On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: House Jan. 6 panel recommends DOJ prosecute Trump on several charges
USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen looks at the Trump charges recommended by the Jan. 6 House Committee. Plus, Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of rape in Los Angeles. Can the federal government do anything to make college more affordable? USA TODAY Education Reporter Nirvi Shah has an answer. Federal officials say there’s been an explosion in child sextortion, and USA TODAY Consumer Tech Reporter Brett Molina looks at what’s next for Twitter.
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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 Tuesday, the 20th December 2022. Today, what the January 6th House Committee says former President Donald Trump should be charged with, plus, Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of rape again. And a look at the high cost of higher education in America.
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The House Committee investigating the Capitol attack on January 6th released its long-awaited final report yesterday, the product of the panel that unveiled never before seen details of former President Donald Trump’s attempt to hold onto power after losing the 2020 election. Producer PJ Elliott spoke with USA TODAY Department of Justice Reporter Bart Jansen to find out more.
PJ Elliott:
Bart, welcome to 5 Things.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
PJ Elliott:
So what exactly did the House Select Committee to investigate January 6th, vote on yesterday?
Bart Jansen:
They approved their final report on their 18-month investigation into the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021. They went on to make recommendations that the Justice Department investigate former President Donald Trump for a handful of potential crimes they believe he committed, and also, they referred four House Republican members of Congress to the Ethics Committee for possible sanctions for their roles in dealing with Trump, surrounding the January 6th riot.
PJ Elliott:
Has the DOJ made any official announcement regarding those recommendations?
Bart Jansen:
The Justice Department declined to comment on the recommendations. Of course, the Justice Department already has a special counsel, Jack Smith, investigating Trump for his role in January 6th, and for the documents down at Mar-a-Lago. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that prosecutors have been monitoring the hearings. What they will be waiting for is the committee to release the transcripts of interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses who have cooperated with the committee, and other evidence they’ve gathered along the way because that evidence and transcripts testimony, could help prosecutors build any cases that they do develop.
PJ Elliott:
So what happens next? Are we looking at the former president facing criminal charges here?
Bart Jansen:
The Justice Department is absolutely investigating whether the former president should be charged. The committee recommended today that there are at least a handful of statutes that the Justice Department should be looking at. One is inciting the insurrection, that he is to blame for causing the riot at the Capitol. Another is allegedly defrauding the United States. That was the schemes to try to overturn the election such as through fake electors being submitted to Congress in place of electors who supported President Joe Biden. Obstructing Congress is another potential violation because the riot disrupted the counting of electoral college votes at a joint session of Congress on January 6th, and there are a couple of other conspiracy statutes that the committee feels Trump may have violated. So those, at least, are what the Justice Department will be looking at and they are continuing to investigate.
PJ Elliott:
What about a timeline?
Bart Jansen:
No, there is no deadline for them to make a decision. We have seen the investigation ratcheting up in recent weeks with a number of subpoenas being issued to state election officials, paralleling what we’ve seen in some state-level investigations, but no, there is no deadline for pressing charges.
PJ Elliott:
Bart, great stuff, as always. Thanks so much.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks so much for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
A jury found Harvey Weinstein guilty of rape and sexual assault in his Los Angeles trial yesterday after deliberating for nine days. It was the second criminal trial for the disgraced film producer who’s already two years into a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York. In LA, he was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation, and another sexual misconduct count involving a woman known as Jane Doe 1.
The jury hung, though, on several counts, including charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Governor, Gavin Newsom, and on allegations of another woman. A mistrial was declared on those. He was also acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by another woman. Still, legal expert, Rachel Fiset, told the AP that he’ll likely spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Rachel Fiset:
Simply put, he was convicted of three of the seven charges he was facing. However, it doesn’t particularly matter to what’s going to happen for the rest of his life. So I think the jury was really being careful and this is the way they came out. The jury was even split where they were hung. One of the verdicts where they were hung was 10-2 and one was 8-4. So the jury was painstakingly going through this and I think that shows the credibility of the actual conviction. I think that really shows that the jury was not just writing him one way or the other, that the jury was taking its time.
Taylor Wilson:
On top of his decades-long New York sentence, Weinstein faces up to an additional 24 years in prison when sentenced.
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The President’s plan for mass student loan debt relief is stalled, but can the Federal Government do anything to make college more affordable? Producer PJ Elliot spoke to USA TODAY Education Editor Nirvi Shah to answer that question.
PJ Elliott:
Nirvi, thanks so much for joining 5 Things.
Nirvi Shah:
Oh, happy to be here.
PJ Elliott:
So let’s start with the cost of college. How much does it cost right now for the average student to attend a university?
Nirvi Shah:
So the average amount that it costs for a public university, I believe, is about $9,700, but most colleges, parents and students, would say they’re paying a lot more than that. That’s also just the raw tuition cost. It’s not going to factor in necessarily everything you need to attend college, and some of your elite, prestigious universities charge many, many times that amount.
PJ Elliott:
Is there anything that states can do to make it more affordable?
Nirvi Shah:
It’s a great question. So state universities charge what they need to, based on how much they get from their state government. So right now, state tuition has gone down a little bit. States are flushed with cash from pandemic aid that’s come from the federal government. But people who work in higher education at the state level would say they’re at the mercy of those state lawmakers, and prior to the pandemic, they saw that their budgets were getting cut. So they were charging more tuition and it hits parents and students right in the pocketbook.
PJ Elliott:
What about the federal government?
Nirvi Shah:
Not really, and that’s where we are right now with all of this conversation that is coming from the Biden administration. They’ve really been trying to hit the flip side of the coin, which is how can they reduce all of the debt that students have accumulated to get those degrees or to try to get those degrees, but there really isn’t a ton they can do in terms of cutting tuition costs. They had a lot of ambition in terms of providing free community college earlier in their administration, but that plan has just fallen apart.
PJ Elliott:
So the story mentions the federal government limiting student lending. How would that help make it affordable?
Nirvi Shah:
Well, if there’s less money to borrow, then there’s potentially the theory that schools would have to charge less because students would not be able to come up with all that money upfront. The flip side of that, too, is if the Pell Grant, which is for generally lower-income families and students, rises, that sometimes universities might charge more to make up for that because they know students have access to that kind of money. So it’s a really tricky situation where it’s a very chicken and egg kind of thing.
PJ Elliott:
Is that a realistic solution though?
Nirvi Shah:
I don’t really know that anyone’s talking about that or that particular idea has had much breadth or much life given to it at the federal level or anywhere else.
PJ Elliott:
Nirvi, thanks so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
Nirvi Shah:
Thank you so much for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Federal authorities yesterday issued an unusual public safety alert citing an explosion in child sextortion cases. At least 3,000 victims, mainly boys, have been identified as targets in operations mostly originating outside the US where children are being forced into sending explicit images online and then extorted for money.
Federal officials said the number of incidents in the first six months this year, represented a 1,000% increase from the same period last year. The FBI said, “Predators are using a variety of online platforms, from gaming to social media sites, often using fake female accounts to target boys between the ages of 14 and 17, and even as young as 10.” A major portion of the schemes are being traced to the Ivory Coast in Nigeria in West Africa.
The FBI, along with the Department of Homeland Security and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, issued the alert ahead of the holidays, urging parents to monitor and talk to their kids as they spend more time online and away from school. Officials said predators have typically been convincing targets to send photos or videos. They then threaten to release them unless victims send money. Some victims have asked for help from their parents with the payments, while others, possibly more than a dozen, have taken their own lives out of shame. To read this full story, you can find a link in today’s show notes.
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It’s been another chaotic few days at Twitter and the social media platform’s future has never been less clear. The latest twist saw new owner, Elon Musk, post a poll over the weekend, asking Twitter users whether he should step down as head of the company. For more on that and what might be around the corner, USA TODAY Consumer Tech Reporter Brett Molina is here. Brett, thanks for stopping by.
Brett Molina:
Sure thing. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So what happened with this poll, Brett, and do you think Musk will listen to its results?
Brett Molina:
So about 17.5 million Twitter users responded to this poll and almost 58%, 57.5 to be exact, voted yes, that he should step down as head of Twitter. 42.5% voted no. The big question is, will he abide by the results of this poll? He’s used online polling in the past to make other decisions related to Twitter, and we have yet to hear from Twitter or Musk in terms of whether he is legitimately going to step down as head of Twitter.
I don’t count anything out when it comes to Elon Musk just because he’s very unpredictable and we’ve seen that with the way he’s run Twitter. But at the same time, I would be highly surprised if he decides that he is going to leave, he’s going to step down as chief executive because an online poll spit out results that said he should. Keep in mind everything that precipitated this poll. There was this ElonJet Twitter account that was tracking the whereabouts of his private jet when it took off and landed in different places using publicly available information.
He had said early on when he took over Twitter that he was going to allow free speech and it didn’t matter if people were criticizing him, he was going to allow everything. You fast forward to ElonJet, ElonJet’s gone. Then you have some reporters that reference ElonJet in tweets. They’re suspended, then brought back. So it’s just hard to know what’s legit and what’s not. He seems to be going back and forth with different thoughts and stances on things.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Musk also put a controversial policy in place over the weekend banning the promotion of other social media platforms on Twitter. He since rescinded that. What’s the latest with this, Brett?
Brett Molina:
So the original policy was not allowing links to other social media platforms. The way I think that it was worded was to focus on free promotion. And he focused on certain accounts like Facebook, Instagram, and Mastedon, which, interestingly enough, has been heralded as one of the top alternatives to Twitter. But then it was interesting, too, because other platforms like TikTok, most notably, were not included in this. A lot of people pushed back on it. He stepped back and said, “I’m sorry this happened.” He said going forward, they’ll start voting for major policy changes, and this is what led us to the Twitter poll asking if he should step down.
So as of right now, people can still, I think, share some of these links. But also, sometimes, if there are links to other social platforms, there might be a warning.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, finally, maybe a tough question to answer, but what’s next for Twitter, Brett? If Musk does resign, do we have any idea who might take over?
Brett Molina:
I haven’t heard a ton of names out there, but I think part of it is, I think it would be really shocking if he decided he would stick to the results of this poll and step down from running Twitter. That’d be extremely surprising. Having said that, Twitter has been kind of in chaos ever since Musk took over. One of the big concerns, I think, with Twitter has been, Musk may be scaring off advertisers. Does he bring someone in that potentially helps bring some of them back?
Taylor Wilson:
Brett Molina covers tech for USA TODAY. Thanks so much.
Brett Molina:
You bet. Anytime.
Taylor Wilson:
You can follow along with the Twitter saga in the Tech section on USATODAY.com and you can find new episodes of 5 Things every morning, right here, wherever you’re listening right now. I’m back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.
