August 20, 2024: New Report Says ICE Lost Track of Unaccompanied Migrant Children, Yacht Sinks in Italy But There's An Underlying Story, RFK Jr. Weighs Dropping Out of Race, and More.
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Welcome back to Unbiased. It is Tuesday, August 20th, and this is your daily news rundown. As always, if you finished this episode and you love the Unbiased approach that it provided you with and you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen. Share this show with your friends, and if you're watching on YouTube, please go ahead and hit that thumbs up button. And if you're not, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button.

and subscribe to my channel if you're not already. Thank you very much, and without further ado, we can get into today's stories. In an update to yesterday's episode, former House Representative George Santos has pled guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. If you want the full backstory of Santos' indictment, listen to my May 12th episode from last year. I will link it in this episode description for you because it'll just make it easier to access. It's a bit far back. But

But by pleading guilty, Santos admitted that he not only filed fraudulent FEC reports, but also embezzled funds from campaign donors, charged credit cards without authorization, stole identities, obtained unemployment benefits through fraud, and lied in financial reports to the House of Representatives.

Santos said that he was sorry for his actions and said, quote,

End quote. His sentencing actually isn't until February of 2025, February 7th to be exact. And as far as his possible sentence, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said that under the deal, Santos will go to prison for at least two years, though the judge said that this plea deal may come with an estimated sentencing range between six and eight years.

Under the agreement, Santos will also have to repay at least $373,000.

This next story is a bit of a crazy one, so it's been developing over the last day or so, and you may have heard about it, but the story behind it is what's even crazier. So early morning hours of Monday over in Italy, they had some bad weather and a water spout formed about a half a mile off the coast of Sicily. There were a few boats in the area, but one of the boats was a 183 foot sailboat, so more of a super yacht rather than a boat, but it got

hit by the water spout and the mast broke in half and the boat sunk. There were about 20 people on board, including the crew, and as of now, 15 people have been rescued, but six are still missing at sea. Really unfortunate story. As I said though, there's an underlying story that's crazier.

Two months ago, there was a fraud trial happening in San Francisco. The two co-defendants were a man named Mike Lynch and another man named Stephen Chamberlain. Lynch is a British tech entrepreneur who started a company called Autonomy, and Chamberlain was Autonomy's vice president of finance.

When Autonomy sold to Hewlett Packard back in 2011, Lynch and Chamberlain were accused of falsely inflating the value of Autonomy and faced criminal charges. However, they didn't go to trial until this past June, so nearly 13 years after the sale of the company. Ultimately, they were both acquitted and they went on their way.

Well, this past Saturday, Chamberlain, one of the co-defendants, was struck by a car and killed while he was out running in England. When Chamberlain was killed, Lynch, the other co-defendant, was on his boat celebrating the recent acquittal with family, friends, and the attorney that represented him at trial. That boat was the boat that just sunk.

So less than 48 hours after Chamberlain's death, both Lynch and the attorney that represented these two men, Christopher Morveo is his name, were thrown off the boat during the storm and they still remain missing.

As if that's not crazy enough, following the verdict, Morveo had posted to LinkedIn for the first and only time. He started his post by writing, quote, I have never posted on LinkedIn before, not sure why. The answer must lie somewhere between a fear of social media, an ignorance of the mysteries of this platform, and a lack of something meaningful to say. But I finally have something that I would like others to hear."

And then he goes on, he continues on this long post just thanking, you know, a whole list of people that helped him in achieving this acquittal for his clients. But he finishes the post with this line, quote, and they all lived happily ever after, dot, dot, dot, end quote.

Just bizarre. Totally bizarre. The good news in all of this is that 15 people were rescued and survived. Tragically, one has been confirmed dead and six are still missing at sea. Lynch, Lynch's 18-year-old daughter, Christopher Morveo and Morveo's wife, as well as the chairman of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife.

So really crazy story, took 13 years for this case to go to trial, and then within two days of each other, and only two months after the acquittal, both co-defendants and their attorney end up in very, very freak situations.

Moving on, Hunter Biden lost another attempt to dismiss his tax-related charges ahead of next month's trial. Hunter had sought to dismiss the tax charges after a judge in Florida dismissed Trump's charges based on a lack of authority from the special counsel. So in the Florida case, the judge ruled that attorneys general actually don't have any

the legal or constitutional authority to appoint special prosecutors, and therefore any charges brought by special prosecutors in cases where they were appointed by an attorney general are void. So Hunter Biden then tried to use that argument to get

his tax charges dismissed because his tax charges were brought by a special prosecutor appointed by an attorney general. But here's the thing. Because the judge that issued that ruling in Florida was merely a district court judge,

The ruling had no binding effect on any other court. And on top of that, the Florida ruling was the first of its kind. So the judge in California overseeing Hunter's case had no obligation to follow the rationale from the Florida judge, and he didn't. That means that Hunter's charges remain, and should everything remain on schedule from here, that trial is set to begin on September 1st.

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A new report issued by the Inspector General of the United States says that ICE, otherwise known as United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has lost track of at least 32,000 unaccompanied minors over the last five years.

An internal watchdog with the DHS sent a report to Congress today titled, End quote. The report reads in part, quote,

During our ongoing audit to assess ICE's ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, unaccompanied children, who were released or transferred from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services,

We learned ICE transferred more than 448,000 UCs to HHS from fiscal years 2019 to 2023. However, ICE was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court. ICE reported more than 32,000 UCs failed to appear for their immigration court hearings from fiscal years 2019 to 2023.

The report continues, "...these issues occurred in part because ICE does not have an automated process for sharing information internally between the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor and ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations and externally with stakeholders such as HHS and the DOJ regarding UCs who do not appear in immigration court."

Additionally, ICE enforcement and removal operations has not developed a formal policy or process to follow up on UCs who did not appear in court, has limited oversight for monitoring UCs, and faced resource limitations. ICE must take immediate action to ensure the safety of UCs residing in the United States.

End quote. The inspector general also wrote in the report that as of May of this year, more than 291,000 unaccompanied children had not been placed into removal proceedings because ICE had not served them notices to appear or scheduled a court date for them. Both of those things are required. So the report basically set forth a couple of recommendations to fix

the issue. The first is for ICE to evaluate the use of manual processes for information sharing within the agency as well as with other stakeholders, identify funding, and develop and implement an automated system to document court appearances and maintain address information for unaccompanied children.

The second recommendation was to develop and implement a process to identify unaccompanied children who fail to appear at these immigration hearings and share that information internally within ICE as well as externally with the Department of Health and Human Services. In a brief response from ICE to the Inspector General, ICE concurred with both of these recommendations and said that it's working already on improving its processes.

And now we can finish with some quick hitters. Starting with an update to yesterday's episode, Disney has agreed to have the wrongful death lawsuit against it heard in court. I told you in yesterday's episode about Disney's viral response to the suit, and now it...

appears that Disney executives apparently realized that approach was not the way to go. Disney Experiences chairman told Reuters in an email, quote, we believe this situation warrants a sensitive approach to expedite a resolution for the family who have experienced such a painful loss. As such, we've decided to waive our right to arbitration and have this matter proceed in court, end quote.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is contemplating dropping out of the race per his running mate, Nicole Shanahan. Shanahan spoke to the host of the Impact Theory podcast about the options that the campaign is currently weighing and said one of the options is to stay in the race because if they can get 5% of the vote, they can establish an official party for the 2028 election. But the second option is to drop out and join forces with Trump.

She explained that their campaign takes more votes away from Trump than it does Harris, and they would be, quote, risking a Harris-Walls presidency if they don't drop out.

In other news, the DOJ has filed a motion seeking to make Trump immune in a lawsuit against him filed by protesters in 2020. The lawsuit claims that George Floyd protesters were met with smoke canisters and pepper balls in Lafayette Square so that Trump could cross the park to a nearby church for

for a photo of himself holding a Bible. The lawsuit claims Trump is liable for battery and assault, among other things, for ordering officers to forcibly drive protesters from the park. However, the DOJ's new motion seeks to substitute Trump for itself

arguing that Trump was acting within the scope of federal office or employment at the time and is therefore immune from liability. The judge does still have to grant that motion in order for the DOJ to officially stand in as a defendant.

And finally, in another setback for Boeing, the company said it would be pausing testing on its already delayed 777X aircraft. The 777X was supposed to enter service in 2020, but has been delayed many times. The most recent delay, which Boeing announced today, is due to the failure of a crucial piece of structure that mounts the engine to the aircraft.

The issue was discovered after the plane completed a five and a half hour test flight on August 16th from Hawaii. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here on this beautiful Tuesday. Have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.