The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.5 "BLOOD IN THE STREETS!" Fallout from 2023's Biggest Elections, Margot Robbie, & Trump Arrest

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's today again, so let's just jump into it. Starting with, let's talk about Dr. Brian Hyatt of Arkansas. Right, because he's currently facing seven separate lawsuits for false imprisonment, as well as some allegations of good old-fashioned fraud. Starting with the lawsuits, Insider reports that seven patients are suing Hyatt after he and his staff allegedly kept them locked in Northwest Medical Center's behavioral health facility four days against their will, with no legal reason for doing so. Reportedly, he and his team would sedate, coerce, and threaten patients into staying longer,

Starting point is 00:00:25 even limiting communications with relatives or attorneys. And in some cases, staff threatened to hold the patients for 45 days if they continued trying to leave. And three of the patients were reportedly only allowed to leave when they were escorted out by police. Now Arkansas law says that if a patient presents a danger to themselves or others, they can be involuntarily kept in a medical facility

Starting point is 00:00:42 for 72 hours, but they must be evaluated by a physician within the first 24. And the facility needs to get a court order to keep the patient for any longer. With one of the attorneys for the patient saying, in none of these cases, even when an involuntarily hold was strategically applied to keep people held, were they ever evaluated by a doctor to determine whether they were a danger to themselves or others. It was just done solely for the purpose of keeping them there and to stop the efforts to get them out. But the question is, why? Like, why would Hyatt hold these people hostage like a lot of evil things? Money during their extended stays high would over bill the insurance companies of these patients

Starting point is 00:01:14 This also wasn't his first rodeo Hyatt's also under investigation for Medicare and Medicaid fraud and specifically the state is looking into why he build insurance at the highest possible rate Without ever actually seeing or examining the patients. Now, he has faced some consequences so far. Northwest terminated his contract and he has resigned from the state's medical board. But as of right now, he's not been officially criminally charged.

Starting point is 00:01:33 So we're obviously gonna keep our eyes on this and I'll keep you up to date. So make sure you're subscribed so you can stay in the loop. And then Peter Griffin pleaded guilty to running sex parlors. Which one of you is the lucky bride? Not that Peter Griffin, you fucking weirdo. I'm talking about a real person by the name of Peter Griffin. Specifically, the 78-year-old retiree who

Starting point is 00:01:50 worked in San Diego as a cop from 1975 to 2002, including working in a vice unit investigating prostitution. And now, prosecutors say that between 2013 and 2022, Griffin and three others owned and operated massage spas where women were actually employed to perform sexual acts. But now, after nearly a decade, they were finally caught, with Griffin pleading guilty to operating the parlors as well as money laundering and wire fraud conspiracy. And the U.S. Attorney's Office saying, according to his plea agreement, throughout the course of the scheme, Griffin used the experience and skills he acquired through his work as a vice detective and, in at least one instance, his badge to help the business of a law enforcement thwart regulatory inspections,

Starting point is 00:02:23 investigations, and any official action against the businesses conceal evidence and maintain a facade of legitimacy and the doj saying he faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and then the barbie movie trailer dropped yesterday and it may have been one of the hardest cultural resets i've ever witnessed the fucking former president of the united states had to turn himself in and plead not guilty to 34 charges and motherfuckers on the internet were like, I don't care. We need to talk in great detail about Margot Robbie's feet. Only question was, how many of those accounts were Tarantino's burners? But all that said, while that movie is shaping up for kind of massive success of social media as at least any indication,

Starting point is 00:02:57 the recent onslaught of reboots, spinoffs, remakes, that's a much different story. Because there's been a lot of discourse about this lately, especially after Disney announced it would be doing a live-action remake of Moana, with Dwayne the Rod Johnson announcing it in a video yesterday, suggesting he would reprise his role, saying it's all in early stages. In a response, people kind of seem to just be fed up with the remakes. Right, they've done live-action Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King. We're getting a live-action of The Little Mermaid.

Starting point is 00:03:21 But specifically in this case, people seem to be annoyed because it's not even been ten years. The movie came out in 2016. With some arguing this isn't even a way to update something that's outdated or introduce it to a new generation. It's just making the same film they already made again for money. We saw this frustration double the same day because it was announced that Warner Bros. is actually working on potentially rebooting the Harry Potter books into a TV series. Right, not some kind of spin-off, but just rather another book adaptation where each book would be a season of television. With people here seemingly mad for several reasons. Right, not some kind of spin-off, but just rather another book adaptation where each book would be a season of television.

Starting point is 00:03:45 With people here seemingly mad for several reasons. Right, some saying, How absurd, how unasked for, how typical of this, we must capitalize on existing IP whether the audience wants it or not moment. And we're trapped in a creative existential death cycle. With others saying they won't support the show because of J.K. Rowling. But even there you have plenty of people saying the controversies around J.K. Rowling aside, there's just no way your average Harry Potter obsessed person will care about this without the original cast. I'm saying that the magic of those movies just can't be replicated. And all of this happening as we learned this morning that

Starting point is 00:04:09 there is potentially a Shrek 5 in the works. Though there, I would say, off the heels of the Puss in Boots movie, which is, it's so, it's better than it has any right to be. Fun story, fun times, one of the best villains in a movie. So I will say there, I'm a little more open. Especially because, yes, it is still a sequel, it's a continuation, but it's not just another reboot. And then in political news, we've got massive news out of Wisconsin. I mean, this is a huge political shakeup.

Starting point is 00:04:34 Because yesterday, a Supreme Court seat was up for grabs and it was scored by liberal Janet Protusewitz. Her victory will likely mean that for the first time in 15 years, the state's highest court will swing to the left. Right, so the race was between Protusewitz and her opponent, Dan Kelly, and it was intense. But becoming the most expensive state Supreme Court race in US history. And when you consider what was on the line, that makes sense. Wisconsin has been a historical swing state, and that court is

Starting point is 00:04:55 no different. But the legislature, not so flexible, with Republicans steadily winning majorities for years now, and Democrats accusing them of gerrymandering to stay in power. With that, along with the abortion ban at the center of this race, and both sides seeing this victory as a chance to cement the ban or overturn it. And what's particularly interesting is that we didn't have to guess where Protasewicz would rule like we did with U.S. Supreme Court justices. Where they generally at least pretend to be impartial when trying to get the spot, but in Wisconsin's case, the candidates were open about many of their positions.

Starting point is 00:05:20 And so for many issues such as abortion, we know that Protasewicz is firmly and openly on the side of a woman's right to choose. And this victory has been hailed by Democratic strategists as a possible shift in state politics, although we know how quickly public sentiment can change by the time the 2024 elections roll around. But either way, Protasewicz spoke to her supporters after her victory and made jabs at Kelly, who tried to overturn the 2020 election results in the state by saying, too many have tried to overturn the will of the people. Today's results show that Wisconsinites believe in democracy and the democratic process. While Kelly, for his part, I think the term was a salty, salty bitch about his loss.

Starting point is 00:05:50 Describing his opponent's campaign as the mostly deeply deceitful, dishonorable, despicable campaign I've ever seen run for the courts and adding, The people of Wisconsin have chosen the rule of Janet. Now, I respect that decision because it is theirs to make. I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent, but I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede. But all in all, a massive win for the left here in what's been called the most important election of 2023. And then Chicago's got a brand new mayor, and depending on your politics, he is either the resurrection or the destruction of this city. For the past four years, Chicagoans have had Lori Lightfoot as their mayor, and when the first round of voting wrapped up back in February, they clearly had had enough of her.

Starting point is 00:06:32 I mean, pretty damn rough to be the incumbent and then there be a runoff election, but you didn't even qualify. They're falling into third place, making her the city's first mayor to lose re-election in four decades. And the reason many believe she lost is that the election was largely seen as a referendum on crime. Right, murders in 2021 spiked to the highest levels on record at 25 years, and there were almost 800 homicides and over 3,500 shooting incidents.

Starting point is 00:06:53 But with Lightfoot out of the running, Chicago was faced a choice in the runoff between two radically different philosophies towards solving crime. Right, you had the front runner, Paul Vallis, a former school administrator and pro-police moderate Democrat. Then on his heels, you had Brandon Johnson,

Starting point is 00:07:04 an activist, teacher's union member, and Cook County commissioner, who's a progressive Democrat, who has endorsements from people like Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren. And we saw him swiftly rising the ranks, polling in fifth place, and then leaping ahead into second. And that was in no small part because he enjoyed the backing of several city unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union and the Service Employees International Union. Meanwhile, you had Vallis, endorsed by the likes of the city's police and firefighter unions, and unsurprisingly, his solution to crime was

Starting point is 00:07:27 simple, increased funding for law enforcement. He wants to hire hundreds more police officers and generally take a tough-on-crime approach to the issue. And he absolutely hammered Johnson with attack ads, highlighting his past comments in support of defund the police, pouring twice as much money as his rival into TV. Though, to be fair to Johnson, he has since backed off of the defund-the-police mindset, saying that he wouldn't cut the police budget by a penny. Rather, saying he would promote 200 more detectives and redirect funds towards social workers who can respond to 911 calls or mental health crises. And at the center of his platform is this idea that you need to attack the deep roots of crime and poverty in crumbling communities. Saying he wants to invest in education, affordable housing, public transportation, mental health treatments, and jobs seeking to boost youth employment in particular.

Starting point is 00:08:04 And proposing to pay for all this by raising $800 million in taxes on wealthy individuals, businesses, and real estate. But Ballas, on the other hand, had criticized the plan, claiming that Chicagoans are already drowning in property taxes, which he promised to cap, also arguing that Johnson just doesn't have the necessary experience to run a city, and their debate over this got pretty heated. The fact that he's being dismissive of a black man who taught for four years in Chicago public schools is, you gotta stop doing that, Paul. You just do. Criticizing his leadership ability and his lack of management competency, that's

Starting point is 00:08:33 what I'm questioning. Not his four years as a teacher when he retires- Then don't bring it up. He'll actually retire with a teacher pension despite the fact that he's only been a teacher for four years. Then we're gonna retire you in three days. So the heart of Johnson's critique is the accusation that his rival is just a Republican in disguise, pointing out how he's been backed by donors who also supported GOP candidates

Starting point is 00:08:51 and was endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce. Also harping on the police union support, which bit Vallas in the ass when the union's president warned that 1,000 cops would resign and there would be blood in the streets if Johnson won the election. And there was even more weight to the critique when a 2009 interview surfaced in which Ballas said, You think of yourself as a Republican. I'm more of a Republican than Democrat now. So with all of that, right, the stage set, hundreds of thousands of voters went to the polls

Starting point is 00:09:12 to decide what kind of Chicago they wanted to see. And the results came in last night, with Johnson narrowly taking the lead by just one point in securing himself the office and thanking his city to thunderous applause. And so today we celebrate the revival and the resurrection of the city of Chicago. It is time for Chicago to come alive. Come alive, Chicago. And so now we have to wait to see whether this race, which was seen as a battle between the

Starting point is 00:09:40 two opposing wings of the Democratic Party, signals a shift in local and state politics across the country. With this, while I'd love to know everyone's thoughts, specifically if you live in or around Chicago, what are your thoughts on the results that we're seeing now? And then I want to tell you more about today's sponsor, Seed, and their clinically and scientifically backed DS01 daily symbiotic. As you know, I've been taking Seed's DS01 for about a year now, and my commitment to better gut health remains strong. And with Seed, it's easy because their probiotic strain research and clinical trial successes are next level. Thanks to their Viacap delivery technology,

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Starting point is 00:10:23 surrounding probiotics these days. I mean, probiotics are a science. It's important they are developed, manufactured, and vetted with scientific rigor and precision. And from experience, I can say Seeds DS01 Daily Symbiotic is the real deal. So give it a try. In your first month, you'll receive this 30-day supply, a refillable glass jar, and travel vibe. And after that, they send sustainably packaged monthly refills. And you can get 25% off your first month's supply of Seeds DS01 plus free shipping. Just go to seed.com slash defranco and use code defranco at checkout. And then in international news, let's talk about foreign workers in the UK. So a survey found that only 29% of Brits have the priority over jobs should go to locals last year compared to 65% back in 2009.

Starting point is 00:10:57 Except those workers aren't always treated so well once they get there. Human rights groups have consistently warned that six-month seasonal visas open up workers to exploitation, not least because regulations aren't adequately enforced. There's nearly 35,000 migrant workers coming to the UK on those visas last year. And you've got a report from Vice talking to more than 20 such people working at nine farms across their country saying their already meager wages have been stolen by employers. With one woman who worked six hours a day, six days a week, saying she received under 2,000 pounds for two months of work, a thousand less than she said that she was owed.

Starting point is 00:11:25 And several more workers from EU plans, one of the UK's largest producers of strawberry and raspberry plants, said that the hours on their payslips were inaccurate, and saying that when they tried to check how their hours were being reported by the field supervisor, they were just yelled at. With others also claiming they had to buy their own gloves and boots, as well as electric heaters to warm their caravans during winter, despite rules saying that workers shouldn't have to purchase the equipment needed to do their jobs.

Starting point is 00:11:44 Not to mention the legal deduction of rent and electricity from their pay. And since Brexit, the UK's economy has become more and more dependent on migrant laborers to fill vacancies in sectors including healthcare, warehousing, and construction. Senate migration to the UK rose to a record high of 500,000 last year, with the government steadily increasing the number of visas issued since 2019, looking to dish out as many as 55,000 this year. Which is also why the Conservative government there has faced criticism from many in its own base that it's betrayed the promise made to them in the Brexit referendum, a vote made in large part to stem immigration. And then, Italian culture is under threat from the English language. At least, that

Starting point is 00:12:16 is according to Italy's Prime Minister, Giorgia Maloney. We've talked about her before, she's the right-wing politician whose brother of Italy party, which is iconography and many members with distant roots in the fascist party, won the election last year. Well, she has now proposed a law that would ban the use of foreign words in official communications, penalizing those who use such words with a $100,000 fine. And specifically, targeting English, which the proposal claims has dramatically increased in usage over the past 20 years, saying that among the 800,000 or so words in the typical Italian dictionary, there are some 9,000 Anglicisms. And adding, this is demeaning to the Italian language,

Starting point is 00:12:47 especially because the UK is no longer in the European Union. So to combat this, the bill requires all officeholders in public administration to have, quote, written and oral knowledge and mastery of the Italian language, as well as prohibiting the use of English in official documents, even for things like acronyms and names of job roles in companies operating there. So that means that if you want to do business in Italy, you'll have to make Italian language additions of all internal regulations and employment contracts.

Starting point is 00:13:09 All of this leading to some comparing it to Mussolini's commission for the Italianness of language. With this proposal coming not long after a similar bill that would ban lab-grown meat and other synthetic foods, and that following a series of decrees banning the use of flour made from insects like crickets in pizza or pasta, and all of this supposedly meant to protect Italian food heritage, namely the prized Mediterranean diet. And then, finally, today, let's talk about specifics regarding everything that happened with Trump. First, a reformed president to be criminally charged, officially getting slapped with 34 felony counts. Honestly, a lot of the details, it's this nitty gritty legal junk, it can become very boring. But this is an incredibly historic case, so I'm going to try and break it down and make it consumable. So first up,

Starting point is 00:13:43 there are two key documents that were made public yesterday, the 16-page indictment against Trump and a 13-page statement of facts that lays out the case in detail. There's one thing that's very important to understand, is that the charge of falsifying business records on its own is usually a misdemeanor under New York law, with it only being able to be bumped up to a felony when it's done with intent to commit or conceal another crime. And of both the charging documents and public statements, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg outlined three different categories of crimes that he alleges that Trump was trying to hide with his actions. State election laws, federal campaign contribution laws, and making

Starting point is 00:14:11 additional false statements, including to tax authorities. With prosecutors making it clear in their statement of facts that it's that first area, state election laws, where the real meat and potatoes are. Writing that Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, and this is a key thing, this is the crux of their case, the prosecutors argued that between 2015 and 2017, then-candidate Trump orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication to help his chances of winning the election. That being a practice we talked about before, catch and kill. The prosecutor is continuing that in order to

Starting point is 00:14:47 execute the unlawful scheme, the participants violated election laws and made and caused false entries in the business records of various entities in New York. And adding that Trump and others involved also took steps that mischaracterized for tax purposes the true nature of the payments made in furtherance of the scheme. So that's the third crime bucket, falsifying business records in part to deceive state tax authorities. Okay, so that covers two of the secondary crimes that raise us to a felony level matter, but the federal campaign contributions one requires more context. And to get that, we have to dive a little bit deeper into the details of the case itself, where the statement of facts outlines three catch and kill schemes Trump allegedly engaged in

Starting point is 00:15:18 alongside his then lawyer, Michael Cohen, who's identified in the documents as lawyer A and David Pector, the former CEO of American Media Inc. One of those schemes, of course, is the payment at the center of this whole scandal. The $130,000 in hush money Cohen gave porn star Stormy Daniels so she wouldn't sell the story of her alleged affair with Trump mere weeks before the 2016 election. And the other two actually happened before that. The first took place in the fall of 2015, shortly after Trump announced his candidacy when AMI paid a former Trump Tower doorman $30,000, with him reportedly trying to sell his story about a child Trump had out of wedlock,

Starting point is 00:15:45 with AMI later concluding that the story wasn't true, but still deciding to keep the catch-and-kill agreement until after the election. And then the final alleged example happened in June of 2016, when AMI paid $150,000 to former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, again to secure this woman's silence about an alleged affair she had with Trump. And according to the Statement of Facts, Cohen was going to reimburse AMI, but that never took place on the advice of AMI's counsel. That's actually very notable here

Starting point is 00:16:07 because all 34 of the charges against Trump stem specifically from the payment Cohen made to Daniels and how Trump reimbursed him. Also, another key thing to note is that Trump was in charge with 34 different crimes, rather he was charged with 34 different counts. And this is kind of where things get even more technical, so I'm gonna kind of give the very broad strokes

Starting point is 00:16:22 and keep it as short as I can. Right, so according to the statement of facts, after the election, Trump arranges to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000. Cohen and the CFO of the Trump Organization agree that he'll be paid $420,000 in reimbursements via 12 monthly payments of $35,000, and the CFO doubling the $130,000 so Cohen could characterize the payment as income on his tax returns instead of a reimbursement. With that being a specific example of that third category of crimes, agg says Trump was trying to cover up, additional false statements to tax authorities. And over the course of the year, Cohen has sent 11 different payments, the first two coming from a trust that held the Trump Organization's assets after he became president, and the last nine being paid out

Starting point is 00:16:54 from Trump's personal bank account. But, and this is the key thing here, all of the payments were falsely recorded as a monthly retainer for Cohen. Reportedly, that retainer agreement never actually existed, but that's how the payments were recorded on the checks to Cohen, the invoices he submitted to the Trump organization, and then the Trump organization's ledgers. And that's massively important because it's the reason why Trump's facing 34 counts. He's not just being charged with the 11 checks. He's being charged for every single time the payments were falsely recorded in the checks, invoices, and ledgers. This is also where the second category of crime Bragg alleges Trump was trying to cover up comes in. If the catch-and-kill payments were meant to silence negative stories during the election, as prosecutors claim, then they're considered political spending.

Starting point is 00:17:29 And so as an agent of a candidate or campaign, Cohen would be bound by federal laws for contribution reporting and limits. Right, and we've seen Cohen actually plead guilty in serving time for violating campaign contribution laws with a payment to both Daniels and McDougal. And that's something that the statement of fact specifically mentions, with it also noting that AMI additionally admitted to federal prosecutors that it had made those hush money payments before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influenced that election. And those last two points are very, very notable because the prosecutors are clearly trying to show that these crimes were committed and Trump acted to cover them up. But as Axios explains, and this is another key thing, in order to convict, Bragg will need to prove Trump tried to conceal crimes that he has not been charged with. And as a result, many legal experts have said that this case is risky, because it could be very hard to prove that the hush money payments were made with the intent

Starting point is 00:18:11 of influencing the election. That's the crux of the argument that Trump violated election laws. And what's more, state election laws usually aren't applied to federal campaigns. And on the flip side, Bragg doesn't have the authority to prosecute Trump for federal campaign violations. And it's unclear if he can invoke a crime he doesn't have jurisdiction over, or if a judge would even go for that argument. As some have said, the third crime Bragg says Trump tried to cover up, falsifying records to commit a state tax crime, that may actually bolster this case because it's much simpler and clear-cut.

Starting point is 00:18:35 Notably, each count against Trump carries a sentence of up to four years in prison. But, importantly, the charges don't have a mandatory sentence, so even if he was convicted on all counts, he might not necessarily get time. In fact, legal experts say that because he does not have a criminal record, it's actually unlikely that he'll be sent to prison at all, even if he was convicted. But all that said, as far as when we're going to see more movement here, it's not quite clear. Prosecutors have asked the judge to start the trial in January, but you have Trump's team saying that's just too soon instead, suggesting next spring. And as far as Trump, for his part, he's responded to all this as you'd expect.

Starting point is 00:19:02 Complain, complain, lash out, complain, and fundraise. With his campaign moving very quickly yesterday to start fundraising off of all of this, including by launching a new t-shirt with a fake mugshot of Trump. With Trump also giving a speech in Mar-a-Lago last night in front of adoring fans. With him basically just kind of rambling on and on about the injustice of the legal system and how could this all possibly happen to him, the best and most innocent man on earth. Complaining that the judge overseeing the case was a corrupt Trump hater, even going after his family as well. Also going on a rant about the many, many other investigations he's currently facing, particularly declassified documents and Georgia probes. Which on that note, right, this is just the beginning. Like his final takeaway, Trump is facing other legal battles that

Starting point is 00:19:37 are much more serious and potentially much more damning. So I'm not going to hold my breath until Donald Trump is held accountable, but however these things play out, it is important to note this is probably just the beginning. And that's where today's show ends. Thank you for being a part of another daily dive into the news, but as always, my name's Philip DeFranco, you've just been filled in, I love yo faces, and I'll see you tomorrow.

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.5 "BLOOD IN THE STREETS!" Fallout from 2023's Biggest Elections, Margot Robbie, & Trump Arrest

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The Philip DeFranco Show - PDS 4.5 "BLOOD IN THE STREETS!" Fallout from 2023's Biggest Elections, Margot Robbie, & Trump Arrest

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