August 19, 2024: House Releases Biden Report Alleging "Impeachable Conduct," Supreme Court Upholds Block on Biden's Title IX Rule, Disney's Viral Response to Wrongful Death Suit, and More
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Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis.

Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Monday, August 19th. It's a new week and this is your daily news rundown. As a reminder, Monday episodes usually consist mainly of stories from the weekend. It's more of a weekend recap and then maybe one or two stories from the actual day. It just really depends on the news cycle. So that's a heads up for you. Also, if you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides and you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on what you think.

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 and subscribe to the channel if you're not already. All of those things really help me out and they are greatly appreciated. So thank you. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories, starting with some news from Friday. The Supreme Court left a temporary block in place.

on President Biden's recent Title IX rule. You may remember back in April, the Biden administration made some updates to Title IX by way of a final rule. Just a bit of a recap, Title IX is a federal civil rights law, which was enacted as part of the Education Amendment in 1972. Obviously, we know there was a time in

when blacks, whites, women, and men were not treated equal under the law. So the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted to address discrimination. And initially, the act was intended to address racial discrimination and segregation, but then later it also extended to discrimination based on color, religion, national origin, and sex.

And over time, it's evolved. If you want to know more about it and its evolution, you can certainly check out my April 30th podcast episode. I dive into it in a little bit more detail in that episode. But earlier this year, the Biden administration issued a final rule that in part adds discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as pregnancy and sex stereotypes to the list of Title IX discrimination prohibitions.

What that means is under this final rule, if a school that receives federal funding discriminates against a student based on any of those things, that school risks losing their funding. Following the issuance of this rule, multiple lawsuits were filed arguing that the administration had exceeded its authority in extending the definition of sex discrimination to include these other things, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy, etc.,

And again, that April 30th episode will detail those lawsuits a little bit more, what the arguments are. But to fast forward a little bit, after those lawsuits were filed, two federal judges across the country issued what are called preliminary injunctions. And we've talked about preliminary injunctions many times in the past, but it's essentially an order from a judge that prohibits a party from doing something while the lawsuit is being

So in these cases, the Biden administration was prohibited from enforcing its Title IX final rule in the 10 states under the court's jurisdiction pending final resolution of the case.

The DOJ then appeals the issuance of the preliminary injunctions to the Supreme Court. And what the DOJ asked the justices to do is sever the provisions of the rule. In other words, the DOJ said, listen, we're fine with the preliminary injunction remaining in place as to the sex characteristics portion of the rule, the most controversial portion of the rule, if you will, but can you

lift the injunction as to the other portions of the rule that are not being challenged here and let us enforce those in the meantime? And the majority of justices said no, which means that the new Title IX rule cannot be enforced at all in those 10 states until there's a final decision from the judges in each of those cases. Once a final decision is issued, the losing party can then obviously appeal and this whole process will start over again.

The Supreme Court's order from Friday reads in part, quote,

But the government argues and the dissent agrees that those provisions should be severed and that the other provisions of the new rule should still be permitted to take effect in the interim period while the government's appeals of the preliminary injunctions are pending in the Court of Appeals. In this emergency posture in this court, the burden is on the government as an applicant to show, among other things, a likelihood of success on its

severability argument and that the equities favor a stay. On this limited record and in its emergency applications, the government has not provided this court a sufficient basis to disturb the lower court's interim conclusions that the three provisions found likely to be unlawful are intertwined with and affect other provisions of the rule.

nor has the government adequately identified which particular provisions, if any, are sufficiently independent of the enjoined definitional provision and thus might be able to remain in effect.

End quote. The dissenting justices were Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson, meaning those four justices would have allowed the rule to sever and only prohibit the Biden administration from enforcing the three challenged provisions of this rule. The five justices who overruled the dissenting justices and left the injunction in place for all provisions of the rule were Chief Justice Roberts, Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, Alito, and

and Thomas. Moving on to the next story, you may have heard about this wrongful death lawsuit that Disney is facing because Disney's response to the lawsuit sort of went a little viral last week. So I did get a few requests to cover this and I do just want to clear it up and what it all means and what we can expect moving forward.

The reason Disney was sued in the first place is because a woman unfortunately died of a serious allergic reaction after she ate at one of Disney's restaurants. So her husband sued Disney, alleging negligence and wrongful death on the basis that the restaurant's menus falsely said that the food was free of nuts and dairy. Disney then files a response to this lawsuit, and this was back in May, but it just started going viral last week.

Basically, what the attorney filed on behalf of Disney was a motion to compel arbitration, which is an attempt to keep Disney out of court. But it was the rationale within the motion that really blew people away. Important to this story is that to successfully compel arbitration, you have to have a valid and enforceable agreement in place that says disputes must go through arbitration. So this attorney that filed the motion on behalf of Disney said,

argued that because this woman's husband signed up for a Disney Plus account in November of 2019 and agreed to the terms and conditions of the registration agreement that this case must now go through arbitration.

So three years ago, this guy signed up for the Disney Plus streaming service, hit agree to the terms and conditions when he registered his account, and in doing so, agreed to an arbitration clause, which is included in a lot of the terms and conditions agreements that we sign these days. And because of that, Disney's attorney says that this husband that just lost his wife must now go through arbitration for the wrongful death lawsuit rather than going to court.

Now, I'm just going to tell you as a lawyer, there is no way that this argument holds up in court. As a company, you cannot say, hey, this person signed a completely unrelated agreement three years ago with our company. And now that his wife died after eating at one of our restaurants, he has to abide by the terms of that unrelated three-year-old agreement.

But there was a second argument that's just a little more plausible. And that is that when the woman's husband bought their park tickets to Epcot in 2023, he again agreed to Disney's terms, which included an arbitration agreement.

However, the incident in question didn't happen at Epcot. It happened in Disney Springs, which is a part of Disney that doesn't require tickets. So it's completely separate from Epcot. And again, as a lawyer, I do not see this going in Disney's favor, but I did want to cover it because I did get a few requests to. And now at least you know what's going on with that. And we can move on to the new report out of Congress regarding President Biden.

Three House committees released a 291-page report into President Biden this morning alleging abuse of power and obstruction of justice in the financial dealings of Hunter Biden and his brother. Now, this is something that President Biden's brother, not Hunter's brother,

Now, this is something the House has been working on for almost two years. They've conducted interviews of 30 plus people. They've reviewed tons and tons of documents. But this is really the first time we're hearing of any official findings. As I said, the report is 291 pages. Did I read it in its entirety? No. But I will share with you a portion of the executive summary, which essentially lays out the allegations. So it starts by saying this, quote,

First and foremost, overwhelming evidence demonstrates that President Biden participated in a conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family. Among other aspects of this conspiracy, the Biden family and their business associates received tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden.

As vice president, President Biden actively participated in this conspiracy by, among other things, attending dinners with his family's foreign business partners and speaking to them by phone, often when being placed on speakerphone by Hunter Biden.

For example, in 2014, Vice President Biden attended a dinner for Hunter Biden with Russian oligarch Yelena Badrina. Following the dinner, Badrina wired $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a firm associated with Hunter Biden.

End quote. It continues on, quote, several witnesses testify that Hunter Biden invoked his father in business dealings with Romanian, Chinese, Kazakhstani, and Ukrainian companies, resulting in millions of dollars flowing to the Biden family. For example, around 2014, Hunter Biden explored starting a joint venture with Chinese businessman Henry Zhao and his company Harvest Fund Management, a $300 billion Chinese financial services company closely connected to the Chinese Communist Party.

party, and when it appeared that the deal may not materialize, he called his father for assistance.

Similarly, while Hunter Biden served on the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma from 2014 to 2019, he utilized his father's position to relieve pressure the company was under from a government investigation. In doing so, Vice President Biden changed U.S. policy in order to withhold a $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee until Ukraine took government action to stop the investigation into the company affiliated with Hunter Biden.

After leaving office, Joe Biden and his family continued their financial relationships with corrupt Chinese businessmen who would send the Bidens millions of dollars, end quote.

Continuing, this is the last little paragraph I'll read, quote, the totality of the corrupt conduct uncovered by the committees is egregious. President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and grift. In doing so, he abused his office and by repeatedly lying about his abuse of office has defrauded the United States to enrich his family. Not one of these transactions would have occurred but for Joe Biden's official position in the United States government, end quote. Now,

Now, it is worth noting that despite this new report, these committees have not introduced articles of impeachment against President Biden. It would be up to one of these committees to do so should they have incriminating evidence. And from there, it would then go to the full house for a vote. But we don't have articles of impeachment as of now.

The report, when it came to articles of impeachment, did say this. It said, quote, the Constitution's remedy for a president's flagrant abuse of office is clear, impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal by the Senate. Despite the cheapening of the impeachment power by Democrats in recent years, the House's decision to pursue articles of impeachment must not be made lightly. As such, this report endeavors to present the evidence gathered to date so that all members of the House may assess the extent of President Biden's

End quote.

As for the president and the White House, a White House spokesperson said in response to this report, quote, End quote.

So that is the deal with the report. And per usual, I do have it linked for you in the sources section of this episode, which you can find a link to in the episode description. Now let's finish with a few quick hitters. The Democratic National Convention kicked off today in Chicago. It'll run through Thursday when Vice President Harris officially accepts her Democratic presidential nomination.

As we know, Democratic delegates already picked Harris as their nominee earlier this month in a virtual roll call, but a ceremonial roll call will be had at the DNC this week. President Biden and the First Lady are scheduled to speak tonight, and then later in the week,

Speakers include Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and former First Lady Michelle Obama. If you want to tune in, it will be broadcasted live on different news networks, as was the RNC, and programming will start around 6.30 p.m. Eastern Time tonight, and it'll end each night around 11 p.m.

In an update to a story from last week, prosecutors in Trump's hush money case are deferring to the judge over Trump's request for a sentencing delay. Last week, Trump's attorneys had asked that Trump's September 18th sentencing be delayed until after the election. And today, prosecutors filed a response saying that while they believe Trump's arguments are flawed, they defer to the court for an appropriate post-trial schedule.

Former Representative George Santos is expected to plead guilty to corruption charges today. He is currently facing multiple federal charges, but they include and are not limited to laundering campaign funds to pay for personal expenses,

charging donors credit cards without their consent, and receiving unemployment benefits while he was employed. His trial was set to start next month, but if he pleads guilty, that trial won't go forward. He'll instead be sentenced in accordance with that deal.

And finally, the Kroger grocery chain sued the FTC today after the FTC put Kroger's $25 billion merger with Albertsons on review. Kroger argues in its lawsuit that the FTC's in-house panel of judges is unconstitutional. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. As always, have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.