UNBIASED - Hunter Biden’s Tax Charges Dismissed, Trump’s GA Indictment, New Law Protects ‘Child Influencers’, Anti-Abortion Protesters Sue Washington DC, and more.

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

1. Montana Judge Rules in Favor of Young Activists in Climate Case (1:46)2. Illinois Enacts New Law to Protect Child Social Media Influencers (8:08)3. Anti-Abortion Protesters Sue DC Alleging Different Treatment Than George Floyd Protesters (11:44)4. Hunter Biden’s Tax Charges Dismissed (16:24)5. Donald Trump’s Georgia Indictment Explained (19:44)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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news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Happy Friday. I hope you're ready to dive in because I have four stories for you today. I will of course cover the Donald Trump indictment out of Georgia, but I'm going to save that for last because that's going to take up the bulk of this episode. So first I'm going to talk about this climate change lawsuit out of Montana that you may have heard about. It was filed by some children. A judge just ruled in the children's favor. Then I'm going to talk about this new social media law out of Illinois, another kind of story related to children. But basically what this law says is that parents can no longer monetize their children on social media without compensating them for it. group is claiming that their first and fifth amendment rights were violated because there was a defacement ordinance that was selectively enforced against them and not George Floyd

protesters. So we'll talk about that and then make our way into Donald Trump's indictment. Before we get into the stories, let me just remind you to leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen. If you have already, thank you so much. It is truly so appreciated. And as my final reminder, before we dive into the stories, yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. This week, a Montana judge ruled that the state is violating the rights of young people with certain laws that it has in place which don't improve or maintain Montana's environment. Let's break this down. rights. And those rights include the right to a clean and healthful environment. Like their state constitution literally says this, and it's actually only one of, I believe, three states that have

language like this in their constitution. The other two, if I'm not mistaken, are Pennsylvania and New York. But the Montana constitution goes on to say that the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations. Now, when you take a look at certain laws, so for instance, there is a section of the Montana Code, which says in part that it is the policy of the state of Montana to promote developments of projects that convert coal into electricity, to increase utilization of Montana's vast coal reserves, to increase local oil and gas exploration and development, to expand Montana's petroleum refining industry, and the list goes on. So you have that section of the Montana Code, but then you also have this

provision of the Montana Environmental Policy Act, which prohibits the state and state agents from considering the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions when they do their environmental reviews. So these kids, and when this lawsuit was filed in 2020, the kids ranged in age from two years old to 18 years old. And in total, it was 16 children. They brought this lawsuit. They're now between the ages of five and 22. But like I said at the time, between the ages of two and 18. And their argument was basically that the state laws are at odds with the state constitution. More specifically, the state laws are exacerbating the climate crisis and harming the environment and therefore violating the state's citizens' constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment, and even more so violating that provision which says that the state and its citizens have this duty to maintain and improve the environment. So that's their argument. The state of Montana counters this argument by arguing that climate change is this worldwide problem.

Montana's greenhouse gas emissions are only a tiny fraction of the overall global emissions, and therefore it's not Montana's burden to bear. Montana shouldn't shoulder the blame for all of these other states, countries, nations contributing to this worldwide problem of climate change. At the trial, several of these children that filed the lawsuit actually took the stand and talked about some of their own experiences with climate change. Some of these things were like one child talked about how she was having to stay inside due to wildfire smoke. Another girl who lives on an Indian reservation says that she has suffered significant distress due to the impacts of climate change on culturally important plants and also the snow for purposes of creation stories, something that is special within her culture. Another child talked about the extreme heat and the shorter winters and how it's hurt their ability to play sports and how increased drought has caused economic harm to family ranches in the state. So several of these children took

the stand to speak to their own experiences. And the plaintiffs also put forth on top of this, all of this expert testimony from doctors and scientists, various professionals that showed the effects that climate change can have on both the physical and mental health of the children. In fact, eight pages of the ruling, and the ruling is kind of long, it's over 100 pages long, but eight pages are dedicated solely to the physical and mental health effects of climate change. Ultimately, as we know, the judge sided with the children and her order reads in part, quote, plaintiffs have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life support system. It goes on to say,

the right to a clean and healthful environment language in Montana's constitution is forward-looking and preventative language, which clearly indicates that the people of Montana have a right not only to reactive measures after a constitutionally prescribed environmental harm has occurred, but to be free of its occurrence in the first place. So that was the judge's ruling. Now, this decision, let me just be clear, it doesn't prevent mining or the burning of fossil fuels. Instead, it just declares those laws that I had mentioned in the beginning of the episode that go against the Constitution as invalid, so they can no longer be enforced. As a side note, before we move on, a similar yet different lawsuit is set to play out in June of 2024.

In that case, and that case was actually filed back in 2015, but again, young plaintiffs, so children, alleging that the federal government's actions contributing to climate change have violated their constitutional rights of life, liberty and property. So the differences with that case are one, it's a federal case, not a state case. And two, the text of the Fifth Amendment, which is, you know, what provides for life, liberty and property, isn't nearly as direct as Montana's constitution when it comes to protecting the environment. So it's a pretty different case, but it's similar in the sense that we have these children coming forth again with this lawsuit trying to hold the government accountable for its contributions to climate change. If you're interested in reading the judge's order for yourself, I do have it linked on my website. So you can always click on the sources link

in the podcast description or just go to jordanismylawyer.com and it is there for you. Moving on to this new Illinois social media law. We've all seen parents on social media, influencers, I would say with kids, I'm not going to say parents, but influencers, that is their job, who highlight their kids often in their content. Well, this Illinois law is meant to compensate those kids because they don't feel it's fair that these parents are using their children to monetize their platform, and yet the children are seeing none of it. So Illinois is the first state to do this to ensure that parents can no longer monetize their children without compensating them for it. And the law is called SB 1782. It's an amendment to the state's child labor law. It was signed into law last Friday,

but it won't actually take effect for roughly another year. So July 1st, 2024 is when it will start to take effect. And before I get into the criteria that the law sets forth, I just want to be clear that the law defines family. It's parents aren't the only people that the law sets forth. I just want to be clear that the law defines family. Parents aren't the only people that this law applies to. So the term that the law uses is family and what that encompasses are parents, blood relatives, and people who are close enough to be considered family. So if anyone that falls into this definition is posting content and featuring children and monetizing that content, they owe an obligation to the child to compensate them for it, and they have to do so through a trust fund.

So here's the criteria. If a child is under the age of 16 and makes up at least 30% of a content creator's content within a 30-day period, and that could be by using the child's name, image, likeness, whatever it is, at least 30% of the content within a 30-day period, or if the child is the subject of a story for at least 30% of that story, and the content creator received compensation for the video equal or greater to 10 cents per view. So long as all of these things are met, the child is entitled to receive earnings. And how it works is if a child is in 50% of a video or the subject of 50% of a video, that child is entitled to 25% of the earnings. If the child is in 100% of the video, that child is entitled to 50% of the earnings. If the child is in 100% of the video, that child is entitled to 50% of

the earnings. If the child is in 30% of a video, they're entitled to 15% of the earnings, and so on and so forth. If a child falls into this category and is owed compensation, the content creator, the family member, whoever it is making the video, has to create a trust fund, as I said, but also has to keep record of certain things. So they have to keep record of the name and age of the child, the number of videos that generated compensation, the total number of minutes of the videos that the content creator received compensation, the total compensation generated, and the amount deposited into the trust fund at any given time. So all of these things have to be recorded and noted,

and the child has to have access to those records. Upon turning 18, the child will be able to access the money in the trust fund. And if there is no trust fund, there is no money, parents decided not to abide by this law, the law does allow these children or the now 18-year-olds to sue their parents for both monetary and punitive damages. So that is Illinois' new social media law. Again, it doesn't take effect until July 1st of 2024, but I do think we're going to start seeing more and more states follow this trend. Moving on to our third story, on Tuesday,

the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit revived a lawsuit that alleged that Washington, D.C. law enforcement enforced an anti-graffiti law against anti-abortion protesters, but not George Floyd protesters. Let's quickly run through the facts, and then we'll talk about the court's rationale and why they revived this lawsuit. I'm going to read directly from the court's ruling. It's a very short summary of the facts of the case, and I think it explains it well. In the summary of 2020, thousands of protesters flooded the streets of the district to proclaim Black Lives Matter. Over several weeks, the protesters covered streets, sidewalks, and storefronts with paint and chalk. The markings were ubiquitous and an open violation of the

district's defacement ordinance, yet none of the protesters were arrested. During the same summer, district police officers arrested two pro-life advocates in a smaller protest for chalking Black pre-born lives matter on a public sidewalk. So the two groups leading this pro-life protest were the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America. Both go ahead and sue DC, alleging violations of various rights. So free speech, free exercise, free association, obviously all clauses of the First Amendment, equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment, and also a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Now here's the thing. They weren't challenging the ordinance itself, but rather how it was enforced. So this is called a selective enforcement claim.

These two groups agreed that the defacement ordinance is constitutional. It's totally fine. But the argument was that one-sided enforcement of the ordinance is not constitutional. So this case is heard in front of the district court first, and the district court actually dismisses the lawsuit. And this was in 2021. Because what the district found was that the anti-abortion groups couldn't prove discriminatory intent by the D.C. government as is required by the Fifth Amendment. But then, you know, this case gets appealed to the appellate court and the appellate court says, well, no, discriminatory intent or purposeful discrimination is only required for

the Fifth Amendment equal protection claim, not the First Amendment claim. The First Amendment claim only requires that plaintiffs show that they were treated differently than similarly situated protesters. In other words, the analysis for the First Amendment claim was that the plaintiffs had to show that one, they were similarly situated in material respects to other individuals against whom the law was not enforced. And two, the selective enforcement infringed on a constitutional right. And the appellate court found that the plaintiffs satisfied both of these prongs. So in the end, the appellate court agreed with the district court that the plaintiffs couldn't allege intentional discrimination, and therefore they had no Fifth Amendment claim, but that the plaintiffs did plausibly allege the elements of

a free speech selective enforcement claim, and therefore this case could proceed on the First Amendment claim. So Fifth Amendment is knocked out, but First Amendment can go forward. In other words, this case should have never been dismissed. The unanimous ruling says in part, viewpoint discrimination violates the First Amendment regardless of the government's benign motive or lack of animus towards the ideas contained in the regulated speech, and that it is fundamental to our free speech that the government cannot pick and choose between speakers, not when regulating and not when enforcing the laws. It's worth noting that on appeal, the plaintiffs got rid of their claims based on the Free Exercise Clause, Free Association Clause, and Religious Freedom Restoration Act. So the only remaining

claims on appeal became the free speech claim and the Fifth Amendment equal protection claim. So what this ruling means is that the case will go back to the district court, it'll be revived from dismissal, and the case will continue to play out in accordance with the standard that was set forth from the appellate court. So now the district court will have to answer, did the D.C. police selectively enforce this defacement ordinance against the anti-abortion groups in violation of their First Amendment right to free speech? That'll be the question that has to be answered. Let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we will talk about Donald Trump's newest indictment. What was a 10-second break for you was a 10-hour break for me. Maybe not that long, but I flew across the country. I'm glad I took the break that I did because in the meantime,

Hunter Biden's tax charges were dismissed. So I want to talk about that and then we'll get into Donald Trump's indictment. In somewhat of an expected move, the federal judge overseeing Hunter Biden's case dismissed his tax charges on Thursday. But this doesn't mean he's off, right? So Special Counsel David Weiss, who was just appointed special counsel last week, actually moved to dismiss the charges last week. And his purpose in doing that was so, according to the filing, at least with the court, was so that new charges could potentially be brought in California or Washington, D.C. Hunter Biden's lawyers were on board with this because the charges were only brought in Delaware

as part of the plea deal, which we know has since fallen apart. The tax charges should have initially been brought in Washington, D.C. or California. Why? That is because proper venue for the tax charges is where the subject lives or where the tax return is prepared or filed, which meant that for the years at issue, it would have been in Washington, D.C. or California. Therefore, the charges should have been brought in one of those places. If you remember, when I spoke about the IRS whistleblower testimony, I talked about how the whistleblowers testified to the fact that Weiss presented charges to both the D.C. district and the Central California district, and both districts declined to bring charges. And then there were these

conflicting stories about whether Weiss had the authority to bring charges himself or not, right? So the whistleblower said that Weiss said he couldn't, whereas Attorney General Merrick Garland said that Weiss could have. But now that he's been appointed special counsel, it's not even a question. He does have the authority, and he likely will bring new charges just in a different jurisdiction, and he could even bring additional charges. Now, this dismissal sheds light on why David Weiss likely requested special counsel status last week, because he needed the authority to bring charges in another jurisdiction, continue on the investigation, etc., etc. So from here, Weiss will continue the investigation. He

will most likely bring new charges in either California or DC. And as I said, he could also end up bringing more charges because the whistleblowers did say in their testimony to Congress that they had initially recommended charging Biden with six felonies. And of course, we know he was charged with the two misdemeanor tax charges and the gun charge. As for the gun charge deal goes, remember there was that pretrial diversion that was going to be entered, but this whole thing kind of fell apart. Prosecutors say that the gun charge deal never went into effect because the probation officer never signed off on it and that was required. But Biden's lawyers

have a different take. They say that the deal is binding and it's still in effect and there's no issue. So the fate of that deal will be up to the judge to decide. It's not clear when she will decide that, but it is up to her. So that's what I wanted to cover as far as the tax charges. Now let's finally move on to Donald Trump's indictment. This indictment is 98 pages long. There are 41 counts, 19 defendants, and Donald Trump is facing 13 of those 41 counts. Before we dive in, let's discuss the big picture of the indictment. What the indictment alleges is that Donald Trump, 18 other defendants, and 30 plus unindicted individuals knowingly and willfully conspired together to change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. This discussion is going to focus solely on Trump's charges, no one else, no other defendants, just Trump, and what they mean under Georgia law. So as I mentioned, Trump is facing 13 counts.

Now I'm going to read you eight charges because there are eight different crimes, but some of these crimes have multiple counts. So we have a violation of Georgia's RICO Act, solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, conspiracy to commit filing false documents, filing false documents, and false statements and writings. Now, to give you kind of a very brief overview before we get into the details. The RICO Act is, you know, him working together with this group of people to try to turn the election in his favor.

The solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer pertains to conversations he had wherein he was trying to get Georgia officials to certify his electors and reject Biden's electors. The conspiracy charges, so conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer, conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, and conspiracy to commit filing false documents, all of those pertain to the elector slate, specifically making the documents, the writing in the documents, the sworn statements, submitting those documents to D.C., things of that nature. The filing of the false document charge pertains to a lawsuit

Trump filed challenging the election, and the false statements and writings pertain to certain conversations Donald Trump had with Georgia's Secretary of State. So I will get into those in a bit more detail, but I wanted to, that's the general gist. If you take anything away as far as this indictment goes, that's what you need to know in basically 60 seconds. So let's first talk about the RICO Act. The RICO Act covers organized crime. It stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. And what the RICO Act says, in the simplest of terms, is that it's illegal for any person to be involved with an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering. So racketeering is fraudulent or dishonest business dealings. An enterprise is any organization or group

or association that uses its base for criminal activity. This could be a legal entity, it could not be a legal entity, it could be a corporation, it could be a highly organized group of people, or it could be a very loosely organized group of people. Any group of people or association that uses its base for criminal activity. Stated another way, it's illegal for any person to take part in a group or association which commits patterns of crime. Knowing that definition, the indictment alleges that Donald Trump and these 18 other co-defendants did exactly that and violated the RICO Act. Remember, as we just talked about, to be in violation of the RICO Act, there must be a pattern of crimes. For this reason, the indictment sets forth multiple alleged crimes that were committed in furtherance of this one

goal, which was to keep Donald Trump in office. Now, these crimes range from false statements to legislators, to false statements to high-ranking officials, to the creation and distribution of false electoral college documents, the harassment of Ruby Freeman, who is an election worker, the list goes on. In fact, there are 161 total acts set forth in the indictment in which the district attorney is saying all of these acts show this pattern of criminal activity in violation of the RICO Act. Keep in mind, though, that not all of these acts, not all of the 161 acts are considered crimes. Rather, they're there to show a pattern because the RICO Act requires it. So as an example, tweets, tweets that Donald Trump wrote. Tweets in and of itself we know is not illegal. You can say whatever you want on Twitter, but they're in there to show a pattern. Same with there are alleged crimes that

took place outside of Georgia's jurisdiction. Obviously, Georgia can't prosecute these things, but again, they're in the indictment to show a pattern. So that is the RICO Act, a group of people working together in this enterprise committing a pattern of crimes to achieve a goal. Now let's move into solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer. There are three counts of this. What you need to know is that each of these three counts pertain to a different conversation that Trump had with Georgia's Secretary of State. And what solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer is, is exactly what it sounds like. A person commits this offense when they ask a

public officer to engage in conduct that violates that public officer's oath that they took when they took office. So the three instances that are listed in each particular count are as follows. The first one is on December 7, 2020, Trump solicited Georgia's Speaker of the House to call for a special session of the Georgia General Assembly for the purpose of appointing presidential electors. The second instance was on January 2nd, 2021, when Trump and Mark Meadows called the Georgia Secretary of State and that this is the call that we know of where he's asking to find 11,780 votes. So then we go on to the third instance, and that's on September 17th, 2021, when Trump asked Georgia Secretary of State to, quote, decertify the election or whatever the

correct legal remedy is and announce the true winner. So those are the three different instances in which the indictment says Trump solicited a violation of oath by a public officer. Moving on to the next charge, conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer. This pertains to Trump and six other named co-defendants basically saying that their slate of electors were duly elected and qualified electors. And what Georgia is saying is that this was done with the intent to mislead. These electors were not duly elected, they were not qualified, and therefore these defendants committed conspiracy to commit impersonating

a public officer. Now the next three charges kind of go together and I talked about it a little bit. So conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree, conspiracy to commit false statements and writings, and conspiracy to commit filing false documents are all related to two particular documents that the electors used and sent to DC. So one of those was titled Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Georgia. The other document was titled Notice of Filing of Electoral College Vacancy. And basically, the conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree pertains to the act of making these documents, whereas the conspiracy to commit false statements in writings pertains to the act of making these documents, whereas the conspiracy to commit false statements

and writings pertains to the actual statements within the documents that were sworn to. And then conspiracy to commit filing false documents is the filing of the document, sending them to DC. So these three charges are related to the same instance of this slate of electors meeting and swearing off and sending it to DC. So those are those three charges. Now we have two more. So filing false documents, this pertains to a lawsuit that Trump filed in Georgia challenging the election at the very end of 2020, last day of December. And what this says is that Trump made false statements in filing this document with the court, and therefore he committed filing false documents. So some of the statements that were made in the lawsuit that the district attorney says were false were as follows.

At least 66,000 underage people voted illegally in the election. At least 2,400 unregistered voters voted illegally in the election. And as many as 10,000 dead people voted in the election. At least 2,400 unregistered voters voted illegally in the election, and as many as 10,000 dead people voted in the election. And there were a few statements just like this, but again, the district attorney says these were false, and you cannot file a false statement with the court. Now moving on to the last charge, false statements and writings. There are two counts of false statements and writings, and each count stems from a different conversation Trump had with Georgia officials. So one of the counts stems from a conversation Trump had on January 2nd, 2021. It was a phone call with Georgia officials

and he made various statements and claims. I'll go over a few, but basically the DA is saying these were false statements. So some of these statements included anywhere from 250,000 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls. Thousands of people attempted to vote, but they were told they couldn't because a ballot had already been cast in their name. 139% of people voted in the election in Detroit, Ruby Freeman stuffed the ballot boxes, etc. There are, I want to say, like 15 statements that were made on this one phone call that the DA says were false or fraudulent statements. And the last count stems

from a phone call on September 17th, 2021 to Georgia Secretary of State. It's one statement and it says, quote, as stated to you previously, the number of false and or irregular votes is far greater than needed to change the Georgia election result, end quote. And again, the DA is saying this was a false or fraudulent statement and therefore in violation of law. Now, those are his charges, but I just want to note a few things before we conclude this conversation. One, a lot of these charges include elements like, you know, the intent to defraud is required or the intent to mislead is required or Trump had to act knowingly or willfully, etc. That means that the Georgia prosecutor will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these elements existed, that he acted knowingly, that he acted

willfully, that he acted with an intent to defraud or mislead, etc. Because of this, Trump will likely defend the charges by arguing, one, he's protected by his right to free speech, and two, he had genuine concerns about voter fraud. This was done in good faith. And we know this because his attorneys talked about his defenses following the federal indictment, and the two indictments are relatively similar. They're obviously not identical, but they do have similarities. Now, this case, like the federal case, will hinge on whether Trump knew he was breaking the law. So one federal prosecutor who is not a part of this case, but made a good analogy, and she put it like this. She said, if you believe money in someone else's bank account is rightfully

yours, that doesn't mean that you can embezzle it, right? Because you know you can't just go into someone else's bank account and take their money. that's illegal, just because you believe you're entitled to the money. So if we compare that to this case, just because Trump felt he was rightfully the, you know, the winner of the election, as long as he knew he was violating laws, that's what this case is going to hinge on. Prosecutors are wanting this trial to start March 4th of 2024. The state is obviously mid-campaign, but it also happens to be one day before Super Tuesday, which is the day that many of the states hold their primary elections. So it's definitely a strategy, but in all of these cases, we'll see strategy both from the prosecutors and the defense.

One final thing I want to mention is that I've had people ask me how long I think he'll spend in jail or if I think he'll go to jail at all, and I obviously have no way of knowing for sure, but if I had to guess, he won't spend a day in jail. I can't see a situation in which the former president of the United States goes to jail. There's just too much at risk. He would have to have secret service with him all the time. There's just too much. I don't see it happening, but I have no problem eating my words if it does happen. So hopefully that answers the question. I don't see it happening, but it could. So that is Donald Trump's indictment. That is everything you need to know. And that also concludes this episode. I hope you have a great weekend and I will talk to you on Tuesday.