Week in Review: September 12-18, 2022

(0:25) Intro
(3:42) Former Twitter Head of Security Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee
(19:00) Senator Lindsey Graham Introduces Abortion Ban Bill Ahead of Midterm Elections 
(26:43) Illinois SAFE-T Act 
(34:55) Special Master Appointed in Donald Trump Investigation

Links to sources can be found on www.jordanismylawyer.com.

Transcript

Jordan: [00:00:00] You are listening to the Jordan is my lawyer 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. It is Monday. So you know what that means. It's time for an unbiased review of the past week of current affairs in the law. So you can form your own opinions without any outside noise. It's gonna be a good episode, but before we get into it, I do wanna give you guys the heads up that true crime.

Is coming to an end or it has ended actually already. So last week's Tuesday episode was my last true crime episode. And there's a few [00:01:00] reasons for this. The main reason being that I really, really, really enjoy doing these unbiased. Kind of news reporting episodes. Um, that is where my passion is. It's not in true crime.

And the reason I started true crime was basically because you guys really liked when I talked about the death penalty and executions and things like that on my TikTok. So I wanted to implement a true crime segment. But what I found in doing that is that I'm not really catering to my own interests and my own passions.

and that is what's most important for me to give you guys the best content that I possibly can. So I can still talk about the death penalty and executions when they happen, because the thing is, is these days they don't happen very often. So when I do do episodes recapping the past week of current affairs in the law, I can say, you know, so, and so was executed in Alabama.

Let's say this past week, he was executed by way of the lethal injection. And I can talk about the [00:02:00] execution a bit so I can still implement. Um, those stories into my news episodes. And then the other reason was just that for my own personal brand, I don't want to be known as someone who does true crime.

I wanna be known as someone who reports on the news and things that are happening in an unbiased way. And so I think for me, the best is just to kind of tailor. What, you know, what, what kind of content I do. Um, so yeah, so that is the deal with that. My last episode was on the most recent execution in the United States, and that'll be my last true crime episode, but executions are not going anywhere.

The death penalty is not going anywhere. I will still talk about it. In my weekly recaps, but without further ado, let's get into today's topics. So today we're talking about the former Twitter head of securities testimony to the Senate judiciary committee regarding Twitter's mishandling of user data and information.

We're talking about Senator Lindsey, Graham's new bill that would ban [00:03:00] abortion nationwide. After 15 weeks, we are talking about Illinois's new safety act that has been causing a bit of controversy. A lot of confusion in some people. So we're gonna clear up some things with that. And then our last story will be about the special master appointee.

So the federal judge in the DOJ Trump case appointed a special master to review the document seize from our Lago. So we're gonna get into a little bit about who that special master is and what we can expect going forward. So let's hop into our first story.

On Tuesday, September 13th, former Twitter security, chief and whistleblower. Peter Zco testified before the Senate judiciary committee regarding Twitter's lack of security as it pertains to user data and information. So here's a little bit about Zco and [00:04:00] who he is. So he was hired by Twitter in November of 2020.

His hiring came as a result of the hacking of some of the most influential people in the world, including president Biden, Kim Kardashian, and Elon Musk. So after that happened, Twitter realized, okay, we need someone to come in and. Kind of get a, get a hold of our security a bit. So this doesn't happen in the future.

And that's when Zco came in. Now in the short time that he was there with Twitter, he was tasked with leading an overhaul of Twitter's security practices. Specifically. He was responsible for information security, privacy, engineering, physical security, information technology, and Twitter, global support.

But his time at Twitter was not. Very long lasting. So like I said, he was hired in November, 2020, but by January of this year, so a little over a year. of working for Twitter. He was let go for what Twitter says [00:05:00] was poor performance now in July. So just six months ish, after he was let go, he released a whistleblower disclosure about Twitter's security practices.

This disclosure was made public in August, and then the Senate judiciary committee asked that he come in and testify. Now I do have this hearing linked for you on my website on the episode description webpage for this episode. So you can listen to that if you want. It's available on YouTube. It's about two and a half hours long.

The format of the hearing was basically, he gave a short statement of his time at Twitter, his findings, what he experienced there. And then each committee member was able to ask him questions within a six minute time period. And Z code would answer each of those questions. And then once the six minutes was up, it was up to a new, uh, committee member to ask him other questions, essentially what he had to.[00:06:00] 

is that Twitter's leadership has misled its own board executives and government regulators about its security vulnerabilities. Specifically. He accused several board members and executives, including the CEO of Twitter. Of making false or misleading statements about privacy security and content moderation on the platform in violation of the federal trade commission act of 1914 and S E C disclosure rules.

So more specifically, some of the things that he said was that. Twitter has two different types of employees. Twitter has engineers and Twitter has non-engineers. Each group makes up about it's a 50, 50, you know, split of how much of the company they make up. So 50% of the employees are engineers. 50% are non-engineers and all of the engineers have access to all of the data that Twitter has.

So about 50%, half of the company's [00:07:00] employees have access to user data and. This isn't just information you give when you sign up, right. When you sign up for Twitter, for those of you who are familiar, um, you know, you're giving your email address and your first and last name basically, but Twitter has so much more information than just that Twitter has your exact precise location.

Other social media account handles that you own your phone number, your home, address, your IP address. Other IP addresses that you've used in the past. And the thing is, is that according to Zco Twitter doesn't even know why it has 80% of the data that it has on each user. So he said that in internal study was done by Twitter engineers themselves independently because Twitter wouldn't give them the funds and the time required to do this study on company time.

But this internal study showed that. Only about 20% of the information that Twitter [00:08:00] has. Did they know why Twitter got it? Why it was given to Twitter, how it was supposed to be used and when it was supposed to be deleted. And on top of that Twitter doesn't delete data when accounts are deleted because Twitter doesn't even know how or why the data.

Is in its possession or where it's stored or where it came from. And so they don't know how to delete the data. So even when you delete an account on Twitter, your data is still there. And again, that data is not just your basic, you know, name, phone number, email address. It's your exact precise location, your IP address, your previous IP addresses.

I mean, they have so much data on you. And that's where the issue comes in because not only do they have this data, but they don't know why they have it and they don't know how to get rid of it. And in addition to that, half of Twitter's employees have access to this information. So Zco says that when these security issues were brought up to [00:09:00] the board, the board chose to just keep deceiving rather than correct the issue.

And then at one point Zco was asked. Okay, well, you know, obviously some of the blame has to be put on Twitter, but what about the regulators? Like, do we need to attribute any of this blame to the regulators? And Zco was basically like, Look, they're in over their heads with these social media giants. And his quote was that these regulatory agencies are left letting companies grade their own homework.

So on top of that, he said how the FTC didn't really scare Twitter. And that Twitter was much more afraid of foreign regulators and not regulators here in America because the regulators in France, it's not just a one time fine. Like it is here in America. In America, if you're in violation of, of anything, you get a one time fine slapped on you and you have to pay it, which these fines, although to the general public is a huge [00:10:00] amount for Twitter.

It's just, you know, they're tossing over pennies, right? So they're not scared of those one time fines. And, you know, actually he said that the regulators in the United States have the tools that they need to regulate properly. But they're not using the right ones. They don't know which tools work. And instead they're just slapping one time fines on these big, big, huge companies.

And calling it a day, he says the right tool would be disallowing. The monetization of email addresses because this is what makes Twitter all of their money. And if they're not allowed to monetize all of the email addresses in their data, that is going to be a deterrent for them. But yeah, he just, I mean, Zco basically compared it to this tool belt.

Right. And he said they have all these tools, they just don't know which tools are effective. They don't know which tools to use. Now, if you remember a few minutes ago, I said that. Twitter, just simply according to Zco, wasn't caring when it was brought up to, to the executives and the [00:11:00] board, they just basically said, we're not gonna correct it.

We're just gonna keep deceiving people. And another example of Twitter, not caring essentially about these privacy concerns was this. So Zco said that China, China bans Twitter, for those of you who don't know, China is a communist country. It doesn't want its people having access to Twitter yet. Chinese companies tied to the Chinese government advertise on Twitter.

And Twitter's fine with that because it makes Twitter a bunch of money. And Zco raised this issue to Twitter when he was working with them because letting China advertise on the platform violated the company policy, like literally went against what the company policy said. And according to Zco Twitter basically just said, Quote, we're already in bed.

It would be problematic if we lost that revenue stream. So figure out a way to make people comfortable with it. End quote. So it's not like Twitter wants to fix these things. It's not like Twitter [00:12:00] wants to be in compliance with policies and regulations and all this stuff. They're just basically saying let's figure out how, how, how we can get around.

And while we're on the topic of China, the FBI alerted Twitter back in the beginning of the year, about a week before Zco was let go that it suspected that there was a Chinese foreign agent working for Twitter on Twitter's payroll. For the purpose of getting Intel, right? Like this is literal quite literally a foreign spy.

Obviously this wasn't purposefully done by Twitter, but rather by China to get someone on the inside with access to all of this data that Twitter has. And that's very clearly. A huge risk to us, national security. And this isn't the only instance that a foreign spy, so to speak was working for Twitter.

Not too long ago, there was an employee working for the Saudi Arabia government. He was actually found guilty [00:13:00] just last month in August for spying on Saudi dissidents. Which means the people against the Saudi regime on Twitter and giving their personal information. So these people that didn't agree with the Saudi government giving their personal information to the Saudi government in exchange for payments.

And then obviously you can only imagine what would happen to these people. So you could find out where these people lived. You could find out everything about them. And he, this employee was just turning over this information to the Saudi government. The government was paying him to do this and. As a result, all of these people were outed to the government simply because they didn't agree with it.

Now, another issue was that Zco testified Twitter doesn't have central logs. And what that means is Twitter doesn't log activities of the systems. So it, so central logs would tell a company who tries to log in when they try to log in how they're trying to log in and [00:14:00] Twitter didn't have this. So Twitter had no idea.

Who when or what was trying to log into its systems that housed all of this data. Right. And Zco says that he learned while working at Twitter, that there were thousands of failed attempts to log in and access internal systems happening per week. And no one noticed. Because there were no central logs.

And when Zco was asked, do companies typically have these, his answer was, yes. So that's just another example of how Twitter just clearly wasn't trying to protect its information. Not only did they not know. How or why they were getting all of this information from its users, but they weren't even taking the right measures to protect the information, to sum up the testimony.

In a nutshell, Zco says Twitter's 10 years behind on industry standards. They don't know how they're getting this data. They're not protecting the data. They have foreign agents in spies working for [00:15:00] them that they don't even know about. It's ju it's a mess. It's, it's a mess after the hearing Twitter. Made a statement.

And in part said, quote, today's hearing only confirms that Mr. Zappo's allegations are riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and quote, and Twitter also went on to say that the company's hiring process is independent of foreign influences and that access to internal company data is managed through background checks, access controls, and monitoring systems.

Twitter declined to respond to specific allegations. Like the company's inability to detect whether foreign agents are on its payroll, as well as claims that the FBI warned Twitter, that it may have a Chinese agent in the company. Twitter would not comment on that now. How does this story really quickly tie into the Twitter deal with Elon Musk?

I've had a few people ask me to talk about this deal with Elon Musk. Um, basically what you need to know is that Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for 44 billion since then [00:16:00] he has tried to back out multiple times. And when he tried to back out of the deal, initially Twitter sued Elon Musk to enforce their agreement and Elon countersued.

Now Elon's most recent reason for backing out of the deal is that a $7.75 million payment was made to Zco as part of a confidential settlement, which allegedly. Prohibited Zco from speaking publicly about his time at Twitter or disparaging the company with the exception of congressional hearings and governmental whistleblower complaints.

Now this payment was revealed in a court filing earlier this month, neither Twitter nor Zappo's lawyer have commented on it. But Elon Musk says that the payment violated a provision of the acquisition contract. Wherein Twitter agreed not to provide any severance payments to employees in amounts outside the ordinary course of business, consistent with past practice.

So Elon says, this is outside of the ordinary course of business. You guys weren't supposed to make [00:17:00] any sort of confidential settlement agreement as per the agreement we had. And Twitter says that it hasn't breached any of its representations or obligations under the agreement. So even though Elon Musk is trying to get out of the deal, Twitter shareholders are planning on holding him to it.

And ironically, on the same day that Zco testified, Twitter shareholders voted in favor of the $44 billion deal. So we will see what happens with the deal. Obviously it's gonna have to go through, you know, the litigation process and we probably won't know anything for a little bit. But that's where that stands, but I wanna know.

What do you make of all of this? Uh, what do you think is the answer to protecting our privacy on social media? Is it legislation, is it a new regulatory agency? Because some of the committee members actually suggested that coming up with a new regulatory agency. Specifically for social media and data protection.

[00:18:00] Um, is it heftier penalties like Zco was implying when he said Twitter was more afraid of the French version of the FTC than America's FTC? Or is it maybe a combination of all of the above? I think the important thing to note here is that social media is not going anywhere. It is by all means here to stay.

It's only going to continue to get bigger. That is the future. So how do we fix this problem? And you know, when I was listening to this testimony, all I could think about was TikTok, right? Because TikTok is a Chinese company. How much information do they have access to that we don't even know about? Right.

What have we opened ourselves up to without even knowing. I mean, it's a scary thought, but it's worth thinking about, so that is, that's the deal with that. I do have it linked on my website. So feel free to watch the hearing for yourself. It's about two and a half hours long. But I pretty much [00:19:00] recapped everything that you need to know.

So with that, let's talk about Senator Lindsay. Graham's new bill that would ban abortions nationwide after 15 weeks, the exceptions being for rape incest and to protect the life of the mother. Now, first and foremost, I just wanna put this out there that this bill will not pass Congress or the white house given the political landscape.

Of both Congress and the white house, obviously the democratic party controls the house and the Senate, the, we have a democratic president in office. So it's, there's no way that this bill becomes a law, but the reason that it is causing some confusion and some concern in some people is because when you look.

At what just happened in the Supreme court. So when Roe versus Wade was overturned in the case of Dobbs versus Jackson women's health organization, a couple of months ago, you saw a political split and it wasn't, I mean, I'm not, I'm not gonna go as far as to say, all Republicans felt one way. All Democrats felt another way because that's just not true.[00:20:00] 

But what you did see is that most Republicans felt the, the, the issue of abortion should be left to the states. And most Democrats felt that we needed to codify Roe versus Wade and make the right to abortion a federal. Right. Well, Now, I mean, Senator Graham is a Republican and he was one of those people that said the right to abortion is not a constitutional right.

And it belongs to the states to handle, but now he's turning around and saying, well, wait, let's, let's introduce this bill that would make abortions. Bann after 15 weeks on a federal. so that's why people are like, what do you mean? You were just saying that this is a state issue, and now you wanna ban it nationwide on a federal level after 15 weeks.

So that is one of the reasons that people are concerned and confused. But another reason it's causing some concern for some people specifically, the Republican party is because they're saying that this bill is a distraction that [00:21:00] divides the G O P ahead of midterm elections. And it's on top of that, giving the democratic party, the ability to argue that if Republicans take control again, They will ban abortion and most Republicans want this issue left to the states.

Anyway. So even Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader said that most of the members of his conference prefer this be dealt with at a state level. Another example is Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. She rejected Graham's proposal, noting her support of federal protections for abortion. Senator Susan Collins of Maine set, a far better approach would be codifying Roe versus Wade.

That's another Republican Senator. Adam laal G P Senate nominee in Nevada recently published an op at assuring voters that if he was elected, he would not support a federal abortion ban. And that's just a few, I mean, you have Charlie Kirk founder of turning point USA, Roger Stone, Blake masters, Senator from Arizona, Tiffany smiley Republican nominee for us Senate in Washington, [00:22:00] all of these people that are part of the Republican party that are saying.

They don't support a federal ban on abortion. And all this is doing is causing division within the Republican party ahead of midterm elections. So some Republican senators obviously would support this. Um, but at the end of the day, it's causing more division than what Republicans want right now.

Republicans want the focus to be on the. They don't want the focus to be on abortion. And just to illustrate that after Senator Graham proposed the bill, he was interviewed by Jesse Waters on Fox news. Jesse asked him to explain the poor timing of the bill, two angry Republicans who view it as detrimental to the G O P.

And Graham's response was that there is no bad time to defend the UN. And notably, although Jesse agreed with all of Graham's anti-abortion viewpoints, he expressed how bad the timing was. And he said in part it's terrible timing, terrible [00:23:00] tactics, we could have shoved this down their throat. On the day, Americans got hammered with the inflation number and the market crashing, and now all the media and the Democrats are talking about is the federal abortion.

Similarly, Matt Walsh, the host of the daily wire, which is a Republican outlet said, it's almost like he wants Republicans to lose. That's the conspiracy theory I would actually subscribe to. This is sabotage. You know, and then you have the other side of that, Democrats are already talking about this proposal in their midterm messaging.

So you have Chuck Schumer, Senate, majority leader who set on Tuesday. Very simple. If you want to protect the right to choose and you want to protect a woman's right to healthcare vote for more democratic senators, you want to have a nationwide abortion. Vote for Maga Republicans end quote. So if this was a strategic move, I guess by Senator Graham, it could very easily backfire.

Now, procedurally, just to give you a little procedural history, this has been a contested issue [00:24:00] between the parties for a long time. Democrats actually just introduced to bill in may establishing a federal right determinate pregnancy until fetal viability, which is around 22 to 24. Or at any point in the pregnancy, if there's a risk to the patient's life or health, this bill obviously didn't pass the Senate because then months later, the Supreme court overturned R versus Wade in Dobbs versus Jackson women's health organization.

And now Graham is proposing this bill. So that procedurally, I mean, this has always been an issue between the parties, but to do this, you know, seven to eight weeks before midterm elections has not only some people feeling infuriated that this Senator was one saying, leave this to the states and is now making it a federal issue or trying to make it a federal issue.

But on top of that, you have people. upset because the timing of this is all you're just gonna divide. [00:25:00] Even more when, you know, arguably, if you're a Republican, you want your party to come together right now. You want as many votes as you can, so you can take back control of the house and the Senate. Right?

I don't know. I mean, what do you think about this? Given the fact that this bill has no chance of passing Congress to the white house. Like I said, this isn't PA the way Congress currently sits politically and our president being a Democrat, this isn't PA, this isn't becoming a law. Do you think this will hurt or help the Republican party ahead of midterm?

and also something I thought about was people are, you know, like Jesse Waters was saying, you could have done this at any time, or people are saying, just wait till after midterm elections. But do you prefer that these politicians cards are left on the table? Because then no one could say after elections that they didn't see this coming.

there's this game that politicians play these tactics literally. I mean, you heard me reference it. Jesse Waters called it a tactic. All politicians do it. It doesn't matter if they're [00:26:00] Republican or their Democrat. All politicians have tactics and they play games, but here, maybe it's almost better to see everyone's cards prior to going to the polls.

Right. So again, I'm curious to hear your guys' thoughts on this. You can always comment on my website. I have a comment submission form. Now on each episode, description webpage on Jordan is my lawyer.com. And that is where we kind of, you know, talk about these issues together and have some more conversation about it.

So let me know what you think about this. And with that, let's move into the Illinois safety act.

The Illinois safety act has been causing a lot of controversy. The Illinois safety act is so it's spelled safe, hyphen T, but it actually stands for safety, accountability, fairness, and equity today. So the full name of the act [00:27:00] is the Illinois safety, accountability, fairness, and equity today act it was signed by the governor in 2021.

It takes effect January 1st, 2023. And the full act is 764 pages. So I'm just gonna be honest with you and tell you, I did not read this act and its entirety. It's just not possible, but I did do a lot of research. And, you know, I looked into some of the things that people have been saying about it on both sides.

There are some people that are pretty fearful of this act that live in Illinois. Um, and I, and I kind of did some fact checking. So the law covers multiple areas. It covers use of force by police officers complaints in misconduct by police officers. Certification and de-certification of police officers, corrections pre-trial processes.

There is a lot included in the full act, but the part that's causing the most controversy is the pre-trial fairness act. Because some of the things that it does is one abolish cash [00:28:00] bail, and two changes. Pre-trial release procedures. So the intention of the bill, according to the Bill's supporters is to prevent people facing criminal charges from having to stay in jail because they can't afford bail.

So the bill sponsor state Senator Robert Peters of Chicago said, quote, being poor is not a crime end of story. Folks who have the means to cover their bail. Don't spend a minute in jail while others could be locked up for weeks or even months before their. This is not a just or equitable system end quote.

So the intention is to fix systemic racism and avoid people having to stay in jail because they don't have the financial means to let themselves out of jail. People on TikTok, I've seen a few TikTok videos calling this, the purge law. Equating it to the purge, the movie where people have, I think it's like 12 [00:29:00] hours to commit whatever crime they want.

Others are saying that when this law takes effect, essentially the jail doors are just gonna open. All, all, uh, inmates that are being detained will automatically be set free. They're gonna be running the streets. And in reality, what this law will do is it will trigger detention hearings for the people being held pretrial.

So it's not like when this law takes effect your jail cell opens and you're free to go. No, you're gonna have to go to a detention hearing. And the judge will determine whether or not the person needs to be detained prior to their trial. So the law eliminates cash bail as a standard. Right because that's, that's the standard you get arrested.

You get booked, you go in to see the judge, and that's when your, your bail is set. Or maybe you, you there's no bail, but it's eliminating that cash bail as a standard. Now, a judge can still keep a person detained. [00:30:00] Depending on the criminal charge, or if they think the person poses a threat to an individual, or if there's a flight risk.

So there's still things that can keep a person detained. Another thing to clear up is that, you know, people have been saying there there's these non detainable offenses, which includes 12 different offenses. And some people are saying that judges can no longer. it detain a person if they are charged with any of these offenses and what these offenses include is second degree murder, arson drug-induced homicide robbery, kidnapping, aggravated battery, burglary, intimidation, aggravated DUI fleeing, and eluding drug offenses, and threatening a public official.

What the law does do though. Is it says that judges can no longer automatically detain a person pretrial just because they committed one of these 12 crimes. And if the judge wants to detain a person who has been charged [00:31:00] with one of these 12 crimes, the standard has now been elevated. So now prosecutors must show by clear and convincing evidence, which is a pretty high evidentiary standard.

That the defendant poses a threat to a specific identifiable person or persons rather than just a general community threat or a threat to a class of persons. So now prosecutors have to show that there is a person, a specific person or multiple people that this person poses a threat to. It's not enough.

That this person is just a threat to the general community as for the flight risk. Now, the prosecution has to show a high likelihood of willful flight. So the standards have been elevated. Now, here is an issue I thought about if this is really about money and it's really about giving people a [00:32:00] fair chance who can't afford it.

I get that. Okay. I, I get it, but, but then why is the law increasing the burden of proof? Why couldn't the burden of proof remain the same? but cash bail just is no longer the standard. I feel like there's a middle ground there. And I did see some people were saying, yes, they do think that the cash bail issue needs to be corrected, but this seems like a gross overcorrection.

Um, I did see people saying that. Keep in mind that Chicago crime, which granted Chicago is just one city in Illinois. Chicago crime is up 37% from last year. And this because of that, this law is getting a lot of heat. The governor and attorney general of Illinois are already facing lawsuits. The state attorneys from two different counties in Illinois actually have filed suit to stop the law saying that they want the law declared to [00:33:00] unconstitutional the mayor of Orland park.

Spoke out last week saying, quote, I can't even begin to tell you how dangerous this act is. End quote. So there's a lot of negative reaction to this law and I'll leave you with a few arguments for and against abolishing cash bail and changing the pretrial requirements a bit. So the arguments for.

Abolishing cash, cash bail, and changing the pretrial requirements is that, you know, in our country we have innocent until proven guilty. Right. But what does it say when you're held until your guilt is determined? That does, that's not innocent until proven guilty that is guilty until proven guilty. Um, so that's an argument for abolishing cash bail and saying, look, you're free to go until your trial date.

You're innocent until proven guilty. Right? Another argument for abolishing cash bail and changing pretrial requirements is that it does set a level playing field for those, with the financial means to bail themselves out. [00:34:00] And it also gets rid of the costs associated with pretrial detention. Cause you know, when you keep these people detained prior to their trial, you're paying every day money to keep them.

In jail. I think I read that it's like $143 a day for each person that's detained pretrial. So those are the arguments for, for this law. The arguments against it is that this could be dangerous. It could lead to more crime. There's less of a deterrent for those wanting to engage in criminal behavior, knowing that they could.

Commit the crime get right back out and keep doing their thing until they gotta appear for trial. So those are the arguments against it. I am very curious. I mean, I'm always curious to hear what you guys think, but I'm very curious to hear what you guys think on this topic, because I think people have very differing viewpoints on this and I would just love to spark some conversation about it.

So with that, let's talk about the. [00:35:00] Last and final story today, the special master appointee in the DOJ Trump case. So federal judge Eileen cannon has appointed one of former president Trump's proposed candidates for the special master. His name is judge Raymond dere, and he will serve as the special master in the DOJs case against former president Trump.

And he will essentially be tasked with reviewing each document that was seized from our Lago one by. To determine if any of those documents are privileged and therefore need to be returned to Trump. Let's talk a little bit about who judge de is. He's a 78 year old, former chief judge of the federal court in the Eastern district of New York.

He was proposed by Trump, but the DOJ did not object. In fact, DOJ lawyers said de has substantial judicial experience and is qualified for the job. Now, his background, he got his law degree from St. John's university law school in 1969. He eventually served as an attorney for the Eastern district of New [00:36:00] York before he was appointed by president Reagan in 1986 to serve as a federal judge in New York.

And he also served a seven year term on the us foreign intelligence surveillance court, which is a pretty significant fact. And the reason this is significant is because of what his role, what his role was during his time in the court. So this court, the us foreign intelligence surveillance court is made up of only 11 federal district judges who are designated by the chief justice of the United States.

It's a very prestigious position. It's a secret court. The hearings and records are closed to the public. And basically their role as judges of this court is to review applications submitted by the United States government to basically take any action related to foreign intelligence. These applications are also called FISO warrants, F FISA warrants.

And if approved by the court, they give the us government the ability to physically search or electronically surveil. [00:37:00] People. And the reason that this is important is because it illustrates the level of experience that judge de has when it comes to confidential information warrants, classified documents like he, this is, I mean, he's very well versed in this stuff.

And in fact, during his time on the court, de was one of the judges that approved. In FBI and DOJ request to surveil Carter page, who was a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign at the time to find out whether Russia med with the 2016 a presidential election. So all of that goes to show, you know, not only does he have crazy experience when it comes to confidential information, classified documents, warrants, yada, yada, but also he was one of the judges that approved.

The government's request to surveil a, a Trump policy advisor now in August de moved to inactive status as a judge, which is the step before [00:38:00] formal retirement. I mean, the guy is 78 years old for God's sake. Um, and most notably he seems to be recognized by everyone as a fair. So Andrew Weisman, a federal prosecutor, and a special master himself described de as compassionate.

And fair. And the platonic ideal of what you want in a judge. And Weisman said, quote, if you asked both prosecutors and lawyers, they would say the same thing that he's just so fair. It's unusual to have a judge where both sides have enormous praise for somebody and quote. And he also said, and I thought this was just such a cute, like nice story.

He also said when he was starting out as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, judge de was late for a hearing. And a few days later, he sent this Weissman, this prosecutor, a handwritten apology letter. He sent it to him and the defense lawyer on the case. I thought that was so nice. And I think it just speaks volumes to who he is as a judge, [00:39:00] because a lot of judges have this they're on this power trip.

And I, I just, I don't know. I thought that that was just so telling of who he is now. It is clear to me that the judge is trying to make a point here by appointing one of Trump's candidates. She wants to show the public that. Or at least it appears to me that she wants to show the public, that the judicial system is trust trustworthy and is doing everything it can to make this a fair investigation and in doing so, she's going against the grain when it comes to everything the DOJ is asking for.

Now, some can make the argument that because judge Eileen was appointed by president Trump, she's doing everything that Trump wants, but I think it's more important to look at this in a fairness light. Rather than a prejudicial light, because the reality is these rulings that the judge is making won't prohibit the inevitable.

If the DOJ decides to bring criminal charges and at the same time, Favorable rulings for Trump, avoid people [00:40:00] down the road saying this wasn't a fair investigation and calling the investigation into question because so far Trump has gotten almost everything he's asked for. So yeah, she may have been a judge appointed by Trump, but in reality, if there are criminal charges brought against Trump, that's not cha that will happen no matter what.

And at least in the meantime, Former president Trump is getting what he wants. So no one can question the integrity of the judicial process or the investigation. So judge dere has until November 30th to conduct his review and he's been directed by the judge to issue reports and recommendations throughout his review as appropriate.

And finally. Just wanna touch on this really quick. If you remember last episode, I talked about the DOJs motion to stay the order that prohibited the DOJ from continuing its review of the documents until the special master sifted through everything. And essentially in that motion, the DOJs argument was that they've already gone through and [00:41:00] separated the classified documents from the non-classified documents, and they just wanna be able to continue to review the classified documents because if they have to stop, it could harm the public.

And the government given that the documents contain information pertaining to national security. Since I reported that to you guys, the judge denied that motion and reiterated that the DOJ does have to halt the review until the special master is finished on or before November 30th. So that is where this matter currently stands.

And by the end of November, we should have some more clarity into everything as always. I. Everything that I cited to or sourced for this episode on my website, Jordan is my lawyer.com. You can go to the episode description webpage and find all of the sources there. And please, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a five star review on whichever platform you listen on.

It really helps support my channel. I just actually hit a milestone. I just, this past week broke 200 reviews [00:42:00] on apple podcast and Spotify combined. So that was super exciting. But, you know, 200, I'm still a small fish and a big pond, and I have a ways to go. So I really appreciate if you guys could take the time to review my podcast and with that, I will talk to you guys soon.