UNBIASED - Week in Review: January 16-22, 2023

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

1. What is the Debt Ceiling and Why is Everyone Talking About it? (1:37)2. Supreme Court Investigation Unable to Identify Source of Dobbs Leak (12:22)3. Additional Classified Documents Found in President Biden's Home (20:23); Can a Vice President Declassify Classified Documents? (22:20)4. Texas Executes Death Row Inmate, Robert Fratta, via Lethal Injection (27:40)All sources can be found at www.jordanismylawyer.com.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok for more content @jordanismylawyer.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You are listening to the Jordan is My Law podcast. This is your host Jordan and I give

you the legal analysis you've been waiting for. Here's the deal. I don't care about your political views, but I do ask that you listen to the facts, have an open mind and think for yourselves. Deal? Oh, and one last thing. I'm not actually a lawyer. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Today we are talking about four stories, one being the debt ceiling, two being the classified documents found at Biden's home. The third story being the Supreme Court report that was released regarding the Dobbs leak. And the last story is about a recent execution that took place in Texas. Before we get into the stories, I do just want to remind you guys, whichever platform you listen, whether it be Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Apple Podcasts, I do ask that you just leave me a very quick

review. I still maintain a five-star review rating, or I guess five-star rating is the right way to say that. Very proud of it because I feel like what I do is not easy. It's not easy to report on the news in an unbiased manner, which is why no one does it. So I'm happy to be one of a kind. And I really, really appreciate when you guys go ahead and leave those kind reviews. It just makes my day. So with that, let's get into today's stories. What is the debt ceiling? Why is everyone talking about it? Well, the debt ceiling is essentially a limit imposed by Congress on the amount of debt that the federal government can have outstanding. So in other words, the debt ceiling is the amount that the United States Treasury can borrow in order to pay its bills. When the government's bills get too high and it can't pay them, the debt ceiling is raised. So their bills include things like Social Security, Medicare, tax refunds, military salaries, interest payments on outstanding debt, things like that.

So just like you, the government has bills to pay. And if it can't pay those bills, it has to borrow more money. But there's a limit on the amount of money that it can borrow. Now, obviously, this wouldn't be an issue if, you know, the United States revenue was exceeding its costs, but the last time that that happened was 2001. And that is according to the White House Council of Economic Advisors. I have a very interesting graph on my website, which shows basically from 1900 until now and how, you know, when we've been in a deficit, when we've been in a surplus, and it is really interesting to see. So once this limit is hit, things get tricky, especially when you have a narrowly divided Congress, like we currently do. And especially when you have a Congress that is proving to be pretty difficult to work with. So we saw when the Speaker of the House was, you know, when Kevin McCarthy was running for Speaker, some of the

far-right Republicans were holding out on him in order to have him make certain concessions. And when you see that kind of environment, like obviously you always have politicians fighting for their side and things that they want, right? But this Congress especially seems to be hard to, they're not really willing to work together. And that's why some people are afraid that a default may happen. So on Thursday, the United States hit its debt limit. The debt limit is currently set at $31.4 trillion. What happens once this debt limit is reached? Once this debt limit is reached, the government is unable to take on any additional debt. It can only draw from any cash that it has on hand or its incoming revenue. The U.S. Treasury can also take what's called extraordinary measures. And this essentially extends the amount of time that the Treasury can continue paying

the government's bills while still staying below the debt limit. And this can include accounting techniques that temporarily reduce the amount of U.S. Treasury securities issued to those accounts. So this can involve suspending new investments or redeeming existing investments early. And the way that this works is by reducing the amount of outstanding treasury securities, the level of outstanding debt temporarily falls, which extends the amount of time that the government can continue paying its debts without hitting that ceiling. Once the treasury exhausts these extraordinary measures though, and it no

longer has cash, it no longer has these extraordinary measures it could take, the government can no longer pay its bills or fund its operations beyond obviously what's coming in in revenue. And this is when the debt ceiling is typically raised or suspended. So the last time it was raised was 2021, which is when it was raised to that $31.4 trillion amount So the last time it was raised was 2021, which is when it was raised to that $31.4 trillion amount. The last time it was suspended was 2019 and it remained suspended until August, 2021. And what happens when it's suspended is literally that like there is no ceiling. So that is what happened recently. Now, the United States has never defaulted intentionally. And I say intentionally because actually, interestingly enough, in 1979, a technical bookkeeping glitch

resulted in a delayed bond payment. Not that there wasn't the funds, it was just literally a glitch. And that technically put the United States in default, but it was very quickly taken care of and it wasn't really an issue. So it's never, the United States has never actually defaulted because the United States has never defaulted. No one can really be sure of what those repercussions look like if it does happen, but economists are warning that the fallout would be pretty serious. It would cause chaos in financial markets. It would completely undermine the economy and it would essentially result in a severe recession. So some of the impact that it could have on the everyday consumer includes things like frozen federal benefits. So this would mean that tens of millions of American households wouldn't get certain federal benefits

on time or worst case scenario at all. These include things like social security, Medicare and Medicaid, federal aid relating to nutrition, veterans, housing, things like that. National defense could also be affected if the salaries of active duty military personnel are frozen. So those are some impacts we could see as far as federal benefits go. Then what economists are also predicting is an inevitable recession, and this is due to households having less cash on hand to feed the economy. So economists say that this recession would be accompanied by thousands of lost jobs and also higher unemployment. Another impact that we could see if the U.S. was to default would be higher borrowing costs. So this would happen if rating agencies downgraded

the United States, our current perfect credit rating, and this would result in people demanding higher interest rates on treasury bonds, which would result in higher borrowing costs for consumers since rates on mortgages, credit cards, car loans, all of those things are linked to movements in the treasury market. Another impact that a default could have is extreme stock market volatility. So if the United States gets to a point where it can't issue additional treasury bonds, it could lead to a severe financial crisis. So obviously this is not ideal. How do we avoid all of that happening? The bad news is, I guess we as the people can't do anything, but our representatives can.

So you know that I never want to scare you. And I know, you know, the mainstream media does. That's what they thrive off of. That is what they live for is the scare tactic. So I'm not here to do that. But I do want to talk about realistically what we may see happen. Obviously, there's the possible default. And that's if both parties can't come to a decision because what's happening right now is the Republicans do not want to raise the ceiling unless Democrats commit to cutting spending in certain areas. Democrats want to raise the ceiling. So there's going to have to be some negotiations here. Now, the way to avert a default is, like I said, either Congress has to raise the ceiling or they have to suspend it. And typically it's not hard to do. We've seen this

done over a hundred times in our history, but now it's a little bit different of a situation because of the way our Congress is made up after the most recent midterms, of course. So the reason that people are concerned right now that this Congress in particular may lead to the United States' first default is because, like I said, Republicans are opposed to any increase in the government's borrowing unless the Democrats commit to cutting spending. Now, the far right Republicans want spending cuts in areas like Medicare and Social Security, but the more moderate Republicans aren't necessarily on the same page. There's just a lot of disagreement as to where these spending cuts would happen.

If these spending cuts would happen because Democrats don't necessarily want to cut spending, they want the limit to be raised to pay the bills. So because of the close margins in Congress, whatever the solution is, it will need bipartisan support. As of now, both parties have voiced that there will not be a default. So that is some indication that both sides are willing to negotiate. Obviously, there's no, you know, for certain there won't be a default. But what this implies is that both parties are willing to work together to avoid a default. Originally, President Biden said he wasn't going to negotiate with Kevin McCarthy. But as of Sunday, he did extend an invitation for McCarthy to chat this over with him, which is also a good indication that some sort of meeting

in the middle will happen. During an event on Thursday, Mitch McConnell predicted some sort of negotiated deal as well, saying in part, quote, in the end, I think the important thing to remember is that America must never default on its debt. It never has, and it never will. We'll end up in some kind of negotiation with the administration over what the circumstances or conditions under which the debt ceiling be raised, end quote. So I think, you know, listening to Kevin McCarthy, I mean, Kevin McCarthy has wanted to talk to the president. Again, like I said, the president did extend that invitation on Sunday. Mitch McConnell is also saying, you know, America has never defaulted. It never will. So it is a good sign that Republicans are, you know, at least the middle of the road Republicans or not the far

right Republicans are wanting to reach some sort of negotiation and are willing to avoid a default, but we will see what happens. So then on Thursday is when the, you know, I talked about those extraordinary measures. That's what the treasury has know, I talked about those extraordinary measures. That's what the treasury has to start using when this limit is reached. So these extraordinary measures were implemented on Thursday in a letter written by the secretary of treasury to Kevin McCarthy. Janet Yellen explained that the treasury did start using these extraordinary measures on Thursday, as I said, and they include specifically

a suspension of new investments in the civil service retirement and disability fund, as well as new investments in the postal service retiree health benefits fund. And these investments are suspended until June 5th. The letter goes on to say that by law, once the debt limit is either increased or suspended, both of these funds will be made whole. So as far as an exact default date, you can't really pinpoint it because the United States revenue fluctuates so much, but the Secretary of Treasury did say it is unlikely to happen before June. So I'm sure there will be updates to this story soon. And you know that once there are, I will fill you in. I will also probably be posting about this on TikTok. So if you don't follow me on there, definitely do that as well as Instagram. I share the same videos to both

platforms. My handle on both of those is Jordan is my lawyer. So you can always catch kind of more frequent content on both of those. So that takes us into the second story, which is that the Supreme Court is unable to identify the leaker of the Dobbs decision. So if you remember back in May, the Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization majority opinion was leaked and everyone knew what the outcome of that case was going to be, despite the court not officially releasing its opinion. So the Supreme Court released a report on Thursday saying that it is unable to identify the person or persons responsible for the Dobbs draft opinion leak. This investigation was specifically ordered by Chief Justice Roberts. The investigation took eight months in total, and it involved interviewing, you know, almost 100 court employees doing follow-up interviews. They hired forensic experts

to track who had access to the draft, who printed it out, who emailed it. But despite all of that, they cannot figure out who's responsible. Specifically, the report reads, quote, the investigation has determined that it is unlikely that the court's IT systems were Specifically, the report reads, quote, who disclosed the draft opinion. They have conducted 126 formal interviews of 97 employees, all of whom denied disclosing the opinion. Despite these efforts, investigators have been unable to determine at this time, using a preponderance of the evidence standard, the identity of the person who disclosed the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, or how the draft opinion was provided to Politico. Investigators continue to review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending to the extent that

additional investigation yields new evidence or leads the investigators will pursue them. End quote. Now the report did say that the fact that employees were working from home because of the pandemic, as well as certain gaps in the court's security policies, did create an environment where it was too easy to remove information from the building and access the court's IT networks. Because of this, the report recommended certain changes be made, and I'll go through them, but there are also more specific recommendations that were made that didn't necessarily make it into the public report because of security purposes. They don't want everyone knowing,

obviously, the changes that are going to be made. So there were additional recommendations, but not available to us. So some of the recommended changes that were made public included limiting the distribution of court sensitive documents. So obviously not as many eyes can see them and minimizing the use of hard copies for sensitive documents makes sense. Also recommended implementing a universal policy on the mechanics of handling and safeguarding opinions and sensitive documents, training the personnel regarding these policies and, you know, security surrounding these sensitive documents, addressing the court's current method of destroying court sensitive documents,

because the report says that the current method does have vulnerabilities that need updating. The report also recommended updating and clarifying the outdated court information security policies, as well as instituting technological tracking mechanisms to track the printing and copying of sensitive documents. And lastly, the report recommended that consideration be given to bills that were actually introduced in the last Congress that would expressly prohibit the disclosure of the Supreme Court's non-public case-related information to anyone outside of the court. So like I said, there were additional recommendations, and the report says that these recommendations were basically made because throughout the investigation, certain things came to light

regarding certain things that needed to be updated or tweaked. Like a lot of their policies and methods of handling things were outdated. And obviously technology has changed a lot. And so the court needs to keep up with those changes. So that's where those recommendations came from. Now, once this report was released, it drew a lot of criticism because it didn't really get into the detail as to the extent that the investigation included the justices themselves. It talked a lot about the

employees within the court, but not the actual justices. So because of this, on Friday, Marshall Gail Curley, the one who conducted this investigation, released a very short four-sentence statement. And she said, during the course of the investigation, I spoke with each of the justices, several on multiple occasions. The justices actively cooperated in this iterative process, asking questions and answering mine. I followed up on all credible leads, none of which implicated the justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe it was necessary to ask the justices or their spouses. On this basis, I did not believe it was necessary to ask the justices to sign sworn statements, end quote. Now, what's interesting about this is that everyone that was interviewed, so all 97 employees that were interviewed, had to sign sworn statements,

basically swearing to the fact that they did not release this draft opinion. So a lot of people are wondering, why did these 97 employees have to sign these statements and not the justices? Now, I, you know, something that I thought of was it's possible that they didn't want to put the justices in the, in the position of having to sign a sworn statement because that indicates almost a lack of trust of our highest powers in our land, right? So not to say that they're not human and that they shouldn't sign these sworn statements along with everyone else, but I just think having them sign the sworn statements kind of illustrates that maybe we don't have as much trust as we should in our highest powers. I don't know if that makes sense to you,

but that is a thought that kind of crossed my mind as to why maybe they didn't have the justices sign sworn statements. So you might be wondering what effect a sworn statement really has on anything, because after all, you know, who's going to catch you in your lie? You're basically just saying, yeah, no, I'm telling the truth. Like, believe me. And then, you know, your word has to be taken for what it's worth, but I have your answer. So if it was determined that anyone lied in signing their sworn affidavit, they swore to something, they sort of the truth of something that wasn't in fact true, those people or that person would be subject to prosecution in violation of chapter 18, section 1001 of the U S code. Code, which is lying, basically in the simplest of

words, and it's punishable by a fine and a maximum of five years imprisonment. The imprisonment fine can go up to eight years, but that's for like terrorist behavior. So in relation to this, you know, lying on a sworn affidavit regarding court procedures, the maximum imprisonment time would be five years. With that said, I highly doubt anyone would actually see prison time for something like this. So more than likely it would be a fine and they would go on their merry way. So that is the Supreme court report, uh, regard. I keep wanting to say Supreme court opinion because I'm so used to saying that, but that is the report on the investigation that was done regarding the Dobbs leak. Nothing, nothing. There's just no, I just, honestly, I have a hard time believing that they're,

that they couldn't get to the bottom of it, but you just got to trust what they say, I guess. So now let's get into the classified documents found at President Biden's home. I will keep that short and sweet. And our final story will be an execution in Texas. On Friday, FBI investigators found additional classified material while searching President Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware. Now, let me just preface this story by saying I really think the majority of people don't care much about this whole scenario, but it is my job to report on the news, so I'm going to do that, but I will keep it short. I don't think much needs to be said about this. Obviously,

you know, more will come to light eventually. There's not really much to know right now, besides there was classified material found in his home, but I will cover the stuff that I think is important, such as whether or not a vice president can declassify documents, because I posted about this on TikTok and a lot of people were commenting that a vice president cannot declassify information, whereas a president can, and that is not correct. So we will get into that. But as you know, for my last episode, the DOJ had launched an investigation into some classified material that was found both in President Biden's office as well as his home.

And the DOJ was notified first from the National Archive, who was notified by White House staff. And then the DOJ was in contact with President Biden's personal attorney, and his personal attorney was kind of updating the DOJ whenever more documents were found. So on Friday, the FBI went in and searched Biden's house for 13 hours and they found six more classified documents. Biden's personal attorney, Bob Bauer said in a statement that quote, the DOJ took possession of materials. It deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials. Some of which were from the president's service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as vice president. DOJ also took for

further review personally handwritten notes from the vice presidential years, end quote. Now, that is what you need to know about the documents that were found. Like I said, there is not much to talk about, but I do want to clarify the law behind classified documents because again, people seem to think that a vice president does not have the ability to declassify documents. So here's how it works. The president and a few others have special authorities to view classified information while in or out of office. Any former president, vice president, and a few others by law have access to any and all classified information in perpetuity by the nature of the position that they held. But no one can remove classified information without proper authorization. Proper authorization

being declassification, and this includes the president. No one can remove classified information without proper authorization. Both the president and vice president can declassify information as per president Obama's 2009 executive order. And if you want to read it for yourself, please do so. It is linked on my website in the sources section for this episode. You just go to the episode webpage, scroll down to the bottom. All the sources are there specifically section 1.3 of Obama's 2009 executive order regarding classification authority. Now this is classification authority, not declassification authority, but you have to know this in order to understand the declassification authority. So section 1.3 reads that the authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by the president and the vice president, and it goes on to list others, but that is what's

important. So the authority to classify information may be exercised by the president and the vice president. And again, that's the authority to classify, but let's move on to the authority to declassify. So section 3.1 of the order regarding the authority to declassification reads, quote, information shall be declassified as soon as it no longer meets the standards for classification under this order. Information shall be declassified or downgraded by, and one of the subsections is, the official who authorized the original classification if that official is still serving in the same position and has original classification authority. So in a nutshell, what that is saying is that a vice president can declassify documents if the vice president was the one who authorized

the original classification and the vice president is still serving as vice president. So obviously for that section to apply, uh, president Biden wouldn't would have had to declassify this document, these documents while he was still serving as vice president, but he would have also had to authorize the original classification as well. Now, the order also gives another method for a vice president to declassify information, and that can be found in section 1.5 regarding duration of classification. And what that says is, quote, at the time of original classification, the original classification authority, which can be a vice president

shall establish a specific date or event for declassification based on the duration of the national security sensitivity of the information upon reaching the date or event, the information shall automatically be declassified. So under this section, a vice president can establish a specific date or event where a document will be automatically declassified. So if he classifies it, he can then say, you know, on this date, it will be declassified. Maybe he makes that date the end of his term, whatever. So that is another section of the order that gives the vice president authority to declassify. And again, the order is on my website if you want to read it for yourself. Before this 2009 order, vice presidents could only declassify and classify

documents under certain conditions. So for example, in 2003, President George W. Bush issued an order in which the authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by the president and in the performance of executive duties, the vice president. So there was that qualification clause. So there were certain conditions that had to be met for the vice president to classify and declassify. So just know that the recent 2009, I say recent because, you know, it's relatively recent, but that 2009 order that was issued by president Obama is still in effect. It has not been challenged. So as per that order, the vice president does have the ability to declassify information. With that said, no one's arguing whether or not he declassified it. That's

not really an issue. So like, I'm not telling you this to tell you that, that he was correct in taking those documents. That is not what I'm saying at all. Let me reiterate that no one can take classified documents. So I am just telling you that because there seems to be some confusion as to whether a vice president can even declassify documents. And the answer is yes, so long as, you know, certain conditions are met. But if we hear anything of substance in regards to the documents found, I will be sure to update you. But as of now, that's really all you need to know. So that takes us to our final story, which is that Texas conducted an execution on January 10th. His name was Robert Frada. He was a former police officer and he was executed via the lethal

injection. Now I mentioned last episode that each episode this month, I would cover a recent execution. So today we are talking about Mr. Frada. Let's talk about what he did that got him on death row. Frada was convicted of hiring two men to kill his ex-wife 30 years ago during a very contentious divorce and custody battle. Prosecutors argued that he organized the plot. There was a middleman named Joseph who actually hired the shooter, who was named Howard, and his ex-wife Farrah was in her garage when she was approached and shot twice in the head. So let's talk a little bit about the procedural history of the case before we finish with the execution details. He was originally sentenced to death in 1996, but the conviction was actually overturned by a federal judge who

ruled that the confessions from his co-conspirators should not have been admitted into evidence. He was then retried and resentenced in 2009. He appealed that sentence arguing insufficient evidence, faulty jury instructions. He argued that a juror in the case was not impartial and also argued that ballistics evidence did not tie him to the murder weapon. Those appeals were rejected and his most recent appeal was in regard to hypnosis. So the argument there was that prosecutors withheld evidence that one of the trial witnesses had been hypnotized by investigators, which led her to change her initial recollection that she saw two men at the murder scene, as well as a getaway driver. Now, the reason that that's important is

because the state's case depended on just two men committing the act. So if she saw, or I actually don't even know if it's a she, I just assumed that, But if this trial witness saw, uh, you know, two men plus a getaway driver, that's three people. And then if she was hypnotized and then change that recollection to fit the state story, obviously, you know, there's an issue there. So the prosecutors though, argue that the hypnosis provided no new information and no new identification. So this appeal was rejected. And then shortly before his execution, the Texas board of pardon and paroles declined to commute his sentence. So you guys have heard me talk about this before, shortly before an execution, the inmate will almost always, um, submit a request to have their sentence commuted to life in prison rather than the death penalty. And in this case, which typically these requests are denied, sometimes they're granted,

but usually almost always denied, which happened in this case, it was denied. The execution itself was delayed for a little over an hour because the last appeal was really like they were, they were literally waiting on it to clear the Supreme court. That's how almost, uh, close these, these executions are. So they were waiting for the Supreme court to give the word that no, this appeal is rejected. We're not, you know, we're not going to hear it. And then the execution went forward. Talk about last minute. He did have his spiritual advisor present for the execution, and he prayed over Frada for about three minutes before the execution began.

He asked for prayers for, quote, hearts that have been broken for people who grieved and those who will grieve in the days ahead, end quote. He also asked that God be merciful to Frada. Frada had no last words. Texas does not offer a last meal, so he didn't have the option. And he was executed via a lethal dose of pentobarbital, which is the method of execution in Texas. Now, interestingly, shortly before he was executed, two days actually before he was executed, he did an interview with Death Penalty Action. And he said that he once supported the

death penalty, but his experience on death row changed his mind. He said in part, quote, it's been kind of an enlightening experience as far as I never gave any thought to the death penalty, even though I was a police officer. And now that I'm going through it, I can understand how it's so ridiculously tormenting for the inmates to be put through this, to have you knowing the day and time and everything that you're going to die and it's just prolonged and everything they put you through beforehand, this is torturous. And I can't believe the government of we, the people actually allows this to happen. I have a total change of mindset regarding the death penalty now that I've been put through this myself. End quote. As for the other two guys involved, the shooter and the

middleman, they were also sentenced to death and they are still waiting their execution. So that was the recent execution in Texas. And that actually concludes today's episode. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please don't forget to leave me a review on whichever platform you listen. And I will talk to you on Monday.