UNBIASED - Prigozhin’s Rebellion, IRS Whistleblower Testimony Re: Hunter Biden, SCOTUS Paves Way for New Louisiana Congressional Maps.

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

1. Prigozhin’s Attempted Rebellion: The Wagner Group, the Cause of the Rebellion, and the Terms of the Alleged Deal (1:37)2. Whistleblowers’ Testimony Re: Hunter Biden Investigation Explained (8:09)3. SCOTUS Paves the Way for the Redrawing of Louisiana Congressional Map; Turns Down Case Surrounding Ability of Lawmakers to Sue Federal Agencies (22:05)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.Follow Jordan on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You are listening to the Jordan Is My Lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. Hope you guys are having a great Tuesday so far. I have three stories for you today. The first story I have for you is that armed rebellion in Russia or as the Wagner group leader called it just merely a protest. The second story is the IRS whistleblower testimony in regard to the Hunter Biden investigation. And the third story is the

Supreme Court orders that were just released on Monday. Of course, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court is releasing some new decisions. This is set to be an intense week in the Supreme Court, so keep your eyes and ears open, And I will, of course, be keeping you up to date. Before we get into today's episode, let me just remind you to please review my show on whatever platform you listen. It really helps me as a podcaster. And also sharing my show really helps as well. So if you have any friends, family or colleagues that you believe will also appreciate nonpartisan news, please share my show with them. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. On Saturday, the news broke that the mercenary

Wagner Group had taken control of military facilities in a key Russian city at the Ukraine-Russia border in what was said to be an attempted armed rebellion. At least that's what Putin was notified of. However, since that, the leader of the Wagner Group has said it was merely a protest. He never had any intention of overthrowing the government. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about what happened. Who is the Wagner Group? Why the attempted rebellion?

Why did it only take 24 hours for them to turn around? What was the alleged deal brokered between Wagner's leader and Putin? Let's go over it all. The Wagner Group, think of it as a private Russian military group. So the Wagner Group operates in support of Russian interests. It receives equipment from the Russian Ministry of Defense, but again, it is not part of the official Russian military. These groups are also called paramilitary organizations or private military companies, which you may have heard of, PMCs. They're not uncommon. In fact, the United

States used PMCs in its war with Iraq. But specifically, the Wagner Group has operated in multiple outside territories, of course, Ukraine, but also places like Libya, Syria, Mali, and the Central African Republic. The United States designated the Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organization this past January. And that came after it was estimated that the group had roughly 50,000 personnel in Ukraine. Of those 50,000, some were contractors, others were actually recruited prisoners. Depending on which estimations you look at, some estimations show that the majority of the personnel in Ukraine were prisoners, whereas others show that it was mostly contractors. The Wagner Group was

founded in 2014 and is led by a man named Yevgeny Prigozhin. He is, or at least was, a confidant of Putin. So I'm sure you're asking at this point, if this is a private Russian military group fighting on behalf of Russia and this guy was a close confidant of Putin, why did he turn on him? Well, one, Prokofiev has referred to Russia's military leadership in Ukraine as incompetent in the past, but the straw that kind of broke the camel's back was on Friday. And Prokofiev accused Russia's military of attacking his Wagner forces. And this attack claimed the lives of 2,000 Wagner fighters. So that's when this sort of attempted rebellion began. And Friday night, Pergozhin released a video calling for top defense officials to be ousted. At the same time, he denied a coup attempt against Putin.

But by Saturday morning, Pergozhin had taken control of military facilities in that city at the Ukraine-Russia border, and he was heading towards Moscow with his soldiers. At that point is when a deal was brokered by the president of Belarus between Putin and Pergozhin. Interestingly enough, after this deal was brokered, Pergozhin actually wasn't heard from on Saturday or Sunday. He had released that video on Friday. This whole thing started on Saturday. And then Saturday night, he left town in a black SUV, supposedly headed for Belarus. But no one saw him or heard from him after that until Monday when new audio was released. But it's audio and not video. So still, some people are like, where is he? What's the status? What's he doing? But in the audio he released on Monday, he was explaining two major

reasons that played into his decision to halt the march. The first reason was that he wanted to avoid Russian bloodshed and that it got to a point where it became obvious that a lot of blood was going to be shed. And at that time is when the president of Belarus, quote, unquote, extended his hand and, quote, offered to find solutions for the further work of Wagner PMC in legal jurisdiction, end quote. The second reason that Progozhin gave was he said this march was just a demonstration of protest. It was not intended to overturn power in the country. Now, a question that some have is, is this true? Or did Putin say as part of the deal, Prokhorin had to come out and say, hey, I wasn't trying to overturn power in the country. I was just, you know,

protesting because Putin is all about his power. And when the news broke of the Wagner group taking control of that Russian facility and then heading towards Moscow, a lot of people, including some officials in the US and some officials in the UK, were talking about how this is kind of a show of the cracks that are emerging in Russia. And perhaps Putin kind of wanted to clear the air that no cracks are emerging. And he wanted Pergozhin to be the one to kind of get on tape and say, look, I wasn't trying to overturn power. The power is fine. I was just protesting. But anyway, those were the two reasons that Pergozhin gave for

halting the march. Despite not succeeding, observers did call this attempt the biggest threat to Putin since he took power in 2000. The UK Ministry of Defense called this the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times. What was this deal, though, right? So we know that the president of Belarus helped reach this deal between Putin and Prigozhin. But what is it? Allegedly, Prigozhin is exiled to Belarus, no longer welcome in Russia. The second part of the deal, allegedly, is that he will have the criminal investigation against

him dropped. He won't face criminal charges. And the third part of that is in regard to the Wagner soldiers. So Putin on Monday said that the Wagner soldiers will have a choice. They can either join the Russian military or some other law enforcement agency in Russia, or they can return home to their family and friends, or they can go to Belarus. Keep in mind, this is the deal as we know it from the president of Belarus and Putin. This is only the bare outline of the agreement. We don't know specifics. We also don't know how much of it is true, right? And this obviously leaves open some questions like, you know, will the Wagner group completely

dissolve from here? What will happen to the Wagner forces that are operating elsewhere in the world? Does this have any effect on them? Will the Wagner soldiers willingly enter the Russian military, or will they still have this sense of loyalty to Bogosian? These are answers we obviously don't have that we will likely only get with time. So that takes us into our second story, which is the IRS whistleblower testimony. Two days after Hunter Biden said he would agree to enter a deal for two of his federal charges and a pretrial diversion for another charge, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to publicize whistleblower testimony from IRS employees who accused the IRS and DOJ of purposely obstructing the Hunter Biden

investigation. The vote to publicize this testimony was held after these closed-door hearings where the whistleblowers gave their testimony. And upon publicizing the testimony, the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith released the following statement in part. He said, quote, Today, the Ways and Means Committee voted to make public the testimony of IRS employees blowing the whistle on misconduct at the IRS and the Biden DOJ. The American people deserve to know that when it comes to criminal enforcement, they are not on the same playing field as the wealthy and politically And that statement does go on if you're interested in reading it in full. It is on my website, jordanismylawyer.com. I also have the testimonies there for you as well.

Now, the House Ways and Means Committee did set forth three key takeaways from the hundreds of pages of whistleblower testimony, which is helpful. But in addition to that, I'm also going to give you some context by way of examples and things that the whistleblowers actually testified to that took place during this investigation. Before we get into the three key takeaways, though, the general gist, as I said before, is that these two whistleblowers are accusing the DOJ and IRS of providing preferential treatment and unchecked conflicts of interest in the investigation of Hunter Biden. The investigation into Hunter Biden was given the codename Sportsman. According to the whistleblowers, it was opened in November 2018 as an offshoot of an investigation that the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur

online pornography platform. And one of the whistleblowers said that the investigation into Hunter Biden was handled differently than any other investigation he had been a part of in his 14 years of work with the IRS. So what are the three key takeaways? The first key takeaway is that the federal government is not applying the same standard to all taxpayers when enforcing tax laws. The second takeaway is that the Biden DOJ was interfering and overstepping in the investigation. And the third takeaway is that there was some retaliation. So previously, the IRS commissioner told the Ways and Means

Committee chairman there would be no retaliation for anyone making any allegations or calling into the whistleblower hotline. But then three weeks after the IRS commissioner testified to that, both IRS whistleblowers as well as their entire teams were removed from the Hunter Biden investigation. So they're calling that retaliation. But let's go back to that first key takeaway that the federal government isn't treating all taxpayers equally. This idea stems from the whistleblowers testifying to the fact that during the course of the investigation, the IRS recommended multiple charges against Hunter Biden. These included things like tax evasion, filing a false tax return, willful failure to file returns, supply information, or pay tax. And these charges

were from 2014 to 2019. But we know that recently he entered into that agreement for three charges in total, right? So the two for willful failure to pay federal income tax and the one related to that firearm possession. But what the Ways and Means Committee is saying is that not only did the DOJ refuse to bring all these other charges that were recommended, but also he got away with this quote unquote slap on the wrist that most Americans would not be able to get away with. So that's the first takeaway the second takeaway is the biden doj intervening and overstepping in the investigation and this idea stems from pages and pages and pages of testimony which again you you are more than welcome to read

for yourself it's on my website but because there are so many pages of testimony there are many many many examples that the whistleblowers testified to as it relates to obstruction. So for the purposes of time, I pulled four examples from the testimony that I'm going to go over that will give you an idea of what the IRS and DOJ were doing that hindered the investigation. So one of the examples was that in early 2020, there was an affidavit establishing probable cause for a physical search warrant and 15 interviews that had been planned as part of the investigation. But this is at the time that President Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president. And the whistleblowers say that once

that happened, DOJ officials really dragged their feet on any of these investigative steps. So they say that despite, you know, the affidavit establishing probable cause for the search warrant and the 15 interviews being planned as of early April 2020, by the time June 2020 came around, none of those investigative steps had taken place, meaning that the search warrant was never signed off on. Obviously, that means the search warrant was never executed. None of those planned interviews had taken place, things like that. Another example that the whistleblowers gave was the WhatsApp text from Hunter Biden in 2017 to that Chinese business partner that you may have heard about. So there was this WhatsApp text

where Hunter Biden writes, quote, I'm sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father. And, you know, when we're talking in regard to the investigation, the reason that this was important for the whistleblower to talk about was because he says once investigators found this text, they wanted to search the guest house at President Biden's residence. But they were told by the assistant United States attorney that this would

never be granted, and therefore President Biden's guest house was never searched. On top of this, the reason that this text is important, and this doesn't really apply to the investigation itself, but the news has been talking about this a lot because President Biden has consistently claimed that he was never involved with any of Hunter Biden's business dealings. But this text kind of implies otherwise. Now, the third example is that in December 2020, information had come out that Hunter Biden had documents in a storage unit in Northern Virginia, and the IRS prepared an affidavit in support of a search warrant for the unit. But Hunter Biden's attorneys were actually tipped off to the fact that they were looking to execute a search warrant at the storage unit.

And that ruined any sort of chance that the IRS investigative team had at getting any evidence from the storage unit. And the fourth and final example we'll walk through is that at a meeting in October 2020 between the IRS investigative team, the prosecution team, and the FBI's computer analysis team, they were discussing the contents of the laptop. But when the investigators with the IRS and the assistant U.S. attorney had asked to see the contents of the laptop, they were actually prohibited from seeing the contents of the laptop, which the whistleblower said was very bizarre and pretty out of character for an investigation like this. So those were the four examples I felt were worth mentioning. Just note that that testimony is hundreds of pages long, as I've said, which means that there are far more examples than

the four I just gave you. I felt that those four examples accurately conveyed the gist of what the whistleblowers were alleging as far as obstruction goes. So that's why I chose the four. But again, I do have the testimony linked for you if you want to check it out for yourself. Let's take a quick break and then we will wrap up this story. Let's wrap this conversation up by talking about the attempts to bring charges against hunter biden i mentioned in the beginning of the story that the irs had recommended several charges some of those being felonies but of course we know that that's not what he was ultimately charged with so what happened between then and now well the truth is no one's really too sure because we have conflicting stories going on so the whistleblowers are telling us one thing or telling Congress one thing.

Attorney General Garland is telling Congress another thing. So in order to get through this, let's first talk about venue. Venue is where the charges are brought. So in this case, there were two places where the charges could have been brought. It was either where Hunter Biden lived or where the tax returns were filed. So it was either Washington, D.C. or California. Therefore, the U.S. attorney that was assigned to this case, which was David Weiss, he had to present the charges to the District of D.C. as well as the Central District of California. So in March of 2022, Weiss goes and presents the charges to the U.S. attorney for the District of California. So in March of 2022, Weiss goes and presents the charges to the

U.S. attorney for the District of D.C. And it was a Biden appointee, and he ultimately declined to bring charges. David Weiss then tells the whistleblowers that there's nothing he can do. He doesn't have authority over this. He can't override the District of D.C.'s decision in not wanting to bring charges. So he's out of luck, essentially. A couple of months later, David Weiss tells this whistleblower that he applied for special counsel status. The assumption is he applied for special counsel status in order to be able to override the U.S. attorney for DC's decision not to bring charges. But his request, at least what he told the whistleblowers, is that his request for special counsel status was denied, which the whistleblowers also saw as a form of

obstruction. So then a couple months after that, David Weiss goes and presents the charges to the Central District of California. So the way that this breaks down is that D.C. had jurisdiction over the 2014 and 2015 charges. The Central District of California had jurisdiction over the 2016 through 2019 charges. So DC obviously already denied bringing charges for 2014 and 2015. So now David Weiss goes to the Central District of California to try to get charges brought for 2016 to 2019. Well, according to the whistleblowers, the reason that prosecutors waited until mid-September to present the charges to the Central District of California is because that's when the Biden appointee took over that district. Lo and behold, come January 2023,

the Central District of California also declines to bring charges. And all the while, David Weiss is telling the whistleblowers and the IRS that there's nothing he can do. He doesn't have authority over this. He can't override the decision. So the whistleblowers are saying they're under the impression that they're completely out of luck, like this case is dead, essentially. Well, then on the other side of that, you have Attorney General Merrick Garland testifying to Congress that David Weiss had free reign. He was given all of the authority he needed. He could he could bring charges in any district he wanted at any time he wanted. And he had the ultimate say. On top of that, Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress that David Weiss never applied

for special counsel status. And even if he did, it wouldn't have mattered because Attorney General Garland says that he really had more power in his current position than he would have as special counsel, because even as special counsel, you have to run major decisions through the attorney general. But that's neither here nor there. The issue is that we're getting conflicting stories. Did David Weiss apply for special counsel status? The whistleblowers say yes. Attorney General Merrick Garland says no. Did David Weiss have the authority to bring charges in whatever district he wanted to? David Weiss says no.

The whistleblowers say no. Attorney General Merrick Garland says yes. So it's almost like we need David Weiss to come out and say something and clear the air because we're getting conflicting stories. David Weiss was reached out to on two different occasions last week on Thursday and Friday. He declined to comment on both days. As of Monday, Speaker McCarthy said that he was going to need to hear from David Weiss. So whether he's subpoenaed to testify before Congress, we will see. But as of now, like I said, it's just very conflicting information as to why those charges were not brought. So those were the three takeaways. And again, just to recap those, you have one, the federal government is not treating all taxpayers

the same. Two, that the Biden DOJ intervened and overstepped in the investigation. And three, that these whistleblowers have faced retaliation. As far as next steps go, when the Ways and Means Committee chairman was asked, he just said next steps are to follow the facts, talk to other people, continue to make sure the government works for the people and not against the people, and that everyone is treated fairly. As a final note, the chairman was also asked about rumors swirling that one of the whistleblowers was invited in by the committee and didn't come forward himself. But the chairman said that that's misconstrued and that what

happened was one whistleblower came to the committee himself. He told the committee that the second whistleblower wanted the committee to reach out to him if they wanted to hear from him. So the committee did. They reached out to his counsel, and that's when the second whistleblower came in and testified. But he did reiterate that the second whistleblower bought his own plane ticket. He paid for his own hotel. So it wasn't the committee putting him up to it. That takes us into our third and final story, some orders out of the Supreme Court from Monday. So on Tuesday, the day this episode drops, the Supreme Court is releasing new decisions. They have 10 decisions left to release before the end of their term, which means that this week

is going to be an intense week for the Supreme Court. But we're not going over those, obviously, because at the time I'm recording this, they have not released any new decisions. I do want to talk about, though, the orders that they issued on Monday. For purposes of this conversation, the main difference between an order and an opinion is going to be that an opinion is where the justices explain their rationale for a final judgment. So they reach a decision and they write the opinion on that decision, which lays out how they reached that decision. An order, on the other hand, is a shorter ruling and most commonly is used to either grant or deny a petition for writ of certiorari. So when a party wants the Supreme Court to hear a case,

they will petition the Supreme Court for certiorari, and the Supreme Court will either grant or deny that request. So in this case, the two orders I'm going to talk about, the Supreme Court is actually saying they will not hear the particular case. So let me give you a few examples, and it'll all make sense. The first case I want to go over is the case out of Louisiana called Robinson, which challenged Louisiana's congressional districting maps that were drawn after the 2020 census. If this sounds familiar, it's because it is. The Supreme Court just decided a very similar case out of Alabama called Milligan in a five to four decision.

They said that Alabama had to redraw its districting maps because it only had one majority black district when they should have had two. Similarly, in Louisiana, they said, hey, look, 30 percent of our population is black, yet we only have one majority black congressional district and we need to change that. So in June of last year, after the new map was drawn, this suit is filed in Louisiana saying we need a second majority black district. And the federal district court blocks Louisiana's map, meaning they say, nope, this map cannot be used. You have to draw a new map by June 20th, and it has to have a second majority black district. So this is obviously a win for those that were challenging the congressional

map, right? Well, then the state goes and appeals it to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And what they say is, hey, we want you guys to hear this case and make a decision. But in the meantime, place the federal district court's order on hold because we want our map to still be in place for now. And then, you know, we'll revisit this once you guys make a decision. And the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals says, look, we'll hear your case, but we're not going to put the order on hold. So at this point, the legislature is tasked with drawing a new map, but the state didn't want this. So the state then goes to the Supreme Court and they say, hey, will you guys hear this case and put this order out of the district court on hold? And the Supreme Court says yes. And they say, we actually have a case just like this out of Alabama.

So we're going to put the district court's order blocking the map on hold until we make a decision in the Alabama case. And at that time, we can figure out your guys' situation too. So what happened was because the Supreme Court put this case on hold, essentially put the order on hold, Louisiana used that map with one majority black district in the 2022 election. But now that the Alabama case has been decided and the Supreme Court found that that map was a violation of the Voting Rights Act, the order that was issued on Monday basically lifted that hold on Louisiana's case. And what it said is we're not going to hear

your case because we just reached a decision in Alabama and it's practically the same issue. So what we're going to do is we're going to let the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals make their decision now based on our ruling in Milligan. So this puts Louisiana on track to add a second majority black district ahead of the 2024 election. Another case that the Supreme Court declined to hear by way of an order raised a question about when individual members of Congress have the legal right to sue an executive agency for documents. So we have what's often referred to as the seven member rule. More formally, it's called Section 2954. It allows seven or more members of congressional oversight committees to request and receive

information from government agencies. So the question for the court was whether those members have a legal right to sue for noncompliance under that law. So if they request information and they don't get it from a government agency, can they sue? And this case actually originated in 2013. So back in 2013, there was a decision by the General Services Administration, which is also known as the GSA, which oversees federal real estate, to lease the old post office building in Washington, D.C. to the Trump Organization for the Trump International Hotel. Well, when Trump won the election in 2016,

17 Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee wanted access to documents relating to the agreement between the GSA and the Trump Organization to see whether Trump had a conflict of interest. And the GSA eventually handed over some of the documents, but not all of the documents. So those 17 Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee that requested the documents ended up suing. Well, in 2017, the case is thrown out by a federal judge on the grounds that those 17 Democratic members did not have standing to sue, meaning they didn't have a legal right to sue. They didn't suffer any sort of injury. Therefore, they could not bring the lawsuit. And in 2020, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for D.C. revived the lawsuit because they said, no,

actually, these minority leaders did suffer an injury sufficient for them to bring this lawsuit, and therefore they can proceed. Well, between 2020 and now, those Democratic members voluntarily dismissed the suit, which means that they voluntarily said, we're not going to move forward with this. It's dismissed. It's no longer an issue. So that led the Supreme Court on Monday to say, we're not going to hear this case. But that leaves open the question for a later date. Can minority members of an oversight committee sue a governmental agency to obtain documents in accordance with federal law. That concludes this episode. Don't forget to leave me a review and

share this show with your friends, and I will talk to you on Friday.