Transcript of Evening Wire: Spencer Pratt Goes Scorched Earth & Epstein Suicide Note? | 5.7.26 New

A purported suicide letter from Jeffrey Epstein is released by a New York court. Reality star Spencer Pratt earns high marks in the debate for LA mayor, and a couple of oil tankers sneak past Iran's missiles. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howell. It's Thursday, May 7th. This is Evening Wire.

A New York court has released what appears to be a suicide note left by the late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The note begins, quote, "They investigated for months, found nothing." A couple lines later, it says, "It is a treat to be able to choose one's time to say goodbye." The note has stayed in a vault of a New York courthouse for 7 years. It was kept hidden from the public because of an unrelated case of the prisoner who found it. On Wednesday, a judge made it public after a request from The New York Times.

A CIA assessment says Iran still has most of its missiles. This comes as a new peace deal is still being considered. Daily Wire foreign affairs reporter Kassia Kiva has the latest.

An intelligence source confirms the findings of the CIA's assessment to The Daily Wire. Despite weeks of sustained US and Israeli strikes, Iran's regime still possesses roughly 70% of its missile stockpile from before the war and about 75% of mobile launchers, even after launching hundreds of missiles at Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the US military sites across the region. This assessment breaks with President Trump's Wednesday claim that Iran only had 18 to 19% of missiles left. The CIA assessment also reportedly concludes that Iran has reopened underground storage sites, repaired damaged missiles, and resumed work on weapons that were near completion before the war began.

Despite Iran's attempt to block the Strait of Hormuz, some tankers have snuck through. Daily Wire contributor Tim Pearce has more.

Experts say, and shipping data shows, 4 tankers from the United Arab Emirates have sailed through the strait. The crossings show the risk that some oil producers and buyers are willing to hazard more than 2 months into Iran's blockade. Roughly 20% of the world's oil passed through the strait prior to the war in Iran. While the strait's closure has had a global impact, oil producers in the Middle East and their customers in East Asia have been some of the hardest hit.

Federal agents raided a Disney cruise ship in a major child pornography sting. Daily Wire Entertainment reporter Amanda Harding has the details.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently raided 5 cruise ships, including 1 Disney ship, as they identified predators viewing and distributing child sexual exploitation material. The operation took place in San Diego and led to 28 individuals being arrested. A CBP spokesperson said, quote, after boarding the vessels and interviewing 26 suspected crew members from the Philippines, 1 suspected crew member from Portugal, and 1 from Indonesia, Officers confirmed all subjects were involved in either the receipt, possession, transportation, distribution, or viewing of CSEM, or child pornography. The CBP then canceled their visas with plans to remove each of the criminals from the United States. A Disney rep said in response to the news, quote, we have a zero tolerance policy for this type of behavior and fully cooperated with law enforcement. While the majority of these individuals were not from our cruise line, those who were are no longer with the company.

Reality TV star Spencer Pratt has emerged the clear winner after last night's heated LA mayoral debate. An NBC poll released this morning showed 89% of viewers rated him the winner. Daily Wire lifestyle reporter Lauren Baer has the details.

Pratt faced off against Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman on the debate stage, where they clashed on how to best lead the city of 3.8 million. The former reality TV star said that he would crack down on crime, improve the city's fire response readiness, and move away from the city's ineffective efforts to combat homelessness.

Well, the good news is when I enforce the law and clear the street of the drug addicts that have taken over 40 blocks of downtown LA, abandoned buildings that have drug addicts just lighting them on fire every other day, I will have potentially 20,000 units available to build.

During a different exchange, Pratt criticized Raman over her approach to homelessness.

She runs the homeless housing thing. She acts like this is just Mayor Bass. The DEA statistic says 93% of this is a drug addiction problem. Councilwoman Raman's plan for treatment first— I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her and we can find some of these people she's going to offer treatment for. She's going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super meth. These ideas cost us over $400 million to house 70— what did he say, 3,000 people for $400 million? This is an absolute failure.

Tune in to Morning Wire tomorrow for full coverage of the debate.

Washington and Beijing are considering talks on AI controls amid rising concerns over its rapid development. Cabot Phillips, host of Wired In Live, has more.

Ahead of President Trump's planned visit to Beijing next week, one of the main agenda items could have a heavy influence on the future of AI. Guardrails could now be considered to prevent new tech from spiraling into disaster. Similar talks took place under the Biden administration without any meaningful results. If AI makes the agenda, the US side will be led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, who has been closely following tech advancements. The president is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on May 14th.

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a discrimination lawsuit against the New York Times on Tuesday, alleging the paper unlawfully passed over a white male employee in favor of a less experienced multiracial woman. Daily Wire reporter Zach Jewell has more.

This involved filling the position of deputy real estate editor, and according to the complaint, the decision allegedly deviated from the normal hiring procedures and involved bypassing the candidate who had relevant experience in real estate journalism, despite that experience being listed as a requirement in the job posting. The EEOC argues that this reflects a broader pattern connected to the Times', quote, "call to action initiative," which seeks to address so-called underrepresentation of women and people of color in leadership roles and aims to increase diversity in management. The Times denied the allegations, with a spokesperson stating the company's hiring is, quote, "merit-based," and that, quote, "neither race nor gender played a role in this decision." The Times also called the lawsuit politically motivated and said it will be, quote, vigorously defended.

The Justice Department is suing Colorado over restrictive gun laws. Daily Wire homepage managing editor Jordan Schroeder has the details.

The suit against Colorado was filed Wednesday following a separate suit against the city of Denver on Tuesday. The state banned what they call high-capacity magazines in 2012 following the Aurora theater shooting. Denver, for its part, has had a ban on many semi-automatic guns since 1989. The Justice Department is now arguing that both of those laws violate the Second Amendment and that the laws were written in a politically charged manner. In the suit against Denver, the DOJ wrote that the term assault weapon is a rhetorically charged political term developed by anti-gun publicists. The DOJ also argued that Colorado's ban on any magazine above 15 rounds is not a ban on high-capacity magazines, given that 30-round magazines are the most common size and are standard issue with most AR-15-style firearms. Colorado's highest court upheld the bans in a separate suit a few years ago. Now it seems like the Supreme Court will have the final say.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the bureau has begun deploying artificial intelligence tools to disrupt potential acts of violence, including planned school shootings. Patel says the move is already saving lives. He told Sean Hannity on his podcast that AI tools have helped the FBI solve cases more quickly as well as prevent potential tragedies.

I'm using it in places like our criminal justice information system database so we can pop fingerprints immediately and get fugitives and arrest warrants out. I'm using in places like our National Threat Operations Center. I'll give you an example. Can you imagine how many tips the FBI gets a week? Thousands. If we had just humans look at it, we would never sift through them all. I put AI in there. We stopped a school massacre in North Carolina because we got a tip and we were able to triage it with artificial intelligence.

Wow.

We stopped a school shooting in New York because we got a tip from our private sector partners who are building our AI infrastructure.

In New York, disagreements over the state's budget have caused a very public split among top Democratic lawmakers. Governor Kathy Hochul announced this morning that lawmakers had struck a deal, but just hours later, she was contradicted by the top Democrat in New York's Assembly. Speaker Carl Heastie vented his frustration to reporters.

We signed off on nothing major. And this is what I'm telling y'all is wrong with this process. And I'm saying this to y'all very clearly. I'm never doing this again. Budgets are supposed to be about money, not policy.

The infighting comes as New York City Mayor Zoran Mondani has pushed Hochul to make up a $5.4 billion shortfall in his city's budget.

Democrats in California's assembly approved a bill that critics say could block public release of an audit into the state's high-speed rail. The San Francisco to LA line was originally projected to cost $33 billion and be completed by 2020. It has since ballooned to an estimated cost of $231 billion. And now skeptical officials say state Democrats want to hide how the project went so far off the rails. The bill would allow the inspector general to keep the results of his audit hidden if the report, quote, would pose a substantial and articulable risk to the project or to state operations if publicly disclosed.

And Caroline Levitt introduced her newborn daughter to the world over social media today. She wrote, quote, on May 1st, Viviana, aka Vivi, joined our family and our hearts instantly exploded with love. She concluded her post by thanking everyone who'd reached out with prayers during her pregnancy and said, quote, I truly felt them throughout the entire experience. God is good.

Those are your drive home updates this evening. To learn more about these stories, go to dailywire.com. And in case you missed it earlier today, we covered some major stories, including a Daily Wire investigation revealing more Medicaid fraud in Ohio, the FBI raiding the offices of a leading Democrat in the Virginia Senate, and LIV Golf being on life support as Saudi funding dries up. Thanks for tuning in. We'll be back tomorrow morning with another full edition of Morning Wire.