UNBIASED - May 20, 2024: Arrest Warrants Sought for Israeli Prime Minister and Hamas Leader, Supreme Court Won't Intervene in Transgender School Policy Debate, Michael Cohen Finishes Cross-Examination, and More.

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

1. Weekend Recap: David DePape Sentenced, Blue Origin Takes Commercial Flight, Iranian President Dies in Helicopter Crash (2:16)2. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Seeks Arrest Warrants for Israeli PM, Hamas Leader, and Others (5:34)3. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case Over Maryland School District Transgender Policy (9:06)4. Trump's Attorney Finishes Cross-Examination of Michael Cohen (11:13)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news! Use this link to register for LEXSummit and use code JORDANISMYLAWYER for 15% off your already discounted ticket! 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 Monday, May 20th, and this is your daily news rundown. The past five days or so have felt a little bit like a blur. I haven't really posted to social media much either, so I just kind of wanted to give you a little bit of an update before we get into today's episode and today's stories. In case you missed it, I released a new episode last Thursday all about the presidential election here in the United States. So I talk about the history of the election, what the modern day election cycle

looks like, and I also throw in a bunch of fun facts as well because that's personally my favorite part. It's super informative, and I just felt like it's the perfect time to release the episode because, you know, we have less than six months until the election. So there's no better time than right now to be informed and learn all about it. So if you haven't listened to that, that was Thursday's episode. Second, as I said, I haven't really posted much on social media in the last few days. The one post that I did share was about Lex Summit, which is the event I'm speaking at in September, and it's also the sponsor of today's episode. Lex Summit is a multi-day conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, for legal professionals to

learn from some of the brightest legal minds in the industry. At Lex Summit, you'll immerse yourself in cutting-edge AI solutions tailored to your firm, so that way, once you're done with the summit, you return to work and you are ready to take your firm to the next level. Perhaps the best part about it is that you can earn CLE credits while you're there. Us lawyers know that is definitely a perk. So I have a specialized link for you in this episode description where you can purchase your ticket, but be sure to also use the code JordanIsMyLawyer, all one word, when you check out because you'll get an additional 15% off the already discounted early bird pricing. This will save you about $400 off of your ticket. So again, use the link in this episode description. Use code JordanIsMyLawyer for an

additional 15% off. You're not going to want to miss this event. And now without further ado, let's get into today's stories, starting with a little weekend recap. On Friday, the man who broke into Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco home in October 2022 and attacked her husband with a hammer was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his federal charges. David DePapp also has a separate pending trial for his state charges. Moving on to Sunday, Blue Origin, the space tourism company led by Jeff Bezos, successfully carried six passengers just past the edge of space, marking its first successful crewed launch since its rockets were grounded over safety concerns two years ago. In total, the whole journey lasts about 10 minutes.

The crew rides up in a reusable rocket until the rocket reaches about 62 miles above the Earth's surface, and then it parachutes back down. The crew consisted of a French entrepreneur, a software engineer, an Indian pilot, an investor, a retired accountant, and a former Air Force captain. That Air Force captain, his name is Ed Dwight, he also became the oldest person to enter space at 90 years old. And finally, and perhaps the biggest news of the weekend, Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi died yesterday after the helicopter he was traveling in crashed in the mountains of northern Iran and left no survivors. Rayesi was traveling back from Azerbaijan when the helicopter went

down. Rayesi was a conservative elected in 2021 after decades on Iran's judiciary. Following his election, the country saw lots of nationwide anti-government protests due in large part to an increased enforcement of Iran's hijab and chastity law during his reign. Rayesi had previously been sanctioned by the United States in 2019 before his election, after the Treasury Department accused him of participating in decades of human rights violations, including the execution of children, imprisonment of prominent human rights lawyers, and executions of thousands of political prisoners while he was on the judiciary. Rayessi was also a vocal critic of Israel's war in Gaza. Following Hamas's October 7th attack, he said the Palestinian people and military should be

congratulated for their victory in standing up against what he called the fake Zionist regime. He called the attack a manifestation of resistance. Raisi's government also normalized diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and strengthened ties with countries like Russia and China when Iran joined BRICS. and Raisi was also a possible successor to Iran's supreme leader. Iran's military chief has ordered a probe into the cause of the crash, and former Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has blamed the United States sanctions, at least partially, for the crash, saying in part, quote, one of the main culprits of yesterday's tragedy is the United States, which embargoed the sale

of aircraft and aviation parts to Iran and does not allow the people of Iran to enjoy good aviation facilities. This will be recorded in the list of U.S. crimes against the Iranian people. Regardless of who's at fault, though, for now, Iran's first vice president, Mohammad Makbar, is Iran's acting president, and Iran will have 50 days to hold a new election. That takes us into the news from today. The International Criminal Court prosecutor announced his request for arrest warrants for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and three others on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. So what does it mean? Well, before we get into the role of the ICC and the facts surrounding this particular case,

one thing that's important to note, and I said this before when I reported on the UN ceasefire resolution months ago, even though that's a completely different subject matter, and I said this before when I reported on the UN ceasefire resolution months ago, even though that's a completely different subject matter, the ICC has no enforcement power. What do I mean by that? The ICC, let's say in this case, if it does issue the arrest warrants, it relies on cooperation from member states to enforce its decisions. So if the court does ultimately grant the prosecutor's request and issue these arrest warrants, any member country to the ICC would have to arrest those people and then extradite them to the Hague where the ICC is located. This would obviously pose some

difficulties for these leaders to travel internationally if the warrants are ultimately issued, but all of this to say that the ICC itself can't make arrests. It has no enforcement power itself. A couple of other things about the ICC worth mentioning. One, the ICC is unaffiliated with the UN. So Israel and the United States are actually not even members of the ICC. There are 124 countries that are members, but countries like Israel, the United States, Russia, China, India, Iraq, Yemen, Qatar, and Libya are among the countries that are not.

The second thing worth mentioning about the ICC, or I guess I should say the difference between the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court, what I've been calling the ICC, is a court that brings cases against individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity. This is different than the International Court of Justice, which is part of the UN and considers cases that involve countries and nations as a whole. So in this story, we're talking about the ICC, not the ICJ. Procedurally speaking, here's what happens when it comes to requests for arrest warrants in the ICC. If the ICC prosecutor reasonably believes that war crimes have been committed, as he does here, he can request an arrest warrant from a

pretrial panel of three judges. Those three judges will then take a couple of months, it could be less, it could be more, to consider the evidence before them and decide whether to grant or deny the request. If the arrest warrants are issued, that's when the obligation to actually make those arrests would fall on the countries that are members of the ICC. And then the arresting country would have to extradite to The Hague, which is where the ICC is located. When it comes to this request specifically, though, Prosecutor Khan has accused Netanyahu and Israel's defense minister of various crimes that include starvation of civilians as a method

of warfare, willfully causing great suffering, serious injury to body or health, or cruel treatment, willful killing or murder, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, extermination and or murder, and persecution. The charges against Sinwar and two other Hamas leaders include extermination and or murder, taking of hostages, rape, and sexual assault in detention. So that's a little bit about the ICC and the request for arrest warrants. But now let's move on to some news out of the Supreme Court today, which is that this morning the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from three parents over a school policy which prohibits school staff from informing parents of their children's sexual orientation changes. The three parents

sued in 2020 over a Maryland school policy that directs school staff to help transgender students create a plan that addresses their preferred pronouns, names, and bathroom usage and bars staff from informing parents of those plans without a student's consent. The parents brought this lawsuit in a Maryland district court, arguing that the policy violated their due process rights under the 14th Amendment to direct the care of their children. The district court dismissed the case in 2022. The parents appealed. And then last year in 2023, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals

upheld the district court's dismissal, finding that even though the parents had raised some compelling arguments, they lacked the requisite standing to pursue their claims. So part of the court's rationale was based on the lack of allegations that the children of these particular parents are transgender or have any gender identity issues or quote-unquote gender support plans. Because remember, to have standing to bring a lawsuit, you have to be able to show some sort of injury. If you're not one of the affected parents in this case, meaning you haven't been injured by the school policy in any way, then you don't have the requisite standing to sue. And that's ultimately what the appeals court said. So then the parents end up appealing to the Supreme Court, and they argued that the Fourth

Circuit had misread the Supreme Court's precedent on legal standing. The parents asked the justices to not only decide whether they did in fact have standing, but also to decide whether the school policy violates their parental rights. But today, as we know, the justices declined to get involved. So that takes us to our last story, which is the cross-examination of Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen. It finished today in Trump's hush money trial. And here's a quick summary of what you should know. As I've said before, when reporting on Cohen's testimony, the strategy of the defense is to cast doubt on Cohen's

credibility. This is because if they can convince the jury to doubt Cohen's credibility enough, the jury may not find his incriminating testimony credible, and that incriminating testimony is pretty much the foundation of the state's charges against Trump. In other words, Cohen is the only one who knows about the conversations between him and Trump about this alleged agreement to pay off Stormy Daniels, to hide the story about Trump's alleged affair, and therefore better his odds in the 2016 election. And that's exactly what Cohen testified about when the prosecution called him as a witness last week. But if the defense can make Cohen out to be a liar, the jury may not take his testimony at face value and therefore may acquit Trump based on reasonable doubt.

Because also remember, the prosecution has to prove their charges against Trump beyond a reasonable doubt. If there's reasonable doubt, the jury must acquit. So last week after the prosecutor called Cohen to the stand and Cohen testified about the allegations against Trump, it was then time for a cross-examination. And that's basically where Trump's team gets their turn at questioning Michael Cohen. And because they're really trying to cast doubt on Cohen's credibility, Trump's team focused specifically on the 2018 charges Cohen faced for lying to Congress about conversations he had with Trump. But today, on the final day of Cohen's cross-examination, Trump's team focused on Cohen's financial interests in the case, the amount of money

Cohen has made from talking about the case, that Cohen is willing to lie out of loyalty, that Cohen previously told people and reporters that Trump didn't know about the payment to Stormy Daniels, but now has changed his story, and how Cohen stole money from the Trump organization. But that last piece was arguably the most surprising piece of testimony from the day, and that's because the prosecution didn't bring it up previously on direct examination. So last week, the prosecution's strategy with Cohen was obviously to get all of his testimony out about these conversations he had with Trump and, you know, the agreements that were in place between the two of them, but also to get ahead of these credibility attacks that the prosecution knew the defense was going to come with. And that's simply just to ease the blow

for the jury. It's not so surprising for the jury when the jury first hears about it, you know, about Cohen's credibility issues from the prosecution. But here, the reason it was surprising is because the prosecution made no mention of the money that Cohen took from the Trump organization. And that might have also been a strategy from the prosecution, or maybe the prosecution didn't even know about it. But regardless, when the defense brought it up today, it came as a surprise. So here's what Cohen testified to. He said that Trump made a $420,000 payment to him. And according to him, the payment broke down to $130,000 to reimburse him for the hush money payment to

Daniels, $180,000 to account for estimated taxes, a $60,000 annual bonus, and $50,000 for a company called Redfinch. Now, Redfinch is a technology company that Cohen said he hired to boost Trump's name in a CNBC poll that asked who the most famous businessmen were in the last century. Cohen and Redfinch agreed that Redfinch would boost the algorithm and put Trump in 10th place, but when CNBC canceled the poll altogether and it never ran, Trump allegedly didn't want to pay Redfinch for its work. So when Cohen was paid the $420,000, Cohen was supposed to take $50,000 of that money and pay Redfinch to settle the dispute. But Cohen testified today that he only paid Redfinch $20,000 and he kept $30,000 for himself because he was upset that Trump shorted him on his annual bonus.

He only got $60,000 as his annual bonus that year. He was used to getting closer to $150,000. And according to his testimony, him keeping that $30,000 was almost like self-help. And the reason this was important to the defense is, again, because it speaks to Cohen's character and credibility. So once cross-examination ended, it was then time for the prosecution to redirect Cohen. This is basically the prosecution's opportunity to rehabilitate Cohen for anything injurious that he may have said on cross-examination and sort of win back his credibility with the jury. So the prosecutor essentially touched on most of the points that the defense made

during cross and asked Cohen to clarify these points, including the $30,000 that Cohen kept, which Cohen just said that he knows it was the wrong thing to do. And by the way, if you're interested in hearing about the key points from direct examination last week, in other words, the questions the prosecution asked Michael Cohen, just so you can get a better picture of the full scope of the testimony, go ahead and listen to my May 13th episode. But for the sake of avoiding redundancy, I'm not going to go over it a second time in this episode. Cohen's testimony is expected to wrap today. I'm recording this at 3 p.m. Eastern time and he was still on the stand. But the prosecution did say at the last minute that

they may call another witness to testify tomorrow. However, once the prosecution exhausts its witnesses, whether that be Michael Cohen today or this other witness tomorrow, the defense will then present its case as to why Trump is not guilty. And then once the defense rests, it will be time for closing arguments. long the prosecution's last witness testifies, because Trump's attorney did signal today that their case won't last longer than a day, which also signals that Trump most likely won't be testifying in his own defense. But we'll have all of these answers tomorrow. So stay tuned for tomorrow's episode. We'll definitely have a better idea of what, you know, the foreseeable future looks like. Just as a reminder for the prosecution to obtain a conviction here, what it needs to prove is that beyond a reasonable doubt, Trump falsified business records when he recorded his monthly payments to Michael Cohen had the intent to commit or conceal another crime. And that other crime could be a violation of federal and state election laws. It could be

a violation of state tax laws. But the prosecution has not specified one crime in particular. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.