UNBIASED - Trump's Target Letter and Possible New Indictment, Hot Chicken Nugget Gets Family $800K, Police Doubt Carlee Russell's Disappearance, U.S. Soldier in North Korean Custody and More.

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

1. Trump Receives Target Letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith Regarding Potential New Charges (1:52)2. Police Give Update and Cast Doubt on Carlee Russell's Disappearance (3:58)3. Florida Jury Awards Family $800k in Damages After Toddler Gets Second Degree Burns from McDonalds' Hot Chicken Nugget (10:55)4. U.S. Soldier, Travis King, in North Korean Custody After Bolting Across Border (13:22)5. New AmazonOne Technology Being Rolled Out in Stores; Power to Buy Rests in the Palm of Your Hand (16:02)6. Johnson & Johnson Sues Biden Administration Over Medicare's New Ability to Negotiate Drug Prices (17:17)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 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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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 may sound a bit different today. I'm also just switching things up entirely today. So not only may I sound different, but the format of today's episode is going to be a little bit different. I am on vacation, so I'm doing my best to still get you guys an episode while also working with different equipment than I typically use. So if I sound different, that's why. And then

the format of this episode is going to differ a little bit because usually I do deep dives and then notable mentions. Today is kind of going to be a full set of just notable mentions. So I have in total six stories for you, and they're all going to be about three, four, five minutes, maybe less, maybe more, depending on the story. So that's how today all going to be about three, four, five minutes, maybe less, maybe more depending on the story. So that's how today is going to work, but it's all good content. Nonetheless, please don't forget to leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen. If you have already, thank you so much. I truly appreciate it more than you know. And of course, another way you can always help me is by sharing my show or my episodes with your family or friends or colleagues or whoever you feel will appreciate nonpartisan

news. Before we get into the stories, let me just give you a quick reminder that yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. So without further ado, let's get into today's stories. Let's first start with this target letter that Donald Trump received from Jack Smith on Sunday. So Donald Trump received a target letter on Sunday from Jack Smith, who is special counsel for the DOJ, but the news didn't actually hit the media until Tuesday. Target letters, when they're given, are given to subjects in a criminal investigation to put them on notice that they're facing the possibility of an indictment. As an example, Donald Trump previously received a similar target letter from Jack Smith before he was indicted in the classified documents case. This particular letter insinuated that Trump could be facing yet another indictment,

obviously, but this time related to the 2020 election and his efforts to overturn it. So the letter specifically referenced three federal statutes that the DOJ is looking into as far as possible violations. The first is conspiracy to commit an offense against or to defraud the United States. The second is deprivation of rights, and this is under a Reconstruction-era civil rights statute. And the third is tampering with a witness. As far as that deprivation of rights offense, a former federal prosecutor gave us some insight as to what that could mean. So what he said is it could be as broad as the deprivation of all voters in the United States, all of their rights, or it could be as narrow as Donald Trump's interference with former

Vice President Pence's duties or the electors. There's just not much detail. So sources have said that there's no additional details in the letter other than the bare bones, you know, you're facing a possible indictment. Here are the violations of law we are looking into. But it doesn't say how the special counsel's office claims he may have violated those statutes that are listed. So as I said, very bare bones. But that is what we know about the letter. And of course, the next step from here, probably the next thing we will hear is an indictment, if an indictment is brought, that is. So the second thing I want to talk about is this case of Carly Russell. New details have come to

light in the disappearance of Carly Russell that New details have come to light in the disappearance of Carly Russell that are causing law enforcement to kind of question whether she was actually kidnapped. Now, this is a story that took the nation by storm. So on Thursday, July 13th, Carly Russell left her job at a spa. She then stopped at a restaurant and then at a Target to pick up snacks and then allegedly headed home. On the way home, she called 911 to report a barefoot toddler walking on the side of the road. And she told the 911 operator that the toddler looked about three or four years old. It was a little boy. He was wearing a white t-shirt and a diaper. The operator asked her to keep an eye on the toddler

until the police arrived. She said that she would, but when police arrived, she was gone. And this led to a desperate search for what was thought to be this missing 25-year-old nursing student who just stopped to help out a toddler on the side of the road. And the thought that was going through a lot of people's mind was this is potentially even a sex trafficking scheme. Well, also according to the original reports, she had called her sister in law after she got off the phone with the 911 operator. And the sister in law says that she heard Russell scream and that was it. She was gone. She wasn't on the phone anymore. Well, then on Saturday night, nearly 49 hours after her disappearance, Carly Russell returns home on foot. So she's barefoot, she walks up to her house, bangs on the door, her parents open the door, and there she is.

Her parents call 911, they report an unconscious but breathing person. And this is where things start to get a little weird for the emergency responders because when they arrived, it was Carly Russell, this girl who had been missing for 48 hours, and it was all over the news nationwide. But unlike the phone call that said there was an unconscious but breathing person, Carly Russell was conscious and speaking. So that's when things started to get a little fishy. But here's what we've learned since then. So when Carly Russell left her job, which was a spa job, not sure if I said that, but she took a bathrobe, toilet paper, and what's described as other items

from the business. And video footage shows her kind of concealing these items as she leaves work. She then stops at Target and got Cheez-Its and granola bars. And none of these items were found in her car when police arrived that night. So when the police arrived to check on the toddler and they found Carly Russell's car, but no Carly Russell, they found like her phone and her wig on the side of the road, but none of these items, the bathrobe, the toilet paper, the other business items that aren't specified, the Cheez-Its, the granola bars, none of that is in the car. To this day, Carly Russell also remains the only report of a toddler walking on the side of the road. 911 didn't get any other calls reporting a toddler. Then on top of that, when

Carly Russell called the police and pulled over, she drove another 600 yards down the interstate before getting out of the highway, which would have meant the toddler, or the toddler she says was there, was more than 600 yards from where her car was. Video footage shows her getting out of her car, going in the backseat of her car, and then walking towards the woods that line the highway. Now, what Russell says, so once emergency responders got to the scene of her home and she was sent to the hospital for treatment, law enforcement starts asking her some questions, saying that, you know, they need to find out who is responsible for this, who kidnapped her. And according to Russell, she says that when she got out of her car, a man who she describes as white with orange

hair and a bald spot, who was also allegedly checking on the toddler at the same time, told her to go to the nearby fence near the woods and hop the fence and then get into a car that was somewhere on the other side of the fence. And before she knew it, she was in the trailer of an 18-wheeler where there was a female accomplice and a baby. And she says she never saw the woman or the baby, but she heard their voices. She told police that she managed to escape once, but they caught her and put her into a room of some sort. She also claimed that she was blindfolded but not tied up because the captors said that they didn't want to leave impressions on her wrist.

She said that they took her to a house, made her get undressed, took pictures of her, but she doesn't remember having any physical or sexual contact. She woke up the next day, and this woman allegedly fed her cheese crackers and played with her hair, and then she was able to escape at some point later that day after being put back in a car and she ran through the woods and came out of the woods kind of near her house. And that's when she returned back home. Now, if that story is not weird enough based on what we know about, you know, what wasn't found in the car, what she took from work, all of those things, things get really weird with the search history on her phone. So the phone was found near her car,

where she was allegedly abducted from, and police thereafter searched her through her phone and her search history to try to get some information as to where she went, or possibly who took her. And the searches that they found were things like this. Do you have to pay for an Amber Alert? How to take money from a register without being caught? There was also a search for bus tickets from Birmingham to Nashville on her departure date of July 13th. She searched for the movie Taken, which is about a kidnapping in Europe. And on the day of her disappearance, someone searched on her work computer for information about Amber Alerts, like the maximum age you have to be to have an Amber Alert issued for you, things like that.

And we know all of this because of a press conference that was held on Wednesday by the Hoover Police Department. And during that 25-minute press conference, which I do have linked for you on my website, the police chief admitted that there was doubt in Russell's story. And the police chief says that they would like to have another conversation with her, but her family has said that because of her mental state, she is not ready to talk. One local former criminal defense attorney says that he does expect a tsunami of charges, though police haven't made any official allegations against her, and they say that that's also something that they haven't even thought about. They're just trying to get this case figured out, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes. So that's the story with Carly Russell. It started out as this crazy mystery, and it still is a mystery in a sense, but it's kind of a different kind of mystery than it started out as. So that's what's going on with that.

Now let's talk about this Chicken Nuggets burn case. On Wednesday, a Broward County jury awarded a family $800,000 in a civil lawsuit against McDonald's and one of its franchisees after a four-year-old girl dropped a hot chicken nugget on her leg, causing second-degree burns. Now, $800,000 might seem like a lot, because it is, but when you compare it to how much the family wanted, it doesn't seem like so much. The family wanted $15 million in damages, specifically $5 million for past damages, $10 million for future damages. And this jury award comes after the jury had previously found McDonald's and the franchisee liable. So specifically, the jury found McDonald's to be liable for failing

to provide instructions for the safe handling of food, and the jury also found the franchisee liable for negligence and failing to warn customers about the risk of hot food. At the trial, jurors heard two days of testimony and arguments. The mother of the little girl testified that she bought Happy Meals for her two kids at the drive-thru. She handed the meals to her kids in the backseat of the car and then started driving away from McDonald's when she heard her daughter screaming. And she testified that she didn't know what was wrong until she pulled over to help her daughter. And that's when she realized that the chicken nugget had gotten stuck between her daughter's leg and the seatbelt. And the chicken nugget had gotten stuck between her daughter's leg and the seatbelt, and the chicken nugget sitting there for a prolonged period of time caused a second-degree burn.

The mother then took pictures of her daughter's leg and videos of her daughter screaming, which were introduced at this trial. Lawyers for McDonald's argued that the food had to be hot to avoid salmonella poisoning, and that the nuggets weren't meant to be pressed between a seatbelt and human flesh for more than two minutes, and therefore McDonald's is not at fault here. But of course, the jury found McDonald's to be at fault, along with the franchisee. So this jury award is $800,000. Like I said, half of the $800,000 is for past injuries. The other half is for future injuries. So I don't know. You tell me if that's a lot. Obviously, it's a lot of money, but compared to what the family originally wanted, it seems like

a substantial reduction in damages. Story number four, this U.S. soldier in North Korean custody. If you follow me on Instagram and TikTok, you may have seen my recap about this, but let's talk about it. Private Travis King, he is a U.S. soldier. He sprinted through the North Korean border on Tuesday, and since then, North Korea has been absolutely silent as to his status. So as far as we know, the United States hasn't heard anything from North Korea about this situation. But United States military officials say that he willfully and without authorization crossed into North Korea while on a civilian tour near the North and Southern Korean border. This is an area called the Joint Security Area, and they have tours of this area, which we'll talk about. The tours actually play into the story. But Travis King joined the military in January 2021, and he was on rotation in South Korea. Officials didn't say how long he had been in South Korea, but last year in February, King was fined 5 million won, which is South Korea's currency,

and it's equivalent to about 4,000 US dollars. But he was fined this amount because he was repeatedly kicking a cop car, like I said, back in February in South Korea. And once he was apprehended by police, he was uncooperative and he was shouting profanities about Koreans and the Korean army. And thereafter is when the fine came. But he failed to pay the fine and he was sent to a detention facility in South Korea where he spent 48 days. So how it worked was each day spent at this facility was equivalent to about $100,001 or $80 US dollars. So he was paying his fine back by spending this time in the detention facility. But upon his release from the facility, he was escorted to an airport for a flight back to the United States. And once he got back to the United States, he was supposed to face some sort of disciplinary action. But at the airport, once King departed from his escorts at the security checkpoint, because

his escorts couldn't get past this point, he left the airport and made his way to this tour where he eventually crossed the border. But again, North Korea hasn't said anything about this incident. We just see video footage and all that stuff of him crossing the border, and that's it. The State Department indicated that it would take a restrained approach to getting King back because officials said that they had seen no clear sign that King even wanted to return to the United States anyway. So that's the deal with that. Second to last, this is kind of some technology cool news. For those of you that shop at Whole Foods and other establishments actually, but

Whole Foods, by the end of the year, Amazon may let you pay with your palm. So Amazon announced on Thursday that it's bringing its new Amazon One technology to all Whole Foods stores by the end of the year. Amazon One is this biometric technology that basically lets users enter and pay for items at stores by placing a palm over the scanner. Now, obviously, users will have to first connect their palm to a stored credit card through the app, but after that, it's just a matter of waving your hand over the scanner and you're done. Amazon One was first introduced in its Go cashierless store, but recently started adding it to these Whole Foods stores. And it's also been tested in other stores like Panera Bread, who began testing it at some of their stores earlier this year, as well as Coors Field in Denver and some airports. So certain stores like Hudson News,

I believe, and some airports have also tested out this technology. But it's currently in more than 200 Whole Foods locations, and it'll be available to all 500 stores by the end of the year. Last but not least, let's talk about Johnson & Johnson suing the Biden administration. On Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson sued the Biden administration over Medicare's new powers to cut and negotiate drug prices. Johnson & Johnson is not alone in the pharmaceutical companies that have done so. They're actually the third pharmaceutical company to sue the administration over this new provision. So you may remember when the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law last year, one of the provisions granted Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices for the first

time. And the target was to make drugs more affordable for older Americans, but in turn, it'll likely reduce Big Pharma's profits because drug prices are going down. big pharma is not too happy. J&J is arguing that these Medicare negotiations constitute an uncompensated taking of the company's drugs in violation of the Fifth Amendment. So to remind you, the Fifth Amendment protects against the government seizing your property without giving you just compensation. And so what J&J is saying is that by negotiating down our drug prices, you're taking our property and not compensating us as is required by the Fifth Amendment. J&J is specifically worried about one drug in particular, and this is Xarelto. You may have heard of it. It reduces the risk of strokes and blood clots. It's among the 10 most widely reimbursed drugs for Medicare Part D patients. And just last year, Xarelto brought Johnson & Johnson

$2.4 billion in revenue. So they do not want to see the price of Xarelto go down. But on top of that Fifth Amendment violation, they're also arguing a First Amendment violation. So J&J also says that this new provision of the Inflation Reduction Act forces J&J to agree that the federal government is negotiating fair drug prices, and therefore the government is compelling it to make false and misleading statements in violation of the First Amendment. So J&J is basically asking the judge to block the Health and Human Services Department from requiring it to participate in this program. And in a statement posted to its website on Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson said, with the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, the government is forcing Janssen to provide to its website on Tuesday, Johnson & Johnson said, of pharmaceutical innovation that provides patients with access to pioneering treatments

and directly impacts the creation of generic medicines that account for 90% of the prescriptions filled in the United States. If manufacturers do not agree to the government-dictated terms of the Inflation Reduction Act, they face massive penalties up to 1,900% of a selected drug's daily sales or are forced to withdraw all of their products from both Medicare and Medicaid, potentially depriving nearly 40% of U.S. patients of needed medicines. We believe that the Inflation Reduction Act's pricing provisions will constrain medical innovation, limit patient access and choice, and negatively impact the overall quality of patient care. We have a and negatively impact the overall quality of patient care. We have a responsibility to challenge the current version of the law to protect our ability

to continue developing transformative medicines for patients now and in the future. But that concludes this episode. Thank you for bearing with me while my audio is a bit different since I'm away from my usual equipment. Please don't forget to leave me a review, share this show with your friends, have a great weekend, and I will talk to you on Tuesday.