UNBIASED - What You Need To Know About Trump's Hush Money Trial, Iran Strikes Israel, FISA Bill Passes, FBI's Criminal Investigation Into Bridge Collapse, Rust Armorer Sentenced, and More.

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

1. Weekend Recap: Iran Strikes Israel, Biden's $7.4B Student Loan Forgiveness, House Passes FISA Extension (0:47)2. Deep Dive: Trump's Criminal Hush Money Trial Begins; Your Questions Answered (4:11)3. FBI Opens Criminal Investigation Into Francis Scott Key Bridge Collapse (13:49)4. Quick Hitters: Rust Armorer Sentenced, Justice Thomas Absent from Oral Arguments, Supreme Court Denies BLM Organizer Negligence Case (14:35)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Monday, April 15th, and this is your daily news rundown. If you love the unbiased approach this episode provides, you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave the show a review on whatever platform you listen, share the show with your friends, and if you're watching on YouTube, please go ahead and hit that thumbs up button, subscribe to this channel if you're not already. Thank you so much. And without further ado, let's get into today's stories. So we'll first start with a recap of the weekend. Then we'll spend a good chunk of time on Trump's

hush money trial, which started today. We'll touch on some other stories from the day, some quick hitters, and that'll be today's episode. So let's start with the biggest story of the weekend, which was that Iran launched an estimated 300 missiles and drones at Israel in what Iran called a retaliatory attack following a suspected Israeli airstrike earlier this month in Syria, which killed three Iranian generals and four officers. Now, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied whether they were behind the Syria strike, but both Iran and the Pentagon have implied that Israel was in fact responsible for it. From what we know from Israeli military officials, Israel's Iron Dome intercepted 99% of Iran's projectiles, with the country of Jordan actually intercepting a few missiles over its own airspace. Five of the projectiles landed within Israel's borders.

No one was killed, but a seven-year-old girl was seriously injured from missile fragments. As far as a response to Iran's attack, Israel's war cabinet did meet today to sort of talk through what they were going to do. We don't know what was ultimately decided. Sources have said that Israel's response may be imminent. Take that with a grain of salt. The Biden administration has said that the United States will not be involving themselves in any retaliatory action against Iran and told Israeli officials that if it does decide to respond, it will do so alone. Speaking of President Biden, he announced the forgiveness of another $7.4 billion in student debt on Friday. And as is the case with most other recent forgiveness,

those that qualify are those that are enrolled in Biden's newer SAVE plan, other income-driven repayment plans, and those with public service loans. Also on Friday, the House of Representatives passed the controversial FISA extension, which if passed by the Senate and signed into law by the president, will extend the Foreign International Surveillance Act for another two years. Now, I posted a video about FISA to social media on Friday, but for those of you that may have missed it, here is a very quick synopsis of the controversy. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed back in 1978, but over the years, one particular section of the law,

Section 702, has become quite controversial. Section 702 gives the federal government the ability to collect intelligence on foreign nationals outside of the United States who may pose a national security risk. Fine. However, should those foreign nationals communicate with Americans, FISA allows the federal government to collect intelligence on those Americans as well, without a warrant. Now, the issue is that the Fourth Amendment protects us from warrantless searches and seizures by the federal government. So opponents and critics see this as a workaround for the federal government to conduct searches

essentially without a warrant. They want to do away with Section 702 or at the very least reform it and add a warrant requirement. However, earlier in the day on Friday, the warrant requirement amendment failed. It was an incredibly narrow 212 to 212 vote. So FISA is currently set to expire on Friday. So that means we should have a vote from the Senate soon. And as I said, if it passes, and assuming it'll be signed into law, FISA will be extended for another two years. Those were the top headlines from the weekend. Now let's talk about what happened today. Most of the headlines today are centered around Trump's trial, specifically the criminal hush money trial

in New York. So let's talk about it. First, what does it mean that trial has started? Because I think when a lot of us think about trial, we think about witnesses taking the stand and opening statements and things like that. And that certainly is to come. But what these headlines mean when they say trial has started is that jury selection has started. And jury selection can take a few days. It could take a week.

It could take even longer than that. My guess is it takes maybe a little over a week. But basically what happened today is that the potential jurors went in. There was 96, I believe, in total. The judge gave a short summary as to what the case is about. The judge asked the jurors for those that self-identify as unable to be fair and impartial to make themselves known. The judge asked for those jurors that are unavailable to serve due to scheduling conflicts to also make themselves known. Those jurors that are unavailable to serve due to scheduling conflicts to also make themselves known.

Those jurors were then excused. The jurors that remain will go through a process called voir dire. Voir dire is where the jurors answer various questions about not only, well, mostly about themselves, but their background, their thoughts and feelings about Trump himself, how he's been, you know, how they feel about how Trump has been treated throughout this case, which news networks they watch, things like that. And based on the jurors' answers, the attorneys will dismiss certain jurors until they're down to 12 jurors and six alternates. Procedurally speaking, each side can strike an unlimited number of jurors for cause, and then each side gets 10 strikes for any reason. So no cause is necessary,

they can dismiss them due to whatever. Voidier in this case will likely take longer than usual because both the defense and the prosecution have been allotted more time than usual to question the jurors. So that'll definitely take up more time than we typically see. However, once the jurors are selected, that's when opening statements are made, witnesses will take the stand, all of that. And as a side note, if you want a full look at the list of questions that the jurors are going to be asked, go ahead and listen to my episode from last Wednesday. I go over some of the questions in that episode, and I also have the full list of questions from the judge linked in the sources section for that episode. But while we are still on the topic of the jury, I do want to answer a question that I have received a lot, which is this. How does a former president get an impartial jury given who they are? The fact is there's a slim chance that he'll get a totally fair jury in Manhattan. And even though we're entitled to a

fair and impartial jury under the Constitution, this is a known tactic, right? If you are the prosecution, you are going to prosecute where there's better chances of you winning. The reality is in Manhattan County specifically, which is where this jury is being pulled from, Trump only got 12.3% of the vote in the 2020 election. He does not have a lot of supporters there. And given the fact that he's a presidential candidate, it's a very polarizing person that's on trial. Same would be said if it was Biden, right? Now, obviously, it's possible for someone to have not voted for him, but be able to take their bias out of it. But you and I both know that's not likely, especially, like I said, when it's where,

you know, we're in such a politically charged climate, Trump being who he is, incredibly difficult. So with that said, my answer to the question is that an impartial jury in this case is not necessarily guaranteed. But I do imagine if he is ultimately convicted, that'll likely be one of the bases of his appeal. So with jury matters behind us, let's talk about what this case is about. This is the second and perhaps the most important aspect to clarify. This case has become known as the Hush money case, right? And each case that Trump is currently facing has its own nickname. We have the classified documents case, the civil fraud case, the election interference case, the hush money case, etc. But the nickname

is kind of misleading in that it's not the actual hush money payments that he's on trial for. Hush money payments in and of themselves are not illegal. You can actually pay someone to keep a secret for you, and that's totally fine. The problem in this case is twofold, really. Mainly, it's how the payments were accounted for. So Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer, is the one that made the payments to Stormy Daniels to allegedly keep her affair with Donald Trump quiet. $130,000 to be exact. The allegation is that Cohen paid Daniels and Trump reimbursed Cohen. But in doing so, when recording the payments to Cohen, Trump classified them as part of his legal retainer,

when really it was meant to pay him back for the hush money payments to Daniels, as DA Bragg alleges, right? So because of that, the Manhattan DA has charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, one count for each ledger entry. So DA Bragg's argument is that Trump's intention was to suppress his affair with Stormy Daniels while he was running for president in 2016 because he didn't want damaging information out there ahead of the election. And in doing that, he intentionally hid the reimbursement payment to Cohen by classifying it as part of his legal retainer. Now, falsifying business records in and of itself is a

misdemeanor. But if you falsify business records in furtherance of another crime, that's when it becomes a felony. So DA Bragg is really going to focus his case on not only the falsification of business records, but also that the falsification of business records was done in furtherance of violating campaign finance laws because as the DA is going to argue, Daniels was paid off to not muddy the waters of Trump's campaign. So that's the second part of this case. Before we move on, I also want to mention some pre-trial matters. So before jury selection started, Judge Merchant also ruled on certain pieces of evidence that can and cannot come in at trial. And before I tell you what the judge allowed and didn't allow, here is the standard.

So for a piece of evidence to come in, its probative value has to outweigh its prejudicial value. So it's a sort of balancing test. And of course, the evidence also has to be relevant. So what does that look like? Evidence is probative if it makes an allegation in the case more or less likely to be true. Think of it as necessary to probe the truth. However, if that evidence is outweighed by the likelihood that it may cause prejudice against the defendant or it may confuse or mislead the jury, that evidence is inadmissible. So this morning, the judge used that balancing test in coming to the following conclusions.

Stories published by the National Enquirer, which criticized Trump's opponents in 2016, can come in. And the purpose of these stories is to show that Trump had control over which stories were published and had this sort of arrangement with American media, which owned National Enquirer. Testimony from Karen McDougal, who also says she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and was later paid $150,000 to keep quiet about it, can come in. However, the judge will not allow prosecutors to talk about allegations that the affair continued while Melania Trump was pregnant and after she gave birth. The Access Hollywood tape, which was released by the Washington Post one month before the 2016 election, that cannot come in. However, prosecutors can show the jury

emails from Trump's campaign that were in response to the tape's release. Allegations of sexual assault against Trump cannot come in. And Michael Cohen's 2018 guilty plea cannot come in if it's tied to Donald Trump. However, the judge did say he will allow Cohen to testify about the guilty plea as long as the proper foundation is laid. Now, importantly, Michael Cohen himself is going to be the prosecution's main witness, him and Stormy Daniels. And as I briefly just mentioned, Cohen himself pled guilty in 2018 to violating campaign finance laws, which he says was at the direction of Trump and included the hush money payment allegations. On top of that, Cohen has repeatedly said that

he and Trump agreed on this scheme to pay Stormy Daniels to help Trump's 2016 campaign, which obviously goes to Trump's knowledge and intent. So his testimony is going to be key for the prosecution so long as they lay the proper foundation and the judge lets Cohen testify about it. On the other side of that, though, Trump's attorneys are going to attack Cohen's credibility. Cohen has lied on the stand in the past, so Trump's attorneys are really going to focus on convincing the jury that Cohen can't be trusted and to not take what he says at face value. So those are some of the more important things that I think you should know as this case gets underway. Obviously, there's a lot to cover here,

and for that reason, I will continue to update you on this case when it's warranted. I probably won't be giving daily updates, but when things happen that are worth talking about, you will certainly know about it. In other news, we found out today that the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation into the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore last month. Now, we don't really know much. What we do know is that FBI agents were on board the Doali cargo ship this morning, and officials that are familiar with the matter say that the probe is looking at whether the crew failed to report an earlier mechanical issue with the ship, which ultimately delayed

its departure, and consequently whether the crew left the port with knowledge that something could be wrong with the ship. Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board has been investigating why the ship lost power and has really been focusing specifically on engine room equipment. Now for some quick hitters of the day, let's just finish with a few quick storylines. The armorer on set of Rust, who was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter last month, was sentenced today to 18 months in prison. Justice Clarence Thomas was absent from Supreme Court oral arguments today,

though Chief Justice Roberts did not give us a reason as to why. It's not often that justices miss oral arguments, but when they do, we'll sometimes get an explanation. Other times we don't. It just, it really depends. Today we did not. Despite him not being present though, he will be contributing to the ultimate decisions in the two cases that were heard today.

And he'll get familiar with the cases by reviewing the briefs submitted by both parties, as well as the transcripts from today's argument. Speaking of the Supreme Court, the justices released a list of cases which they have decided they will not hear. And one of those cases is an interesting First Amendment-related case where the appellate court, specifically the Fifth Circuit, held that a Black Lives Matter protest organizer could be held liable for negligence after a police officer was seriously injured

during the protest. Now, this organizer following that appellate decision had asked the Supreme Court to review it, but the Supreme Court declined to get involved. And just as a note, because that decision was out of the Fifth Circuit, that decision and that precedent applies only to those states within the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit. So Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. It is not a binding decision on the entire nation. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great rest of your night, and I will talk to you tomorrow.