Morning Wire - Presidential Immunity & Weinstein Conviction Overturned | 4.26.24

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

The Supreme Court hears arguments on presidential immunity, Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction is overturned on appeal and Starbucks takes labor union case to high court. Get the facts first with Morning Wire. Fum: "Get 10% off with promo code Wire at http://www.TryFum.com/Wire" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Supreme Court hears oral arguments on Donald Trump's claims of presidential immunity. Without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, there can be no presidency as we know it. How will the court rule? And what will it mean for Trump, his prosecutions, and even future presidents? I'm Daily Wire, editor-in-chief John Bickley, with guest co-host, Sage Steel, host of the Sage Steel show. It's Friday, April 26th, and this is Morning Wire. Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction has been overturned. What evidence led to the ruling and what's next for the disgraced Hollywood producer? I don't care who the defendant is.

If it's a former president of the United States or the most storied Hollywood producer of our generation, the law applies to everyone. And are online service providers blocking access to conservative groups? A new congressional investigation says they are. This is a strategy. And it's a strategy they're deliberately deploying to go after conservatives and silence them. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. And stay tuned.

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Kick your bad habits today by going to tryfume.com slash wire and you'll get 10% off with promo code wire. That's try fum.com slash wire. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in one of the most consequential cases against former President Donald Trump. The case hinges on whether Trump has presidential immunity protecting him from key charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith. Here to discuss what we heard yesterday as Daily Wire contributor David Marcus. Hey, Dave. So that really went on for a while and was pretty exhaustive. The experts are all busy reading the tea leaves now. But first, what exactly was at issue here before the court?

Morning, John. So this is in connection with the federal case alleging Trump tried to overthrow the 2020 election through his actions leading up to January 6th. Trump's attorney, D. John Sauer, argued that the former president's activities, including reaching out to state officials, agreeing to slates of alternate electors and his role on January 6th, official acts of the president and come under immunity protection. Sauer also insisted that the founders never intended criminal prosecution for presidents or former presidents on the basis of official actions and that instead they provided the remedy of impeachment. Here's some of his remarks. Could President George W. Bush have been sent to prison for obstructing an official proceeding

or allegedly lying to Congress to induce war in Iraq? Could President Obama be charged with murder? for killing U.S. citizens abroad by drone strike? Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies? The answer to all these questions is no. All right. So that's the Trump side. What do we hear from the state? I'm guessing they did not agree that immunity was absolute or that impeachment needed to come first. Yeah, it's exactly right. Their argument was presented by Michael Dreuben, who had Jack Smith sitting at the table with him, notably Trump was absent from his side owing to his trial in New York.

Dreamen essentially said that nobody is above the law and that while there are a small, limited group of core powers that a president has that cannot be reviewed or subject to prosecution, that the election interference allegations at play here are not in that basket of total powers. And how did the justices respond to these arguments? Did we see this breakdown again on ideological grounds. To some degree, the concern raised by the liberal justices was that a blanket immunity would invite future presidents to engage in criminal abuses of power. And the contrary concern raised by the conservative justices was that the threat of criminal prosecution could interfere with the president's ability to make difficult decisions that only a president can make.

These are legitimate competing interests. And several times, I thought quite notably, just as Gorsuch suggested that the gap between the arguments was narrowing, considerate. meaning that this or a lower court might be able to parse out what is and is not subject to immunity in this case against Trump. Look, it's a case that goes very deep into American history. We heard quotes from Benjamin Franklin and George Washington about protecting the independence of the presidency. And one thing all sides seem to agree on was that it had not been established what the limits of presidential immunity actually are. Yeah. Finally, back to those tea leaves. Where do legal experts expect the court to land here? And what impact could it have on the timeline of the trial if it goes forward? Judging from what the justices were focused on in questions, many legal experts are expecting the court now to split the baby, as it were, on immunity, holding that some actions are covered and some are not. Here's Loyola Law Professor Jessica Levinson in that regard. I think the Supreme Court is going to give some sort of test for which acts are protected and which acts are not protected.

And that's going to take them a while. And they will probably then send this case back down to the trial court judge, Judge Chutkin. She will have to apply that new test. And if one of the parties doesn't like how she applies it, that could then be appealed back up to the D.C. circuit, all of which is to say, even when the Supreme Court rules, I don't think that's the end of this case. The key here is whether they just do that at the Supreme Court level or if they send it down to a lower court, doing the latter would all but guarantee

that this trial would not take place before the November elections, something that Special Counsel Smith has stressed as vital. It was Smith, you recall, who asked the court to move quickly on this question to begin with. For Trump and his team,

that delay would be viewed as a major victory. Something is certain. However this is decided, it will have major implications, not just for Trump, but far into the future, as it will define in a new way just how powerful the president of the United States is or is not. Yeah, truly historic case here before the court and Trump's fate may very well hang on its ruling. Dave, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. The 2020 rape and sexual assault convictions against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein have been overturned. was sentenced to 23 years in prison and remains in prison in California for additional convictions in that state. Here to discuss the latest development is Daily Wire Senior Editor Ash Short.

Hey Ash. So what exactly did the New York Appeals Court say when overturning these convictions? So the court ruled that Weinstein was convicted in part based on testimony regarding, and I'm quoting here, uncharged alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes because that testimony. testimony served no material non-propensity purpose. This means basically that Weinstein was convicted based on his character and not the actual facts of the case presented at trial. That's what the appeals court wrote in its ruling, adding that the, quote, remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial. But it's unclear whether prosecutors will move for a new trial or drop the case since

Weinstein is still serving a 16-year sentence in California after he was convicted of raping a woman in 2013. What did the women claim he did to them? Well, one of the accusers in this case, Jessica Mann, claimed that Weinstein forced her to allow him to perform oral sex on her and later raped her and forced her to be in a relationship with him. Weinstein's defense pointed to numerous, affectionate and loving emails that Mann had sent to Weinstein. But Mann claimed those were all lies, she told her boyfriend, friends, family, and even her psychic and life coach over the years. And one of her friends, forced to testify due to a subpoena from Weinstein's attorneys, also admitted on the stand that man never seemed distressed after Weinstein's alleged attack,

and even described the film producer as her spiritual soulmate. The other New York accuser, Miriam Haley, claimed Weinstein forced her to have sex with him, but that she maintained a friendly relationship afterward out of fear that he could harm her career. This relationship included consensual sexual relations, as well as forced sex, she claimed, and emails telling Weinstein that she loved him.

So contemporary emails and interrelated, actions did not back up their claims. Right. Instead, defense brought in other women to also make accusations against Weinstein for crimes he was never charged with. Typically, such witnesses aren't allowed to testify, but the court made an exception in Weinstein's case, which is part of the reason the appeals court overturned his conviction. Will this ruling have any impact on Weinstein's case in California? Not directly, but Weinstein is also appealing his conviction in California, which is based on a woman's claim that Weinstein, whom she barely knew, barged into her hotel room and raped her. The same basis used to overturn Weinstein's conviction in New York could very well factor into his appeal in California.

Yet it's unknown how a California appeals court rule. Something to watch for in the future. Ash, thanks for reporting. You're welcome. A new congressional investigation headed up by Texas Senator Ted Cruz digs into how online service providers are restricting access to conservative groups. Daily Wire Investigations editor Brent Scher interviewed Cruz on his probe, which the Republican Senator says uncovered, quote, a very deliberate effort to cut off essential services to conservative groups. Hey, Brent. So specifically, which services is Cruz talking about?

Hi, John. Yeah, Cruz put out a report this week that outlines how online service providers use broad policies to silence conservatives. What he's talking about are companies like Eventbrite and Slack that have made their services unavailable to, you know, certain conservatives. He says these actions get less attention than censorship by large platforms such as Facebook, but that it's every bit as problematic. This is the next generation in the left's effort to engage in censorship and silencing. And it's a very deliberate effort to cut off essential services that conservative organizations need to operate. When Twitter blocked the Babylon B, that was visible to everyone. When Facebook and Twitter suppressed the,

the Hunter Laptop story. That was visible to everyone. When YouTube took down a panel discussion with Ron DeSantis talking about COVID and face masks, that was visible to everyone. What these online service providers are doing is far less visible, but every bit is problematic. So he digs into Event Bright, which is a free online event management tool. It's not letting conservative organizations use the service? Yeah, well, at least some conservatives. Cruz found that Eventbrite took down event pages for at least. least eight events that included either Daily Wire host Matt Walsh or his documentary What Is a Woman. The event hosts, mostly college Republican organizations, were told broadly that any event centered

around What Is a Woman violated Eventbrite's hateful events policy. Eventbrite said that its decision to cancel the What Is a Woman event was based in a large part on their objection to the film itself, but then they couldn't identify anything with the film that violated its terms of service. And here's the incredible thing, Brent. They admitted no one involved in the decision actually watched the movie What Is a Woman? And that's the sort of just brazen abuse of their power

and it's done in an explicitly ideological leftist way to silence conservative voices while not silencing those voices on the left. And just to be clear here, Cruz got this information as part of an investigation by the Senate Commerce Committee. He's the ranking member and he compelled the service providers to give the exact reasons for their decisions that never would have been

made public otherwise. Another person who was deemed unacceptable by Event Bright was Riley Gaines, the outspoken athlete on protecting women's sports. Eventbrite told the committee that they determined the event violated the hateful events policy because it disparaged people based on their perceived gender. Event Bright did not consider the event page in reaching this conclusion, so they didn't even look at the event page. Instead, they made the determination there were three of Riley Gaines's social media posts. She had won in March of 2023 where she said, Leah Thomas is not a brave, courageous woman who earned a national title. He is an arrogant cheat who stole a national title from a hardworking, deserving woman. And by the way, Riley Gaines is the one who is sweating against Leah Thomas. If anyone has a right to speak out against it,

Riley Games would be first in line. Now, the other group Cruz pinpoints is Slack, which is used by companies across the world for internal communication. who exactly is Slack excluding? Slack revoked services to Libs of TikTok, the popular social media account that highlights clips of liberals saying and doing crazy things. Its team communicated on Slack, and one day, without warning, it was just kicked off. Cruz found that Libs of TikTok was kicked off

precisely because it was creating content for conservatives. When Slack was asked why they suspended Libs of TikTok, they said, quote, What makes Libs of TikTok problematic is that lives of TikTok has a specific audience. And they are taking this information and posting it to that specific audience. And understand what they're saying then. They're saying the primary concern is that lives of TikTok's posts are read by a conservative audience. So they're not even claiming to be

upset with lives of TikTok's post, most of which are retweets of post from leftists. What I found most shocking in Cruz's report was how uneven enforcement is. Eventbrite is actively hosting event pages for groups that celebrate the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Slack has an active account for Antifa and a group called Crime Think, which produces how-to guides on committing crimes. So Cruz says it's all part of a deliberate effort to kneecap conservative voices. Well, alarming findings in that report, Brent. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, anytime. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more news you need to know.