UNBIASED - June 5, 2024: Presidential Proclamation Correction, Biden's Border Proclamation vs. Trump's, Jury Member Bribed With $120,000, House Votes on ICC Sanctions, and More.

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

1. Biden Issues Border *Proclamation*, Not Executive Order; Here's the Difference; and How Biden's Proclamation Compares to Trump's 2019 Border Proclamation (0:48)2. House Passes Bill to Sanction International Criminal Court and Others Amid Arrest Warrant Request for Israeli PM Netanyahu (7:26)3. Jury Member in Largest Pandemic Fraud Scheme Trial Receives $120,000 Bribe on Doorstep (9:04)4. Quick Hitters: Boeing's Starliner Successfully Launches After Years of Delays, Pro-Palestine Protesters Arrested After Entering University President's Office, NYC Indefinitely Delays 'Congestion Pricing' Plan, Trump Requests Lift of Gag Order in Hush Money Case (12:04)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 5th, and this is your daily news rundown. As your reminder, my news cycle ends at 3 p.m. each day, just so I have time to get this episode out to you before the end of the workday. But what that means is that any major story that breaks after 3 p.m. will be on the following day's episode. So just keep that in mind.

Of course, if you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides and you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen, share the show with your friends. And if you're watching on YouTube, please just go ahead and hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel if you're not already. All of those things take under a minute and really help me out. So thank you very much. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. We have to start this episode by making a small correction to yesterday's episode. In yesterday's episode, I covered President Biden's executive action

to restrict illegal entries at the border. But I was referring to the action as an executive order, and I was calling it an executive order for a couple of reasons. First, because that's what all the news outlets are calling it. Second, because in my experience with executive orders, they're not immediately available for review, so the administration may announce it, but you may have to wait a day or two to actually access the document. So given that, I just took these news reports at face value, something I know is a risky game to play. The reality is the action that President Biden took yesterday was a presidential proclamation, not an executive order.

And look, there's really not a huge distinction between the two, but I do want to make sure you have your facts straight because that's what I'm all about. A presidential proclamation and an executive order differ in a couple of ways. They can be very similar, but they can also differ. First, an executive order has the force of law, and it directs other executive agencies to carry out certain tasks in accordance with federal law. A presidential proclamation, on the other hand, can have the force of law, but not always, and truthfully, most of the time they don't. And proclamations either direct executive agencies or individual private citizens to do

something or refrain from doing something, but it's more so based on policy and not existing law. Presidential proclamations are usually used for celebrating days or celebrating weeks, proclaiming a national holiday, things like that. That's what they're most known for, but they can also have substantial legal weight. As I said, in some instances, they can have the force of law, which makes them not that much different than executive orders. Take the Emancipation Proclamation, for instance, one of the most, if not the most, famous proclamation in United States history. What the Emancipation Proclamation did is it directed the executive government, which included the military, to recognize and maintain the freedom of slaves. It didn't

necessarily free the slaves as much as it told the government it had to recognize enslaved people as free. It also told the military that it had to accept enslaved people that were in suitable condition into the military. So it more so directed the government to treat those people as free, but it wasn't a law in and of itself, nor was it based on some other federal law like an executive order would be. It simply was an order to the executive branches of the government to treat enslaved people as free. And then of course, following the Emancipation Proclamation is when the 13th Amendment was enacted. But this just goes to show that some proclamations, not most, but some, can have substantial weight and meaning. Another example, and a more recent example, was in 2019 when Trump issued a proclamation called Addressing Mass Migration Through the Southern Border of the United States.

And that proclamation from Trump is actually very, very similar to Biden's border proclamation he announced yesterday. The only real difference between Trump's and Biden's is that Biden's allows for more exceptions. So Biden's doesn't apply to unac more exceptions. So Biden's doesn't apply to unaccompanied children. It doesn't apply to those fleeing persecution. But the two are very similar in that they rest on the same statutory authority, specifically sections 212F and 215A of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Notably, a federal court ended up blocking Trump from enforcing his ban after the ACLU challenged it. And the ACLU has also said they'll be challenging Biden's ban. So we'll see what happens with that.

But speaking a little more to the similarities between the two, Biden's proclamation actually says verbatim what Trump's proclamation says. Both say, quote, now, therefore, I, president of the United States by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including Sections 212F and 215A of the Immigration and Nationality Act and, the entry into the United States of persons described in Section 1 of this proclamation under circumstances described in Section 2 of this proclamation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and that their entry should be subject to certain restrictions, limitations, and exceptions. I therefore hereby proclaim the following, end quote. And it goes on

to, you know, talk about the actual substance of the proclamation. But as I was saying before, proclamations direct other agencies to take action. So in both Trump and Biden's proclamations, the DHS and Secretary of State were put to work in establishing the limitations on asylum eligibility and allowing for expedited removal for those who don't have a legal basis to be in the country. The DHS issued their interim final rule yesterday following Biden's proclamation announcement. Now, you might be wondering why would Biden issue this proclamation if Trump's very similar proclamation was struck down by a federal court? Well, one reason may be that even though there's a chance that this gets struck down just like

Trump's did, it shows that he's working on the border, which is a big issue in the upcoming election. Another reason is that maybe he feels that his proclamation has a better chance at passing judicial review since his proclamation allows for more exceptions than Trump's did. And that's also a possibility. But regardless, as with anything, we're going to have to see how this plays out within the courts. So that is the deal with the proclamation. I just wanted to clear up any confusion because I honestly don't know why it was and still is being reported as an executive order. Yes, executive orders and proclamations are very similar in that they both direct executive agencies to carry out certain tasks, but they're also different enough to where the distinction

should have been made. Again, executive orders typically direct other agencies as to how to carry out existing federal law, whereas proclamations, when they do direct agencies to do something, it's more so in accordance with policy set forth in the proclamation rather than existing federal law. So now you know, and hopefully that clears up any confusion, and now we can move on to a story out of Congress. The House voted yesterday in a 247 to 155 vote to sanction the International Criminal Court in light of its consideration of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Remember, the International Criminal Court prosecutor just a couple of weeks ago requested

arrest warrants for not only Prime Minister Netanyahu, but also another Israeli official and three Hamas leaders. The panel of judges at the ICC has yet to rule on these requests, but in light of that request, some lawmakers here in the United States took issue with the Israeli government officials and Hamas leaders being treated as equal. So consequently, the House introduced this bill that would impose sanctions on any person, quote, engaged in any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies, end quote. And those sanctions could include things like prohibiting, you know,

property transactions here in the United States, could include blocking visas, revoking visas, things of that nature. And it would apply not only to those at the ICC trying to investigate and prosecute, but also any member countries that were to make an arrest if the arrest warrants were issued. And given that that language only applies to protected people of the United States and its allies, it would not, you know, it would not extend to the Hamas leaders, just Netanyahu and the other Israeli official. Most important to this conversation, though, this bill will likely die in the House, meaning the Senate probably won't take it up. And so nothing's going to happen with it, but it's worth mentioning nonetheless. The next story is an interesting story related to a federal jury bribe. It's not necessarily a story from today.

It's from earlier this week on Monday. So currently ongoing is a federal trial for what prosecutors call the largest pandemic relief fraud scheme to date. Seven people are currently on trial for allegedly taking part in this $250 million fraud scheme through the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future. The nonprofit allegedly exploited funds from a federal child nutrition program during the pandemic to purchase personal items like cars, jewelry, travel, houses, things like that. Prosecutors have said that the seven individuals currently on trial stole more than $40 million and cost taxpayers an

estimated $250 million. Now, just as a side note, there are 70 defendants in total that allegedly took part in this scheme, but these are the first seven to go to trial. However, the more interesting storyline here, the more recent storyline, is that court documents now show that a juror in the case said she was given $120,000 in cash to acquit the defendants. The cash bribe was allegedly delivered to her house on Sunday, just a day before closing arguments were set to conclude on Monday. The story goes that this random woman showed up at the home of one of the jurors just before 9 p.m. on Sunday to make this delivery. It was a gift bag. Now, the juror wasn't home at the time, but a relative of the juror answered the door, and that's when this random woman handed the juror's relative a gift bag saying it was a present for the juror,

calling the juror by name, and told the relative to tell the juror to issue a not guilty verdict on Monday, and more cash would come. When the relative looked at the bag, there was a ton of cash. It ended up being roughly $120,000. So once the juror got home, she immediately called 911. The police came out, they took pictures, and they ended up turning the cash over to the FBI on Monday. Now, as of now, all seven defendants have had to turn

over their cell phones to the FBI. The FBI still has their phones. All seven defendants were ordered into custody while the FBI investigates the situation and ultimately tries to figure out who's responsible or at least who conspired with this random woman that delivered the cash. Whoever is responsible could face charges of bribery of a juror or influencing a juror, maybe both. Those would carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. As far as court proceedings go, the juror at issue, the juror that was given the cash, was dismissed on Monday, and the judge ordered the jurors to be sequestered for deliberations. Then a second juror was dismissed on Tuesday because the second juror called a family member to tell the family member that they had been sequestered and the

family member responded, is it because of the bribe? So the second juror ends up getting replaced with an alternate and now the jury is currently in deliberations. What a story. Now, let's finish with some quick hitters. First, Boeing finally successfully launched Starliner, a spacecraft it's been attempting to launch for weeks now. Well, really years if you look at the whole history of the launch. But after many, many setbacks, the two astronauts were able to make their way to space today. At this point, it's about 3 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. The astronauts still have about 20 hours left of travel time before they get to the International Space Station. In an update to the on-campus protests, which we haven't really heard much

about recently given that students are on summer break, but today roughly 10 pro-Palestine protesters began occupying the building of Stanford University, which houses the offices of the university's president and the university's provost. At least one student spilled what is being reported as fake blood on the desk of the president as the students were demanding divestment, transparency, amnesty, all these things that we've seen in these protests. But about two hours after the protest started, the building was cleared. 13 people had been arrested, though the university said that extensive damage was done inside the building. The third quick hitter is that New York City's governor is indefinitely postponing congestion pricing. Congestion pricing was supposed to take effect at the end of this month and charge a $15 toll for cars driving south of 60th Street between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m.

on weekdays. According to sources, the two reasons for the delay are economic and political. Apparently, the governor is worried that one, Manhattan businesses have not fully recovered from the pandemic, and two, that Democrats are facing difficult house races in the suburbs of New York City where the congestion plan is unpopular. And finally, the last quick hitter, Trump asked for his gag order to be lifted in the Hush Money case, arguing that the conclusion of trial meant that the gag order was no longer necessary. DA Bragg filed his own motion opposing Trump's request, arguing that the judge's gag order wasn't only put in place to

protect the fairness of trial, but also based on the court's obligation to prevent harm to the integrity of the proceedings, to protect the orderly administration of the court, and to avoid risks to the administration of justice. So for those reasons, Bragg argued that it shouldn't matter that this trial is over. There is still a need for the gag order to be in place. Bragg said the order should remain in place until at least sentencing is over, but he recommends through the resolution of any post-trial motions as well. The judge has not yet ruled on that as of now. That could change by the end of the day, but as of now, 3 p.m., the judge has not ruled. That is what I have for you

today. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a fantastic night, and I will talk to you tomorrow for the final news recap of the week.