UNBIASED - October 30, 2024: DOJ and GOP Go To Court Over Biden’s Interview Recordings, ICE Accused of Failing to Return $300M+ in Noncitizens' Bonds, SCOTUS Allows Virginia to Purge Voter Rolls, and More.

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Welcome back to UNBIASED. In today's episode: Judge Cannon Declines to Recuse Herself from Trump Assassination Attempt Case (0:07) DOJ and GOP Go To Court Over Biden's Interview Audio Recordings (2:14) New Lawsuit Against ICE Says Its Failed to Return $300M+ in Bonds (5:57) Pennsylvania Overseas Voter Lawsuit Dismissed (8:03) Pennsylvania Republicans Ask Supreme Court to Review Provisional Ballot Decision (11:00) Supreme Court Gives Green Light to Virginia to Continue Implementing Voter Roll Program (14:51) Quick Hitters: Supreme Court Declines to Intervene in RFK Jr.'s Emergency Ballot Appeal, Florida Mailman Arrested for Dumping Mail in Woods, Subway Sued Over Sandwiches, Pelosi Attacker Sentenced to Life, How Astronauts Vote from Space! (17:02) Listen/Watch this episode AD-FREE 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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Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, 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, October 30th, and this is your daily news rundown. In an update to a story from last week, Judge Eileen Cannon rejected Ryan Ruth's request for her to recuse herself from the case. Ryan Ruth is, of course, the man charged with attempting to assassinate former

President Trump at his Florida golf course. So about two weeks ago, attorneys representing Ruth asked Cannon to recuse herself from the case due to the risk of her creating an appearance of partiality to the public. Ryan Ruth's attorneys cited three reasons in support of this assertion. One, she was appointed by Trump in May 2020. Two, she dismissed the classified documents case against Trump, and he subsequently praised her decision to do so. And three, the assignment of three high-profile Trump cases to her court has raised public suspicion about the alleged randomness of these assignments. However, in an order written yesterday, Judge Cannon determined

that these arguments presented by Ryan Ruth's attorneys do not justify her recusal. She wrote in part, quote, defendant cites a series of factors which he believes, when viewed in their totality, create an appearance of partiality. None warrants recusal, whether examined individually or together, end quote. She does explain her decision based on each individual argument, and if you are interested in reading that, I do have it linked for you in the sources. But for purposes of time, ultimately, she says that each point made by Ruth's attorneys fails to meet the legal standard for recusal, which requires more evidence of bias or partiality beyond the mere speculation cited to in this case. Notably, she said, quote, I have never spoken to or met

former President Trump except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding through counsel. I have no relationship to the alleged victim in any reasonable sense of the phrase, end quote. From here, Ruth can try to appeal this decision, any reasonable sense of the phrase. End quote. From here, Ruth can try to appeal this decision, but if not, the trial will continue as planned, which is currently set for February. Moving on to the next story, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee and Attorney General Merrick Garland were in court yesterday, but not together, in fact, fighting against each other. This case can be traced back to when President Biden sat for an interview with special counsel Robert Herr and discussed his handling of classified documents. Following that interview, and as I've

talked about many, many times in the past, Herr released his final report, which declined to recommend charges against the president, but did describe Biden as a, quote, elderly man with a poor memory, end quote. According to her, Biden expressed confusion at various times during the interview, including dates surrounding when he served as vice president and when his son Beau died. The report sparked criticism from both sides. Democrats, including the president himself, were unhappy with her portrayal of the president. Republicans, on the other hand, were disappointed with her not recommending charges against the president. But the House Judiciary Committee, wanting more answers, called for the release of the interview

transcript as well as the audio recordings. And the transcript ended up getting released, but not the recordings because President Biden asserted executive privilege over them. Consequently, Attorney General Garland would not turn over the tapes despite being subpoenaed to do so from Congress, and Garland was ultimately held in contempt of Congress. Because those recordings were never released, the administration faced multiple lawsuits. News outlets, including CNN, brought suit under the Freedom of Information Act. A watchdog group filed a similar lawsuit. The Heritage Foundation filed a lawsuit, and the House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit. Now, the committee's lawsuit was against Attorney General Garland specifically, and it was that lawsuit that went to court yesterday.

The committee's lawsuit is a little different than the other lawsuits in that the committee is taking issue with the assertion of executive privilege and whether executive privilege can be asserted over these interview recordings. The other lawsuits deal more with the Freedom of Information Act. The committee's lawsuit says in part, quote, President Biden's self-serving attempt to shield the audio recording of his interview with the special counsel while publicly releasing a transcript of that same interview represents an astonishing effort to expand the scope of executive privilege from a constitutional privilege safeguarding certain substantive communications to an amorphous privilege that can be molded to protect things like voice inflection, tone, and pace of speech. Any privilege that could conceivably apply to President Biden's interview with the special counsel was waived when the executive branch released a transcript of that interview to the press and produced that transcript to the committee, end quote. So the committee's main arguments are one, executive privilege doesn't apply here. And two, executive privilege was waived when the transcript was released.

But the DOJ and Attorney General Merrick Garland want this case dismissed. The DOJ argues, quote, the committee's vanishingly small informational needs come nowhere close to overcoming the assertion of privilege. For these reasons, the court should rule in favor of the department, end quote. So basically, Attorney General Merrick Garland is arguing that the committee already has what it needs because it has the transcript, and that the marginal amount of additional information they're going to receive from the audio tapes, like voice inflection, tone, stutter, etc., does not outweigh the power of executive privilege. As of right now, we don't have a decision from the judge as to

whether this case will or won't be dismissed, but she did say at the end of Monday's hearing, quote, I'm having trouble with both sides on different issues, end quote. So I'll keep you posted there. Moving on to the next story, a new lawsuit filed yesterday claims U.S. immigration authorities illegally failed to return around $300 million in bond payments to tens of thousands of immigrant families and U.S. citizens. Let's start with a little background here. Immigration bonds are very similar to bonds we see in criminal court, except they are set by ICE and immigration judges. But the purpose is the same. If an immigration bond is posted, a non-citizen

facing removal proceedings can be released into the U.S. while their case plays out. The average bond payment for non-citizens is around $6,000, but it does range depending on a variety of factors. So factors like flight risk, immigration history, potential threat to the community, etc. According to the ICE handbook, though, once the immigration case has concluded, and if that individual complies with all of the rules and fulfills all court obligations, that bond is to be returned to whoever paid it, either immediately or within 60 days. However, the lawsuit claims that ICE, quote, regularly fails to return these funds even when all conditions have been met

and proceedings have concluded, end quote. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a man named Douglas Cortez from New York who alleges that he posted a bond for $10,000 to have a friend released from detention. He claims that in August of 2023, his friend's proceedings were dismissed, but now more than a year later, he has not received a refund for his cash deposit. Now the lawsuit is seeking class action status, which means that if Cortez wins the case, anyone else who failed to get a bond returned, who was owed one, will receive a portion of that potential payout. The lawyers representing Cortez in this case said that after they reviewed government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, they found that ICE has withheld around $300 million and that ICE held

on to the money for so long that roughly $240 million was transferred to the U.S. Treasury account for unclaimed funds. So far, ICE has declined to comment, saying it does not discuss pending litigation. And now on to another court case. It seems lawsuits are all we talk about these days, but this one was actually pretty highly requested. A federal judge in Pennsylvania dismissed a lawsuit yesterday seeking to implement additional vetting for overseas ballots. Here's the deal. Under the Federal Uniformed Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, states and territories must allow certain groups of citizens to register and vote absentee for federal elections. The groups of citizens that are covered under this law include members of the United States

Uniformed Services and Merchant Marine, their family members, and U.S. citizens residing outside of the U.S. Now, another law at issue in this lawsuit is the Help America Vote Act. Under that law, states are required to build these computerized voter registration systems and implement minimum requirements for voters who register by mail. And while HAVA created these special verification rules for voters who register by mail, it specifically states that those special rules don't apply to anyone who is allowed to vote by absentee ballot under that UOC AVA. That's that first law we talked about. So in accordance with these two federal laws, Pennsylvania goes ahead and enacts a state law called the Uniform Military and Overseas Act, which does various things, but effectively extended the federal procedures for absentee voting to state and local races as well. And like HAVA, Pennsylvania's

election code exempts certain qualified absentee voters from having to provide this proof of identification to ensure that their ballot is counted. However, the plaintiffs in this case brought this lawsuit because in their view, Pennsylvania law requires all UOCA VA voters, those voting overseas, to satisfy the voter eligibility requirements of the state, including its residency requirements. So in short, the plaintiffs were asking the court to state that those voting overseas are subject to proof of identification requirements in this election. At the end of the day, the reasons that the judge dismissed this case are as follows. One, the judge said it was

brought too late. The judge said they could have brought this lawsuit as early as 2022 when the state department originally issued its guidance concerning procedures for military overseas voters. Two, the judge said courts aren't supposed to interfere in election-related disputes so close to the election unless there's a powerful reason for doing so, which the judge said the state does not have. Three, they lacked standing, so the state lacked the ability to sue. Four, the state failed to join certain indispensable parties as required by the rules of procedure. And five, the state failed to articulate a viable cause of action. So what this decision means is that those voting overseas and submitting their absentee

ballots in Pennsylvania will not be subject to special verification requirements and the voting procedures will stay the same as they are currently. For this next story, we are actually staying in Pennsylvania. And if you're wondering why we're talking so much about Pennsylvania or why so many legal disputes are coming out of Pennsylvania, it's because Pennsylvania is a battleground state and it matters during the election. have asked the Supreme Court to block a lower court ruling that requires election boards to count provisional ballots submitted by voters whose mail-in ballots have been deemed invalid. In Pennsylvania, voters using mail-in ballots must seal their ballot in two envelopes. The ballot first goes inside what's called a secrecy envelope, and then after that, the secrecy envelope is placed inside of a second envelope known as the declaration envelope. And voters have to sign and date that declaration

envelope. Now, if a ballot sorting machine determines that the ballot was not first placed into a secrecy envelope and was only placed into that declaration envelope, the ballot cannot be counted. The voter that submitted that ballot will be notified and thereafter will submit a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots are a little different in that they record a person's vote, but they're put aside while the county board of elections determines whether they can be counted. We mostly see these in situations where when a voter's eligibility can't be determined on the spot. So in the most recent primary election, two Pennsylvania voters received notice that their ballots might not be

counted due to a missing secrecy envelope. They went ahead and they cast provisional ballots, but the provisional ballots ended up not being counted either because election officials determined that provisional ballots cast by people whose mail-in ballots had been timely received could not be counted, even if the mail-in ballots were invalid. So these two voters go ahead and they sue the election board and argue that the election board was required to count their provisional ballots. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed in a four to three decision that as long as the mail-in ballots are not counted, the provisional ballots should be

counted. Now, the controversy over this whole issue of whether to count provisional ballots comes down to how the election code is written in the state. The election code says, quote, a provisional ballot shall not be counted if the elector's mail ballot is timely received by a county board of elections, end quote. So the question is whether a voter who sends in a timely mail-in ballot, but that timely mail-in ballot is deemed invalid, should be allowed to then cast a provisional ballot and have that ballot counted. Following the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's 4-3 decision, the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania took the case to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to put the decision on hold to give them time to file a petition for review, meaning they want the Supreme Court of the United States to review the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision. And while they get their petition

written and filed, they want the justices to put the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision on hold. Now, this just happened. So obviously, we'll have to see what the justices do with this. I'd imagine they act quick because obviously, at this point, we're six days out from Election Day. I will tell you this. If the court decides not to put the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision on hold, Pennsylvania counties will count these provisional ballots submitted by voters who submitted timely but defective mail-in ballots. If the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's decision is put on hold, Pennsylvania counties will not count provisional ballots that followed timely mail-in ballots regardless of whether or not the mail-in ballots, regardless of whether or

not the mail-in ballots were defective. So stay tuned on that. I'll let you know when we have a decision from the court. And finally, we can stop talking about Pennsylvania, but we're not straying from the lawsuits because in another election-related lawsuit, and in an update to yesterday's episode, the Supreme Court today allowed the state of Virginia to continue with its program that state election officials said removed more than 1,600 non-citizens from its voter rolls. If you haven't yet listened to yesterday's episode, you may want to do that just to get caught up for this story, but I'll give you a quick summary here. Virginia's governor issued an executive order in August basically directing state election officials to look at individuals that had self-identified as non-citizens with either the DMV or some other agency and see if any of

those individuals showed up on the state's voter rolls. If they did, they'd be taken off. In total, more than 1,600 individuals were taken off. The Biden administration, as well as civic and immigrant rights groups, ended up suing the state because under a law called the National Voter Registration Act, states cannot make changes to voter rolls within 90 days of a federal election. The lower court sided with the Biden administration, so the judge blocked the state from implementing this program and ordered the state to restore the voting registration of all of these people that had been taken off program and ordered the state to restore the voting registration of all of these people that had been taken off. Eventually, the state election officials went

to the Supreme Court. This was on Monday. And again, if you want to get caught up on all of the state's arguments there, go ahead and listen to yesterday's episode. The administration and the immigrant rights groups had until last night to file their own briefs as to why the Supreme Court should keep the lower court's ruling in place. And today, the Supreme Court sided with the state election officials. As we've talked about before, justices do not have to explain why or how they came to a decision when it comes to court orders. And in this case, they didn't. All we know from this order is that the lower court's order blocking the implementation of the state program is put on hold, which means that the state can continue to remove non-citizen matches from its voter rolls. And we also know from this order that Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson all said that they would have denied the state's request for a hold. That takes us into quick hitters. Yesterday, the Supreme Court

declined to intervene in RFK Jr.'s emergency appeal to have his name removed from ballots in Michigan and Wisconsin. In lower court proceedings, state officials in Michigan and Wisconsin said it was too late to remove his name as voting was already underway. And as I just said, the justices do not have to publicize how they voted or why they voted one way or another when it comes to court orders. But in this case, Justice Gorsuch did include a dissenting note, which said that he dissents for substantially the reasons given by the dissenting justices in the lower court rulings. And a mailman in Orlando, Florida has been arrested for allegedly dumping more than 1,000 pieces of mail

in the woods. Included in these pieces of mail were an absentee ballot and around 400 political items, though it's not clear whether these political items include ballots or whether they're political advertisements or something else. But either way, the mailman is facing up to five years in jail and a maximum fine of $250,000. In an effort to keep things somewhat lighthearted, a new class action lawsuit against Subway claims the chain's advertisements overstate the amount of meat and cheese in its sandwiches. The lead plaintiff in this lawsuit says she purchased a steak and cheese sandwich from a Subway location in New York in August for $7.61, and then realized the chain's ads showed a sandwich containing at least 200% more meat than she received in her sandwich. It's worth noting that

the same law firm that brought this suit has brought similar lawsuits against McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, and Burger King. Three of those lawsuits have been dismissed, but the suit against Burger King is still playing out. David DePapp, the man that attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband with a hammer in 2022, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was convicted on state charges of kidnapping, burglary, and false imprisonment, and this life sentence is in addition to his federal sentence of 30 years. And finally, this is a fun one. This is my attempt at ending this episode on a fun, lighthearted note. If you've ever

wondered how astronauts vote in space, I have the answer for you. Unfortunately, they obviously can't vote in person or can they, you know, send a ballot by mail. So instead, they use a tracking and data relay satellite system. The astronauts actually fill out a crew member specific encrypted ballot while on board their space mission. They then upload their ballot into the space station's onboard computer systems. And from there, the ballots are routed to NASA's TDRS system, which hands them off to the terminal in White Sands, New Mexico. Landlines from the TDRS ground terminal then transmit the ballots to the terminal in White Sands, New Mexico. Landlines from the TDRS ground terminal then

transmit the ballots to the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, which then delivers the ballots to the county clerks for filing. Pretty cool. That's what I have for you today. There is no critical thinking segment today, but we will get back to it tomorrow. Have a great night, and I will talk to you soon.