UNBIASED - December 17, 2024: TikTok Files EMERGENCY Request with Supreme Court, Judge REJECTS Trump's Claim for Immunity, Trump SUES Des Moines Polling Firm, Additional Drone THEORIES, and More.
Episode Date: December 17, 2024Welcome back to UNBIASED. In today's episode: TikTok Asks Supreme Court for Emergency Relief (0:37) Judge Merchan Rejects Trump's Presidential Immunity Argument (3:53) Trump Sues Des Moines Polling... Firm Over Pre-Election Poll Favoring Harris (7:03) What We've Learned About the Wisconsin School Shooter (8:56) More Theories About the Mysterious Drones (11:30) Quick Hitters: TikTok CEO Meets with Trump, Disney to Pay $233M in Backpay, Democrats Try to Remove Electoral College, Tech Executive Guilty of Murdering Fellow Tech Executive, FTC New Rule to Ban Surprise Fees, AccuWeather Releases 'White Christmas' Forecast, Judge Denies NYC Mayor's Request to Dismiss Bribery Charge (15:42) Listen/Watch this episode AD-FREE on Patreon. Watch this episode on YouTube. Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok. All sources for this episode can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Welcome back to unbiased your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis
Welcome back to unbiased today is Tuesday, December 17th. And this is your daily news rundown after today
We only have two more episodes left in season two of unbiased
So let's make the most of it
If you haven't yet listened to yesterday's episode and you're not caught up to speed season three of unbiased will start Monday, January 6th. So just make a mental note that there will be no episodes between
this Friday and when season three starts back up in January. And now, without
further ado, let's get into today's stories. Less than a week after a federal
appeals court rejected TikTok and ByteDance's request to pause the enforcement
of the TikTok ban. They are now asking the Supreme Court to get involved. Something that
we all knew was going to happen, but let's talk about it.
As a quick note, throughout this story you will hear me refer to TikTok as the plaintiff,
but just know that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, are suing the federal government. I'm just going to refer to both entities as TikTok
for the sake of ease.
Now, here's the thing.
There are two things that can happen at the Supreme Court
and TikTok will shoot for both.
The first TikTok did yesterday,
which is ask the Supreme Court
to put the appellate court's ruling on hold temporarily
while it files its petition for review
with the Supreme Court.
The second thing is petition the Supreme Court for review.
In other words, ask the Supreme Court to take up the case
and issue its own decision on the merits.
The first comes first, the second comes second.
So TikTok has not yet filed its petition for review.
It has only filed that emergency request
to block the lower
court's ruling. In asking the justices to block the lower court's ruling, TikTok has to prove to
the court three things. One, that TikTok is likely to prevail on the merits of the case when and if
the Supreme Court hears arguments. Two, that if the lower court's ruling is not blocked, TikTok will suffer irreparable injury,
and three, that the public interest supports
blocking the lower court's ruling.
If the Supreme Court agrees that TikTok is right
on all three counts,
they have to temporarily block the lower court's ruling,
which in effect puts it on pause
until the Supreme Court decides whether or not
they are going to take the case. And TikTok has asked the justices to decide whether they're going
to pause the lower court's ruling by January 6th. Remember the ban goes into
effect January 19th. So now that TikTok has asked the Supreme Court to
temporarily pause the appellate court's ruling, the Supreme Court can either A
deny TikTok's request and not take any further action until TikTok actually files that petition for review.
B, deny TikTok's request but agree to hear the case and, you know, get it on the calendar for arguments sometime in the next few weeks.
C, grant TikTok's request, pause the lower court's ruling, agree to hear the case and get it scheduled for arguments sometime within the next few weeks to the next few months,
or D, grant TikTok's request, wait for TikTok
to file a timely petition for review,
and then agree to hear the case and set up for arguments.
So there are a few different avenues that can happen here.
If the justices deny TikTok's request for an injunction
and refuse to hear the case, it's done.
The appellate court's ruling stands
the TikTok ban will take effect January 19th. If the justices ultimately agree to hear the case, it's done. The appellate court's ruling stands the TikTok ban will take effect January 19th.
If the justices ultimately agree to hear the case
and set up for arguments, we'll likely see a slight delay
as it pertains to the effective date of the ban
just because there may not be enough time
between now and January 19th,
especially given the holidays for the parties
to submit their briefs, justices to hear arguments
and then subsequently write up a decision and release it. So I will of course keep you updated as we learn more about what the Supreme Court
plans to do with this, but that is what we have as of now. Now let's talk about Trump's claim for
presidential immunity. Judge Mershon, the judge overseeing Trump's falsification of Business
Records case, will not throw out Trump's conviction due to
presidential immunity. So as we know, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that presidents enjoy some immunity from
criminal prosecution.
Specifically, they enjoy
absolute immunity from prosecution stemming from their core
constitutional powers. They enjoy presumptive immunity from prosecutions
stemming from official acts,
and they have no immunity for unofficial acts.
But the Supreme Court in issuing that decision,
they took it one step further.
And they also said that if a president is put on trial
for acts which he has no immunity for,
the jury cannot consider evidence
related to a president's official acts. The court said allowing evidence of
official acts would quote, permit a prosecutor to do indirectly what he
cannot do directly, invite the jury to examine acts for which a president is
immune from prosecution to nonetheless prove his liability on any charge." End quote. So keep in mind the
basis of Trump's conviction here that Trump, while in office, wrote checks to
his former attorney Michael Cohen to reimburse him for a payment he made to
Stormy Daniels so she wouldn't come forward with a story about an affair she
had with Trump years earlier. Those checks were then recorded on the books
as a legal retainer.
That is where the falsification of business records comes in.
It wasn't the payments that were illegal,
it was how they were recorded.
So once the Supreme Court's ruling came out,
Trump's attorneys tried to get his conviction tossed
based on the fact that during trial,
prosecutors relied on, as evidence,
official acts Trump took as president. And this, they said, is not allowed per the
Supreme Court's ruling. Trump's attorneys cited to certain pieces of evidence that
the jury had, such as Trump's presidential financial disclosure form,
testimony from White House aides, social media posts that Trump made while he was
in office,
things like that. But last night, Judge Murchon ruled that the evidence received by the jurors
was related entirely to unofficial conduct and therefore receives no immunity protections.
And even if some of the evidence was related to official conduct, Murchon says using those acts as evidence of the quote, decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no
danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.
End quote. Furthermore, Murchon said that even if prosecutors erroneously
introduced evidence that could be challenged under an immunity claim, such
an error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt. Now as for Trump's team, they have
since said that this ruling is a quote-unquote direct violation of the
Supreme Court's decision on immunity, so it is likely that they will appeal this
matter and of course, as always, you already know, I will keep you posted on
where this goes. In some more Trump news, he has filed a new lawsuit against the Des Moines Register polling
firm, its parent company, and pollster Jay Ann Selzer, accusing them all of consumer
fraud and election interference for publishing a poll three days before the election that
showed Harris up by three points in the state.
This is despite Trump ultimately winning the state by more than 13 points.
Trump's lawyers say the difference between his win and the poll results constitutes election-interfering
fiction.
So this lawsuit alleges a violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive
advertising.
And the lawsuit says that this poll deceived Iowan voters.
The suit further alleges that the polling miss was not a coincidence, but rather intentional.
Now the reality is that under consumer fraud laws, the person or entity being accused of fraud
has to know or reasonably know that what they're doing constitutes fraud.
In this case, if the polling entity, the newspaper, and the pollster can show that they relied on real data and numbers in coming to
their conclusion, there is no merit to Trump's claims. If they can't back up
their numbers with data, that is where they may find themselves in trouble. The
newspaper said, quote, we have acknowledged that the Selzer- Des Moines
register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President Trump's Election Day victory in Iowa by releasing the pollszer-Demoyne register pre-election poll did not reflect the ultimate margin of President
Trump's election day victory in Iowa by releasing the poll's full demographics, cross-tabs,
weighted and unweighted data, as well as a technical explanation from pollster and Selzer.
We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit."
Let's take our break here.
When we come back, we'll talk about what we've learned about the Wisconsin school shooter,
more updates and theories as to what's going on with the drones, and we'll finish with
some quick hitters.
Okay, let's talk about what we have learned about the school shooting in Wisconsin since
I initially covered this story yesterday.
We now know that the shooter was 15-year-old
Natalie Rubnau, though she went by Samantha, not Natalie.
She had gone to school that morning and around 10.55am while inside of a classroom in a study
hall of students from mixed grades, she opened fire.
The call was made to the police at 10.57am by a second grade student and the first officer
arrived three minutes later.
By 11.05, officers said the shooter was down, the gun had been recovered.
Though it is important to note, the shooter died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot
wound, not by the police.
We know that two people have died, a teacher and a student, and that two others are in
critical condition.
So what was the motive? Well,
I will tell you what's been confirmed and what hasn't been confirmed. An officer has said that
information has been gathered by investigators that suggests the shooter had been dealing with
problems and expressed some of those problems in writing, which is now being reviewed. Police also
said that the motive appears to be a combination of factors, but did not give
details as to what those factors might be.
What hasn't been confirmed is an alleged manifesto that was posted to her ex-account
the morning of the shooting.
She posted a picture from a bathroom stall holding up a hand gesture as well as a link
to a Google
Doc.
However, anyone who's ever shared a Google Doc knows that you have to go in and manually
change the privacy settings of the document to make it available to anyone who has access
to the link.
Without making that change, no one can access the document besides yourself.
So this girl did not make that change.
So while the link was public, no one could actually
see the document. With that said, she also allegedly sent the document to her boyfriend,
who was able to access it and has since handed it over to authorities. It's alleged, and when I say
alleged, I mean that, but it is alleged that she wrote about her deep hatred for men no matter their age and her own
strong dislike for her father. She also allegedly contemplated committing suicide on many occasions,
but felt doing it in the way she did it yesterday rather than just killing herself
would be better because it would cause mass pain. Again, I stress that all of this is alleged.
It was supposedly written in that manifesto, but again, that manifesto has not been confirmed.
So one day when and if the manifesto is released,
we will talk about this more.
Now let's talk some more about these drones.
Last night I went on a deep dive into the various theories.
So let's talk about them.
One of the biggest theories right now
is that these drones are government drones.
Why?
One, because if these drones were foreign
drones, they would be shot down. There's really no question about that. And two,
because this type of effort is too large and too expensive for an average hobbyist
civilian. We have heard from contractors who have worked with the government in
the past that this is likely a government effort. The government has not
outright denied that it's them and that's where all signs are pointing.
Now, if the government comes out today and says this is not us, okay, maybe, but they
haven't done that yet.
In fact, they issued a joint statement last night, the DHS, FBI, FAA, and DOJ, simply
saying that they're investigating the thousands of reports of these drones, but they haven't said it's not them despite many, many people theorizing that it is.
So let's get into it. If this is the federal government, the question becomes why. Why is
the government operating these drones? Here are two of the big theories. One, because some war
weapon has been lost somewhere in the tri-state area and these drones are trying to find it.
We have a couple of wars going on and the United States is supplying weapons and equipment.
And two, the other theory is that this is actually part of the Advanced Air Mobility Mission,
which was an agreement between various federal agencies signed last December.
Now you may hear these theories and think,
oh, uh-oh, this podcast is all of a sudden a conspiracy theory podcast. That's not the case.
What this podcast is and has always been is an unbiased source of news that encourages
you to think critically and differently.
What this podcast has never been and will never be is the mainstream media.
And I think we're all thankful for that.
So I don't want to just tell you what the mainstream media is saying about the drones.
I want to cover all the bases.
Let's go a little bit deeper into each theory, starting with the first
one, the lost war weapon. There is a viral video going around on TikTok and I'll link it in the
sources section of this episode so you can watch it for yourself, but essentially a well-known
celebrity is saying that she knows a guy whose father used to work for the Pentagon and NASA
and worked with the government on various top-secret projects. The father
has apparently been reaching out to people in his life and telling them
basically that he would never forgive himself if he didn't tell people the
truth behind the drones and that these drones are government drones and could
possibly be searching for a lost war weapon. To back this up, he says that the
areas that coincide with where the drones have been seen
have spiked in radiation, and that the reason the government isn't telling us, isn't telling the
public, is because they don't want to cause worldwide chaos and make the United States look
disorganized and weak. Now, the counter-argument there is that the United States has the capability
to monitor radioactivity through satellites.
So the drones aren't absolutely necessary,
unless of course drones are better
at picking up radiation than satellites.
Now, the second theory is this.
Last December, the US Transportation Command,
the Air Mobility Command,
the Atlantic County Economic Alliance,
and the National Aerospace Research and Technology Park
announced the establishment of a testing corridor for unmanned aerial systems, or drones. And that
corridor runs between Joint Base McGuire-Dix Lakehurst in central Jersey and Dover Air Force Base in
Delaware. This testing corridor is exactly what it sounds like. It's an authorized path for the government to test drone technologies.
These testing corridors are not new.
By the way, Governor Hokel of New York announced a 50-mile drone corridor in 2018.
NASA more recently announced a drone corridor in Virginia.
But it begs the question, why not just say that's what it is?
That's a seemingly innocent project.
And that's what has a lot of people so confused.
So these are just some of the theories that are floating around. But of course, I will keep you
updated as more develops. And if you're wanting to know more about these drones, I did discuss it
in last Thursday's episode in the rumor has it segment and then a bit in Monday's episode as well.
Let's now finish with some quick hitters. Donald Trump met with TikTok's CEO
Shochu yesterday at Mar-a-Lago. The meeting obviously comes as TikTok is at risk of being
banned here in the United States, as we discussed, so I'm sure that was part of their discussions.
When Trump was asked yesterday whether he would seek to prevent the ban from taking effect,
he said that he would take a look and that TikTok has a special
place in his heart. Now, as we've discussed, there is only so much Trump can do as president
when it comes to the ban. A president cannot unilaterally repeal a law or overturn a court's
decision. What he could do is he could try to convince lawmakers to pass another law,
either repealing or modifying the ban, but that wouldn't
necessarily be easy considering the ban had bipartisan support in the first place. Another
option is if the ban takes effect, he could theoretically direct his DOJ to not enforce the
ban against app stores in the United States, which means app stores could still offer the app, but
that also comes with its own risks. So I'll dive more into the potential options that Trump has
to try to save TikTok once we have a better idea of what the Supreme Court is going to do with it.
Disney has agreed to settle a class action minimum wage lawsuit for $233 million.
In 2018, Anaheim, California voters approved a ballot measure that required employers in
Disneyland and Anaheim Resort Zones that had a tax rebate agreement with the city to pay
a higher minimum wage.
That minimum wage has gone up every year since.
It's currently $19.90 an hour.
Disneyland sued in 2018, arguing that it doesn't fall under this law because of a decades-old
deal it had with the city.
Disney ultimately lost that fight, which it had with the city. Disney ultimately lost
that fight, which it had been fighting for the last five years, and in those five years it hadn't
increased the minimum wage in accordance with the measure. So now that it's lost the legal battle,
it has agreed to pay $233 million in back pay to the roughly 50,000 employees that should have seen
wage hikes since 2018. And Senate Democrats have introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college.
Though it won't pass, here's what you should know.
Advocates of the amendment argue that the electoral college is outdated and that a popular
vote would enhance democracy.
In other words, the person that gets the most votes from the people wins.
End of story.
But here's why constitutional amendments almost never make it
into the Constitution. To pass, it requires two-thirds of both the House and the Senate,
plus three-fourths of the states to ratify it. The odds of 66% of Congress and 75% of the states
agreeing to this type of an amendment is almost slim to none. And a San Francisco tech executive was found guilty of stabbing and murdering fellow tech
executive and cash app founder Bob Lee.
Camera footage shows Lee and Nima Momeni leaving Lee's hotel and getting in Momeni's car.
They drive out to a secluded area, get out of the car, and video shows Momeni move toward
Lee and then drive away in his BMW. Prosecutors say
Momeni killed Lee over the alleged sexual assault of Momeni's sister by an acquaintance of Lee,
but defense attorneys argued that Momeni acted in self-defense and didn't realize in the moment
that Lee had been killed. Now that Momeni has been found guilty, his sentence will come at a later
date. The FTC finalized a rule today seeking to ban surprise junk fees for live event tickets,
hotels, and vacation rentals.
Notably, it's not that the fees are going away, but rather consumers can't be surprised
by them at checkout.
FTC Chair said, quote, whatever price you see is the price that you are paying at the
end.
No more mystery surprise fees at the very end of
the process." The rule takes effect in April 2025. AccuWeather has released its White Christmas
forecast predicting more US cities can expect a white Christmas this year than last year.
To declare a white Christmas, there must be one inch of snow or more on the ground. The regions
that are more likely to see a white Christmas include the Great Lakes region
and the Ohio Valley.
Cities like Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and DC have a low snow probability, and Midwest
cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, Denver, and Salt Lake City have a medium snow probability.
And finally, New York City Mayor Eric Adams will have to face his bribery charge after
a judge denied his request to dismiss it.
Adams was hit in September with a five-count federal indictment, alleging a long-running
scheme with the Turkish government.
The bribery charge was the most serious of the five charges, and he sought to have it
dismissed.
But today, the judge said that the concerns Adam has raised will ultimately be
up to the jury to decide. His trial is currently scheduled to begin in April. That is what I have
for you today. Thank you so much for being here. As always, have a fantastic night and I will talk last episode of season two.