: use for various crimes like sex crimes, DNA and murders,
Speaker 5: all kinds of different things. So here's the deal. The
Speaker 5: company that provides those tests for them notified the sheriff's
Speaker 5: partment that the tests that they had were bad. The
Speaker 5: problem is is the company sent a letter to a
Speaker 5: person who no longer works at the sheriff's department.
Speaker 1: Oops, yeah, that's a problem.
Speaker 5: So that happened more than a year ago, and so
Speaker 5: for the last amount of time since that letter was
Speaker 5: sent out, the Sheriff's Department continued to use those tests,
Speaker 5: not knowing that they were actually bad.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
Speaker 5: The company that runs the testing program says it doesn't
Speaker 5: provide false positives, but it's just not as reliable as
Speaker 5: they should be. So what happens now Now the department
Speaker 5: is trying to retest four thousand DNA samples to figure
Speaker 5: out if everything is still okay with the way it
Speaker 5: was tested the first time. The problem is, as we've
Speaker 5: reported before, in certain crimes, in certain situations, there's not
Speaker 5: a lot of DNA evidence to test, So in some
Speaker 5: cases there may be none left to retest.
Speaker 1: With these cases. Uh oh, that's a problem. Now.
Speaker 2: Isn't it interesting that this email got sent to somebody
Speaker 2: that's no longer with the sheriff's department, which means either
Speaker 2: they left the sheriff's department and the email was taken away,
Speaker 2: which means that the email was sent to a box
Speaker 2: it no longer exists and it's up in the ether.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if they got a return message
Speaker 2: at the manufacturer, but they didn't do any other follow
Speaker 2: They certainly didn't send a second notice, third notice, another
Speaker 2: way of contacting. Or it's somebody that was terminated from
Speaker 2: the sheriff's department, in which case maybe they're even getting
Speaker 2: the notification and they're going, well, shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Have fired me, and then they delete the email.
Speaker 2: To be honest, I would have done that unless I
Speaker 2: thought that it was putting somebody in jail, you know, wrongly,
Speaker 2: then I would probably follow up.
Speaker 1: But if I thought that.
Speaker 2: You know what this is on you guys, yeah, I
Speaker 2: probably would have just deleted the email, been like, shouldn't
Speaker 2: have fired me?
Speaker 5: Now, what does this mean for all of the cases
Speaker 5: that have already gone through judicial system using these now
Speaker 5: hampered essentially DNA tests. Well, the District Attorney's office is
Speaker 5: working with the sheriff to try to sort all of
Speaker 5: that out. Defense attorneys could certainly get a hold of
Speaker 5: this and demand that certain things be retested or retried,
Speaker 5: and they could have a very big implication for the
Speaker 5: criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: We'll have to wait and play that out.
Speaker 5: By the way, the Sheriff's department is the only one
Speaker 5: that's come forward and told us about this issue, but
Speaker 5: we are told that other law enforcement agencies in the
Speaker 5: county also use that company. So we're reaching out to
Speaker 5: the different agencies throughout LA County to figure out if
Speaker 5: anybody else has been in this test. But we are
Speaker 5: talking thousands of bad DNA tests at least what the
Speaker 5: Sheriff's department gest.
Speaker 2: And that's just Sheriff's department. As he said, this could be.
Speaker 2: This could have a wider fallout. And if I'm a
Speaker 2: if I am a defense attorney, I'm salivating right now.
Speaker 2: I mean salivating, not like into a sample tube that
Speaker 2: they can future test, but I'm salivating like figuratively speaking,
Speaker 2: that would be They've got to be very excited about that. Hey,
Speaker 2: before we move to the news here, I want to
Speaker 2: take just to tell a personal story. If I can't
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with this, amy, can would you
Speaker 2: mind if you have a second I know you're trying
Speaker 2: to put your newscast together. So my my wife and daughter,
Speaker 2: just I mean twenty minutes ago left on a very
Speaker 2: long road trip. They're going to be on the road
Speaker 2: for the next thirty hours. And so I had to
Speaker 2: send a message to my daughter and told her to
Speaker 2: use ways, And I said, you're going to need to
Speaker 2: use ways.
Speaker 1: And choose the voice Amy on that.
Speaker 2: And so she's all excited now that she has a
Speaker 2: celebrity who's giving.
Speaker 1: Her directions to wherever she's going. And I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. She says, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 11: Anyway, Well, I hope I don't steer her wrong.
Speaker 1: We would blame the app, We wouldn't blame the voice.
Speaker 11: Oh no, you should see Shannon Farren. She comes in
Speaker 11: and yells at me.
Speaker 1: She dies, yeah, how dare she?
Speaker 11: Yeah? Amy, you kicked me off the other day. You
Speaker 11: sent me the wrong direction.
Speaker 2: How long did you have to record stuff for that?
Speaker 2: Did that take forever to get?
Speaker 11: No? No, no, really no, it didn't take very long.
Speaker 12: And I did it when the app was first unveiled,
Speaker 12: so in its crowdsource, so it was brand new when
Speaker 12: it came out.
Speaker 11: But no, it didn't take that long.
Speaker 12: It's only about one hundred prompts because they mix and
Speaker 12: match them.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so you have to so you would do
Speaker 2: like one word like turn. You wouldn't say turn left
Speaker 2: in half a mile mile, turn say in one mile,
Speaker 2: and then you say turn left.
Speaker 1: Oh that's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great. I love it when you take me
Speaker 2: behind the scenes on that stuff.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that anytime. Appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I will let you know if you do indeed,
Speaker 2: steer them wrong?
Speaker 1: Makes it? Why does that say boise ten miles? We
Speaker 1: weren't even we weren't even north of Colorado.
Speaker 11: That's yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna learn how to money with Joel Larsgard.
Speaker 2: He joins us next Chris merrill In for Bill Handle
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