On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: Search intensifies for Titanic tourist sub
The search intensifies for the Titanic tourist submersible. CBS News Correspondent David Pogue recounts his experience visiting the sub last year. Plus, former President Donald Trump’s federal trial on classified documents charges has been scheduled, USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen breaks down Hunter Biden’s agreement to plead guilty to multiple charges, a federal judge strikes down as unconstitutional Arkansas’s ban on gender-affirming care for children, and nearly one third of all unhoused people in the United States live in California.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Wednesday, the 21st of June 2023. Today, the latest as a search continues for the missing submersible in the North Atlantic. Plus, we have a date for former President Donald Trump’s documents trial, and Hunter Biden makes a plea agreement.
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A Canadian aircraft heard underwater noises just after midnight last night in a part of the North Atlantic being searched for a submersible that vanished on Sunday in a dive to the Titanic wreckage site. US and Canadian ships and aircraft intensified their searches yesterday and they’ve already searched more than 10,000 square miles, according to the Coast Guard. As of this morning, the sub has an estimated 24 hours of oxygen remaining if it’s still intact. Five people are on board, including the mission company Ocean Gate CEO, Stockton Rush. Few people have been inside the submersible designed to reach the wreckage of the Titanic, which sits nearly two and a half miles underneath the ocean. But one person who has is CBS Sunday Morning correspondent and fellow podcaster, David Pogue. He did a story on the sub for CBS last year. I spoke with David to learn more about his experience. David, thanks for hopping on 5 Things.
David Pogue:
Sure.
Taylor Wilson:
You visited this Titanic Taurus sub. I’m wondering if you can just tell us a little bit about what your experience was like, not just inside the submersible but this entire experience getting out there to the North Atlantic.
David Pogue:
I was anticipating a once in a lifetime experience and I got it. Ocean Gate, the company, invited us from CBS Sunday Morning – cameraman, producer and me – to come aboard and, in theory, to document one of their dives to the Titanic, for which they were charging a quarter of a million dollars per person. We didn’t pay that. We were there to do a story. I was very, very, very excited. And then I saw the actual submersible. It’s a one of a kind. As Stockton Rush, the CEO and the inventor of the sub, puts it, “Every submersible is a prototype.” In other words, there is no spare. There was no version 1.0 before a 2.0. This is it. It’s a one of a kind. And as such, there were parts of it that seemed to me to be less sophisticated than I was guessing.
You drive it with a PlayStation video control, literally a Bluetooth wireless controller. Some of the ballasts are old rusty construction pipes. When they seal you in, and they do seal you in by the way, there are 18 bolts that seal you in from the outside and they only do 17 of them because the 18th one is way up high, so they don’t bother with it. So there were certain things that looked like cut corners, but Stockton made me aware that the part that we care about, where the people are, the pressure capsule, is very high end, designed in conjunction with NASA, the University of Washington, carbon fiber five inches thick.
Taylor Wilson:
You signed a very fat waiver before getting inside this thing. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the items on that waiver?
David Pogue:
This is adventure travel. This is for adrenaline seekers, people who live on the edge, the kind of clientele that would take a Blue Origin rocket ride, for example. And so yeah, it is very dangerous. It’s in international waters, so it’s not supervised or regulated or inspected by any governmental body. The waiver, basically it’s eight paragraphs of ways that you could get permanently disabled or killed. It outlines the fact that the ship you’re on to carry you out to the site is not a consumer ship, a tourist ship. It is a working petroleum vessel. It’s not designed for those who are dainty of foot. So there are big heavy doors and the decks are wet and it’s dangerous. Then there are dangers involved with getting into the submersible. Then there are dangers involved with going down to see the Titanic or even going down at all. There are dangers involved with coming back up. So they make very clear, every paragraph ends with, “I understand that this may result in permanent disability or death.”
Taylor Wilson:
And David, in your reporting, the watercraft actually went missing for several hours last year. Can you explain what happened there?
David Pogue:
It did not go missing. I tweeted at one point, there was a time last year when the sub was lost for three hours, but yeah, that could be taken two ways. And what I meant was the sub was lost. It couldn’t find its way. It didn’t know where it was. It was on the bottom of the sea. Could not find the Titanic. The ship above knew where they were. The ship on the surface never lost contact with them and was trying to guide them to the ship, but they never found it and after three hours, they gave up and rose to the surface without ever having seen the ship.
Taylor Wilson:
Got it. So in other words, completely different than what we’re seeing or what we assumed to have happened here.
David Pogue:
Completely different. To my knowledge, in the three summers they’ve been doing this, they have never lost communication before.
Taylor Wilson:
And in speaking with Ocean Gate officials about what would be done in an emergency situation like this one, did they have a plan for this?
David Pogue:
I have to say it’s a very safety conscious culture on that ship, in that outfit. There are checklists and inspections and twice daily mandatory briefings, and we all had to get into the sub and he showed us where the fire extinguisher was, we had to practice putting on the smoke masks in case there was smoke. Nobody ever said here’s what you do if we lose communication and are trapped under the sea, because it just seems impossibly remote. This thing has so many ways to come back to the surface. Even if you’re unconscious, this thing will come back to the surface on its own after 12, 14 hours in the sea. It has sandbags hanging from dissolving links that the seawater eats away and then the sandbags drop and you come up even if you’ve passed out.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. David Pogue with some great insight for us on the missing submarine. Thank you so much, David.
David Pogue:
My pleasure.
Taylor Wilson:
Ocean Gate, the company that operates the missing submersible, was previously warned that its approach to the enterprise could have a catastrophic outcome, according to a 2018 letter written by leaders of the submersible craft industry and obtained by the New York Times. They said they were worried about the company’s experimental approach.
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Former President Donald Trump’s federal trial on charges related to the classified documents seized at his Florida estate has been scheduled for August 14th. US District Judge Aileen Cannon has also told DOJ prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers to file all pre-trial motions by July 24th. Meanwhile, Trump continues to defend his decision to hoard the documents at his Mar-a-Lago home after leaving office. In a contentious interview with Fox News, Trump denied allegations of mishandling classified materials and promoted lies about the outcome of the 2020 election. When pressed by anchor Bret Baier on why Trump did not return the documents to the National Archives, Trump said the boxes were packed with personal items and that he was very busy.
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Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of tax evasion and to resolve a federal gun violation. I spoke with USA TODAY Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen for more. Welcome back to the show, Bart.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
First, Bart, what can you tell us about the charges on federal tax evasion?
Bart Jansen:
Yes, he agreed to plead guilty to two counts of willfully failing to pay his taxes. These are for the tax years of 2017 and 2018. Each of those years he received at least $1.5 million and didn’t pay taxes on the money. Justice Department officials have told the Associated Press that they’re expecting to recommend probation, so he is not expected to be jailed over those charges.
Taylor Wilson:
And he’s also agreed to a pretrial program on this gun charge? Bart, can you tell us a little bit about this charge and what this program entails?
Bart Jansen:
Yeah. In order to buy a firearm, you sign a document that says that you’re not a drug addict at the time. Well, he apparently bought a gun, a Colt revolver in 2018, at a time when he later acknowledged in a book that he wrote, in his own memoir, that he was heavily addicted to drugs. And so he essentially lied on a federal form about buying a gun. So he has been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm. So he has agreed to go into a pretrial diversion program that’s basically to avoid an actual trial. And so if he completes the program, basically staying out of trouble during some period of time, that the charge could eventually be dismissed. So that could go away without any conviction at all.
Taylor Wilson:
And, Bart, what implications could this have for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign and in his dealings with Republicans?
Bart Jansen:
Well, at the presidential level, his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, has already begun attacking him over that Hunter Biden is getting let off with much too easy a penalty for these charges. And also that there’s basically a two-tiered system of justice in the country, one for the politically favored, the insiders, and another for everybody else. Trump, of course, faces indictments in two jurisdictions. He’s basically arguing that he’s being treated unfairly while Hunter Biden is being let off the hook.
In addition, congressional Republicans plan to continue investigating Hunter Biden. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, a Republican of Kentucky, said that this amounts to just a slap on the wrist. He thinks that some of that money that Hunter Biden was piling up was actually the result of influence peddling from people in Ukraine or China or Romania trying to influence the Biden administration. And so Republicans are going to continue investigating that. So they’ll be nagging at President Biden’s heels probably at least all the way to the election.
Taylor Wilson:
USA Today Justice Department Correspondent Bart Jansen, thanks as always.
Bart Jansen:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
A federal judge yesterday struck down as unconstitutional Arkansas’s first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for children. It’s the first ruling to overturn such a ban as a growing number of Republican-led states adopt similar restrictions. US District Judge Jay Moody issued a permanent injunction against the law. It would’ve prohibited doctors from providing gender-affirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers, or surgery to anyone under 18. At least 19 other states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors following the Arkansas law, and nearly all of them have been challenged in court.
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Nearly one third of all unhoused people in the United States live in California, according to a new study out yesterday. And the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness revealed that 50% of all unsheltered people in the country who may or may not have a car to sleep in live in California. The state is home to around 12% of the country’s total population, so it has a disproportionate amount of unhoused people. In the study, about 90% reported that the cost of housing was the main reason they could not escape homelessness.
And before we go, today is the summer solstice. That means it’s officially the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest day of the year. Enjoy the sunlight.
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 back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.
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