Whistleblower: FBI Investigating Parents

Today on Sekulow, whistleblowers have confirmed the FBI is investigating parents. We'll talk to Congressman Mike Johnson and Mike Pompeo. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Do you remember back in September of 2021, the National School Board Association sent a letter to President Biden saying you need the Department of Justice to come in, you need the FBI to come in to investigate these parents. They're just too hostile at these school board meetings. They were hostile over masks, they were hostile over mandates, they were hostile over virtual learning, they were hostile over critical race theory. A lot of parents who were learning exactly what the curriculum was because their kids were doing school virtually at home during the lockdowns and they were actually hearing what their kids were being taught. Remember you had even those school boards saying your parents don't have a right to listen in on the teaching.

So then, again, that came in September 29th. October 4th, a one-page memo goes out to the FBI from the Attorney General Merrick Garland about partnering, using the FBI resources to look into what's happening at these school board meetings. Then you get just a few days later, that's on October 4th, the same October 20th, two weeks later, a joint message from the Criminal Investigative Division and Counterterrorism Division of the FBI about can they, which we've seen this before time and time again, bring a legal challenge, a criminal challenge against one of these parents.

Again, this whole idea of trying to silence speech. Well, just yesterday, last night, Congressman Jim Jordan and Congressman Mike Johnson, Congressman Johnson will be on the broadcast with us later today, sent a letter to Merrick Garland, the Attorney General. They now have whistleblower reports about the FBI continuing to use a threat tag, edu officials. So again, they've got a threat tag set up investigating parents.

They've got examples of this. It's all based off a whistleblower. This is after Merrick Garland testified that, no, no, the Counterterrorism Unit would never really be involved because of parent speech. So what they've done is, again, the leadership of the FBI and the Department of Justice has weaponized the FBI to go after parents. We've got enough problem with terrorists around the world and in the United States, but we're gonna go, they're gonna make a priority and have a tag that talks about education, an edu tag. The tag means that this is a part of their threat assessment, that they have a, once that happens, they tag it and it goes to a special group. Now, any economist is gonna be joining us later in the broadcast and we're gonna get into the particulars of this.

But this is a really serious matter, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would do this. Let me take just a brief moment here to pause for a second though. I wanna thank our ACLJ members that supported our matching moment. We exceeded our goal or got right to the goal, I should say. We met our goals, actually exceeded a little bit of what we anticipated. The response was incredible.

Thank you. And the bill to codify Roe that was put up by the Schumer, it's called the Schumer legislation, that was the more than Roe even, failed. Now, it failed barely.

It was 5149. And the concerning news, of course, is that Senator Manchin said he would support a Roe versus Wade codification. So we're preparing for that one already.

But we gotta do these battle by battle. That battle was a success. Your support of the ACLJ made that significant. And I will tell you this, we're filing a brief today in the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. This case involves Planned Parenthood funding in South Carolina. It's been challenged. We're backing up the state on that.

I want people to be clear. It's just a huge thank you to everybody who was part of that matching moment in these last couple of days. We raised over $500,000. That means with the tax, it's like a million dollars for the ACLJ. So we doubled, really doubled the initial goal was $250,000. So we doubled that because of you.

I say we, but that's because of you and your support. And we defeated that extreme abortion attempt to codify in Congress and in the Senate. Now, again, we know that Joe Manchin is the outlier still. He was the 51st vote against it.

They even had Kamala Harris there ready to go if they had the votes ready. So we're going to stay on it. We're going to stay on this.

We'll be right back on Sekulow. Part of the letter, this is from Congressman Jim Jordan, Congressman Mike Johnson. Congressman Johnson will be on the broadcast with us live in the second half hour of the show. This is the letter to Merrick Garland from last night. After this whistleblower information has come out that the FBI is, in fact, opening up investigations into these parents.

Now, after they've opened up the investigations, they found out that there's nothing there. So this again, but they're putting FBI files out on parents, sending FBI agents out to interview parents. And a lot of this you can see is partisan motivated.

We'll go through some of the examples, but I want to read this from the letter. The whistleblower information is startling. You have subjected these moms and dads to the opening of an FBI investigation about them, the establishment of an FBI case file that includes their political views and the application of a quote threat tag to their names as a direct result of their exercise of their fundamental constitutional right to speak and advocate for their children. This information is evidence of how the Biden administration is using federal law enforcement, including counter-terrorism resources to investigate concerned parents for protected first amendment activity. And then we had the disinformation on its board announcement. We know that that's out of Department of Homeland Security.

These are all, what is the one unifier here? Law enforcement agencies, badges, guns, knock at your door, investigate, bring cases against you, criminal cases. Right. So this is just like the IRS case where you had the government target by names of organizations. They did one of them here because it said they had the word liberty in an organization they were affiliated with. The same exact thing happened in the IRS cases. Remember the lowest learner emails saying we'll get DOJ and the FPC involved. But what is the common thread here is that they're using law enforcement. Now you have to understand something. When a file is open, an investigation begins, and the economists, our senior counsel's here, who is also a U.S. attorney and head of the criminal division in the U.S. district attorney's office in Atlanta.

So folks, when you get a file opened, this is significant. So first of all, what is the Department of Justice doing here? Well, the Department of Justice is becoming a weapon of the left. It is becoming a gun for the left pointed at the heads of people who are interested in the welfare of their children. Y'all, I can't tell you how much this really concerns me because you may open your mouth at a school board meeting, and I've represented school boards. I represented the Fayette County Board of Education south of Atlanta, and there were a lot of parents there who were angry about things that were happening in the school board, but it did not make them domestic terrorists.

Think about this. You get up and you say something. You maybe raise your voice. You show a little zeal and passion in what you say, and suddenly you're tagged as, what do they call it here, an EDU official terrorist. The FBI comes knocking on your door, shows their badges to agents. You become a target. A file is opened in Washington D.C. upon you. You are a federal target of an investigation, whether or not you're ultimately acquitted, and I don't mean that in a criminal term, but I mean cleared of the charges.

Your name is still in the FBI's records. This is very scary, folks. And Merrick Garland said it wasn't happening. So now you've got a whistleblower inside the FBI saying it is happening.

Yeah. This directly from the letter we've learned from brave whistleblowers, the FBI's open investigations with the EDU official's threat tag, get this, in almost every region of the country and relating to all types of educational settings. And they have some examples, as we talked about, the Mobs for Liberty. And you know what they said for the Mobs for Liberty? Oh, they also know she was a gun owner. The fact is, again.

Well, how did they know that, by the way, without doing an investigation? And second, that's legal. Of course. These are all legal things. You have a Second Amendment right to own a gun. You can be part of a group called Mobs for Liberty, and you can vocally oppose the defeat politically of any school board member. And saying that we want to beat you politically, we want to take you out of office, that is not a criminal speech. That's not even threatening speech.

That's just political speech. Politics is a win or lose game. You have to win.

You have to beat your opponent. You have to take a strong position. You have to be against something. You have to be for something.

Again, rhetoric, political rhetoric in America has always been tough, and it's always been protected speech. But these school board associations, remember, these are unions. They have a hold over the Biden administration.

They send the letter. Merrick Garland tries to walk away from it. And the truth is, now they know the FBI didn't walk away from it. It did, in fact, continue to move forward with counterterrorism investigations into parents. This dad had one because, quote, he fits the profile of an insurrectionist because he rails against the government and he believes conspiracy theories. But who's identifying what is a conspiracy theory? And would railing against the government make you a criminal?

And petitioning the redress of grievances of your government is protected by the First Amendment. But here's what people have to understand. To get this information, to find out if the other person was registered with this group or that he believes in these theories, they had to investigate this person.

This doesn't just come out of the air. This isn't just, you know, a neighbor says, you know, I'm worried about this guy. This is, they open an investigation. And I think it's important for our audience to understand what that means. A counter-terrorism investigation opened up on moms and dads who are opposing a school board.

Andy? This is terrifying. This is terrifying that this is happening in the United States today. And you ought to be terrified.

I don't mean that in an understated term. You ought to be scared to death that you, the fact that you actively advocate for, passionately advocate for your children before a school board could result not only in a visit from a federal law enforcement official, the FBI weaponized as the IRS was, weaponized by Biden as the IRS was weaponized by Obama. And then you now have an FBI file in Washington, D.C. in your name as a possible terrorist. Now what, so the FBI agent, to get this information, who are they working with inside the FBI? The Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney's Office? Yeah, with the U.S. Attorney's Offices. That's what this memorandum that Garland sent out said. The Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, all U.S.

Attorneys, all FBI agents. In other words, it's a coordinated effort put together to scare you from exercising your right to free speech. That's what it is. This is the broader theme we're seeing from the Biden administration leading up to, what is it, a midterm election. When did we see this last time?

Remember, when did this happen last? It was under the Obama administration after the passage of the Affordable Care Act leading up to a midterm election where the Democrats knew they were going to get clobbered. What did they try to do? Silence the grassroots movement that was growing naturally, kind of outside of the Republican Party, but certainly a conservative movement and the Tea Party groups. They wanted to silence them. They used law enforcement tools to attempt to silence those groups.

They used the IRS, they used the FBI, they used the Department of Justice. Here again, it's a natural grassroots movement. That's the scariest thing in politics to any politician is not political parties and the kind of the party activists who are in line. It's the real grassroots movement that pop up when the people who usually wouldn't go to the meetings, the people who usually don't take strong political positions suddenly get awoken to what is going on.

They get active. They start their own local groups to say, you know what, it's not that hard to defeat a school board member. It doesn't cost that much money to run a school board race.

We can run the school board and we can then set the policies and the tones. And I think this again, this is the biggest threat to politicians is natural grassroots movements that aren't being forced by either major political party. This happens to be a conservative movement. And so you've got these, they're trying to use everything they can to get this speech silenced. Remember it's awful, but lawful. They're defining what's awful.

And this is what they're saying here. It's awful that a Republican state elected official, again, expressed public displeasure with the school district's mandates. And that was quote inciting violence. A Republican against a Democrat saying he didn't like Democrat policies was quote inciting violence. Listen to what, do we play the Merrick Garland bite yet?

Listen, I want to play this because this is, he denies this. And we now have whistleblowers, but here's what he said. I do not believe that parents who testify, speak, argue with, complain about school boards and school should be classified as domestic terrorists or any kind of criminals. Parents have been complaining about the education of their children and about school boards since there were such things as school boards and public education. This is totally protected by the first amendment.

But, but Andy, it is totally protected by that. That party got right. What he got wrong is that they are classifying these parents as terrorists. I mean, he says what he just said that we quoted and then he writes a memorandum that says just the opposite. We're going to look at the, we're going to get the FBI working with each U.S. attorney to facilitate strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, and have dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting assessment and response. He's a liar. A threat to them is I disagree with the policy.

The Republican disagrees with the Democrat. They consider that inciting violence. Now in all these cases, these came through this national threat operation center tip line and the cases that were are mentioned in this letter from Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson to Merrick Garland, nothing. The FBI started the file, did the investigation, brought, you know, brought these parents and individuals in and what did they conclude? There was nothing illegal about what they were doing. And in fact, most of the time, what the extreme parts about what they were being told these tip lines didn't add up. There was no evidence. There was, they weren't making threats. They weren't saying they were going to use guns and all of these things. But again, the idea is that if, if you just let it out there, that most people that's their hope will say, you know what, I'm not going to show up. I know I don't need to be dealing with the FBI. It's just like with the tea party said, you know what, who wants more involvement by the IRS in your life?

So I'm just going to sit back and that's, we talked about the idea of getting you to shut up, chilling speech, chilling the political organizing. Take your phone calls as well at 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Bill has called in from Wyoming online too. Hey Bill, welcome to Sekulow. Hi, excuse me. I'm going to try and keep straight about this, but I've been a single person, my old adult life.

I worked in retail for 30 years. And anytime I've interacted with these children, their moms and dads are proud and happy and love these kids. And I get tired of, I don't like the idea of them being punished for wanting to know how the kids are going to grow up to be. But this is the problem. And the problem it punishes in an understatement. They're being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And Harry Hutchison, our director of policy, has just written a piece called President Biden's Extremism.

Harry, this is certainly one. Absolutely. So if you look at the misconduct of Merritt Garland, if you look at Nina Jankowicz, who is now the head of the Biden Administration's Ministry of Truth, if you look at Joe Biden's own statements, where he labels essentially anyone who oppose him part of the MAGA crowd, and he calls them extreme and divisive, it's important to note that the Biden Administration has launched an unmitigated attack on the American people.

And the American people, I think through the electoral process, they are going to react to being placed under surveillance by the Attorney General of the United States, and justifiably so. And I think, I'm a parent, and I think that where it resonates is this is a conversation happening amongst all parents. It's the idea about when they came out, this is the teachers' unions saying, you can't listen to what your kids are being taught virtually about the curriculum. You have no role in this. And the idea is that what parents have figured out, we've been working at school boards since the beginning of the ACLJ.

40 years. And the idea is that it's not hard to impact your local school board if you decide to run. It's not hard to defeat a candidate. I mean, again, if you live in a politically very liberal area, it may be tough to win as a conservative. But the truth is, a lot of times it's pretty liberal people on there in conservative areas because they run.

They run and they know the importance of the curriculum being set very early with what these kids are being taught. So I think, again, all we're seeing is you put this all together. Don't look at it as one piece, one piece.

Put it all together, what is it? We're leading up to a midterm election where new terms are coming out, ultra-mega. The idea, again, that that's a bad word. Make America Great Again is bad.

And now there's an ultra version of it. And the speech police, the disinformation governance board in a law enforcement agency, weaponizing law enforcement agencies, and all they have to do, once this whistleblower has come out and you realize that the FBI is showing up to these parents, that can chill the speech right there. You don't have to bring a charge.

No. Just knowing that the FBI might show up to your house because you showed up at the school board meeting and how the audacity to wait in line and speak and the FBI might show up, guess what they're hoping? You'll make the decision that it's just not worth it to show up at that school board meeting because you don't want to be dealing with an FBI investigation into your personal life. I mean, you got to understand what this looks like.

I mean, I think, Andy, it's important for people to understand what it looks like. Investigations open. You can get a knock on your door with a person showing you a badge. That's how investigations can start.

And that you're talking about chilling free speech. Walk people through what came into your office, what would happen? Well, I mean, they show, first of all, they show up at seven o'clock in the morning. That's part of the intimidation tactic is they show up immediately in the morning and wake you up and there's two agents there standing and they flash badges at you and they say, we hear from the FBI. We want to talk to you. Of course, in my opinion, you tell them, go away.

I'm not interested in talking to you. But they, they intimidate people into talking to them and admitting statements that they made, which they had the right to make under the constitution and tried to convert and pervert that into impermissible speech and into terrorist talk. That's the fear. Or a false statement to them. Or a false statement.

God forbid you can make a false statement and be prosecuted under 18 USC 1001 because you lied to the FBI who had no business being there in the first place. So Harry, as you look at all of the, you know, we talked about this in, you know, Nina Jankowicz now saying if you're verified on Twitter, that means you should be able to edit other people's tweets. Where, what is it, where's this going? It's going toward a massive, deliberate and intentional campaign of intimidation. It is designed to intimidate the American people into submission and subordination.

So if you look at Nina Jankowicz, she wants to control freedom of speech. You look at President Biden, he wants to control the activities and the political thoughts of people who perhaps support the idea of making America great. Amazingly, the President, President Biden, keeps attacking Trump supporters claiming that they are sowing societal division and that President Biden sees himself as a President of unity. Amazingly, President Biden expressed his commitment to social division last week by fondly reminiscing how united the country was in the good old days when he enjoyed having lunch with real segregationists.

Evidently, this is the kind of unity that President Biden prefers and he is engaged in a contest with President Obama in terms of which President can be the most divisive President in U.S. history. And then they appoint people like Nina Jankowicz, age 32, to be the czar of free speech who says something like this, number 14. And I am eligible for it because I'm verified. But there are a lot of people who shouldn't be verified, who aren't, you know, legit, in my opinion.

I mean, they are real people, but they're not trustworthy anyway. So verified people can essentially start to edit Twitter the same sort of way that Wikipedia is so they can add context to certain tweets. She's talking about tweets by third parties.

Yeah, by private citizens. She's going to edit your speech. Even if you're verified on Twitter. So I'm verified on Twitter. Again, that's because people try to make other accounts so that you know that if I send out like a donation fundraiser, we do a matching moment, that I'm the real, I'm really the Jordan Secula from the ACLJ.

So it's verified on Twitter, right? The idea that, again, she would say, well, even I, though, you know, it doesn't really matter if I'm verified because I'm not legit. Because my politics would be so different from hers that she would think that, again, that you need to edit my comments. So even I shouldn't be editing.

First, it's just absurd that the idea of to edit speech, this is not Wikipedia. These are kind of breaking moments, commentary on what's happening in real time. When you are commenting in real time, you have to take only the facts that you have. So sometimes you will learn more information as things develop. But the purpose of Twitter is the real time information. It doesn't mean that everything is going to be a hundred percent accurate all the time. Real time breaking news isn't.

But opinions also are something very different. The whole idea here, as we go into our second half hour, they want to shut you up before the election. They want to make you think. And it's in the letter from Congressman Johnson, who's going to be on with us in the second half hour of the broadcast, is that the idea is to chill the speech, that you will make the calculation. I'm not going to show up because I know the FBI showed up in people's houses, so I'll just be quiet. I won't get involved in the school board election. I won't get involved in what my kids are being taught. They want to silence you.

Don't let it happen. Check out ACLJ.org and Harry's New Peace. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights, in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today.

ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. First I want to remind folks, yesterday, after our broadcast, we came on a special online, but if you're listening to the broadcast on radio or Sirius XM, you may not have seen it, the vote in the U.S. Senate. We won that vote, 51 to 49, the extreme abortion legislation where they attempted not just to legislate Roe vs. Wade, but to legislate abortion on demand through the nine months, no restrictions. Even the restrictions that had been in place under Roe vs. Wade would go. It was 51 to 49, all 50 Republicans plus one Democrat, that one Democrat, Joe Manchin. Now the issue there that we're watching is that Joe Manchin's already said, though, he would be good with codifying Roe vs. Wade. That legislation exists by two Republicans, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, who voted no yesterday on the more extreme legislation. The question now is, does the abortion industry give the green light to start a legislative move on that codification of Roe?

I mean, that would be basically taking Roe and exactly codifying it into law, which again would be bad because we believe in our legal analysis that we could beat that in federal court, but again, it keeps the issue in the federal courts instead of actually returning it to the states like that draft leak opinion talks about. So we're updating you on that just to update you there. And of course, a big thank you to everybody who participated in our matching moment. We doubled our goal. The original goal was $250,000. We raised over $500,000 over those two days.

So a huge thank you to people who participated in the matching moment. So we have the resources to get this work done. Harry Hutchinson, our director of policy, has a piece up at aclj.org called President Biden's Extremism. We've just been talking about in the first half hour of this, the Department of Justice going after parents at school board meetings. And then we've got on top of that, the new misinformation disinformation governance board run by someone that thinks they could edit your tweets on Twitter, that she should have the authority to edit and put context in your tweets. So in other words, you don't have free speech. They can correct your speech. And you look at all of this, Harry, and it points to a very draconian environment where the government's heavy hand is at the people's free speech, which is always dangerous.

Absolutely. And I think if you look at Nina Jankiewicz, for instance, she doesn't believe you're entitled to have speech unless it's approved speech, which is directly contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. So one of the things that we should notice is that the Biden administration typically hires individuals who failed to respect the United States Constitution. They failed to respect the rule of law, and they hope that they can continue to get away with it. And I think, again, it's up to the American people to respond to this infringement, in my opinion, of their constitutional rights by getting engaged and by going out and basically supporting candidates who support the United States Constitution. Andy, you said also what the Department of Justice has done is weaponized the FBI.

It is. The FBI has become a gun, a mortar, a weapon, just like they did with the IRS that we beat back. They are now taking the FBI and they're saying, if you don't comport with the speech that we like, the speech that we approve, the speech that is within the parameters that our, to use Harry's excellent phrase, our ministry of truth says is the speech that's permissible. We're going to make you a target. We're going to make you a terrorist. We're going to open a file on you in Washington, D.C. We're going to tail you. We're going to come to your house and we're going to get you. That's exactly what they're saying here.

Don't think it's any less than that. Congressman Mike Johnson, who co-authored this letter and went to Merrick Garland last night, is going to be joining us in the next segment of the broadcast. I just want you to understand that one of the examples of the whistleblower was a mob the FBI investigated after a tip because she was part of a quote, right wing moms group.

You know what it's called? Moms for Liberty. But oh, it's right wing.

So you've got to investigate that. These are people that had the FBI come to them and FBI filed open up on them because they had the audacity to speak out against an elected official, against a public official and a school board member. This again, it's the basis of trying to get you to shut up and sit down and not engage politics. As you know, folks, as we reported, there's a letter that went out last night to Attorney General Merrick Garland from Congressman Jim Jordan and Congressman Mike Johnson. Congressman Johnson's joining us now. He's a ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Congressman Johnson, I want to go right to you with this letter because you've got whistleblower reports now that contradict Merrick Garland's testimony to your committee about parents being investigated by the FBI for voicing their concerns at school board meetings.

That's right, my friend. This is a big deal. We have been investigating this for some time. Our Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, we have jurisdiction over the Department of Justice and all of its agencies and division.

We've been investigating the Biden administration's misuse of law enforcement resources. Part of that has been to target concerned parents. They've been doing this since last fall. Remember all the angry mom affairs and all the dads were going to the school board meetings. They were protesting. They were letting their voices be heard. They were exercising the First Amendment, Jordan, and they were letting these school boards on the local level know that they're not on board with the CRT nonsense. They didn't like the mask mandates and all that.

It's a quintessential part of our process. But here's the problem. The Department of Justice and the FBI targeted those parents and considered them a threat.

Now, here's the deal. When Merrick Garland came in front of our committee in October, we asked him under oath, right in front of the Judiciary Committee, whether that was true or not, he said that those parents had never been targeted. Now we have a whistleblower that confirms our worst fears. Mike, this is Jay Sekulow. And you write in the letter in sworn testimony before this committee, you denied that this was to Merrick Garland. You denied that the Department of Justice or its components were using counter-terrorism statutes and resources to target parents at school board meetings. We now have evidence that contrary to your testimony, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has labeled at least a dozen of its investigations into parents with a threat tag created by the FBI's Counter-Terrorism Division to assess and track investigations related to school boards.

We just were talking about, Mike, that you put all this together. All the actions of the Biden administration over the last several months, the Governance Board for Misinformation and Disinformation, the President really targeting anybody that disagrees with him is ultra-maga. And then you have parents being targeted by the Department of Justice. What do you want to see happen here? Well, ultimately we need accountability. We've got to make sure that the Department of Justice is not weaponized to become a political arm of the Democrat party. And that's exactly what they've done, Jay. All these surreal dystopian developments that you just described and many others lead only to one logical conclusion that the DOJ is no longer this neutral arbiter, you know, the agency that's in charge with maintaining our justice system and making sure that the law is equal, everyone's equal before law and justice is blind, all that.

They've thrown it all out the window. They're using this to advance political objectives and go after their political opponents. And sadly, and very unfortunately, not a dozen, but dozens, now we know because of this whistleblower, dozens of parents who have just shown up at their local school board meetings to show their care and concern for what their children are being exposed to, they've been labeled as domestic terrorist.

This absolutely happened. The threat tag, by the way, is EDU officials. That's the FBI's tag that they put on these files. And they're treating these people like they're enemies of the state. It's unconscionable. And Jay, at the end of the day, the greatest threat here, you and I both know is that it's undermining the people's faith in our institutions. And if we lose our faith in our system of justice, brother, in a constitutional republic, we're in real trouble. Well, it reminds me, just one second here, it reminds me exactly of what we had to do with the IRS when they targeted groups, the same thing based on their names, Liberty, 9-11, Freedom, that became a be on the lookout list, which, and then we had the, I'll never forget in the discovery, getting those emails from Lois Lerner, where she said, let's get in touch with the FBI and the FEC and bring a criminal case because that will shut this down. So we know where this can go. And we took action on that. Of course we won, but you had to take legal action to do it.

Well, that's right. And that may be a component of this. In the meantime, Jim Jordan and I in our letter to the Merrick Garland last night, we told them, listen, number one, you have to now produce all the documents and materials that we have been sending these requests for almost 18 months now on this issue and things related to it. They haven't been forthcoming.

They haven't shown us what they are required under the law to produce for Congress. So we demanded that. We also said, take reasonable steps right now and immediately to preserve all those records responsive to our letters, because you know what they'll do, Jay, they'll get rid of the evidence. So this is serious stuff.

It goes to the highest level. This is the top law enforcement official in the country. And remember, what's so ironic about this is Merrick Garland, they told us, remember he was going to be on the Supreme court, as you well know, Jay, and they told us he was the lion of the left. This guy is supposed to be the smartest, the man of the highest integrity on the left. And it turns out he just raised his hand and lied to Congress.

I mean, this is, this is really, really serious stuff, but we are not going to let it go. What I'm concerned about Congress for two is the idea that in some of these, most of these examples, it's someone who is using political speech saying, you know what, we're going to get rid of you guys. The school board officials, they're, they're elected.

The school board members are elected officials. And the idea that in America, you can't say to someone, you know what, we're going to beat you politically. We're going to run candidates against you. That suddenly that makes you a threat. It makes, you're inciting violence if you express displeasure with their policies. I mean, this idea, again, what I'm concerned about is that there's no longer this idea in our country. It's not shared by both political parties anymore that we protect free speech. In fact, now saying that you're a free speech absolutist is a bad thing in America. But we we've heard a use by this disinformation board, this awful, but lawful, of course, they're defining what awful is.

I mean, the, I think here the there's the, there's the disillusion with the institutions of government, but then there's the, the second idea, which is they really just want all these parents and everybody who may have been politically you know, motivated to get involved, to sit back and say, you know what, I'm going to make the calculation. I'd rather not have the FBI knocking on my door, so I'm not going to show up. I'm not going to voice my concern.

I'm not going to get involved. That's exactly right, Jordan. And the three of us have been serving this arena and this arena defending our fundamental freedoms and free speech and religious liberty, our whole careers, because we saw that a day like this may come one day and we're here now, right? You have the government, the highest levels of power in the country labeling citizens who have disfavored opinions.

They're late. You know, we had a press conference yesterday. We're going to defund that disinformation board to give it our best shot, Jim Jordan and I, and Lauren Boebert and others.

And we stood there and I stood in front of this whole cadre of, of, uh, Hill reporters, you know, Washington Capitol Hill reporters. And I said to them, guys, everybody wake up out of your stupor and remember, this is not who we are in America. In America, we do not trust the government to be the arbiter of what is true and acceptable speech. That that's called tyranny guys. You you're the free press, right? The first amendment guarantees the right to free speech and a free press.

Guess what? That's in jeopardy right now because the government may disfavor what you say tomorrow, right? We're all in jeopardy.

We have to stop this. We have to keep government in check and we have to defend freedom. And it's never been more important to do that than it is right now. Congressman Mike Johnson, a good friend of ours for a long time, a fellow worker and, and for religious freedom for first amendment freedoms. And it's always great working with you, Mike. And I'm thrilled that you're heading this up with our friend, uh, Jim Jordan.

This is really important. Thanks, Mike. And folks again, Carson Johnson's run into a committee hearing, but I want you to understand too. They are, they have exposed this. So now they're going to be able to say that to America or not that it's not just an idea that the FBI might be doing this. They have a whistleblower who's providing them information. They get federal protections for that whistleblower to provide information to Congress because again, they have the oversight. They have the power of the purse. They can like, he was talking about defunding and things like the idea.

And even when you're in the minority party, you're still on the committees. You have the ability to seek information. Uh, the, the idea here is that it's no longer just hypothetical. They've got the evidence now that the parents are actually getting the knocks from the FBI. You know, I'm wondering if these parents, um, you look at what their civil rights claims and violations have been here could be very significant. So what we're saying is we're looking at all this in totality as we put together our efforts and you saw how successful those efforts could be yesterday on the pro-life situation where we were able to defeat that bill and now we're looking at the legal work and hopefully Alito's, you know, leaked opinion will be the opinion and will be a big day for, uh, for children in America and stop the slaughter of unborn children that has taken place for four decades now, uh, at least reduce it.

Um, but I want to say this, these kinds of encroachments on free speech and fundamental liberty are the reason the ACLJ exists. And I want to again, and join Jordan joins me with this. Logan joins me with this. Our whole team joins us.

Thank you. We had a moment that we realized that we were going to have to expend significant resources in a very short period of time because of the leak of this opinion and to combat the attempt to intimidate judges, the attempt to get legislation through, or maybe even pack the Supreme Court. And we had to act really quick and we did it. It's called, it was called a moment.

We've never done it like that before, where we had a matching challenge for a moment and it was literally Tuesday and Wednesday. That was it done yesterday at midnight. And we met our goals, exceeded our goals because of your support of the ACLJ. And I know I filled up my car with gas yesterday too. Folks. I know what it's like out there. It is unbelievable $105.50 to fill my car up yesterday.

It's an SUV and I was low on gas, but $105. So knowing that you all sacrificially gave makes a huge difference. And so all of our entire team at the American Center for Law and Justice, from the people that you don't see behind the studio to the lawyers and government affairs people, to our entire teams around the globe, thank you for supporting the work of the ACLJ. Coming up, another reason when you support the ACLJ, our Senior Counsel, former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.

Welcome back to Secula. We're joined by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who also, I just want to remind you, especially important as we're discussing this, was the head of the CIA. So we're talking about counter-terrorism and these offices of the law enforcement being utilized against parents in America. I mean, this is someone who's run these agencies, but also was a member of Congress too.

So he's been on the other side of this holding the executive branch accountable. And Secretary Pompeo, we now know because of whistleblowers that have come to Congressman Jim Jordan and Congressman Johnson, who was just on the air with us, that the FBI did set up the threat tag EDU, so education officials, in their counter-terrorism and criminal divisions. And the Attorney General's testimony last year about saying that they would never use counter-terrorism divisions against these parents was in fact not true.

And now it's not a hypothetical. We have a whistleblower who's provided the reports that these parents have had the threat tag used against them. They've had the FBI come investigate them simply for voicing an opposing view at a school board meeting. This attempt, again, to weaponize all of these different branches of government, the executive branch, against the American people, Secretary Pompeo, it is really troubling to us, the ACLJ. And we see it as we lead into an election time. Jordan, it's absolutely deeply troubling.

It's worse than that. This is using the full power of the United States government, the investigative power, the capacity to go out and intimidate by showing up at the door and threatening people who are just out there trying to take care of their kids. Parents are simply trying to make sure the kids get taught the right things in school.

They're not being taught junk in their schools. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out why I cannot come up with a good motive for why this administration is so focused on this, with all of the challenges we have, whether it's jihadis abroad or folks coming across our southern border. For the life of me, I cannot figure out a good motive for why it's the case that they are so stuck on investigating parents.

It's abhorrent. It's deeply inconsistent, both with what the attorney general said and with the basic tenets of American privacy and freedom. I am confident that the ACLJ will keep at this chasing documents, making sure we find out why it is the attorney general didn't know this was going on, or worse, he did and he didn't tell the American people the truth. I'm confident you all will be an important part of rectifying what appears to be a truly abhorrent policy from this administration. You know, Mike, when you look at the way this has gone down, you've got this EDU officials tagged by the counterterrorism and criminal divisions of the Department of Justice. Then you have the Biden administration setting up a disinformation governance board where they're going to determine what's appropriate speech and what is not appropriate speech. So it looks like to me, when you take these two actions, they are really focusing, Mike, on squelching the constitutionally protected free speech rights of American citizens. That seems to be the target right now.

Yeah, I don't think there's any doubt about that. And you mentioned, right, you know, these places, these particular places, the Counterterrorism Division and the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, they have very defined missions. And their their mission is far afield from somebody standing up at a school board meeting, speaking on behalf of their child trying to just get it right for their kids, you may disagree with them, it may be about a mask and you disagree, it may be about some subject matter, but they put the Criminal Division of the Justice Department and the counterterrorism of the Justice Department to sic them on these people is truly dangerous.

Combine it with this, this truth squelching disinformation board. And you're right, Jay, the risk is what they're trying to do is to undermine these basic freedoms that these parents have. And I'm praying that we all uncover precisely what it is we're doing and we push back against it. And in the end, we get them to stop. That's the most important thing.

Exactly. I want to turn to China as well. Because again, we've talked about a lot of these domestic issues the last few days in our broadcast. But we discussed previously with you that if Russia had this quick victory in Ukraine, which they have not, that we might see China do something similar in Taiwan. And now that Russia's bogged down in Ukraine, we're seeing reports of invasion drills by the Chinese military around Taiwan. Do you believe they're preparing for an actual attack?

It's always difficult to know. But the United States should be doing the things that it knows how to do to support the Taiwanese people in the event that that is the case. And I've long thought that Xi Jinping was less likely to do it than others. By military force, he wants to reunify Taiwan for sure.

But I've often thought he would use the other tools kind of like what he did with Cardinals that yesterday, right? Just putting pressure on religious leaders pressure on political leaders, and ultimately getting them to bend the knee to his authoritarian dictatorship. But these drills are certainly ominous. They are certainly suggesting that he is making sure that his military is more capable than the Russian military has proven. And we should never underestimate Xi Jinping's full capacity, the capability that he has and his intentions with respect to Taiwan, he is determined. And I don't think for a moment, that's what's happened in Ukraine is going to slow him down or prevent him from achieving what he ultimately wants to achieve.

The only thing that will stop it is the Japanese the South Koreans, the Australians and the United States of America helping Taiwan giving them the tools they need to defend their own sovereignty. I know they'll fight we need to give them the tools to do that in advance of the invasion not as we did in Ukraine after so much death and destruction. Let me ask you a quick question on the Ukraine front also. How do you see the status of that right now? Russia now moving towards Odessa. I mean, Putin not showing up yesterday at this big hockey match. I don't know what to read into that exactly.

Where do you see things? Well, it looks like we're going to see more of what we've already seen, Jay, right? Clearly, Putin's initial set of objectives to destabilize and overthrow the Zelensky government at the outset of the campaign failed. He didn't achieve that. But that's not good at terms not going to change his ultimate objectives. He will still try to do everything he can to destabilize and put a puppet regime in place inside of Ukraine. And so the movements though desk that look like another phase of this, he'll get as far as he can. He may slow down, he may stop things for a little while.

It may feel like there's a calm, but it is it is almost certainly the calm before the next storm absent American deterrence and the capacity that Europe has to deliver what the Ukrainians need to defend themselves from this. I pray that they don't lose sight of that if Vladimir Putin should stop and take a break. It is not to stop his campaign.

It is only to regroup. You wrote a piece, a final question for you, Secretary Pompeo, on China again. But it ties into all this. We've got a lot of domestic issues going on. And then there was a lot of attention on Ukraine that there's a little bit like things seem to slow down and there's a little less attention on Ukraine. But I think who has benefited the most from this is China. And you wrote a piece, brutal lockdowns show the failures and insecurity of the Chinese communist system. Their brutality during these lockdowns, I mean the imagery coming out that we have seen for these covid lockdowns.

It is unreal that this is happening in 2022. But I feel like there's this disregard for human rights in the past month because and the focus has shifted. So people's attention is not on China and it needs to be.

I wrote about this, Jordan, for exactly that reason. The horrors in Ukraine are worthy of all the attention that they have received. But the horrors that are taking place from the Chinese government on their own people are equal. General Secretary Xi Jinping has a problem. He said he was going to have zero covid cases.

He posted the Wuhan virus on the world and yet said, no, I know how to take care of this. And now you can see his policies are beginning to break down and fail. And so he is doing these brutal lockdowns. We've seen the pictures from Shanghai. It's happening in Beijing as well. They have to resort to these kinds of things so that he can maintain his political power.

I am confident that the people of China, the good people in China are seeing what's taking place and they are horrified by these these lockdowns for a virus. And they are beginning to see the real brutality. And I hope that this will unite them and encourage them. All right, Secretary Pompeo, as always, thank you. It's great having you as part of our team. Thank you for your insights, folks. Your support of the ACLJ allows all of this broadcast, one of the most informative hours on radio, in my view. I'm biased, but I was just telling that to Jordan during the break. The amount of information that we can get out in an hour is is something I want to thank our entire teams, production teams, producers for allowing us to do it. And thank you again for your support of the ACLJ. It's meant a lot.