UNBIASED - June 12, 2024: House to Vote on AG Garland's Contempt Resolution, ICE Arrests Migrants After FBI Shows Connections to ISIS, Judge Strikes Down Biden's New Title IX Guidance, and More

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

1. ICE Arrests Eight Migrants After FBI Shows Connections to ISIS (0:49)2. House to Vote on AG Garland's Contempt Resolution for Refusing to Turn Over Biden's Interview Tapes (2:41)2. Quick Hitters: Biden Administration's New Rule to Ban Medical Debt from Credit Reports, Texas Judge Strikes Down Biden's New Title IX Guidance, Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady Following May Annual Inflation Numbers, Musk Withdraws Lawsuit Against OpenAI (7:27)Show your support for UNBIASED on Patreon.Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Wednesday, June 12th, and this is your daily news rundown. Today's episode is a little shorter. I'm hoping we even get past 10 minutes, but it's okay because yesterday's episode made up for the slow news day that was today, and tomorrow we have more Supreme Court opinions. So there will be enough to cover tomorrow. So I'm okay with today being short. And I hope you are too. If you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides, please leave me a review on whatever

platform you listen. If you're watching on YouTube, hit that like button or thumbs up button, share the show with your friends. All of those things really help me out and only take about two seconds of your time. So thank you very much. And without further ado, let's get into today's stories. Starting with a story that broke yesterday, ICE, which is the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arrested eight men here in the United States with potential ties to ISIS, though they weren't arrested on terrorism charges, but rather immigration charges. So we don't really have many details about their ISIS connections. One source that is familiar with the situation said that some of those people that were arrested are believed to have engaged in extremist rhetoric, but it's

unclear whether the other people did the same or were arrested simply because they were associated to the others. We just don't know. These men who are originally from Central Asia were arrested in Philadelphia, New York, and LA and came to the United States through the southern border. Timing wise, we know that at least two of the men crossed the border in the spring of last year. We also know that one of the men used the federal CBP One app to actually schedule one of the lawful appointments for asylum at the border. But according to the information that we currently have, when the men crossed the border, their criminal background checks came back clean. So they were let in.

But in the last several months, the men made it onto the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force radar after the FBI was investigating a potential terrorist threat in Central Europe. Since then, the FBI says that it's been monitoring the men, keeping close tabs on the men, but ultimately the FBI decided to alert ICE as to the potential ties to ISIS to have them arrested on immigration charges. Now that may have been because there wasn't enough to arrest them on terrorism related charges, but, that may have been because there wasn't enough to arrest them on terrorism-related charges, but the FBI may have still wanted them detained for security purposes, so that's why they handed it over to ICE. We don't really know for sure. Currently,

the men are detained and will now appear for removal proceedings before an immigration judge. In some news from today, the House is set to hold a vote on a contempt resolution against Attorney General Merrick Garland. As of 3.15 p.m., they have not yet held that vote, but they should by the end of the day. So a little bit of background here. You probably remember when Special Counsel Herr looked into Biden's handling of classified documents and ultimately recommended against prosecuting Biden. Well, in his report, he laid out certain instances from his interview with the president that he felt contributed to why the president shouldn't be prosecuted. Because remember, what special counsel Hurst said in his report was that although there

was evidence of willful retention of classified documents and therefore evidence that President Biden broke the law. Herr was not recommending prosecution because he didn't think that the prosecution would be able to prove willful retention beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore obtain a conviction. And Herr's reasoning was like, look, you could bring this in front of a jury because there is evidence in favor of prosecuting. But if you do, just be aware that significant reasonable doubt may exist in the minds of the jury, which would then lead to an acquittal and therefore be a waste of time, money, resources, etc., etc. Because Herr's recommendation is not the end-all be-all, right? It doesn't matter what Herr recommends. The DOJ can still

prosecute or not prosecute regardless of what Herr's recommendation is. Herr's report was just that, a recommendation. But the DOJ can then decide to prosecute if it wants to, despite Herr recommending against a prosecution. But anyway, the examples of reasonable doubt that Herr cited to in his report were where the documents were found when they were found, i.e. in President Biden's garage amongst piles of junk, and also his age and memory. Because this kind of speaks to maybe he forgot about the documents. Maybe a jury would find that his retention wasn't willful or deliberate because of his memory issues. So that's what Herr was saying in his report. And to illustrate

these memory issues, Herr referenced specific incidents in his interview with Biden where Biden seemingly forgot, one, the year that his son Beau had died, two, he had trouble remembering what years he served as vice president, so things like that. Following the release of the report, the House Rules Committee requested a transcript of that interview, and the DOJ subsequently released it. But then the committee was like, well, we need the audio too, because you can only get so much from the written transcript. The audio will provide us with a lot more context. But Biden then went and asserted executive privilege over the audio. And because of that, Attorney General

Garland did not turn it over to Congress. Now, the world of executive privilege is complex. It's not cut and dry, and it wouldn't be right to say either President Biden doesn't have the power to assert executive privilege over the audio, or he does. The truth is, when it comes to Congress requesting documents from the executive branch and the president asserting executive privilege over those documents, it's a gray area. In fact, the Supreme Court has actively shied away from this exact issue. So we can't say for sure whether executive privilege extends to these documents that are held by the executive branch that are requested by Congress.

But that aside, because Attorney General Garland would not turn over the audio, House Republicans moved to hold him in contempt. And contempt is, of course, when you don't comply with congressional orders. The resolution first started within the Rules Committee, who advanced it to a floor vote yesterday and a 9-4 vote. Today, the House voted in a narrow 208 to 27 vote to bring the resolution to a full vote, meaning they'll debate on it and have an actual vote. It's not clear at this time if it'll pass, especially given how narrow the vote was earlier to even get it to a vote. But just so you're set up either way, if it is passed, Attorney General Garland would be held in contempt of Congress, and the passage would direct Speaker Johnson to refer the case to the United States Attorney for D.C. From there, the United States Attorney can decide to prosecute.

They don't have to. They can. And if they do, Garland could face jail time, but likely would not. We have seen other officials face jail time for contempt, like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro more recently, but this situation is a lot different given that executive privilege, specifically in this context, lies within a huge gray area. If the resolution doesn't pass, then Garland goes on his merry way. The House can always try again later, but it would sort of just kill the issue for now. So those were the two stories I have for you today. And now we'll finish with some quick hitters. I meant to include this one in yesterday's episode. Somehow it didn't make it in. So here it is today. The Biden administration proposed a new rule, which has

been in the works since September, but would ban medical debt from all credit reports. There are certain major credit reporting companies like Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. These sort of companies have already stopped using medical debt to calculate people's credit, but what this rule would do is extend that practice to all credit reporting in the United States. Another quick hitter from yesterday, a judge in Texas ruled that the Biden administration improperly attempted to rewrite federal law barring sex discrimination in schools by applying it to LGBTQ students. You likely remember when the Biden administration issued that new guidance just a couple of months ago that extended Title IX protections to gender identity and sexual orientation. But following that guidance, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued, and he argued that the administration had exceeded its authority in issuing that guidance, and yesterday the Texas court agreed. However, the administration will almost certainly appeal that decision.

Consumer prices rose 3.3% in May compared to a year ago. We found this out today. It is below economists' expectations, and it is a slight decrease from the annual inflation rate of 3.4% recorded in April. Following this data release, the Fed announced it would again keep interest rates steady at approximately 5.5%, and also seemingly signaled only one potential rate cut this year, despite expecting more at the beginning of the year. And finally, Elon Musk has filed to dismiss his own lawsuit against OpenAI, which was filed in February. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015, but ultimately left the board in 2018. His recently filed lawsuit alleged that OpenAI had abandoned its original mission

of developing AI for the benefit of humanity rather than financial profit. Musk's filing, though, did not give a reason for withdrawing his lawsuit. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being with me here today, even on a slow day in the news. Tomorrow should be a bit more exciting. And of course, we do have even more Supreme Court decisions on Friday. I don't do podcast episodes on Friday, but if anything crazy happens, I will certainly do a special report. So we'll see what happens with that. I hope you have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.