UNBIASED - May 8, 2024: Classified Documents Trial Indefinitely Postponed, TikTok's Constitutional Rights Explained, U.S. Bomb Delivery to Israel Paused, Laken Riley Suspect Indicted, and More.

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

1. Your Questions About the TikTok Lawsuit Answered (0:39)2. Judge Overseeing Classified Documents Case Indefinitely Postpones Trial (5:19)3. Georgia Court of Appeals Agrees to Hear Fani Willis Disqualification Appeal (7:29)4. Biden Administration Pauses Delivery of Bombs to Israel (8:58)5. Laken Riley Murder Suspect Indicted on 10 Charges, Including 'Peeping Tom' Charge Stemming From Unrelated Incident (11:22)Get EXCLUSIVE, unbiased content 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, May 8th, and this is your daily news rundown. If you love the unbiased approach this episode provides, you already know what to do, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen. Share this show with your friends. If you're a YouTube watcher, hit that thumbs up button, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. So many things you guys can do to help me out and all of those things are very much appreciated. So

thank you in advance. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. We're starting with a little update to yesterday. So yesterday I reported on the lawsuit filed by TikTok and TikTok's parent company ByteDance against the United States government over what's called the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, but is better known by a lot of people as the TikTok ban. There were two main questions that I was getting after posting the podcast as well as the post I posted to social media. Both really good questions, so I wanted to address them. The first one was, how was this lawsuit filed in the appellate court without first being filed in a district court? And it's a great

question. It means you've been listening to me or you just know your stuff because typically when federal lawsuits are filed, first these lawsuits are filed in district court, and then on appeal, they'll go to the appellate court, and then they'll go to the Supreme Court. So it's interesting to see a case go right to the appellate court. The answer to this question, though, is very simple and straightforward, and that is exclusive jurisdiction. Exclusive jurisdiction clauses limit legal battles to courts of one jurisdiction. In other words, it's specifically set forth in the legally binding document or the law

that one particular court will hear disputes over the issue. In this case, the Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act specifically says at the very bottom in Section 3, quote, The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit shall have exclusive jurisdiction over any challenge to this act or any action finding or determination under this act, end quote. And that's it. That's the answer. Very straightforward. And just because I can totally see a follow-up question, someone now asking, well, if the appeals court has exclusive jurisdiction, can it still go to the Supreme Court? The answer is yes. And as I've said before, it probably will

end up before the Supreme Court. But first, we have to get a decision from the appellate court. The second question I got is, how can TikTok and ByteDance assert a violation of constitutional rights when they're not U.S. citizens? And this is also a great question. Corporations and organizations of all types have some constitutional rights. This is well-established Supreme Court precedent. It started with the 14th Amendment and equal protection, and then it later extended to other constitutional rights, such as the rights under the First and Fourth Amendments. And one of the biggest reasons for this is because a corporation is defined as a group of people authorized to act as a single entity. Being that a corporation is made up of a group of people who have constitutional

rights themselves, the court felt it was right to extend constitutional rights to the collective organizations as well. But more than that, and as the court found in the past, depriving organizations and corporations of such rights would allow the government to interfere in ways that may sometimes be over the top, may be too restrictive. And so to safeguard those corporations and similar entities, the court extended these constitutional protections. And this is a controversial issue. People do definitely have arguments on both sides as to whether corporations should have constitutional rights, but that is the way Supreme Court precedent stands. In this case specifically, though, the app TikTok is owned by TikTok LLC, which is controlled by

TikTok Limited and owned and TikTok Limited is owned by ByteDance. So there's a lot of entities involved here, but it's TikTok limited and ByteDance that filed suit. So it's ultimately going to come down to whether at least one of those two entities can prove standing and consequently, whether at least one of those entities has constitutional rights. TikTok Limited is actually partially headquartered in Los Angeles, and it was first incorporated in California in 2015. ByteDance, although it was founded by Chinese individuals who still retain 20% of the company, it's 60% owned by global investors, such as BlackRock, which is an American investment firm, and General Atlantic, also an American growth equity firm, as well as other investors and entities too. On top of that, 20 percent of the company is owned by employees, which includes

thousands of Americans. So between ByteDance and TikTok, the entities certainly have United States connections and therefore can try to assert this argument that this Foreign Adversaries Controlled Applications Act violates their constitutional rights. Now, whether a court ultimately agrees with that is another story, but the basis exists. So hopefully that clears up your questions surrounding the TikTok lawsuit, and we'll now jump off to some Trump-related news. I have two stories related to Trump. The first one is that the judge overseeing Trump's classified documents case

made the decision yesterday afternoon to indefinitely postpone Trump's trial date. His trial date in that case was set for May 20th, but at this time it has been indefinitely postponed. And here's why. According to the scheduling order that was filed on the docket yesterday, there are still eight outstanding pre-trial hearings. And before a case can start, or sorry, I should say before a trial can start, a judge has to handle all of the pre-trial matters. And these are usually issues surrounding discovery, maybe

their evidentiary hearings, maybe it's motions to dismiss the case, things of that nature. So given these outstanding hearings, as well as seven other deadlines for documents, the judge determined that at this point, it doesn't make sense to set a trial date. Specifically, what Judge Cannon wrote in her scheduling order is, quote, the court also determines that finalization of a trial date. Specifically, what Judge Cannon wrote in her scheduling order is, quote, The court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture before the resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and classified information procedures act issues remaining and forthcoming would be imprudent and inconsistent with the court's duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions with the court's duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending

pretrial motions before the court, critical legislative issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury. The court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024 trial date to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before this court consistent with defendant's right to due process and the public's interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice, end quote. So as per that scheduling order, the last hearing is currently scheduled for July 22nd, so it's likely that if and when we see a new trial date set, it won't be scheduled until after that date, which means the actual trial

may not happen until months after that. The other Trump-related story is out of Georgia. So the Georgia Court of Appeals decided today that it will take up the appeal of Judge McAfee's decision not to disqualify District Attorney Fonny Willis from the election interference case. The order from the appellate court was very short. It was a one-page order, which just said that it will take up the case, and Trump and his co-defendants have 10 days to file the notice of appeal. The appeal, of course, stems from Judge McAfee declining to disqualify Fonny Willis from the Georgia election interference case in light of her romantic relationship with

the appointed special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Ultimately, what Judge McAfee decided or ruled is that Willis and Wade could not both stay on the case, so Wade did step down. However, Trump and his co-defendants still assert that Willis should be disqualified due to the financial conflict of interest in hiring Wade in the first place. So that is what the Georgia appeals court will ultimately decide. What'll probably happen from here is Trump and his co-defendants will, of course, file the notice of appeal, but they'll also likely file a motion to stay the case in the district court while the appeal is pending. That way, if that request is granted, the entire case would be put on pause until the appellate court renders a

decision on the disqualification, and that could take anywhere from four weeks to six months. Moving on, President Biden pressed the pause button on a delivery of U.S.-made bombs to Israel in light of Israel's, at the time, planned attack on Rafah. This story initially made news last week, but at that point, it wasn't clear what type of weapons were put on pause, and as of today, we now know that that paused shipment includes 3,500 bombs, 1,800 of which are 2,000-pound bombs, 1,700 are 500-pound bombs. A senior U.S. official told Axios that the pause was a way for the United States to signal to Israel its concern over the ground operation in Rafah, and at the time that the pause was announced, the ground invasion into Rafah was just a plan.

But as of Monday, that ground invasion became an active invasion. So the story goes that as of a couple of months ago, the United States was talking to Israel about the planned operation in Rafah. The United States apparently wanted to discuss how Israel would meet the humanitarian needs of civilians in Rafah and how to operate differently against Hamas there than anywhere else in Gaza, given what's taken place in Gaza and how many have been killed. And as Israeli leaders seemed to get closer to carrying out the operation, the White House started reviewing proposed transfers of weapons to Israel that could be potentially used in its Rafah operation. And as a result of that review, the White House paused one of the shipments of weapons last week. The official also added that the administration is committed to ensuring Israel gets every dollar appropriated in the new

supplemental funding package that was just recently passed by Congress, but also noted that this particular weapons delivery and the shipments that are being discussed right now have actually nothing to do with the recent supplemental funding package, and that all of these current shipments are drawn from previously appropriated funds. So the takeaway here is that the White House paused one particular shipment that consisted of 2,000 pound bombs because they're concerned about the impact of these particular bombs on dense urban settings, but the United States is still supplying other types of bombs and weapons to Israel. As we speak, it's not like there's been an all-out pause.

The fifth and final story is that the suspect accused of killing 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley has been formally indicted on 10 charges, including malice murder, felony murder, aggravated battery, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, obstructing or hindering a person making an emergency telephone call, tampering with evidence, and peeping Tom. A lesser known part of this story and the reason for the peeping Tom charge is that earlier in the day on February 22nd, so the day that Lake and Riley was killed, this suspect actually was caught spying on another individual looking through the window of another individual's apartment in the same University Village housing building. And that is what the peeping Tom charges for. The other nine charges,

though, stem from the killing of Lake and Riley. The suspect has been denied bond and is currently being held at the Clark County Jail. 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 today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.