UNBIASED - Hunter Biden Indicted, Impeachment Inquiry into President Biden, Once-In-A-Generation Antitrust Trial Begins, Hunter Biden Files Lawsuit Over Laptop Data, and More.
Episode Date: September 15, 20231. Hunter Biden Indicted on Gun Charges (1:54)2. Speaker McCarthy Announces Impeachment Inquiry into President Biden (6:10)3. Five Officers Federally Indicted in Connection with Tyre Nichols' Death (1...9:07)4. Hunter Biden Files Civil Suit Against Garrett Ziegler Over Laptop Data (25:40)5. DOJ v. Google Trial Begins (32:04)6. Judge in GA Election Case Rules Trump and Co-Defendants Won't Be Tried With Chesebro and Powell in October (35:24) If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.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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You are listening to the
Jordan Is My Lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased
news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy Friday. I am ready for the weekend. I hope
you are too. Just a note for today's episode. Typically, I wait until the end of the day
Thursday to record just so I can get, you know, as much and the most recent news in the episode.
But for this episode, I actually stopped recording or I stopped researching, I guess, around 2.30
on Thursday. So this episode will cover Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday guess, around 2.30 on Thursday. So this episode will
cover Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday up until about 2.30. However, I did catch the Hunter Biden
indictment, which came down on Thursday. So the stories today will include the Hunter Biden
indictment, the impeachment inquiry that Speaker McCarthy announced on Tuesday, the five officers
that are facing a federal indictment
in the death of Tyree Nichols, Hunter Biden's lawsuit against a former Trump aide, the DOJ's
case against Google and the trial that just started this week. And then I'll briefly talk
about the judge's recent ruling in the Georgia election interference case. So those will be the
stories for today. Before we get into them, let me just remind you, as I always do, if you love what you hear in this episode, please go ahead and leave
my show a review. It helps more than you know. If you have already, I appreciate you. Thank you so
much. And as always, the reminder I give every episode, yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your
lawyer. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories.
Hunter Biden was indicted on Thursday on three counts related to false statements on a federal firearm form and unlawful possession of a firearm. Now, as we know,
Hunter Braden was previously going to enter into a pretrial diversion for the gun charge, but that
pretrial diversion sort of fell apart along with the plea deal for the tax charges. Following that,
David Weiss, who was a prosecutor in the case at the time, was appointed special counsel status. And he said
in a court filing that he did expect an indictment to be filed in relation to the gun charges before
September 29th because the statute of limitations for some of the related offenses would expire in
October. So in fact, the indictment was filed before September 29th. It was filed yesterday on September 14th.
Let's walk through it.
And I do have it linked for you on my website.
So you can always click on the sources link in the podcast description or just go to Jordan
is my lawyer dot com.
Find this episode.
Scroll all the way down.
That's where you'll find the sources.
The indictment first starts off by clarifying that a person seeking to purchase a firearm
has to fill out this form called ATF Form 4473.
Part of this form requires the purchaser to certify that all of the answers are true and
correct.
Specifically, Question 11E of the form requires that the purchaser certify
that he or she is not an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substances.
So the indictment says on October 12, 2018, Hunter Biden purchased a Colt Cobra 38 SPL revolver in the state of Delaware. Upon purchasing,
he completed the form and certified that he was not an unlawful user of or addicted to
any controlled substances. The indictment says that Hunter Biden knew this was a false statement
when it was certified to, and as many know, at the time he was dealing with a cocaine addiction.
So that is, of course, what the indictment is referring to though it does not explicitly mention the cocaine addiction counts
one and two relate to the statement being false whereas count three relates to hunter biden's
actual possession of the firearm so count one one says that Hunter Biden's false statement was
intended or likely to deceive a firearms dealer in violation of federal law. Count two, on the
other hand, alleges that Hunter Biden knowingly made the false statement related to information
that must be kept in a firearm dealer's records. To simplify that, he made a false statement on a
federal form. So again, counts one and two relate to the statement actually being false, though they
are two different charges for slightly different things. Count three relates to possession. So
count three alleges Hunter Biden knew he was an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, but possessed
the gun anyway. And specifically, the indictment says the possession took place from October 12,
2018 until October 23, 2018. That's the indictment. It's very short. It's four pages.
And again, if you want to read it, it is available for you in my sources section.
Now, one final note is that in addition to the gun charges, Special Counsel Weiss did
say in a court filing filed last month that, quote, a trial is now in order, end quote,
on the tax offenses and that he may bring tax charges possibly in California.
So that's what we know about the indictment so far.
I'm sure more will come out in the coming days. There has been no date scheduled as to when Hunter Biden is
supposed to appear in court for his initial appearance. But of course, as I said, I did
stop my research a little earlier today than usual, so it's possible it comes out after I've
already recorded. In that case, you'll know once that news comes out.
So that's what I have for you on that. Let's move on now to the impeachment inquiry. On Tuesday,
Speaker McCarthy announced that he was directing the House committees to open a formal inquiry
into the impeachment of President Biden. We have a lot to unpack here, so I want to talk about what
the impeachment process looks like, but I also want to talk about what this inquiry means or what inquiries mean in general, but also the reason for the inquiry in this particular case, the fact that this wasn't a move agreed on by all Republican representatives, and why, despite directing it, there is still one representative who wanted the inquiry that
is calling for Speaker McCarthy's removal. And by the way, let me just say that I say inquiry.
I know that people say inquiry, and that may very well be the correct way to say it,
but for some reason, I have always, always, always said inquiry. So that's just what I'm
going to stick with, okay? I know what an inquiry is, and I just say it inquiry.
You may say inquiry, but that's just what it is.
So we're going to cover all of those topics.
Let's first start with the most important component of this conversation, which is what
is the impeachment process?
What is impeachment?
Impeachment is the formal process of bringing charges against a government official.
The Constitution specifically gives Congress the power to impeach federal officials,
but interestingly enough, the Constitution does not set forth any specific crimes that an official
has to commit in order to be impeached aside from treason and bribery. So the actual language in the Constitution is treason,
bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. So to give you an example of when the impeachment
process was used in the past, we have three presidents that have been impeached. Andrew
Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. Donald Trump was actually impeached twice, and that's
the first time that had ever happened. So let's talk about Andrew Trump. Donald Trump was actually impeached twice, and that's the first
time that had ever happened. So let's talk about Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson was impeached in
1868. His charge fell under that high crimes and misdemeanors category. And basically what he did
is he and this Secretary of War official, his name was Edwin Stanton, they didn't get along.
They didn't have a good relationship, and it was Edwin Stanton, they didn't get along. They didn't have
a good relationship, and it was clear that President Johnson wanted him gone. So Congress,
in order to protect Stanton from being fired without the Senate's consent, they enacted this
Tenure of Office Act. And what that did is it said that an official couldn't be fired or replaced without Congress's approval.
Well, when Congress then went, they weren't in session anymore, Johnson decides to try to replace Stanton anyway.
And so Congress went ahead and said, OK, you violated the Tenure of Office Act by unsuccessfully trying to replace Stanton when we said you
couldn't do that without our approval, so we're going to go ahead and impeach you.
And that's what happened.
Then the next impeachment didn't happen for another 130 years.
So Bill Clinton in 1998 was impeached for lying under oath and obstruction of justice.
I'm sure you know the famous quote,
I did not have sexual relations with that woman. That quote was Bill Clinton denying that he had
sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky during his testimony in another sexual harassment lawsuit
filed by another woman. So he did in fact have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, which meant that he had lied under oath.
He had obstructed justice by lying under oath.
So that's why he was impeached.
Then you have Donald Trump, who, as I said, was impeached twice.
The first time was for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
That stemmed from this impeachment inquiry that found he had solicited foreign interference from
Ukraine in the 2020 election and then proceeded to obstruct the inquiry by telling his administration
officials to ignore the subpoenas. The second impeachment charged him with incitement to
insurrection, and that charge, of course, stemmed from the events on January 6th.
So now that we've talked through why impeachment charges have been brought in the past, let's look at what's going on
in Biden's case. The inquiry into President Biden stems from his potential involvement with Hunter
Biden's foreign business dealings. Separately, there's also the allegations that President
Biden's Department of Justice interfered with this
whole investigation into Hunter Biden's taxes. So for those reasons, this inquiry was directed.
So let's now go through the impeachment process. What does impeachment look like?
The first step in the impeachment process is this inquiry or inquiry, whatever you say. Typically, an inquiry is first voted on by the
House, but it's not necessary. So the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the first impeachment of
Donald Trump started with the House voting to formally open the inquiry, but Donald Trump's
second impeachment did not. Instead, Nancy Pelosi, who was Speaker of the House at the time,
actually just formally announced the inquiry just like McCarthy's doing now. So the House never
ended up voting on it. It was more so just Speaker Pelosi directing it. This inquiry can be done by
any committee in the House, though it's more often than not done by the House Judiciary Committee.
But as an example, in this case, Speaker McCarthy specifically
directed the House Ways and Means Committee, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform,
and the House Judiciary Committee to continue on with their investigation. And this is the stage
where these committees will basically just gather as much evidence and facts of any alleged
wrongdoing that they can. From there, that evidence
will be presented to the House Judiciary Committee, and the House Judiciary Committee is in charge of
reviewing everything and deciding whether to recommend articles of impeachment. Now, in order
for articles of impeachment to proceed to the House for a vote, a majority of the House Judiciary Committee has to approve them.
So if the articles are approved by a majority of the House Judiciary Committee, they then go to the
House for a vote. At that stage, only a simple majority is needed. So 218 votes in the House
are needed to impeach. If the House votes to impeach, the Senate will hold a trial. At the
Senate stage, that is where the individual is officially convicted and removed from office.
So you can, as an official, be impeached without being removed. In fact, no president that's ever
been impeached has been removed from office. It just doesn't happen. It's just very
hard at that stage to get the votes needed. But at the Senate trial, Chief Justice Roberts, who is
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, would preside over the trial,
and the Senate would then vote on whether to remove the official from office. Now, I said it's
really difficult to remove an official,
and that's because two-thirds of the Senate needs to vote to do so. This is an incredibly difficult
step to get past because if you think about the way the Senate's broke down, it's rarely ever
broken down to where there's enough senators that are in support of removing this official. So just, you know,
to kind of illustrate that in the Senate currently, you have a pretty even split. You're not going to
get 67 votes to remove President Biden from office if it gets to that stage, right? So that's what
the impeachment process looks like. Now let's talk about who's on board, because to the surprise of some, not all Republican
representatives are on board with this decision to launch the inquiry. In fact, around 20 House
Republicans opposed it, one of those being Don Bacon, who is a Republican representative from
Nebraska. And what he said is, quote, we cannot use impeachment as a political weapon against every president,
end quote. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, another Republican, said, quote, we've got to
get back to a point where impeachment is what it was intended to be. I feel like both in the last
cycle and in this cycle, we're converting into essentially a vote of no confidence in the British
Parliament, and I don't want to see our
country go down that path, end quote. As for Republicans in the Senate, some of them aren't
happy either. One Senate Republican who chose to remain anonymous had a lot to say about it.
They called it a waste of time, a fool's errand, and they added that it would be dispensed with
fairly quickly if the House did,
in fact, send articles of impeachment over to the Senate. They also said they think the call
for an impeachment inquiry could simply just be McCarthy giving people their quote-unquote
binky to get through the government shutdown, but that it's a political loser for the GOP.
So those are some Republican senators and representatives that don't necessarily
favor this decision or look negatively upon it. Now, of course, the majority of Republican
representatives are, you know, in favor of it or on the fence about it, not necessarily totally
opposed to it. And then, of course, the Democratic senators and representatives are very much against
it. You know, they see this as weaponization of impeachment, the Democratic senators and representatives are very much against it.
You know, they see this as weaponization of impeachment and the impeachment process.
So now let's go to why McCarthy did this, right?
If he doesn't have full-on support from his party, why did he make this call?
We obviously don't have the answers.
Let me just say that, okay?
What happens in the government, we only know so much of.
We don't know for sure. But there's two sort of theories at play here. One is that some of the more extreme Republican representatives,
they've been steadfast in launching this investigation. For instance, you have
Representative Matt Gaetz, who suggested that he would present a motion to remove Speaker McCarthy
if he didn't support the impeachment.
Then you have this, you know, so he was facing pressure, right? Then you have this other theory
that McCarthy sort of succumbed to the mounting pressure of the impeachment investigation in order
to get those more extreme Republican representatives on board with avoiding a government shutdown in
the coming weeks, right? Because if he can give
them what they want with this impeachment inquiry, maybe they'll work more to avoid a government
shutdown by being more open to certain funding measures like more aid to Ukraine, which they
are not on board with right now, or maybe less spending cuts than they're asking for,
things like that. So there's this theory that McCarthy's call to open this
inquiry was to kind of get some of these Republicans to cooperate. Representative
Marjorie Taylor Greene, she is a Republican representative who in the last few years has
actually introduced seven articles of impeachment against Biden just herself. She said she wouldn't
vote to fund the government without a vote on the impeachment inquiry. So you can see there's this kind of there's there's a little bit of a game going on.
Then you have this added component where even though McCarthy called for the inquiry,
some representatives are still threatening motions for his removal because what they're saying is
you guys probably remember how McCarthy had a really tough time
being elected Speaker, right? He had to go through many, many rounds of voting. Well,
in order to claim the spot as Speaker, he had to enter into an agreement where in order to get
the Republican votes, he agreed to do certain things during his time as Speaker. Well,
what Representative Gates is saying is he hasn't fulfilled his end of the bargain. McCarthy hasn't. So included in the list of measures that were part
of the deal, you know, things like a balanced budget, term limits, a full release of videos
from January 6th, a subpoena of Hunter Biden, they haven't been brought forward by McCarthy.
So they're saying, if you don't abide by our agreement, we're going to remove you.
So there's a lot happening, okay?
President Biden made his first remarks about the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday.
And what he said was this.
He said, quote, I don't know quite why, but they just knew they wanted to impeach me.
And now the best I can tell, they want to impeach me because they want to shut down
the government, end quote.
And then he went on to say that he has to focus on his job and not this impeachment.
He has other things to worry about.
That's what's going on with the impeachment.
Let's take a quick break.
When we come back, we'll cover the last few stories. A federal indictment was filed this week against the five police officers that were involved in the death of Tyree Nichols.
This indictment is in addition to the state charges that they currently face.
Back in January, you may remember the story of Tyree Nichols, but I will give you a recap.
Tyree Nichols was pulled over at an intersection for allegedly reckless driving.
According to the video footage, which I did watch, Tyree was eventually pulled out of his car,
and at the same time when he was being pulled out, two more officers were arriving to the scene.
All of the officers were yelling at him to get on the ground.
He wasn't fully cooperating, but he also wasn't completely resisting. So to give you an example,
he did go down to his knees. Officers were telling him to lie on his stomach, but he didn't. And
during all of this, you can hear Tyree telling the officers to calm down as they're yelling at him.
He's saying he's just trying to get home, but he's
being yelled at to put his hands behind his back. Somehow, Tyree manages to get up and run away.
He runs away. He's eventually found by the patrol cars in the area, and he was found in his mom's
neighborhood. I think it was something like 100 yards away from his mom's home. And so he's,
you know, trying to get home. Again,
he's not cooperating completely. Officers are giving him commands. You can hear Tyree saying,
all right, all right, but not putting his hands behind his back when he's asked.
He calls out for his mom at one point, and then it seems like he's trying to get up again,
you know, up from the ground because police had him on the ground at this point, and he's again sprayed with pepper spray. In the background, you can hear officers
asking for his hands repeatedly. One of the officers then hits him with his baton a few times
and then goes and walks, that same officer goes and walks back to his car. Eventually, the body
camera falls onto the ground, or it was intentionally taken off. We don't know.
So you can't see what's happening, but you can hear what's happening. And it sounds like Tyree
is getting tased and he's yelling stop and officers are still repeatedly asking for his hands.
Then there's this separate video footage from a pole camera nearby. And from about 2 minutes and 18 seconds into the video,
until about 3 minutes and 40 seconds, so about a minute and a half, Tyree is getting beat.
What looks like, you know, kicks to the face, punches to the head, back, etc. But at one point,
he gets up again, and he's ultimately brought back down. It's unclear if he got up himself at that point or
if the cops brought him up, but this continues on. And finally, at about the five minute mark
in the video, officers back off of him because it seems like they finally got him handcuffed.
Around the six minute mark, they get him propped up against one of the cop cars.
They're talking to him on and off until the 23-minute mark. So 18 minutes, right?
Or 17 minutes, something like that. And at the 23-minute mark is when medical help gets to the
scene. At the 30-minute mark, so seven minutes later, he's put onto a stretcher, brought into
the ambulance, and that's when the video ends. He was taken to the hospital in critical condition,
and he died three days later from his injuries.
Now, the state charges that the officers are facing, they were brought weeks after the
incident.
It didn't take very long.
Those charges include second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping,
official misconduct, and official suppression.
They have pled not guilty to those charges.
However, the federal indictment is
different. So remember, a federal indictment stems from violations of federal law, whereas a state
indictment stems from violations of state law. In this indictment against these officers, there are
four charges. So we'll go through the charges quickly, explain what they are, and that'll be
that. Count one alleges that the officers violated Tyree's right to be free from unreasonable force, and they failed to intervene in the assault.
Count 2 alleges the officers violated his right to be free from an officer's deliberate indifference to his serious medical need.
Count 3 alleges that the officers conspired to cover up their use of unlawful force by omitting material information and providing
false and misleading information. And count four alleges that the officers committed an
obstruction offense by intentionally omitting material information and providing that false
and misleading information. The excessive force and failure to intervene, as well as the deliberate indifference, they actually carry max penalties of life in prison. So excessive force under the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment more force is used than what's reasonably necessary to arrest a victim.
The question is, what would a reasonable officer do in that same situation?
So in a Supreme Court case called Graham v.
Connor, the Supreme Court said that this question of what a reasonable officer would do in the
same situation has to be answered from the perspective
of a reasonable officer on the scene, not an officer after the fact with 20-20 vision.
If the force that was used against the victim rises above that, that is excessive force.
Now, federal law also says that an officer who purposefully allows another officer to violate a victim's constitutional has to show that the defendant officer was aware
of the constitutional violation being committed, had an opportunity to intervene, and chose not
to do so. And then finally, that deliberate indifference is when an officer defendant
knew the victim had a serious medical need, but willfully disregarded it by failing to render aid
and by failing to tell the dispatcher or the
emergency responders that showed up to the scene. So from here, these officers will obviously have
to either plead guilty or not guilty to these charges. And then, you know, this will play out
as these situations do. Hunter Biden has filed a civil lawsuit against Garrett Ziegler for his role in hacking Hunter Biden's laptop and putting Hunter Biden's data where the public could see it.
So let's talk about what this civil lawsuit is or means.
First, let's go over the players.
You have Hunter Biden, obviously Joe Biden's son. We know that. Garrett Ziegler in July of 2021. And then you have
does one through 10. So these are basically people that have not yet been identified,
but who Hunter Biden believes are responsible in some way for the acts alleged in the complaint.
According to the complaint, Ziegler had accessed, tampered with, manipulated, altered, copied, and damaged
Hunter Biden's laptop data without Hunter Biden's authorization or consent. The complaint starts
off by saying, quote, Garrett Ziegler is a zealot who waged a sustained, unhinged, and obsessed
campaign against plaintiff and the entire Biden family for more than two years.
While defendant Ziegler is entitled to his extremist and counterfactual opinions,
he has no right to engage in illegal activities to advance his right-wing agenda. Yet, that is
precisely what defendant Ziegler and his so-called non-profit research group have done and have asserted they will continue to do
in the future, end quote. The complaint says it's unclear the precise manner by which Ziegler
obtained Hunter Biden's laptop and Hunter Biden's data, but there's no dispute that the defendants
did so, according to the complaint. Specifically, it says that there are published
reports that say Ziegler himself claims to have obtained a copy of a hard drive from what Ziegler
says is Hunter Biden's laptop. And Ziegler says he obtained this copy in December of 2020.
Then in early 2021, Ziegler says he was able to get another copy of a hard drive from Hunter Biden's
laptop from Rudy Giuliani. The complaint says that the data appears to have been tampered with
and manipulated both before Ziegler received it and after it was obtained. On or about July 8,
2021, Ziegler organized this LLC called ICU LLC, which was doing business under the name
Marco Polo. And according to Ziegler's public statements, a chief focus of ICU has been
accessing and analyzing Hunter Biden's data. Hunter says it is unclear the precise dates on
which Ziegler accessed and tampered with the data, but that he believes it's still
continuing today. In May of 2020, Ziegler allegedly used the data from the laptop to create an online
searchable database of Hunter Biden's emails that were found on the laptop, despite Hunter
obviously never having authorized or consented to the public's access. Then a few months later, in October of
2022, Ziegler published a report called Report on the Biden Laptop. In December 2022, Ziegler
spoke in an interview about how the data was accessed, saying, quote, and we actually got
into Hunter's iPhone backup. We were the first group to do it in June of 2022.
We cracked the encrypted code that was stored on his laptop.
Now, this quote is obviously used to illustrate that his data was hacked illegally.
But the complaint also cites to times where Ziegler himself has talked about the length of time it took him and his, let's call them associates,
to go through all of this data and Ziegler's efforts to create a website that housed roughly
10,000 pictures that Ziegler says came from Hunter's data. And Ziegler's also talked about
the months that it took him to go through the pictures and
redact them and analyze the metadata, which of course tells you information about the photo,
like when it was taken and where it was taken. Ziegler also said that the videos took more time
than the photos because he needed to use AI tools in order to censor parts of videos that he
considered pornographic. For these reasons, the reason all of this is relevant
is because Hunter Biden says this is all proof
that Ziegler manipulated and tampered with the data,
not only by analyzing it, but also redacting it
and by using AI tools to censor it, things like that.
So according to Hunter, this data is not in its original form.
Now, the complaint says that Hunter has demanded Ziegler and these other defendants stop what
they're doing by way of a cease and desist, but that they have refused to do so. So at this point,
Hunter has no other option other than to file this lawsuit. What does Ziegler say about it? Ziegler was doing an interview with Absolute Truth,
which is a conservative outlet. And he said that the lawsuit isn't worth the paper it's written on
and that the firm that filed it should be embarrassed of themselves. And I'll play you
a clip from the interview. This is basically his thoughts. I just am offended that they keep
underestimating us as if we hadn't gone through each and every one of their potential legal
arguments before we released the report. That's why we didn't put the genitalia of the Biden family
in our report. We redacted the genitalia because we wanted no angle for them to fight us on.
So they're going to get burned again. They're doing this because they realize the lawsuit that I've talked about on this program before in California state court
is likely going nowhere. So this is just round two for Garrett. And I want to come back and
talk about it at a later date. So that's what Ziegler had to say about it. And I'm sure,
you know, in the days that follow, he'll have more to say on it. Let's go ahead and talk about the DOJ's lawsuit against Google. In what some are calling a
once-in-a-generation antitrust trial, this week kicked off the long-awaited trial between the DOJ
and Google. DOJ sued Google back in 2020, alleging that Google had unlawfully orchestrated its business dealings to
remain the top player in the search engine business and keep all of the other players
out of the game. The reason that this is a problem in the DOJ's eyes is because of Section 2 of the
Sherman Act, which makes it illegal to monopolize. Under this law, as long as you possess monopoly power in the relevant market
and you willfully acquire or maintain that power, you violate Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
So given that, what the DOJ is saying is that Google has willfully acquired and maintained
this monopoly power by conducting its business in the manner that it does.
Now, this includes paying billions of dollars every year to companies like Samsung and Apple
in order to ensure that Google is the search engine that pops up first for users of these
devices. Google also pays web browsers like Mozilla billions of dollars every year to ensure the same.
Just to give you an idea, Google controls 88% of the search engine market.
Google, on the other hand, says, hey, our actions aren't willful.
We just have a superior product.
And consumers view our search engine as superior.
And therefore, they choose to use our search engine over others. And as for the deals
with those companies like Apple and Samsung, those companies willingly entered into agreements with
us. They weren't forced to do anything that they didn't want to do. So those are legal business
agreements. We're not doing anything wrong. Since the filing of the lawsuit in 2020, 35 states,
plus Guam, Puerto Rico, and the District
of Columbia have also filed suits of their own.
However, to save time and resources, all of these suits are being tried together in this
one trial.
So what happens if the DOJ wins?
If the DOJ wins, Google will likely see a pretty hefty fine.
They could potentially see some other punishments as
well. Maybe the judge even orders Google to structure its business a little bit differently.
But perhaps most notably, what the DOJ is really trying to achieve is that if the DOJ prevails in
this case, that would be an indication that big tech is now subject to more regulations
from the federal government than we're currently seeing. Big tech right now is pretty unregulated,
and the federal government is trying to change that. What happens if Google wins? If Google wins,
they're just going to keep doing what they're doing. But it could also carve out this path
where other big tech platforms, you know, they start to head down what they're doing, but it could also carve out this path where other big
tech platforms, you know, they start to head down this road of monopoly in a similar manner, which
Google has because they know the precedent set that they can, you know, do the things that Google
has done to rise to the level that it has. This trial is expected to last three months, so I will
update you again once we know more.
The last thing I just briefly want to mention is that on Thursday, the judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case ruled that Donald Trump and 16 of his co-defendants will not go to trial with the two defendants that requested a speedy trial. So if you remember, I don't remember when I talked about this, but
Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro had requested a speedy trial. Their trial was set for October.
The Fulton County DA was trying to try all of the 19 defendants together in October,
arguing that if they were to have multiple trials, it would become this enormous strain on the court.
And for that reason, let's just try everyone together in October. But the judge denied this
request from the DA and said that severing the 17 other defendants, which includes Donald Trump,
was a, quote, procedural and logistical inevitability, end quote. He also noted that
it is possible additional divisions are required
down the road. So that's what you need to know about that. And that concludes this episode. I
hope you enjoyed it. Please go ahead and leave me that review if you loved what you heard.
Have a great weekend, and I will talk to you on Tuesday. Bye.