UNBIASED - Senate's $95B Foreign Aid Package, Mayorkas Impeached, Trump's NATO Remarks Spark Controversy, Fani Willis Disqualification Hearing, and More.

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

1. Senate Passes $95B Foreign Aid Package; Here's the Numbers Breakdown and What the Bill's Future Might Look Like in the House (1:12)2. Trump Asks Supreme Court to Pause His Federal Election Interference Trial Indefinitely (4:22)3. Trump's NATO Remarks at Weekend Rally Spark Global Controversy (7:59)4. Judge Allows Evidentiary Hearing Re: Fani Willis' Relationship with Special Prosecutor to Proceed (15:02)5. QUICK HITTERS: House Votes to Impeach Mayorkas (19:31); Secretary of Defense Enters Hospital and Transfers Powers (21:05); Rideshare App Drivers to Protest on Valentines Day (21:49); RFK Jr. Apologizes to Family Members After Super Bowl Ad (23:13); DOJ Seizes Cargo Plane Iran Sold to Venezuela (24:21); Man Arrested for Stealing and Burning Jackie Robinson Statue (25:11)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!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, February 14th. Despite some technical difficulties, here we are. I am here, okay? So today's episode is going to look a little bit different, and I didn't mention this, but as always, this episode was recorded yesterday around 6 p.m. Eastern Time. So as I said, this episode will look a little bit different in the sense that there's no real structured segment format. I'm just going to go over four main stories, varying lengths, and then we'll do quick hitters, and that'll be today's episode. Before we get into the stories, I always like to remind you that if you like what you hear

and you haven't yet done so, please go ahead after the show and leave me a review on whatever your preferred listening platform is, or if you are watching me on YouTube, just go ahead and hit thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. All of those things really help me. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. The Senate passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid package early, early, early on Tuesday. We're talking wee hours of the morning before most of us were up. They pulled an all-nighter. It was passed in a 70 to 29 vote. So I first want to talk about the numbers, how this bill breaks down as far as foreign aid to the respective countries go, and then we will get into what the future of the package looks like. So in the bill,

we have $60 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion for Israel, $9.2 billion in humanitarian aid, and this is not just for Gaza. So in the previous bill that was shot down last week, there was aid specifically for, or humanitarian aid specifically for Gaza. This is humanitarian aid for Gaza, the West Bank, Ukraine, as well as others in the midst of war zones. There's $8 billion in support for partners in the Indo-Pacific. This includes funding to deter the Chinese government. And then there's also about $400 million for a grant program that would allow nonprofits and places of worship to make security enhancements to protect them from hate crimes. Now, as I mentioned last episode, this package is essentially the same as the one that was

just shot down last week, just without the border security measures. So instead of being a border security and foreign aid package, this is just a foreign aid package or foreign aid bill, whatever you want to call it. With that said, there is one provision that made it into this new package that relates to the border situation, and that is a provision that would allow sanctions on criminal organizations involved in the production of fentanyl. So now that it's passed the Senate, the bill will go to the House. Speaker Johnson is the one who determines whether this bill gets voted on in the House. And he has not really clearly stated, at least as of now, whether the House will even

vote on the bill. But he did say on Monday, quote, the Senate did the right thing last week by rejecting the Ukraine, Taiwan, Gaza, Israel immigration legislation due to its insufficient border provisions. And it should have gone back to the drawing board to amend the current bill to include real border security provisions that would actually help end the ongoing catastrophe. Instead, the Senate's foreign aid bill is silent on the most pressing issue facing our country. The mandate of national security supplemental legislation was to secure America's own border before sending additional aid around the world. Now, in the absence of having received any single

border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work on its own will on these important matters, end quote. So it's obvious that the House is going to work on their own border measure, but it's also, it also seems like Speaker Johnson may want to wait to bring this foreign aid package from the Senate to a vote in the House until the House has some sort of border security measure of their own passed. And this is something that could take weeks, it could even take months, if the House even decides to vote on it. But as always, I will of course keep you posted. Story number two. Last week, an appeals court ruled that Donald Trump lacks presidential immunity from his federal election interference charges. And on Monday,

Donald Trump took this to the Supreme Court and asked the court to put the appellate ruling on hold and maintain the current pause on the trial. So basically what Trump requested or what his request said is that his team is currently working on a petition for certiorari. A petition for certiorari is the official request to the Supreme Court to take up the case. But in the meantime, while that petition is being worked on, Trump wants the Supreme Court to indefinitely delay the trial that is set to take place at a federal courthouse in D.C. A little more background information on this. The trial was supposed to start on March 4th, but prior to the appeals court issuing their ruling last week regarding this immunity defense, the district court judge officially postponed the start date and did not offer a new start date,

just postponed it. And this is because a March 4th start date just became unrealistic, given the fact that the appeals court hadn't yet issued their ruling. And even once the ruling came out, the parties need time to prepare for trial, and three weeks just is simply not enough time. So the judge indefinitely postponed the case. But now that there's an appellate ruling, you know, assuming the Supreme Court doesn't get involved, the district court judge could now reschedule the trial for a later date. So what Trump is asking of the Supreme Court is to indefinitely delay this trial until the Supreme Court decides what they're going to do with the case. Trump's main argument as to why this trial should be put on hold is that if the court doesn't, if the Supreme

Court does not decide to pause the trial, then what Trump says is that not only will the trial significantly impact Trump's ability to campaign at the height of the election season, but also that the trial would inflict First Amendment violations on American voters. More specifically, what the brief says in regard to the First Amendment violations is, quote, President Trump is the leading candidate for President of the United States and the greatest electoral threat to President Biden, whose administration is prosecuting him. Conducting a months-long criminal trial of the leading opponent of the current regime in the middle of a presidential campaign will inevitably disrupt President Trump's ability to campaign against President Biden, stifling his voice and preventing American voters from hearing from the leading candidate, end quote. Now, we should have a decision from the court fairly soon,

given just the circumstances surrounding the issue, given that, you know, we're under time constraints here. They should decide rather quickly. But again, that ruling, it's not deciding the merits of the case. The ruling would either say, we as the court declined to get involved in this case, the appellate court ruling stands, and in that case, trial would be rescheduled and it would proceed accordingly. Or the Supreme Court could say, we are going to chime in on this issue, we are going to decide this issue, so while we make our decision, we're going to put this trial on hold. So that is what you can expect from here. That's, you know, that's what's currently happening. And again, I don't know the date that the Supreme Court will issue a decision,

but it should be fairly soon. In some other Trump news, Trump's NATO remarks at a rally on Saturday have sparked some global controversy. Let's talk about them. At a rally over the weekend, Trump recounted a conversation that he had with a president of a country, which is also a NATO member. And this conversation, according to Trump, included the ally president asking Trump if the United States would still protect his country if his country didn't pay their NATO contribution and was attacked by Russia. And Trump asked the president to clarify what he meant by didn't pay. Trump said, you're delinquent. And the president said, yeah, let's assume that's the case. And Trump responded, quote, no, I would not protect you. In fact,

I would encourage them, meaning Russia, to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay, end quote. To add a little bit of color to this situation, one, this conversation that Trump was referencing took place while he was president. So this was on a recent conversation. Also, the remarks were part of a broader conversation about how Donald Trump had helped NATO sort of get back on track during his presidency. He was saying that when he became president, NATO was broke because people weren't paying their dues. But then when he took over, he changed that and made countries step up to the plate and pay. So that was his overarching

message. But people were not happy with the way that he said he wouldn't defend them if Russia did attack them, because the whole purpose of NATO is it's an alliance between countries to protect one another. So once these remarks from the rally started circulating in the media, Trump posted to Truth Social and he said, quote, I made NATO strong. And even the rhinos and radical left Democrats admit that. When I told the 20 countries that weren't paying their fair share that they had to pay up and said, without doing that, you will not have US military protection, the money came rolling in. After so many years of the United States picking up the tab, it was a beautiful sight to see. But now, without me there to say you must pay,

they are at it again. We are into helping Ukraine for more than $100 billion more than NATO. We have nobody that they respect, and they insist on paying far less than we do. Wrong. NATO has to equalize, and now. They will do that if properly asked. If not, America first. Make America great again. End quote. And, you know, I do, this is, this is also a good time to clear up some other facts that are important to this conversation. So NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it was founded after World War II in order to prevent Soviet control from expanding throughout Europe. It currently has 31 members and its purpose, as I said previously, is to serve as sort of this alliance between countries that protect one another. And what Trump is referring to when he says dues, it's not that each country has to pay a membership fee, right? The countries don't have to pay to belong to the alliance, but each country does have to or should be contributing to their own military budgets. And this military budget component, which Trump was referring to in his remarks, has always been a bit of an issue for the United States because the United States

contributes so much money compared to other members of NATO. And so presidents in the past have raised this issue, including President Obama. He raised the issue in 2014. And as a result of that, the NATO members agreed to move for or move towards spending 2% of their respective GDP on national defense by 2024. So in other words, each country would work towards contributing 2% of their GDP to their own defense. And this 2% is not paid to NATO. It is a country's contribution to its own military defense. So this military defense contribution is what Trump and the ally president were talking about when the president asked Trump what he would do if the country didn't pay. But long story short, the remarks made a lot of people uneasy.

People on the other side of the aisle from Trump, including Senator Chris Van Hollen, said that anybody who cares about America should be, quote, scared to death by the fact that Donald Trump is telling us that if he was re-elected president, he would throw our NATO allies to Putin, end quote. NATO Secretary General said, quote, any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the United States, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk, end quote. And Nikki Haley also echoed that thought. At her own rally, she said Trump effectively put all American service members at risk by saying what he said and taking Russia's side. Someone that had a differing opinion was Marco Rubio, Senator Marco

Rubio. What he said is that, quote, virtually every American president at some point in some way has complained about other countries in NATO not doing enough. Trump's just the first one to express it in these terms, but I'm not concerned because Trump has been president before. I know exactly what he has done and will do with the NATO alliance, but it has to be an alliance. It's not Americans' defense with a bunch of small junior partners, end quote. And another thing I want to mention, you know, that's also equally as important, is that as of December, a president cannot withdraw from NATO just by himself. He can't do it unilaterally is what I mean. So he either has to

get the Senate's approval to do so, or there has to be some sort of act of Congress. So there is that safeguard in place. And this is, you know, things like refusing to appoint a United States ambassador to NATO headquarters, failing to attend NATO summits, order United States military commanders to tone down their exercises with NATO allies, or as Trump suggested, refuse to come to a country's aid if it were attacked. But I also want to mention that not coming to another member's defense would actually be a violation of the NATO alliance, and more specifically Article 5. Article 5 of the NATO alliance says that an attack against one member is an attack against all, and that members of the alliance must respond appropriately. So that's just another thing to keep in mind that, you know, if a country, let's say the United States, didn't come to the defense

of another, that could be considered a violation. So that's the story with Trump's remarks. Let's move on to the next, which is about this Georgia election interference case. The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case, not to be confused with the federal election interference case. The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case, not to be confused with the federal election interference case, ruled that the hearing scheduled for Thursday surrounding the district attorney's potential disqualification will go forward. Now, the last time I reported on this developing situation was about a week ago. It was in the February 6th episode, and at that time, Fannie Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, had filed a response to the motion to dismiss the

indictment and disqualify her and the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, from the case, and this was due to an improper relationship. In that motion that Willis filed, Willis and Wade admitted to developing a relationship, but said that the relationship did not develop until after Willis had already hired Wade as the special prosecutor in the case. However, when the defendant's motion to dismiss was originally filed and these allegations were made, the judge scheduled an evidentiary hearing to take place this Thursday. Basically, an evidentiary hearing is where the judge would hear all of the evidence, including any relevant testimony, and based on that evidence would make a determination as to whether to dismiss the indictment based on the allegations and also whether to disqualify

the district attorney and the prosecutor from this case. But when Willis filed her response, admitting to the relationship but denying any wrongdoing, she also asked the court to one, cancel the evidentiary hearing given that there was no wrongdoing, and two, quash the subpoenas for the testimony of both her and Wade, because both of them were subpoenaed to testify about their relationship at the upcoming hearing. So the hearing on Monday was regarding Willis's request, but ultimately the judge allowed the hearing to go forward, so it still will take place on Thursday, and the judge also allowed for the subpoenas to stand, for now at least.

And what he said about that was that he wants the hearing to go forward, he wants to see how things are going, he wants to see how the live testimony of another key witness goes, and from that he'll decide whether Willis and Wade can be called to testify. So that will be sort of a game time decision from the judge. The main issue at this hearing will come down to whether Willis financially benefited from her relationship with Wade as the special prosecutor. So that is something that would result in disqualification, not necessarily the relationship itself, but if Willis benefited financially from it. The relationship itself is not at issue. It's the financial benefit. At Monday's hearing, what the judge said is this.

He said, quote, specifically looking at defendant Roman's motion, it alleges a personal relationship that resulted in financial benefit to the district attorney. And that is no longer a matter of complete speculation. The state has admitted a relationship existed, and so what remains to be proven is the existence and extent of any financial benefit, end quote. He said, quote, because I think it's possible that the facts alleged by the defendant could result in disqualification, I think an evidentiary hearing must occur to establish the record on those core allegations. End quote. The judge also addressed Wade's qualifications as a prosecutor because that was also an issue that the defendant raised. Specifically, the defendant argued that Wade

was only hired in this case because him and Willis were in a relationship, not because he was the most qualified for the role. But what the judge said is, quote, in my mind, as long as a lawyer has a heartbeat and a bar card, that lawyer's appointment standing alone is a matter within the district attorney's discretion, end quote. So the judge won't be considering that. And again, I can't trust it enough. This will come down to financial benefit. Did Willis benefit financially from the money that the DA's office paid Wade for his work on the case? And specifically, the financial benefit at Did Willis benefit financially from the money that the DA's office paid Wade for his work on the case? And specifically, the financial benefit at issue here is the trips

that the two of them took together. The defendant says the trips were paid for by Wade, which was a benefit incurred to Willis buying through the money that Willis's office paid Wade, whereas Willis says that all travel expenses were split and do not present any financial conflict. So we will know more on this on Thursday. And as always, I will keep you updated on Friday. Now on to quick hitters and back to the original meaning of quick hitters, which we've gotten away from in the last couple of episodes. But quick hitters are stories covered in two minutes or less. So let's start with the first one, which is Mallorca's impeachment. The House was scheduled to vote again on Tuesday on the impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mallorca over his handling

of the southern border. At the time that this episode is being recorded, we don't yet know if the resolution passed or failed, but I can of course provide you with an update on Friday, also the information we know as of now so that you know what's going on when that vote happens and we know how the vote went. If you listened to my last episode, you know that the reason this measure is being reconsidered again, despite failing last week, is because Representative Blake Moore switched his vote last minute in order to introduce a motion to reconsider. But if you need to get caught up on that, go ahead and listen to my last episode. You'll hear everything there. So now that Steve Scalise is back from his

cancer treatment, Republicans are hoping that they'll have enough votes to impeach Mayorkas this time. But margins before were very slim. They still are very slim, so it will be close. And if the vote does pass, Mayorkas would become only the second cabinet secretary in history to be impeached. The only other cabinet secretary to be impeached was William Belknap in 1876. He had taken part in a kickback scheme to make some extra cash. His job as war secretary apparently wasn't paying enough. So Mayorkas would be the second in history. Quick hitter number two, defense secretary Lloyd Austin is back in the hospital and has transferred his powers and duties to deputy secretary of defense Kathleen Hicks. Austin made headlines a couple of months ago. He failed to transfer his duties while he went under anesthesia for

a prostate procedure, but this time he made sure not to make that same mistake. He is currently being treated in the critical care unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and is being treated, quote, for symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue, end quote. It is not clear how long he will remain in the hospital, but he did have to cancel his trip overseas to Brussels because of this hospital stay. Number three, drivers for Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare apps will be holding a protest at airports across 10 major cities this Valentine's Day. Justice for app workers wrote in their announcement, quote, Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers are tired of being mistreated by the app companies. We are sick of working 80 hours a week just to make ends meet, being constantly scared for our safety, and worrying, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Rhode Island, and Tampa, we are not taking rides to or from any airports on February 14th. We're going on strike and telling the app companies that we won't take it anymore, end quote. Uber and Lyft both commented on the

situation saying that they did not believe this strike, this protest was going to have a significant impact on business. Uber said last year's protest didn't have an effect on business and that as of Q4 2023, drivers in the United States were making about $33 per utilized hour. Lyft said something similar saying that Lyft drivers using their own cars earned around $30 an hour, including tips and bonuses of engaged time, but closer to $23 an hour after expenses. Quick hitter number four. RFK Jr., Robert F. Kennedy Jr., issued a statement to his family members after a Super PAC aired a Super Bowl commercial mirroring a 1960 broadcast by his uncle, President John F. Kennedy. Members of the Kennedy family who have publicly voiced opposition to RFK Jr.'s political views in the past were less than thrilled with the ad. Bobby Shriver,

RFK Jr.'s cousin and the nephew of President Kennedy, wrote, quote, My cousin's Super Bowl ad used our uncle's face and my mother's. She would be appalled by his deadly healthcare views. Respect for science, vaccines, and healthcare equity were in her DNA, end quote. RFK Jr., then apologized on X, he wrote, quote, I'm so sorry if the Super Bowl advertisement caused anyone in my family pain. The ad was created and aired by the American Values Super PAC without any involvement or approval from my campaign. FED rules prohibit Super PACs from consulting with me or my staff. I love you all. God bless you. End quote. The United States government, in other news, says it seized a Boeing 747 cargo plane that officials say was previously sold by a sanctioned Iranian airline to a state-owned Venezuelan cargo airline. And officials say that Mahan Air has been subject to U.S. sanctions for years for providing support to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard

force. So officials said the sale was done without U.S. government authorization and violated export control laws. According to the DOJ, the plane is now in Florida and will be disposed of, though the department did not elaborate on how or when that plane would be disposed of. Number six, a suspect has been arrested in the January 25th stealing and burning of a Jackie Robinson statue in Kansas. Rocky Alderete, who was arrested in an unrelated case, is now facing recommended charges of felony theft over $25,000, aggravated criminal damage to property, and identity theft and making false information. The statue was stolen from a Wichita park and sports complex. It was found five days later burning in a trash can, and investigators say that there were at least three people that were seen on surveillance video when this statue was stolen. But so far, Alderete is the only suspect

in custody. Officials also said this isn't a hate crime as far as they know. They said there's no evidence of a hate crime and that it appears the statue was stolen to sell off its metal. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Again, happy Valentine's Day. If you don't have a valentine, I will be your valentine. And I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you again on Friday in just a couple of days.