UNBIASED - UPenn President Out, Harvard President In; Biden Bypasses Congress, Sends Shells to Israel; SCOTUS Asked to Intervene in Trump's Case, Hunter Biden Seeks Dismissal of Gun Charges, and More.

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

1. Penn President, Liz Magill, Resigns Amid Backlash; Harvard Board Backs and Reaffirms Support for President Gay (2:06)2. Donald Trump's Last Minute Decision to Not Testify in Own Defense in NY Civil Fraud Trial (14:40)3. Quick Hitters (19:12)(Biden Admin Bypasses Congressional Authorization in Sending Emergency Tank Shells to Israel, Man Arrested for Threatening to Kill Vivek Ramaswamy, Hunter Biden Seeks Dismissal of Firearm Indictment.)4. SCOTUS Declines to Hear Challenge to Law Banning Conversion Therapy in Minors (27:38)5. Special Counsel Jack Smith Bypasses Appellate Court and Asks Supreme Court to Determine Trump's Absolute Immunity Claim (32:30)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 Tuesday. I have a great episode for you today. You know how sometimes there's these episodes that I'm just like, I just know this one is going to be better than usual. It's very informative. I have a lot to talk about. And because I'm posting this a little bit later in the day, we get to talk about Harvard's statement about their president. So my first story is about Penn's president resigning from her

position in light of the recent congressional testimony and some other events. But Tuesday morning, Harvard came out and said that they are fully supporting their president. Their president will not be leaving. And so I want to talk about that. The second story will be about Donald Trump's decision not to testify in his own defense in the New York civil fraud trial. Then we'll get into some quick hitters. This includes the president sending an emergency supply of shells to Israel and bypassing congressional approval, Hunter Biden asking for his gun charges to be dismissed, and the arrest of a man who threatened to kill Vivek Ramaswamy. Then we will finish with some news out of the Supreme Court. This includes the

court deciding not to hear a case dealing with the prohibition of conversion therapy on minors and special counsel Jack Smith's very surprising request to expeditiously decide Trump's immunity claim. So those are our stories today. As usual, let me just remind you, if you like what you hear today and you have not yet left me a review, please go ahead and do so on whichever platform you listen. And also, as my legal disclaimer, you guys know the drill. Yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. University oflvania's president liz mcgill resigned on saturday in the wake of the recent congressional testimony surrounding anti-semitism and some other events which we will get into whereas harvard announced on tuesday that its president will remain now if you listened to

friday's episode you're all caught up on the testimony and the statements that followed. But to put it very simply and briefly, many people were calling on the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and Penn to resign following their congressional testimony last week. If you want to hear more about it, listen to Friday's episode. In this episode, we will cover the events that led to McGill's resignation outside of the congressional testimony and the announcement from Harvard that its president, Claudine Gay, will remain president despite calls for her resignation. The announcement of Liz McGill came from Scott Bach, the Penn Board of Trustees chair,

who wrote in a letter, quote, I write to share that President Liz McGill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as president of the University of Pennsylvania. She will remain a tenured faculty member at Penn Carey Law, which is Penn's law school. We will be in touch in the coming days to share plans for interim leadership of Penn. President McGill has agreed to stay on until an interim president is appointed, end quote. Bach also submitted his resignation and his position was temporarily taken over by the vice chair of the board of trustees. So let's walk back a couple of steps and talk about the events that led up to McGill's resignation, because we obviously know that the congressional testimony

played a big role, but there were other events that contributed to this whole saga as well. This all goes back to before the October 7th attack in Israel even happened. Penn hosted an event on campus called the Palestine Rights Literature Festival. This was between September 22nd and September 24th. And according to some critics of the festival, some of the invited speakers were those who had made anti-Semitic comments in the past. Now, organizers of the festival and attendees of the festival rejected this assertion. The university did acknowledge that these people had made some comments in the past, but we'll get into that in a little bit. So they hold this festival. And given the long,

very, very long history of conflict between Palestine and Israel, Penn faced nearly immediate backlash from donors, the Anti-Defamation League, students who did not want this festival to take place. And it's important to note that although Penn's campus hosted the event, Penn did not organize the event. Nonetheless, before the festival began, Penn issued a statement that said, in part, quote, While the festival will feature more than 100 speakers, many have raised deep concerns about several speakers who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in anti-Semitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people. We unequivocally and emphatically condemn anti-Semitism as antithetical to our

institutional values. As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values. End quote. So at this point, some people, mainly Jews, are furious that one, Penn allowed this festival to go forward, and two, Penn failed to really forcefully condemn the festival. So some of the school's big donors were even starting to call for other donors to stop writing checks at this point. Then, two weeks later, October 7th happens. Hamas attacks Israel, and that is when the calls for McGill's resignation really started. Following the October 7th attack, because keep in mind, this festival just took place

two weeks earlier, people weren't happy with the festival. And so now the attack took place and they're really not happy. A lot of emotions happening. And McGill releases two separate statements within a week, really, of each other that basically condemn the attack, you know, expressed the university's devastation at the loss of life, and again, acknowledged the speakers that were on campus a couple of weeks prior and how, quote unquote, painful the presence of those speakers was for Jewish students. Over the course of the next six weeks, students at Penn,

both Palestinian and Jewish students, are experiencing acts of hate and violence. McGill released another statement, saying in part, quote, we must respect the pain of our classmates and colleagues and recognize that our speech and actions have the power to both harm and heal our community. We must choose healing. So all of this is happening over the course of October. And then on November 1st, McGill announces an action plan, which was supposedly designed to combat antisemitism, but the plan didn't really help because at the end of that week, the FBI and the police at Penn were investigating some anti-Semitic writings on the walls, some emails to faculty members, so the plan wasn't really doing much, you know,

immediately after enactment. On November 10th, a Jewish civil rights legal organization files a civil rights complaint with the Department of Education against Penn. The filing accused Penn of nurturing a hostile environment towards Jewish students and failing to adequately respond to the harassment of Jews. This complaint, along with the previous incidents we just discussed, is what triggered the House Education and Workforce Committee to invite McGill, as well as the presidents of Harvard and MIT, to testify. And we know how that went. And if you don't, again, if you want to recap, go ahead and listen to Friday's podcast episode. After the testimony, McGill attempted to clarify what she said in the congressional testimony in a video shared to X, which you can

also hear about in Friday's episode as well. But by this point, it was too late for a lot of people. Ross Stevens being one of the major Penn donors, he sent the school a letter on Thursday basically threatening to withhold $100 million in donations if McGill did not resign as president or was not let go as president. And a bipartisan group of more than 70 Congress members sent a letter on Friday to the board members of MIT, Harvard, and Penn demanding that their presidents be dismissed. So this is really when the calls for the resignation start. Penn's board got together at an emergency meeting on Thursday, so two days after the congressional testimony.

But after the meeting testimony, but after the meeting, McGill was still president. However, it was only two days later that she resigned. And yes, as I said, she will stay on as a tenured faculty member. So that is what's going on with McGill and her resignation. Now on to Harvard, because the Harvard Corporation, which is Harvard's highest governing body, released their own statement on Tuesday morning. The statement came after a board meeting on Monday, and their statement said this, in part, quote, As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay's continued leadership of Harvard University. Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President

Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing. The letter concludes by saying, quote, in this tumultuous and difficult time, we unanimously stand in support of President Gay. At Harvard, we champion open discourse and academic freedom, and we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated. End quote. The statement also addressed some plagiarism allegations, which I don't really want to get into too much because they're not a big part of the story, but just so you know what it's about, because I like you to be informed, what happened is

the Washington Free Beacon and a post on Substack claimed that Gay had plagiarized portions of four different papers over a 24-year period, which included her PhD dissertation at Harvard. The statement from Harvard basically just said, we're aware of these allegations, we investigated, we found a few instances of inadequate citation, but no violations of Harvard's standards for research misconduct. However, they did write that Gay is requesting four corrections in two articles to add citations and quotation marks that previously were not included.

So that's that. That's the plagiarism deal, but as I said, doesn't play a huge role in everything else going on. Now, a couple of differences that I feel should be highlighted between Gay and McGill, because naturally the question is, why would McGill resign and why would Gay be kept on? I couldn't tell you. I don't have the answer for you. But I do want to touch again on some similarities and differences between the two, because potentially it gives us some insight as to

why the outcomes were so different. One is that McGill's resignation was being called for before the congressional testimony, because of that speaking event on campus, because of Penn's response, because of the, you know, things that were happening around school campus in regards to anti-Semitism. Whereas Gay's resignation request only came after the congressional testimony, and that's what the calls for her resignation were really based upon, that testimony. Another difference being that McGill's testimony was a bit more smart-alecky, if I could use that word. She was smirking and smiling as she was testifying, whereas Gay really maintained a serious demeanor. So maybe that played into it a little bit too.

Another thing is that Gay had pretty significant support from faculty members. As of Monday, more than 700 faculty members had signed a petition to keep Gay on as president. And that letter cited the school's commitment to academic freedom. The letter requested that the school resist political pressures. The critical work of defending a culture of free inquiry in our diverse community cannot proceed if we let its shape be dictated by outside forces. Also on Monday, the Harvard Alumni Association Executive Committee voiced their support for Gay in a letter to the board. So Gay had a lot more support from faculty members than McGill did in light of the testimony and everything else that had gone on. But again, the main difference being that donors and other people were calling for McGill's

resignation for months. This testimony was sort of the last straw for McGill, whereas the testimony was really what got the ball rolling for Gay. So although we don't have all the answers, that could give us a little bit of insight as to why the outcomes were different. And finally, let's just touch on MIT a little bit. MIT's president didn't really face as much backlash compared to the others, and that might be because she herself is Jewish, but also because her testimony wasn't as frowned upon. For one, she didn't get as many follow-up

questions from Representative Stefanik as the others did. So she basically stated her response to the question, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your school's policy? She responded, she got one more follow-up question, and then Stefanik moved on to the others. When Stefanik moved on, she was getting increasingly more and more frustrated because they were all giving these sort of beat around the bush answers. And so, you know, each president that followed, the questions got more and more aggressive or more and more combative, if you will. So then the focus was more so on them. Whereas MIT answered first, she was done first. And again, MIT's president is Jewish herself.

So that may have played a role too. The MIT corporation did already declare their, quote, full and unreserved support, end quote, for their president as of last Thursday. So she will likely keep her job as well. Moving on, let's talk about why Donald Trump is not testifying in his own defense. Donald Trump decided on Sunday that he would not be testifying on Monday in his own defense in the New York civil fraud trial. Trump was originally scheduled to testify, like I said, on Monday, but he posted this lengthy post to Truth Social, which I will not read you in full, but what it said in part is this, quote, as everyone knows, I have very successfully and conclusively testified in the corrupt Biden-directed New York State Attorney General's rigged trial against me, end quote. He then writes about some of the issues he has with

the case, which I have talked about before, but include the expert testimony that he says concludes he did nothing wrong, the professor from NYU that testified in his defense that said if Trump were a student, he would have given Trump an A on his financial statements, the hundreds of millions of dollars he has paid in New York City and state taxes, and the appellate ruling that he says the quote-unquote biased judge refused to accept. So he talks about all of those issues and then says, quote, based on the above that I have already testified to everything and have nothing more to say other than that this is a complete and total election interference Biden campaign witch hunt

that will do nothing but keep businesses out of New York. I will not be testifying on Monday, end quote. In response to Trump's statement, Letitia James, which is New York's attorney general, the one who brought this case, said, quote, whether or not Trump testifies again tomorrow, we have already proven that he committed years of financial fraud and unjustly enriched himself and his family. No matter how much he tries to distract from reality, the facts don't lie, end quote. Now, a few things I do want to clear up. One, he has already testified once. Donald Trump was a witness for the prosecution. The prosecution had their chance to ask him questions. This testimony that he decided not to do was in his own defense. So

he was not obligated to testify. He makes the rules in a sense. He didn't necessarily do anything wrong or go against any court rules by not testifying. It was his own decision to make. The only thing that this really did is kind of mess with the court schedule a little bit. So the court ended up taking Monday off and just resuming on Tuesday. But it was within his own power to not testify. The second thing I want to mention is that a very possible reason he decided not to testify is because of the gag order that the judge had issued against decided not to testify is because of the gag order that the judge had issued against him. So you remember there was this gag order where he

was not allowed to criticize the judge's law clerk. That gag order was appealed. It was kept in place. So he has this gag order against him where he's already been fined for violating it, and potentially he knew that getting up on the stand, he could open himself up to more penalties if he were to violate it again. And given everything else, including that he knows this case is a likely loss because the judge has already ruled against him on the main issue in the case, it likely wasn't worth it for him to take the stand. So from here, the defense will put forth its final witness. The attorney general's office is expected to have two rebuttal witnesses because remember it goes prosecution presents their case, defense presents their defense, and then the prosecution gets a rebuttal.

So the prosecution will have, they're expected to have at least two rebuttal witnesses. Both sides, once the rebuttal is over, will submit filings to the judge explaining why they should win. They'll return for closing arguments on January 11th. And from there, the judge will issue a ruling. He has said that ruling will likely take him a few weeks. So it's possible we don't have a ruling until the very end of January, even into February. But that's what that's what this case looks like from here and again the judge has ruled on the main issue in the case which is that trump committed fraud in these financial statements and if that's a little if that concept is a little bit confusing for you how the judge ruled in the

main issue but not not the other issues or why there are still pending issues in the case go ahead and listen to my september 29th. I really dive into the ruling and what it means and why this trial is taking place and the issues that are left to be decided. So again, that's the September 29th episode. Go ahead and listen to that if you want more of a background. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll touch on some quick hitters and then talk about some Supreme Court news. The Biden administration has decided to use an emergency authority known as an Arms Export Control Act emergency declaration to allow the sale of roughly 14,000 tank shells to Israel by passing congressional review. What does this mean? Well, basically, this sale of 14,000 tank shells is part of a

much bigger sale. The bigger sale is worth about $500 million. It includes 45,000 shells for Israeli tanks. But the act, the Arms Export Control Act, allows for the president to export arms if an emergency exists. The Arms Export Control Act is this 1976 law that allows the president to control the import and export of articles and services related to defense. Typically, under the law, the president has to get congressional approval. But in a case where an emergency exists, the president can go ahead without congressional approval. So what the law says is this. If the president states in his certification to Congress that an emergency exists, which requires the proposed sale in the national security interest of the United States, thus waiving the congressional review requirements, the president shall set forth in the certification a detailed justification for his determination, including a description

of the emergency circumstances which necessitate the immediate issuance of the letter of offer and a discussion of the national security interests involved. So while we don't know the details, we know that the Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that an emergency does in fact exist and notified Congress accordingly. So that's how a portion of this deal was able to be done without congressional approval. Now, Congress still has to approve the bigger sale, the one that's worth more than $500 million, but the emergency authority pertains to this smaller chunk in which the quote-unquote emergency justifies, right? So the emergency at hand, being the war between Israel and Gaza, according to the justification from the president,

allows for a smaller chunk of the sale to proceed without congressional review. Specifically, it's worth about $106 million, and again, consists of about 14,000 tank shells. One final thing I want to mention, this emergency determination workaround isn't necessarily common. It is a fairly unusual step, but it has been done before. It's also been done on a much larger scale. As an example, in 2019, then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made an emergency determination for a weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan that was worth $8.1 billion. So in comparison to this one, which is about 106 million, the 2019 sale was significantly bigger. And at least three other administrations have used this emergency authority as well, including George H.W. during the Gulf War.

So again, not necessarily common, but has been done before. The second quick hitter I have for you is about a 30-year-old man from New Hampshire who was arrested on Monday after allegedly threatening to kill Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Tyler Anderson was charged with making an interstate threat and is being held pending a detention hearing on Thursday. So what happened? Ramaswamy's campaign sent out a text to voters about this campaign event that was taking place Monday morning in New Hampshire, and Anderson decides to reply to the text and wrote back, quote, great, another opportunity for me to blow his brains out, exclamation point, end quote. And then followed that up with another text that said, quote, I'm going to kill everyone who attends and then fuck their corpses, end quote. Naturally, the campaign got in touch with

the FBI, local police, and they arrested Tyler Anderson. And the third quick hitter I have for you is that on Monday, Hunter Biden asked a judge to dismiss his three-count indictment. Keep in mind, the indictment at issue here is separate from the indictment that was just issued last week relating to tax charges. The gun charges were handed down in September after the plea deal fell apart. Following that, David Weiss was given special counsel status in the case, and then following that, the first indictment was issued relating to gun charges. There was one count for making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, one count for making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, one count for making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal

firearms licensed dealer, and one count for possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. And these three charges, of course, stem from his purchase of a gun in 2018 when he was self-admittedly addicted to cocaine. Now, before we get into what happened, we knew that a motion to dismiss was coming. First of all, motions to dismiss are very common in any sort of proceeding, whether it's civil or criminal. Obviously, no one wants to be a part of a lawsuit or charges, so they try to get them dismissed and they use whatever rationale they can. Obviously, no one wants to be a part of a lawsuit or charges, so they try to get them dismissed, and they use whatever rationale they can. Now, at the time that this indictment came down, there was some conflict over whether the plea deal was in effect or not, whether the plea

deal could in fact fall apart, and I'll touch on that in a second, but we knew that that motion to dismiss was coming as it relates to that issue. However, following the indictment, something else happened. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, said that that law that Hunter Biden was charged with that prohibits a user of or an addict of controlled substances from owning a firearm violates the Second Amendment and is therefore unconstitutional. Now, importantly, that ruling only applies to those three states that the Fifth Circuit has jurisdiction over, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, which

means that their decision has no bearing on Hunter Biden's case. But nonetheless, given that it's an appellate court that made this decision, Hunter Biden is, of course, going to argue exactly that, that the law he's being charged with violates the Second Amendment, just like the Fifth Circuit said it did, and that, you know, this law needs to be reviewed because it's obviously on shaky grounds if it's not being held up in other circuits. So that's one of the bases for dismissal, is that this law is unconstitutional and violates the Second Amendment, and therefore Hunter Biden can't be charged with it. The other basis for dismissal stems from the plea deal that fell apart. And this is the issue that

I was just briefly kind of talking about, but let's get into it a little bit more. When the deal crumbled, the two parties to this case, so the prosecution and Hunter Biden, had signed the deal, meaning in a way it was executed properly and rightfully and was able to go forward. But there was one problem. There was a line for the signature of a court probation officer that needed to be signed, and it was never signed. The court probation officer never signed it. So now the question is, was this plea deal executed or not? And the judge is going to have to decide if the plea deal was in fact approved and executed in a sufficient manner to where it remains in effect, or on the contrary, whether the failure of the court probation officer to sign the plea deal renders this plea deal

ineffective. So Hunter Biden's attorneys are going to argue that the deal was in effect once the two parties signed it. After all, they're the only two parties to the case. Therefore, because this deal was executed, Hunter Biden should not face charges. The deal should stand. The prosecution, on the other hand, is, is of course going to argue that the plea deal wasn't executed properly because the court probation officer didn't sign it, and therefore it's not binding and these charges can proceed. And finally, there's a third argument from Hunter Biden's attorneys, and that is that there were flaws in the way that special counsel David Weiss was appointed, and therefore the prosecution in and of itself isn't

lawful because David Weiss should have never been appointed special counsel and therefore should have never been able to bring charges. So that's the basis for Hunter Biden's dismissal and that's what I feel you should know about that. Finally, let's get into the Supreme Court. There's two stories I feel you should know. One being that on Monday, the Supreme Court said they would not hear a challenge to a Washington state law that bans conversion therapy on children. Conversion therapy, if you're not familiar, is the practice of, quote unquote, curing one's sexual orientation or gender identity through counseling. So for instance, in some religions, homosexuality is

undesirable. Sometimes it's even seen as evil. So a homosexual might seek out, or in some cases might be forced into, conversion therapy for the purpose of trying to get that person to not be attracted to the same sex. So to bring this full circle, the law at issue in Washington state says that a licensed healthcare professional cannot provide minors with conversion therapy. And if they do, these healthcare professionals could lose their license. So Brian Tingley, a Christian marriage and family therapist in the state of Washington, he's not too happy about it. Basically, his argument was that his right to free speech is being violated because this law limits his right to speak freely when he's counseling his younger clients on issues relating to sexual orientation or gender identity. So he sues it at the district court level, of course, that's where cases are

first brought, and the case is dismissed. He appeals it. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit upholds the law. It's a split decision, but ultimately, the majority found that the law was prohibiting professional conduct, not speech, and therefore, the law does not violate the First Amendment at all. So he takes it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court just turned it down. They said, we're not getting involved. The decision not to hear the case at the Supreme Court level was six to three. Justice Thomas, Justice Alito and Justice Kavanaugh said they would have wanted to hear the case, but the remaining six justices declined. Now, the thing is, to hear the case, there needed to be four justices to sign on to it. In this case, there were only three.

So that didn't happen. Now, when the court decides they're not going to hear a case, they don't have to give an explanation. They can just say, we're denying it, and that's the end of it. But in some cases, when justices are passionate about a case or an issue and the court's not going to hear it, they'll write a dissent. So in this case, Justice Alito and Justice Thomas wrote their own dissent. And here's what they said. Justice Thomas wrote that because this issue involves the First Amendment, and because appellate courts around the country have been split on this particular issue, this particular law, this is a case the Supreme Court should have heard and decided. Now, to give

you a little bit of background, the appellate courts that are split, obviously the Ninth Circuit in this case upheld the law, whereas the Eleventh Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, struck down the law. So there is conflict between the circuits. Now, in regard to the First Amendment, Thomas said that there's little question that this law regulates speech and therefore implicates the First Amendment. He said, quote, true, counseling is a form of therapy, but it is conducted solely through speech, end quote. Justice Alito, on the other hand, while he also would have liked to hear this case, he wrote a much shorter one-page dissent. He just said that this case presents a question of national importance. It's beyond dispute that this law and other laws like it around the country

restrict speech, and all restrictions on speech deserve the court's attention. He also briefly mentioned the circuit split, and he says that between the circuit split and the First Amendment issue, this case easily satisfies the criteria to be reviewed. And just as a side note, so you're aware, the particular criteria that both Justice Alito and Justice Thomas are referring to is court rule 10 a court rule 10 isn't controlling, meaning it doesn't it doesn't mean that the court has to grant a petition for certiorari if the criteria is met. But it's more of a guiding tool that says, hey, in these instances, the court typically will grant review of a case. So nonetheless, 10A says that if a United States Court of Appeals enters a decision that conflicts with another decision of another United States Court of Appeals on that same matter, the court should consider reviewing the matter. So that is what both Justice Alito and Justice Thomas are referring to when they say, hey,

there's a circuit split here. This case, you know, we should have heard this case and decided this issue. Now, it's possible the issue comes again to the court later on. If another circuit decides this issue another way, potentially the Supreme Court can decide to hear the matter then. But for now, they will not get involved. So that brings us to our last story, which is also out of the Supreme Court, but it pertains to special counsel Jack Smith making a surprising move and

asking the Supreme Court to determine whether Trump has absolute immunity in the election interference case. Now, why would Jack Smith do this? I will tell you. This case is currently set to start in March. However, the fact that the federal district court judge just ruled that Trump doesn't have immunity means that Trump can appeal this case to the Court of Appeals, and then it can be appealed further to the Supreme Court. Whether intentionally or not, these appeals can possibly delay the start of the case. If Trump delays the start of the case, who knows when the case would be able to start because he has other cases lined up after that. One at the end of March, another one in May, not to mention Super Tuesday primaries are March 5th, the day after the election interference case is supposed to start. So Jack Smith doesn't want to take any chances in delaying this case. So what he would do, so typically procedure would be, okay, federal district court enters a ruling, it gets appealed to the appellate court, and then it gets appealed to the Supreme Court. But in this case, Jack Smith

is saying, we're going to bypass the appellate court. We're not wasting any time. We're just going to take this to the Supreme Court and say, hey, can you take a look at this and just give us an answer so we can be done with it and have no issues? Now, another reason that Jack Smith is likely going to the Supreme Court right now and bypassing the appellate court is because the Supreme Court breaks for the summer. So if Donald Trump appealed the federal district court judges ruling to the appellate court, which he was planning on doing, then you'd have to wait for a decision out of the appellate court, and then it could be brought to the Supreme Court. But if this didn't get brought

to the Supreme Court by the time that they took a break, because the Supreme Court breaks from the end of June until the beginning of October, they wouldn't even be able to issue their decision until once they got back from break, which would be after the election in November. So there's definitely a reason that Jack Smith wants this figured out right now. He doesn't want to waste any time. So how does Donald Trump feel about this? On the day that Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court for review, a Trump spokesperson issued a statement that says, quote, Crooked Joe Biden's henchman deranged Jack Smith is so obsessed with interfering in the 2024 presidential election with the goal of preventing President Trump from retaking the Oval Office, as the president is poised to do, that Smith is willing to try for a Hail Mary by racing to the Supreme Court and attempting to bypass the appellate process. Deranged may need to be reminded that the Supreme Court has not been kind to him, including by handing down a rare unanimous rebuke when the court overturned him 8-0 in the McDonnell case. As President Trump

has said over and over again, the prosecution is completely politically motivated. It is an unprecedented attack against crooked Joe Biden's political opponent, banana republic style. There is absolutely no reason to rush this witch hunt to trial except to injure President Trump and his 150 million at least supporters. President Trump will continue to fight for justice and oppose these authoritarian tactics. So that was a statement out of the Trump camp. The day that Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to resolve this matter, the court asked Trump to file his response by December 20th. That doesn't necessarily mean that the Supreme Court will definitely make a decision on this issue,

the justices could very well decline to hear it, just like they did with the Convergent Therapy case, or they could decide that they do want to resolve it. In that case, if the Supreme Court does decide the issue, the question that they have to answer is basically, is a former president immune from criminal prosecution? DOJ policy prohibits the indictment of a sitting president, but a former president is a different story. If a president is elected, are they granted absolute immunity in perpetuity? That's the question. Jack Smith also wants the court to answer whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for something he was already impeached for by Congress, because this is another argument

Trump has put forward. He says he was already impeached by Congress. He was acquitted. But, you know, this is sort of like double jeopardy in a sense. He's being prosecuted for something he was already impeached for. So Jack Smith also wants the Supreme Court to weigh in on that. Now, the court's next conference day is January 5th. So either they'll decide what they'll do with it then, or they could potentially decide before then if they manage to squeeze in another conference day this month. But that's what we're looking at. I would imagine January 5th would be when they make their decision because if Trump's side isn't submitting their filing until December 20th, you obviously have the holidays. And then, you know, it gives the justices time to review and decide what they're going to do.

Orders don't come out the same day as the conference, so we wouldn't get an answer from the court on January 5th when that conference is had. But that, you know, that just gives you at least an estimated timeline for this issue. That concludes this episode. I truly hope you learned a lot because I think it was filled with some incredible information. And like I said, there's just some episodes I like better than others. More informative episodes just have a special place in my heart. So thank you for being here. As always, I hope you have a great week and I will talk to you on Friday. Yeah.