UNBIASED - Rep. George Santos Arrested, Goldman Sachs to Pay $215M, Trump's CNN Town Hall.

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

1. Rep. George Santos Arrested on Various Federal Charges; Indictment Explained (1:29)2. Goldman Sachs Agrees to Settle 13-Year-Old Gender Discrimination Lawsuit for $215 Million (11:20)3. Recap of Trump's CNN Town Hall (14:18)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!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. Happy Friday. I have three stories for you this Friday. The first one is representative George Santos being charged with fraud, money laundering, a few other things, and what the deal is with that. The second story is about a Goldman Sachs class action settlement. That'll be a very brief story. And then the last story, we're going to recap the CNN Trump town hall. I'm not going to be covering the Donald

Trump, E. Jean Carroll trial because in case you missed it, I released a full episode dedicated to that. So that dropped on Wednesday night. So definitely listen to that if you haven't already. And before we jump into the stories, let me just quickly remind you to please leave me a review on whatever platform you listen, really helps support my show. And what helps me maybe even more than that is when you share my show with your family, friends, colleagues, whoever it might be that share an appreciation for nonpartisan news. So without further ado, let's get into today's stories. on Wednesday, Representative George Santos was arrested in New York. The indictment was later unsealed and we learned that he had been charged with seven counts of wire fraud,

three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making false statements to the House of Representatives. He pled not guilty. Let's get into the indictment and what kind of scheme the indictment alleges. So what the indictment says is that in 2020, Santos was employed as a regional director of a Florida-based investment firm. During that employment, he was paid a salary of $120,000. The pandemic hits, and shortly after that in June, he decides he's going to apply for government assistance by claiming he had been unemployed since March 2020. So from June 2020 through April 2021, Santos is receiving government assistance, despite receiving that $120,000

salary, being the regional director for the investment firm. He received over $24,000 in unemployment insurance benefits. And then last year in September 2022, he operates in LLC, also out of Florida, and he uses it to obtain political contributions, or at least that's what he says. So he hires a consultant to be the communicator with prospective donors. And allegedly what he tells the consultant is to tell donors or prospective donors that the money that they would be donating would go towards helping to elect Santos to the House of Representatives, in part by running TV ads. Well, he gets at least two donors that rely on these TV advertisement statements. Each of them donate $25,000 into the company's bank account. And after these funds are received,

they are then allegedly transferred into Santos' personal bank accounts, which he then used to buy designer clothes. He withdrew cash, discharged debts. He transferred money to his associates. So he was doing a bunch of things with that money that he was not supposed to be doing. Again, according to the indictment, just because he's indicted does not mean he's guilty. You are presumed innocent until your guilt is proven. Lastly, the last part of the scheme was these false statements to the House. So every House candidate has a legal duty to file financial disclosure statements, otherwise known as House disclosures. This happens before each election, and it's nothing new. Santos does this,

but he doesn't do it accurately, according to the indictment. So the indictment says that in both the May 2020 disclosures and September 2022 disclosures, he allegedly understated his income and failed to disclose certain amounts that he had received. So more specifically in 2020, he said he had earned $55,000 from what we're calling company number two, when he really only earned about $27,000 from that company. So he overstated what he earned. And then on top of that, he failed to report roughly $25,000 that he had received from the investment firm. Then in the 2022 disclosures, he stated a few things that the

indictment says aren't true. So first he said his earned income consisted of $750,000 in salary from his LLC. The indictment says he didn't receive this salary from the LLC. He also said his unearned income included dividends from the LLC valued between one and 5 million. The indictment says he did not receive the reported amount. He also said he owned a checking account with deposits totaling between $100,000 and $250,000, as well as a savings account with deposits totaling between $1 and $5 million. The indictment says he did not maintain checking or savings accounts with the deposits in the reported amounts. And finally, the indictment says he failed to report approximately $28,000 in income

from the investment firm and approximately $20,000 in unemployment insurance benefits. So let's take this count by count. There are seven counts of wire fraud. What is wire fraud? Wire fraud is when anyone uses, in this case, a wire, you know, electronic communication, for the purpose of executing a scheme to defraud or obtain money by false or fraudulent purposes. Five of his seven wire fraud counts stem from various emails and text messages either about and or facilitating the contribution solicitation scheme. So if you remember, we had just talked about the fact that he told his consultant to tell prospective donors that if they donated money, this money was going to go towards helping him be elected to the House, and in part it would

pay for things like TV advertisements. Well, each of these counts specifically stems from one email or text message that conveys that message, if you will. So as an example, one email and two text messages specifically falsely stated that certain funds that were received as a political contribution would be used to purchase TV ads when allegedly, according to the indictment, they were not. So that's three counts right there. So one count for the email, one count for one of the text messages, another count for the other text message. Again, five of the seven counts stem from these various emails and text messages. The other two counts stem from the fraudulent application for unemployment benefits. So between all of those things, that is where you get the seven counts of wire fraud.

Now let's move into money laundering. So money laundering happens when the defendant knowingly conducts a monetary transaction in criminally derived property over $10,000. So this can be a deposit, it can be a withdrawal, it can be a transfer. And these three counts specifically stem from two days in October of 2022, when he transferred roughly $75,000 in three separate transfers to his own personal bank account. Again, this was from the political contributions. So he was telling people that if they donated money, it would go to political contributions. And then according to the indictment, he went ahead and took that money and transferred it to himself. The next count is theft. Theft says that he knowingly, willfully,

and without lawful authority embezzled, stole, purloined, and converted to his own use money and things of value of the United States and a department and agency thereof. This stems from the application for unemployment benefits. So the amount he received in unemployment benefits when he didn't actually satisfy the requirements of unemployment benefits, that was theft from the government. And then the last two counts, the false statements to the House, exactly what it sounds like. It's knowingly and willfully making false, fraudulent statements and representations to the House of Representatives. These statements have to be materially false.

So again, these two counts stem from the 2020 House Disclosure Report and the 2022 House Disclosure Report that we went over. Following the indictment, the U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of New York made the following statement. He said, quote, This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations. Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charged Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself. He used political contributions to line

his pockets, unlawfully applied for unemployment benefits that should have gone to New Yorkers who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and lied to the House of Representatives. My office and our law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively root out corruption and self-dealing from our community's public institutions and hold public officials accountable to the constituents who elected them, end quote. Santos was released on a $500,000 bond. He had to surrender his passport and he will need court approval to travel outside of New York and Washington, D.C. Following his arraignment and his not guilty plea, he said he won't be

resigning from Congress and he plans to run for reelection, calling this a witch hunt. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked if he would support Santos for re-election, calling this a witch hunt. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked if he would support Santos' run for re-election, to which McCarthy said, quote, no, I am not going to support him. He has a lot going on. I think he has other things to focus on in his life other than running for re-election, end quote. Despite saying he won't support his run for re-election, he did say that he is not calling for Santos' resignation until the House Ethics Committee determines that Santos broke the law. So Santos still maintains his position as a

representative. In fact, he was present in the House on Thursday. He made a point to be there. Something to keep in mind before we move on to the next story, at the grand jury phase, and we've talked about this before, but at the grand jury phase, the grand jury is tasked with determining whether one could reasonably believe a crime was committed based on the evidence presented to them. This is not beyond a reasonable doubt like it is at the trial phase. This is a much lower burden of proof. So now that the charges have been brought, the proceedings will enter a pre-trial phase. This could take months to play out. And this is when Santos can ask for the case to be dismissed. He could enter into a plea agreement. There's a lot of things that can happen.

If he does ask for this case to be dismissed and the judge denies that motion to dismiss and Santos still maintains his innocence, he does not enter into a plea agreement, there will then be pre-trial litigation as to what kind of evidence would be allowed at the trial what kind of defense santos can bring and from there it would eventually go to trial and it would be up to the jury to determine his innocence or guilt so i hope that sheds light onto what the

allegations are what the alleged scheme is and now you have a better understanding of that let's now move into our second story which is that goldman Sachs has settled a 13-year class action lawsuit for $215 million. This was a gender discrimination lawsuit. It was set to go to trial in June, so next month, Goldman Sachs decided that they were going to settle this to avoid a trial. This case was based, like I said, on gender discrimination, but more specifically, it was brought by women alleging that Goldman Sachs was not paying women the same as men and women were not entitled to the same promotion opportunities that men were. Although there are only four named plaintiffs in this lawsuit. It did include about 2,800 female associates and vice presidents within the company. So this is what the lawsuit alleges in part. Of course, I'm not going to read

you the whole thing, but I do want to give you some context. So it says, Goldman Sachs has distributed the benefits of its enormous success unequally, systematically favoring male professionals at the expense of their female counterparts. At nearly all levels of its management ranks, it has paid its female professionals less than similarly situated male professionals, even though they hold equivalent positions and perform the same or substantially similar work with similar, or in some cases, superior results. Goldman maintains policies and practices for promoting its employees that result in the disproportionate promotion of men over equally or more qualified women. As a result, female professionals have been systematically circumvented and excluded from promotion

opportunities that are routinely afforded to their male counterparts. The resulting underrepresentation of women in Goldman Sachs' management ranks is stark. The violations of its female employees' rights are systemic and based upon company-wide policies and practices and are the result of unchecked gender bias that per settlement, Goldman Sachs has to undergo a three-year analysis by outside consultants to ensure that its hiring and promotion processes are proven equitable. They also have to have an independent third party that is going to examine current salaries and employment conditions for pay gaps and other areas of inequality to get those taken care of. Once legal fees and costs are deducted, the average payout is going to be about $47,000 per employee or female employee. Obviously,

that number is going to vary depending on if the female employee was an associate or a vice president or whatever the position was. I do have links on my website where you can read the complaint for yourself. I also have the press release that followed the settlement. So those things are always there if you want more information. Our final story of the day, let's recap CNN's town hall with Donald Trump. Caitlin Collins was the one who was asking Donald Trump the question. She was kind of leading the town hall, if you will. It did get a bit contentious at times. I'm not going to recap every single statement.

I'm not going to get too far into the weeds with the fact checking and the back and forth between Trump and Caitlin. But I do want to focus on the questions hechecking and the back and forth between Trump and Caitlyn. But I do want to focus on the questions he was asked and the responses that he gave, because I do think that that is the most important aspect of this story. If you do want to fact-check, I know there are several outlets who have released fact-check statements. Just, you know, proceed with caution, as I always say, depending on which outlets you're reading. One outlet's going to tell you one thing, another outlet's going to tell you another thing. So the night opened with election fraud. So Caitlyn asked Trump to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election, but he stood by his claims that the election was rigged. This was

a topic that kept coming up throughout the night. So at various points of the night, he would bring this up that the election was rigged. Caitlyn would then argue back and they would go back and forth on it. Then came the first audience question, which was, will you suspend polarizing talk of election fraud during your run for president? His response was, yes, unless I see it. I have a right to say something. We need paper ballots instead of mail-in votes. Let's just win it again and straighten out our country. So that was his response to that. The next question he got from Caitlyn was,

do you regret your actions on January 6th? He says he handled things well. He asked people to walk peacefully, protect police officers, etc. Caitlyn rebutted this with the fact that he waited three hours after the Capitol was breached to say anything, to which Donald Trump then said, I offered Pelosi 10,000 soldiers. She turned it down because she didn't like the look of it. And he said, you know, even if they would have taken 500 of the soldiers I offered, it never would have happened. Caitlyn then came back and said, your own official has testified to the fact that you never gave that order, to which Donald Trump said, what are you talking about?

And I think the miscommunication there, if I had to guess, was that Trump was saying he offered the soldiers, the troops to be deployed to the Capitol. He didn't give the official order because according to him, Pelosi turned it down. But Caitlyn was saying, you never gave the order. And Trump was trying to say, but I offered. It just that was just yet another thing that they argued about. He then pulls out a document from his jacket where he has January 6th laid out tweet by tweet, action by action, and he starts

going over the timeline to prove his point that he did make an effort to calm the crowd. But again, Caitlyn was saying, you know, you didn't though right away, you waited too long, etc, etc. The next question from Caitlyn was, do you owe Pence an apology for how you acted on January 6th? Trump says no, because Pence made a mistake. He said Pence is a great guy, but he made a mistake. He should have put the votes back to the state legislature, to which Caitlyn then said the vice president doesn't have the authority to do that under the Electoral Count Act. Now, the thing with this is the law was later changed. So the Electoral Count Act was updated in what's called the Electoral Count Reform Act of

2022. And Trump's argument is that this law was reformed because the Democrats changed it after the fact because they realized that Trump was right and the VP could do what Trump was asking. And so they reformed this law to make it so the VP couldn't do what Trump wanted Pence to do. But then Caitlyn's argument was that no, no, no, the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 They reformed this law to make it so the VP couldn't do what Trump wanted Pence to do. But then Caitlyn's argument was that no, no, no, the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 just strengthened the law to clear up any confusion to avoid what happened with you happening again. So then we get some audience questions. One of those questions was, if elected president, what is the first thing you would do to help

make things more affordable? And she was talking about inflation and how the cost of everything is so high right now. His response was, quote, drill, baby, drill. End quote. He went on to say, we were energy independent when I was in office. We were soon going to be energy dominant. We had oil down to 187. And we had the greatest economy in the history of this country. And these quote, stupid fools ended it. And that's what started inflation. And now it won't stop. So that's what he had to say about that. He said that the biggest part of the economy was that I got you tax cuts and the biggest regulatory cuts, and this place was rocking. And then we were given a gift from

China, meaning the pandemic and it all went downhill, to which he said, but then I built the economy back up after that, and the Biden administration has essentially torn it down. His next question was, would you pardon the January 6th rioters? His response to this was, a large majority of them, yes. I can't say for every single one because I'm sure some of them got out of control. He was then asked if he would pardon the Proud Boys, to which he said he would have to look at their case. He doesn't know all the facts, but it's not possible to get a fair trial in DC or New York City for that matter. And that of course led to the discussion about the sexual abuse allegations and the verdict against him that just came out the other day. And he doubled down on his assertion that he has never met her. He has never seen her. She is a whack job that made

up this whole story. And what he says is that it would have been crazy for someone as famous as him who owned the hotel next door to Bergdorf Goodman to be going into the dressing room of a department store with a woman. And he swore on his children, which he says he never does, that this is a fake story. It's a made up story. Caitlin's perspective on this was, you know, a jury of your peers said you were liable. So you obviously did it. So that was how that conversation went. There was a bit more to it. But again, I'm just focusing on the highlights another question he got was what do you think about the current debt situation and how can we move forward his response was we have to get the country back we have to lower interest rates lower energy start paying off debt he says he thinks the democrats will cave in this whole

debt ceiling debate but he says to the Republicans, he says, if they don't give you massive cuts, you'll have to default. He says default is better than what we're doing now because we're spending money like drunken sailors. To that point, Caitlin asked, so to be clear, you think the United States should default if the White House doesn't agree to spending cuts? And Donald Trump said, you might as well do it now because you'll end up doing it later. And Caitlin asked, you once said that the debt ceiling should never be used as a negotiating tactic. And he said, sure, that's when I was president. And Caitlyn asked, so why is it different now that you're out of office? And he said, because now I'm not president. He went on

to say that we're spending $7 trillion on nonsense and you're going to default anyway at some point and it's going to be messier. So just do it now. The next question was with gun violence, how would you act to defend our second amendment rights and restore gun rights taken away from us? His response was, it's not the gun that pulls the trigger. It's the person that pulls the trigger. He was asked, are there any new gun restrictions you would sign into law? And he says, we need to harden school security, harden entrances, make schools safe. But it's a big mental health problem more than anything else. So he didn't really answer this question.

He was asked, are there any new gun restrictions you would sign into law? And he did not give a clear answer other than he would tighten security in schools. The next question was, how will you appeal to women voters concerned with the Dobbs decision? His answer was, great question, great victory. Getting rid of Roe v. Wade was great for pro-life because it gave them something to negotiate with. And now what's happening is that deals are going to be made. And he believes in exceptions. He says, I believe in the life of the mother, the rape exception, the incest exception, like Ronald Reagan did.

But this was a huge victory and something I'm very proud of because prior presidents have tried to do this for years and I was the one that was able to accomplish it. He was then asked if he would sign a federal abortion ban. He did not answer the question directly. He was saying that he would negotiate so people are happy. And Caitlyn was then asking, well, what makes people happy? And he said, I just want to do what's right for everyone. And she said, well, what is that?

And he didn't answer that part of the question. The next question was, with Title 42 expiring, do you agree with deploying troops to the border? And what would a Trump administration do to stop migrants crossing at all of our borders? And he said, letting Title 42 expire is destroying the country. We need to continue building the wall. And that led to an argument because Trump says he built hundreds of miles of the wall. Caitlyn was telling him he only built 52 miles of new wall. And Trump's argument was that before there was like this decrepit wall in some parts, it was just, you know, rusted old parts of a wall and he fixed it.

And therefore he's built hundreds of miles of the wall. Caitlyn's argument stems from the fact that she says the wall was already there. You just fixed it. And therefore, he's built hundreds of miles of the wall. Caitlin's argument stems from the fact that she says the wall was already there. You just improved it. So you didn't really add anything new. And then the next question was, do you support providing additional equipment to Ukraine? And how do you deal with the threat posed by Putin? And his response was, if I were president, this never would have happened. He said, quote, if I am president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.

I will meet with Putin and Zelensky. They both have strengths. They both have weaknesses. And I will have it settled in 24 hours, end quote. When Caitlyn asked him if he wants Ukraine to win, he said, quote, I don't think of this as winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all of these people, end quote. She said, can you say if you want Ukraine or Russia to win this war? He said, I want everyone to stop dying. She asked, would you consider Putin

a war criminal? He said, quote, I think it's something that should not be discussed now. It should be discussed later because right now, if you say he's a war criminal, it's going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to get this thing stopped. He's going to fight a lot harder than he would under the other circumstance, end quote. The next question, and one of the last questions, was why did you take classified documents when you left office? He says he has every right to do so under the Presidential Records Act, and almost immediately deflected to the boxes found at President Biden's house. This caused a bit of an argument between Trump and Caitlyn because Trump said he had a right to negotiate with the National Archives, whereas Caitlyn said no, the documents

belong to the National Archives once his term is over and there's no right to negotiate written anywhere in the law. That is the end of this episode. Please don't forget to share it with your friends. Please don't forget to leave me a review and I will talk to you next week.