Biden at the UN General Assembly, Ukraine support, Iranian prisoners: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: President Joe Biden met with Israel's leader and pushed for continued Ukraine support at this week's UN General Assembly. USA TODAY Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer takes a closer look at the released Iranian prisoners. Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies that he doesn't take orders from the White House. USA TODAY Senior Reporter Jessica Guynn breaks down an election conspiracy theory spreading online. Free COVID-19 tests are made available again.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right hereHit 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 Five Things You Need to Know, Thursday, the 21st of September, 2023. Today, a recap of this week's UN General Assembly whilst we look at some of the Iranians released as part of the prisoner exchange and a new election conspiracy theory is spreading online.

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It was a full agenda at the United Nations General Assembly. This week, President Joe Biden spent three days in New York for the gathering and met, yesterday, with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli leader has pushed to meet with Biden at the White House since his return to power last December, but Biden upset over Netanyahu's plan to overhaul Israel's judicial system and concerned about his commitment to democratic checks and balances was reluctant to give him a high profile oval office meeting. They met instead at a Manhattan Hotel. Despite Biden's criticisms, he stressed that US commitment to Israel is ironclad, while Netanyahu said Israel is committed to democracy. Biden invited him to visit Washington by the end of the year. Both Biden and Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, addressed the assembly on Tuesday, warning against pulling back on support of Ukraine in its war with Russia.

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And the week was also marked by comments from Iran's hardline President, Ebrahim Raisi. He slammed the US for pulling out of a nuclear deal in 2018 and called Sanctions on the Country a political tool. His remarks came the same day this week that five Americans imprisoned in Iran were freed in a prisoner exchange. In this week's deal to free five Americans detained in Iran. The US also released five Iranians in addition to unfreezing billions in Iranian oil revenues. US officials said the released Iranian prisoners had been charged or convicted of nonviolent crimes, but experts say some of them could be threats to national security. I spoke with USA Today domestic security correspondent, Josh Meyer, to learn more.

Josh, thanks for hopping back on the show.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

There are concerns that these released Iranian prisoners might be more dangerous than the Biden administration initially advertised. I want to start, Josh, by just going through some of these specific released prisoners. Mehrdad Ansari was sentenced to more than five years in prison back in 2021 for his role in working to obtain technology for Iran that violated sanctions. Josh, why might this have been a big deal?

Josh Meyer:

Well, I mean, I think it depends on how you describe dangerous. The Biden administration is probably technically correct in saying that these guys, including Ansari, were convicted of nonviolent crimes. He was essentially convicted and sentenced to more than five years in prison for his role in a scheme to obtain sensitive parts and technology for Iran and for its military programs in violation of international sanctions and trade embargoes, and that equipment or parts included dual use parts that can be used by the military and civilian capabilities in such things as nuclear weapons, missile guidance and development programs, secure tactical radio communications and offensive electronic warfare.

Taylor Wilson:

Meanwhile, an engineer who's a permanent US resident was accused of stealing secret aerospace documents. What exactly happened here, Josh?

Josh Meyer:

So that would be Amin Hassanzadeh, who is a Michigan engineer and Iranian citizen and a US permanent resident who's accused of funneling secret data to his brother in Iran. Now, he is one of three of the five who was awaiting trial. He had not been convicted of anything, but he was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, he had his Ann Arbor home secretly searched by the FBI and at the time of his arrest in 2019, had a PhD in electrical engineering. And he basically is accused of trying to obtain information or data that if it fell into the wrong hands, it would, according to a company executive, have catastrophic consequences.

Taylor Wilson:

And another US resident, a prominent political scientist, was also involved in this prisoner release. What do we know about him?

Josh Meyer:

So Kaveh Afrasiabi, a lawful permanent resident of the US since 1984, became a prolific letter writer, media spokesman and consultant for the government of Iran, but he failed to register as a foreign agent and the Department of Justice says that he surreptitiously derived a "significant portion of his income from the Iranian government". So he appears to be somebody who is acting as an agent of the Iranian government here without permission to do so. Afrasiabi drew attention in 2020 for a American television appearance where he provided commentary on the US airstrike to kill Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, and he said that President Trump's hands were stained with the blood of 10 martyrs, five from Iran, five from Iraq, and he called Soleimani a national hero. So his is one of the cases where I think is a little bit more complicated than some of the others. His case was still pending as of August, 2023 before this week's deal.

John Demers, who is a former assistant attorney General for national security with the Justice Department said Afrasiabi pitched himself to Congress, journalists and the American public is a neutral expert on Iran for more than a decade and should have registered as a foreign agent.

Taylor Wilson:

How were these arrests part of broader work from the government to pursue Iran's web of smuggling and trafficking for, really, decades, especially, Josh, as it relates to procurement of nuclear weapons parts and also how might the releases here undermine those efforts?

Josh Meyer:

I think law enforcement officials, some of them are very upset about this kind of thing. They understand that these kind of trade-offs sometimes do have to be made to get Americans home, but I quote some people in the story, former prosecutors and former investigators, saying that these cases take years to do, often in cooperation with our foreign counterparts, to really gather the evidence needed to obtain an arrest and a conviction in the cases and that this really undermines our efforts to go after Iran and its global network of proliferators who are basically trying to buy whatever they can to help Iran with its weapons programs, its military efforts, its fighter jets, things like that, and even its nuclear weapons program.

Taylor Wilson:

Josh Meyer covers domestic security for USA Today. Great insight as always. Thanks, Josh.

Josh Meyer:

My pleasure. Thanks, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

Attorney General, Merrick Garland, yesterday defended the Justice Department as independent of the White House and Congress. His comments came as Republicans attacked him repeatedly for the handling of high profile investigations of Hunter Biden and Donald Trump.

Merrick Garland:

I am not the president's lawyer. I will add, I am not Congress's prosecutor. The Justice Department works for the American people. Our job is to follow the facts and the law and that is what we do.

Taylor Wilson:

Garland's testimony on Capitol Hill came amid the criticisms of multiple politically fraught investigations. House Republicans are investigating whether to impeach President Joe Biden, in part because of alleged influence pedaling by his son, Hunter. House Judiciary Committee chair, Congressman Jim Jordan, blasted the department for what he called a ridiculous plea deal offered to Hunter Biden in July. As for picking a special counsel who negotiated the deal to continue the probe and for prosecuting Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents. Jordan said, "There is one investigation protecting President Biden. There is another one attacking President Trump. The Justice Departments got both sides of the equation covered." But the top Democrat on the panel, Congressman Jerry Nadler, accused Republicans of poisoning the discourse to stage political stunts with allegations that have been refuted by committee witnesses. Nadler also said that Republicans sought to impeach Biden with no justification while protecting Trump from allegations about the January 6th capitol attack.

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A false conspiracy theory is gaining steam online and it's happening at a time when major social media platforms are easing off their moderation of political speech. I spoke with USA Today senior reporter, Jessica Guynn, to learn more. Hello, Jessica.

Jessica Guynn:

Hi, Taylor. How are you?

Taylor Wilson:

Good. Thanks for hopping back on the podcast.

Jessica Guynn:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So starting here, what is this conspiracy theory about Covid and election rigging?

Jessica Guynn:

Well, you know how they say everything old is new again? This is the latest conspiracy theory making the rounds that the Biden administration will reinstate Covid pandemic era restrictions to push the use of mail-in ballots and rig the 2024 election. And this is a recycled conspiracy theory from the 2020 presidential election when former President Trump and his allies alleged that Covid lockdowns and mail-in ballots were being used to throw the election to Biden, and disinformation experts tell us that the resurgence of this conspiracy theory is pretty troubling coming just as the 2024 contest heats up.

Taylor Wilson:

What are the social media platforms doing about this theory?

Jessica Guynn:

The short answer is not enough. According to Advanced Democracy, which provided us with an exclusive report on the recent spread of this theory, they and others say that social media platforms are increasingly taking more of a hands-off approach to political speech. Some of that has been inspired by Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, which is now called X, and his decision to have much more of an anything goes content moderation style. Of course, that style has been accompanied by a surge in hate speech and other harmful content.

Taylor Wilson:

Are any platforms, Jessica, worse than others when it comes to moderating false or misleading election information at this point?

Jessica Guynn:

Well, X seems to mark the spot for most of the false or misleading election information among the mainstream platforms, though it has to be said that less popular, more fringe platforms are just coated in this stuff.

Taylor Wilson:

What role is GOP front runner, Donald Trump, playing in this conspiracy and how does it relate to false claims he made in the build up to and after the 2020 election?

Jessica Guynn:

Well, in the run up to the election, Trump repeatedly claimed over and over and over again, without evidence, that mail-in ballots would be abused to elect Biden, and after he lost the election, he continued to tout conspiracy theories about mail-in voting. So now his campaign on X, formerly Twitter, put up a video of him talking about how his political opponents are trying to use Covid restrictions and mail-in ballots to rig the election against him and so on. And that video did have a community note that gave some information about Covid and safety measures, but it didn't contradict the false claims he was making.

Taylor Wilson:

And Jessica, you touched on this a bit, but how worried are disinformation researchers about not just this conspiracy theory, but also other rampant misinformation on social media ahead of the 2024 election?

Jessica Guynn:

I can only imagine the constant state of being for disinformation researchers is one of great unease and high alert, but election season is really their Super Bowl. Advanced Democracy is not the only research organization that is seeing this conspiracy theory ripple all over the place, others are too, and I think they're just really bracing for the tidal wave to come.

Taylor Wilson:

Jessica Guynn, great insight as always. Thanks so much.

Jessica Guynn:

Thanks so much for having me.

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Taylor Wilson:

The Biden administration announced yesterday that consumers will, once again, be able to get four free Covid home tests per household beginning on Monday. The test will be available on the government run website covidtest.gov. The reopening of the free test program comes as the Department of Health and Human Services announced it'll award $600 million to a dozen test manufacturers to shore up the government supply of home tests. The investment will deliver about 200 million new over-the-counter Covid 19 tests according to officials. During four previous rounds, HHS and the postal service delivered more than 750 million free tests to households. The program wrapped up at the end of the Covid 19 public health emergency earlier this year. The federal government has continued to ship tests to nursing homes, low-income senior housing, and uninsured and underserved communities.

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Thanks for listening to 5 Things. If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and if you have any comments, you can reach us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm Taylor Wilson back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA Today.