UNBIASED - September 3, 2024: U.S. Seizes Plane of Venezuela's President, Mysterious Kamala Harris 'Eagles' Ads Appear in Philadelphia, NY Government Worker Arrested and Charged, and More.

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Welcome back to UNBIASED. In today's episode: U.S. Seizes Plane of Venezuela's President. Here's Why (0:43) Philadelphia Eagles Team Says Mysterious Bus Stop Ads of Harris are "Counterfeit" (5:25) Quick Hitters: Former NY Governor Aid Arrested and Charged, Pennsylvania Judge Issues Ruling on Mail-In Ballots, HP to Continue Seeking $4B in Damages From Man Who Died Aboard Yacht, US Marines Attacked By Turkish Group (9:12) Daily Critical Thinking Exercise (11:42) 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 Tuesday, September 3rd, and this is your daily news rundown. Remember that my news cycle ends at 3 p.m. Eastern time every day, so anything that happens after that will be covered in the next day's episode. As always, if you love the unbiased

approach that this episode provides and you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen, share the show with your friends. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can go ahead and hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel if you're not already. All of those things really help me out. So thank you very much. And without further ado, we can get into today's stories. Over the weekend, the United States government seized the plane belonging to the president of Venezuela. Government officials

and a pilot hopped aboard the plane, which was in the Dominican Republic, flew it straight to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and that is where it sits today. Now, as you might expect, seizing a president's plane is no light task. So let's talk about why it was done. For starters, the relationship between the United States and Venezuela, it's a contentious one. The Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, is a pretty corrupt president. He's running a pretty corrupt government. And the United States has decided that it is going to try to keep Maduro in check. There's a lot of political unrest there. Most recently, in fact, President Biden essentially said to Maduro, listen, if you just agree to have a free and fair election during Venezuela's 2024 election, will ease some of the sanctions that we currently have on your country. Maduro seemingly agreed. The United States lifted the sanctions on Venezuela's oil and gas in November of last year. The election cycle continued on, and Maduro continued to

oppress and censor his opponents. Now, what does this oppression look like? Well, the opposition leader at the time, Maria Machado, she was reportedly polling pretty well, well enough to beat Maduro in the July election. But Machado was disqualified from the race and some members of her campaign team were jailed. So following all of that, Biden reinstated the sanctions in April of this year. And yes, of course, Maduro, you know, ended up winning the election in July. Following that election, some GOP lawmakers were pressing the Biden administration to impose even harsher sanctions on Venezuela's government. And a bipartisan group of lawmakers also wrote to Biden,

not necessarily calling for sanctions, but demanding accountability from Venezuela's government. And actually, as a side note, but related to this story, there was a presidential candidate named Edmundo Gonzalez running against Maduro in the election, and he just had a warrant issued for his arrest yesterday. The warrant was requested by Venezuelan authorities. It accused him of various crimes, including conspiracy, falsifying documents, and usurpation of powers, and the judge ultimately granted that. So okay, Venezuelan's government is corrupt, but where does the plane come into play here? Back in 2019, former President Trump issued Executive Order 13884, which prohibits anyone in the United States from engaging in transactions with people who have either acted or purported to act for or on behalf

of the government of Venezuela, and this includes as a member of the Maduro regime. In short, what that means, United States people can't work with other people to benefit Maduro or the Venezuelan government. On top of that, the Department of Commerce imposed export controls specifically for goods intended for, quote, a Venezuelan military or military intelligence end user, end quote. Well, in late 2022, early 2023, people affiliated with Maduro allegedly used a Caribbean-based shell company to buy Maduro's plane from a company based in Miami. The reason for the shell company was to, of course, conceal their involvement with Maduro. So this plane was purchased for $13 million and subsequently

exported from the United States to the Caribbean and then to Venezuela. This was in April 2023. Since May 2023, the plane has allegedly, quote, flown almost exclusively to and from a military base in Venezuela and has been used for the benefit of Maduro and his representatives, end quote. And there you have it. That would be a violation of not only Trump's executive order, but also the export controls put in place by the Department of Commerce. But one of the main reasons that the United States decided to enforce these export controls and Trump's executive order is because of Maduro's actions in the recent election in Venezuela. So it all sort of ties together. According to the DOJ press release, the Department of Commerce Miami field office,

the Department of Homeland Security, office, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Homeland Security Investigations Task Force in Miami are all working together to investigate the case, and the DOJ's Office of Internal Affairs, as well as the Homeland Security Investigations team in Santo Domingo, assisted authorities in the Dominican Republic to carry out this seizure. That's what I have for you on that. Let's now move on to some other news related to the election here at home. Posters of Kamala Harris in a Philadelphia Eagles uniform have been popping up at bus stops in and around the city of Philadelphia. The Eagles have since called the posters quote-unquote counterfeit. So let's talk

about it. As I said, these posters basically have an image of Harris wearing an Eagles uniform and helmet with a football cradled in her hand, and at the bottom is the Eagles logo, the word Kamala or the name Kamala in big letters, a smaller line of text that reads, quote, official candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles, and then underneath that is a URL philadelphiaeagles.com slash vote. So far, these posters have been seen in three locations around the city. The URL printed on the poster is a real URL and takes you to an Eagles webpage that provides relevant dates for this year's Pennsylvania and New Jersey primaries, as well as various links to, you know, either learn more about elections, how to register to vote.

There's a link for first-time voters, polling locations, how to request a ballot, things along those lines. So what it seems is that the URL is an official Eagles, you know, URL, but that the Eagles aren't responsible for putting up the posters. Someone else must have put the posters up and included that URL that belongs that the Eagles aren't responsible for putting up the posters. Someone else must have put the posters up and included that URL that belongs to the Eagles because the Eagles released a statement on X that reads, quote, we are aware counterfeit political ads are being circulated and are working with our advertising partner to have them removed, end quote. Similarly,

the city of Philadelphia provided their own statement, and that reads, a number of illegally placed posters of Kamala Harris and the Philadelphia Eagles were placed in bus shelters in Philadelphia. These were not digital ads placed by the Harris campaign, the Philadelphia Eagles, SEPTA, or the media agency Intersection that handles the transit ad space. This was not a digital breach. Whomever is responsible for the illegally placed posters broke into the securely covered shelter ad space and somehow put the posters in the space. Intersection has advised the city's Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems that they plan to conduct a full inventory tomorrow of all bus shelters and remove any illegal posters. The

city has a process to review all bus shelter ads, but this again was not a digital ad, end quote. Now, there is an artist that creates very similar ads and has placed them at bus stops in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. in the past. I obviously don't want to accuse anyone, you know, without having all of the evidence, but I do think it's important here for purposes of giving exposure to all sides of this story. The artist that I'm referring to had previously placed an ad that looked like a Ben and Jerry's ad with an image of Biden eating an ice cream cone that read, quote, Rocky Road to Democracy, just vote. And then at the bottom, there was a URL,

benjerrys.com slash democracy. That URL takes you to the actual Ben and Jerry's website and specifically a webpage that talks about democracy. There's a link to learn how to register to vote. It highlights various social groups like Color of Change, NAACP, the ACLU. And again, that ad was at a bus stop in Philadelphia. So very much similar content branding and placement. That same artist also put up a piece in Washington, D.C. about 10 months ago featuring Trump's face with Pepto-Bismol branding and Pepto's slogan. So obviously, time will tell who was at the center of all of this, but that is what we know as of now. Now let's move on to some quick hitters, starting with a former aide to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who has been arrested and charged with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government. While working in state government for New York, Linda Sun allegedly blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from meeting with officials here in the United States and allegedly sought to arrange for a

high-level New York state official to visit China. In exchange, prosecutors say Chinese government representatives facilitated millions of dollars in transactions for Sun's husband, who had business activities in China, and her husband is also facing criminal charges. Some news out of Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania judge ruled Friday that election officials cannot throw out mail-in ballots over incorrect or missing envelope dates. This ruling doesn't apply to the whole state of Pennsylvania, but rather to counties in Pennsylvania, two of the most populated counties. And this is one of three similar lawsuits that allege mail-in ballots with incorrect or missing dates should be thrown out. Moving on, Hewlett Packard says it will continue to pursue its $4 billion

damages claim against Mike Lynch, the man who recently died aboard the yacht that sunk off the coast of Italy. In my August 20th episode, I mentioned that Lynch had recently been acquitted of fraud when his boat sunk. That case alleged that him, along with another co-defendant, falsely inflated the value of their company, Autonomy, when they sold it to HP for $11 billion. Despite being acquitted of those criminal charges, though, HP was seeking compensation in the amount of $4 billion and says it will continue to do so despite the deaths of Lynch and his co-defendant. Two United States Marines were assaulted on Monday by members of a Turkish nationalist group while on shore in Turkey. The Marines were dressed in civilian clothes when they were approached by 15 people affiliated with the Turkish Youth Union, a group with anti-American

sentiments. Local authorities responded quickly and detained all 15 people involved in the attack. The two Marines were not injured but were taken to a hospital for precautionary measures and have since returned back to their ship. A similar incident involving the same Turkish group took place in 2014. And now let's finish this episode with some critical thinking. Today's critical thinking segment isn't tied to a story, but rather something I've personally been thinking about. And I want to pose the same question to you. If you have chosen a candidate for this election, what would it take for you to switch your vote? What is something that your candidate would have

to do to turn you off or something the other candidate could do to turn you on. Now, if your answer is nothing, I really want you to think about this. Come up with at least one thing. And maybe you have a laundry list of things. That's okay too. But at least identify what those things are. Because if we simply say nothing, it means that we're too close-minded. And for those that haven't yet chosen a candidate and, you know, the jury is still out, what does either candidate have to do to win your vote? What would turn you on? And for those that haven't yet chosen a candidate and, you know, the jury is still out, what does either candidate have to do to win your vote? What would turn you on?

What are you looking for? And then conversely, what would turn you off? Maybe you're not inclined to vote for either candidate, but something is ultimately going to help you make up your mind. What is that thing? Or what are those things? It might be multiple. It's important for us to identify these things as an exercise to keep an open mind. And you may be surprised. It may be

harder than you think to come up with an answer. Like I said, I've been challenging myself with this over the last few days. I have yet to come up with a concrete answer. So challenge yourself a little bit and see what you can come up with. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.