UNBIASED - Here's What's in the Senate's Foreign Aid/Border Bill, DA Fani Willis Responds to Improper Relationship Accusations, Migrants Disappear After Assaulting NYC Police Officers, and More.

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

1. DEEP DIVE: Senate Releases Foreign Aid/Border Bill; Here's What It Says (0:37)2. DEEP DIVE: Fulton County DA Fani Willis Files Motion Responding to Accusation of Improper Relationship with Special Prosecutor (12:05)3. QUICK HITTERS: U.S. and U.K. Strike Iran-Backed Militia Targets (21:15); Manhattan DA Under Fire After Releasing Migrants Without Bail (22:27); Ted Cruz to Propose Legislation to Protect Lawmakers at Airports (24:14)4. ONE-LINERS (25:03)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news! 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

Kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook born in Vegas gives you the chance to take action to the end zone and celebrate every highlight reel play. And as an official sportsbook partner of the NFL, BetMGM is the best place to fuel your football fandom on every game day. With a variety of exciting features,

BetMGM offers you plenty of seamless ways to jump straight onto the gridiron and to embrace peak sports action. Ready for another season of gridiron glory? What are you waiting for? Get off the bench, into the huddle, and head for the end zone all season long. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance,

call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. I'm your host, Jordan, and I hope you enjoy the show. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Tuesday, February 6th, 2024. This episode was recorded yesterday around 5 p.m. Eastern time. I have two deep dives for you today, then we'll get into some quick hitters and then one liners, and that'll be today's episode. If you love what you hear today, please go ahead and leave me a review on whatever platform you listen. I ask this of

you every show, but it's for those of you who haven't done it already. It really helps support me. And of course, if you're a YouTube watcher, just go ahead and hit that thumbs up button, subscribe to my channel. Both of those things really help me out. So thank you in advance. Let's not waste any time. Let's just get into today's stories.

On Sunday night, the Senate released the contents of a long-awaited 370-page bill called the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024. It's a mouthful. It'll go to a vote later this week. It specifically deals with border security and foreign aid, and a lot of people are kind of referring to this bill as a border bill or a border security bill, but it's important to note that the bulk of this bill is for foreign aid. So there is a portion of the funds that are going towards border security, but again, mostly it's going to foreign aid. So this is how the bill breaks down. $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, $20 billion for border security, $14 billion to Israel, about $10.7 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza, $2.3 billion for operations around the Red Sea,

and roughly $4.8 billion to the Indo-Pacific. In total, the bill includes roughly $12 billion more than President Biden had initially asked for back in October. You remember that $106 billion foreign aid package. Well, the difference between that request and this new bill is about $7 billion more for border security specifically, a little bit more for humanitarian aid to Gaza, and now there is some thrown in there for the Red Sea, which wasn't a particular issue back when Biden requested money from Congress back in October. So let's first talk briefly about the money to the foreign countries, and then we'll dive into the border provisions and what that says. Of the $60 billion in aid to Ukraine, about $25 billion comes in the form of additional weapons and military equipment.

$20 billion is to replenish stockpiles of equipment that we have already transferred to Ukraine, so refill our shelves, so to speak. And then roughly $13.8 billion is to allow the Ukrainian government to buy more ammunition from suppliers here in the United States. Of the $14 billion to Israel, roughly $5 billion is to support Israel's missile defense systems, like the Iron Dome. And of the $4.8 billion for the Indo-Pacific, roughly $2.6 billion would be on efforts to deter China. So things like replacing the munitions that the United States has already provided to Taiwan, things of that nature. And then again, $10 billion, almost $11 billion in humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the $2.3 billion for the operations in the Red Sea. Now something else

that this bill does before we get into the border provisions is it strips funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees. So this is an agency which Israel has accused of employing individuals who took part in the October 7th attack. The UNRWA chief has already said that Israel has not yet presented evidence to support those accusations, but regardless, this bill would strip the funding for that agency. So now let's dive into the border component of the bill. $20 billion for border security, specifically $6.8 billion for customs and border protection, $7.6 billion for immigration and customs enforcement, and just under $4 billion for citizenship and immigration services. For the sake of ease, let's just go down a list of some of the things that the bill would either implement or change. First things first, if the seven-day

rolling average of migrant encounters reaches 4,000, the Department of Homeland Security would have the authority to close the border to all migrants who don't have appointments to seek asylum. This is voluntary authority, right? It's not required that they close the border, but the DHS can close the border. However, if the seven-day rolling average reaches 5,000 or if crossings exceed 8,500 in a single day, the Department of Homeland Security would be required to close the border to all migrants without appointments. Those that have appointments would still be allowed to go to their appointments, but it would be closed to all other migrants.

At this point, if the DHS does close the border, they're required to do so or they voluntarily choose to do so. The border would remain closed until DHS has the ability to process all migrants encountered and operational control is re-established. The bill does cap the number of days that these emergency powers can be used, and those caps are as follows. 270 days in the first year, 225 days in the second year, and 180 days in the third year. And this emergency authority would expire after the third year. Another thing the bill does is require the government to process at minimum 1,400 migrants per day, even during an emergency closure. The bill would also give the president the power to suspend an emergency border closure

implemented by the DHS for up to 45 days if an emergency exists so as to warrant the suspension. So if the DHS closes the border, the president can open it back up for 45 days if an emergency warrants it. Number seven, the new emergency authority would not apply to unaccompanied children, migrants experiencing medical emergencies, or migrants who have an imminent threat to their lives. Those individuals would also still be allowed to cross over between legal ports of entry. Another thing the bill does, migrants who attempt to cross more than once while the border is closed would be banned from entering the United States for a one-year period. Migrants being processed at the border would have to be detained and supervised for 90 days while they complete their asylum interviews,

and those that pass these interviews would receive work permits while they await the adjudication of the rest of their claims, and those that fail or those that are rejected would be immediately removed and sent back to either their home country or Mexico. So this is the provision that some people are saying or arguing ends catch and release and others are saying it doesn't end catch and release. But here's where the debate lies. Currently, those who are seeking asylum would enter the country and they would then be given a future court date and essentially

be let go on parole, right? They're told to come back for their court date whenever that court date is. It could be years in the future, months in the future, whenever it is. Under this Senate bill, what would happen is the people seeking asylum would be detained and supervised at the federal level for 90 days while they complete the initial rounds of the asylum interviews. After those 90 days, they would either be approved or denied. Now, approval means they can enter the country on a work permit while the rest of their asylum claim is playing out, whereas rejection means that they would be sent back home. So in a sense, it's ending, you know, this quote

unquote catch-and-release concept because asylum seekers would now have this detention period rather than being immediately let go on parole. But at the same time, the detention isn't required until the end of the case, right? Until the case is fully adjudicated. So it's not really putting an end to this catch-and-release concept in its entirety, more so delaying the release component of it, if that makes sense. But speaking of parole, it's also worth noting that under the bill, the president does retain the authority to designate humanitarian parole on a case-by-case basis. The bill also says that asylum cases would be adjudicated no longer by immigration courts, but instead by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. And this is an attempt to fast track these cases because the immigration

courts are so backlogged. The bill also says that those seeking asylum would see stricter asylum requirements. As examples, the people would have their criminal history looked into. The current credible fear standard would be heightened. So in order to prove that credible fear exists to permit them entry into the country, the officer adjudicating their case would look into whether that person could have safely resettled in another country on their way to the United States and whether that person could safely relocate within their own country before coming over here. Migrants whose asylum claims receive positive determinations under this expedited process would immediately, as I said, receive work permits, and the family members of

certain visa holders would also get work permits. As for those who don't qualify for asylum, the government would be granted this new expedited removal authority under the bill to remove them at a quicker rate. Children of people with H-1B visas would get work authorizations. They would also have their legal ages frozen while waiting for their green cards rather than possibly facing deportation once they hit the age of 21. The bill authorizes 250,000 additional immigrant visas spread out over five years for employment-based migrants. The bill allocates $3.2 billion for an increase in ICE detention capacity, so the capacity would go from 34,000 to 50,000. The bill allocates $2.5 billion for more deportation flights, up to 77 flights per day.

The bill allocates funds for the hiring of more Border Patrol agents as well as new officers to evaluate asylum claims. As far as fentanyl-related actions, the package does include this Fend Off Fentanyl Act, which would require the president to sanction these transnational criminal organizations that are engaged in fentanyl trafficking. And finally, the bill provides a pathway to permanent legal status for Afghan nationals who were admitted or paroled into the United States when that withdrawal happened in 2021. So those are the main takeaways from this bill. Now, I need to just put this out there that the Senate and the House are on two different pages.

As of Sunday, House Republicans were moving forward with a bill of their own that only provided aid for Israel and left out Ukraine completely, as well as the other countries. None of the other countries were included in the House's bill. On top of that, the House passed a bill back in May called H.R. 2, otherwise known as the Secure the Border Act of 2023. This went much further in some ways than this current Senate bill when it comes to border security. And we know that last week, and even as recently as this past Sunday, Speaker Johnson said that the Senate bill is essentially dead on arrival in the House. On Sunday, he posted to X, he said, quote, this bill is even worse than we expected and won't come close to ending the border catastrophe the president has created. If this bill reaches the House, it will be dead on arrival, end quote. Now, of course, just because

Speaker Johnson says one thing doesn't necessarily mean it'll happen that way. We may see the more moderate Republicans vote with Democrats to pass this particular piece of legislation. It's something we've seen in recent past, but only time will tell. Of course, the Senate is said to hold its first vote on Wednesday. This is just a procedural vote. So what needs to happen is 60 senators need to vote to actually send the bill to a vote. And then from there, if it passes that procedural vote and it actually, you know, goes to the floor for a vote, the Senate could vote on the actual text of the bill that same day, potentially Thursday, maybe it's pushed to Friday.

And then of course, if it passes the Senate, it would go to the House. So let's get into our second deep dive, which is about Fannie Willis and the accusations that were launched against her by some of the defendants in the Georgia election interference case. A few weeks ago, I reported on these affair allegations involving Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis and the special prosecutor in the case. Specifically, some of the defendants, including Donald Trump, filed motions to dismiss in their respective cases seeking to not only disqualify Fannie Willis from the cases, given that she had an inappropriate relationship with the special prosecutor who is prosecuting these defendants, but also, you know, just

dismiss the indictment entirely based on this relationship. And at the time that the motions to dismiss were filed, the DA's office said that Fannie Willis would respond to these accusations with a court filing of her own, which she did file on Friday. And here is what she says. The motion starts off by saying, quote, while the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek. Unequivocally, the evidence and facts demonstrate that one, District Attorney Willis has no financial conflict of interest that constitutes a legal basis for disqualification. Two, District Attorney Willis has no financial conflict of interest that constitutes a legal basis for

disqualification. Two, District Attorney Willis has no personal conflict of interest that constitutes a legal basis for disqualification. Three, the attacks on Special Prosecutor Wade's qualifications are factually inaccurate, unsupported, and malicious, in addition to providing no basis whatsoever to dismiss the indictment or disqualify the special prosecutor. Four, District Attorney Willis has made no public statements that warrant disqualification or judicial inquiry. And five, criticism of the process utilized to appoint and compensate the special prosecutors in this case demonstrates basic misunderstandings of rudimentary county and state regulations and provides no legal basis for dismissal of the indictment or End quote.

To sum up her argument, basically what she says is regardless of her relationship status with the special prosecutor, neither her nor the prosecutor have any personal or financial interest in the conviction of the defendants, and therefore the indictment legally cannot be dismissed, and neither can the prosecutor nor the DA be disqualified from the case. Because in order for a conflict of interest to be present, according to the case law cited in the DA's motion, a prosecutor has to have a personal or financial interest or stake in a defendant's conviction, and that a theoretical or speculative conflict of interest

is just simply not enough to warrant dismissal or disqualification. The bulk of her motion is essentially why the relationship between the two doesn't rise to the level of a conflict so as to warrant a dismissal. And what she says would be a conflict of interest is a situation where a DA represented a husband in a divorce action while at the same time was prosecuting the wife for shooting the husband. Or where the prosecutor has a relationship with the victim of a crime and is prosecuting the perpetrator. But she says there's no conflict of interest where a prosecutor has a relationship with a DA and both are on the same team. So just to give you a little context surrounding the professional dynamic between the two, both district attorneys and special prosecutors are

prosecutors. They're on the same team, so to speak. So what will happen is sometimes a district attorney who works for the government will appoint a special prosecutor in a given case in order to avoid any conflicts of interest. The same concept applies to the attorney general of the United States appointing a special counsel to a case, right? We saw Attorney General Merrick Garland. He recently appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith to Donald Trump's case. And similarly, he appointed Special Counsel David Weiss to Hunter Biden's case. So special counsel will appoint, or sorry, Attorney General will appoint special counsel, just like DAs will appoint a special

prosecutor. And it's just to avoid conflicts of interest. So what Willis is saying is that there's nothing impermissible about relationships between lawyers on the same side of a case. In fact, what Willis says in her motion is there's actually a relationship on the defendant's side of the case that according to the defendant's logic would disqualify their own attorneys. But she says, because I know that, you know, relationships on the same team aren't improper, I would never argue that the defendant's attorneys needed to be disqualified, just like myself and the special prosecutor don't need to be disqualified. So what the motion says in regard to that is, quote, it is worth noting that there are at least

two personal relationships among the collection of defense attorneys representing the defendants that under the standard argued in defendant's motion would almost certainly require disqualification. Amanda Clark Palmer, counsel representing defendant Ray Smith, and Scott Grubman, representing defendant Kenneth Chesbrough, are publicly known to be in a personal relationship. Since defendant Chesbrough has pled guilty and agreed to testify against defendant Smith and other remaining defendants, one who was ill-informed about the standard for attorney disqualification in Georgia might argue that the personal relationship between Clark Palmer and Grubman could rise to the level

of conflict. But that, of course, would be an incorrect conclusion to draw, end quote. So that's what she has to say about the attorneys on the other side. So basically, she's throwing their argument back in their face and saying, if we have to be disqualified, then so would you guys. But again, according to the prosecutor, that's not an issue here because that's not an impermissible conflict of interest. Now, Fannie Willis's motion does not explicitly state whether a relationship exists or existed between her and the prosecutor, but the prosecutor's affidavit does. And an affidavit, for those maybe who aren't familiar, is just a sworn statement of fact. So in this case, Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor, attached an affidavit to Fannie Willis's motion, swearing to the truth on various statements surrounding, you know, the financial

aspects of their professional relationship, the timeline of events, the relationship between him and Fannie Willis, and a few other things. But specifically, as it pertains to a relationship between the two of them, Wade addresses it in one line, line 27, and he writes, quote, in 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship, end quote. And notably, 2022 was after Wade was hired as special prosecutor, but before the charges were brought before the grand jury. So just to give you sort of a time frame of this. However, it's also worth noting attorneys for the defendants are arguing that their relationship actually began in 2019, which was before Wade was hired. So then in addition

to the romantic side of things, there was this allegation that Willis had financially benefited from Wade's investigation and prosecution of the case. And that argument was that the DA's office had paid Wade hundreds of thousands of dollars for his work on this case and that Wade spent the money that he earned on various life-related things, which included vacations with Willis. So Willis writes in her motion, quote, Roman's motion wildly speculates that District Attorney Willis somehow benefited financially from the investigation and prosecution of this criminal case, but provides no support to justify that conclusion. To be absolutely clear, the professional relationship between Special Prosecutor Wade and District Attorney Willis

has never involved direct or indirect financial benefit to District Attorney Willis. The facts here are readily distinguishable from contingency fee arrangements or other scenarios where a true financial conflict of interest may play a role in prosecutorial decision-making and that requires disqualification, end quote. So those are the really the nuts and bolts of her motion, you know, talking about how there's no personal or financial conflict of interest here. There are obviously other legal arguments involved, but rather than getting down to the nitty-gritty of all of this, I think it's best that we actually wait until the February 15th hearing just to see which issues are really focused on by the judge and ultimately how the judge rules on this, because that'll give us a

much more narrow scope on this matter and kind of weed out the irrelevant and baseless arguments. But of course, if you do want to read the motion yourself, I always have my sources linked for you. So you can just go to JordanIsMyLawyer.com or click on the sources link in the podcast description and you can find it there. Now let's move on to quick hitters, the first of which deals with these strikes by the United States and the UK. So the United States and the UK began striking Iran-backed groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen on Friday. Since then, they have struck at least 110 targets, and the United States does plan to take, quote, additional strikes and additional action, end quote, in the coming days. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that the United States intends to send a clear message that it will respond when

our forces are attacked and when our people are killed. Iran has not yet taken a direct role in the fight, though it did say that the attacks by the United States and the UK were a quote flagrant violation of international law, end quote, and that the continuation of such attacks was a, quote, worrying threat to international peace and security, end quote. The Pentagon has said it does not want war with Iran and believes Iran does not want war either, but Sullivan did not answer whether the United States might attack sites within Iran, because as I said, so far the strikes have been limited to Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The second quick hitter is out of New York. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is getting heat after releasing four migrants involved in an attack on two NYPD officers

without seeking bail. On January 27th, NYPD officers were trying to move an unruly crowd outside of a building in Times Square when one person became confrontational. Surveillance video shows the officers talking with a group of men. They then try to arrest one of them, and that's when the other men begin kicking the officers. In total, seven were arrested, five were charged with assault of a police officer, gang obstruction, obstructing government administration, and disorderly conduct. And then days later, two others were charged with robbery and felony assault. However, the DA's office did decline to prosecute one of them because he says there's just not sufficient evidence to do so.

So here's what happened. Because of current bail laws in New York, four of the first five men to be arrested were released without bail. And now these men are gone. They're nowhere to be found. The New York Police Department thinks at least four of them fled to California. They do have a March court date, but again, they were let go on their own recognizance, so they are now said to be potentially in California. They got on a bus. Both New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Kathy Hochul said that bail should have been set. Hochul suggested that they should be sitting in Rikers right now, but the Manhattan DA did not seek bail. The DA's office has not yet commented on the suspect's

immigration statuses, and it is unclear whether the FBI is currently searching for these men. The third quick hitter, and the final quick hitter I have, is about Senator Ted Cruz, who is proposing a bill amendment to a big aviation bill being marked up by a Senate subcommittee this week that would offer lawmakers, cabinet members, and federal judges a dedicated security escort at airports as well as expedited screening outside of public view. Cruz said that this amendment is needed to ensure political VIPs aren't endangered as they pass through public spaces in airports. The current draft of the bill, and again, this is just a proposal, tasks TSA with the escort duty,

but does allow TSA to tap on local law enforcement to provide the escort. So then the cost would be on local law enforcement. And now let's finish off with some one-liners. President Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary with 96% of the votes. And in an unsurprising move, the federal judge overseeing Donald Trump's election interference case made the official call to postpone the March 4th trial date while the appeals are playing out. Buckingham Palace announced on Monday that King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer, though it did not specify the type of cancer. And number four, the Supreme Court will interrupt their winter recess to hear oral arguments in the Trump ballot disqualification case on Thursday.

So I will have an update for you on Friday. I'll let you know how those arguments went and how the judges were kind of, you know, questioning and reacting to the arguments set forth by both sides. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a fantastic week and I will talk to you on Friday.