Iran’s “Despicable” Attack on US Children

Today on Sekulow, Iran's despicable attack on U.S. children. 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. So I want you to understand the severity of what Iran attempted to do. The U.S. was able to thwart this, but this is what they're trying to do, I'm sure all over the United States, to the point where the FBI Director Christopher Wray has come out to let everyone know.

Probably to also be on guard if you are a children's hospital. Yes, Iran used Iranian sponsored hackers to attempt a cyber attack against Boston Children's Hospital last summer. At the same time, the Biden administration was starting to renew, trying to renew their talks to get into the nuclear deal again with Iran.

But Christopher Wray, I just want to set it up this way. What they were trying to do here was to cause death and destruction and chaos. He called it, quote, one of the most despicable cyber attacks I've seen.

So to me, this separates it from the cyber attacks like on banking or economic attacks, which are catastrophic in their own way. But literally, whatever they were trying to do, it was trying to hurt kids. That's what Iran is trying to do. And I want to remind people, they have said they want to take vengeance against the United States to avenge the killing of Soleimani, the former head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. So thankfully, this time it was caught and the FBI was able to get involved. And I'm sure it's a warning to all children's hospitals and all hospitals that Iran is trying to attempt not some economic sabotage, but some actual chaos which would lead to death of children.

This is not how would it affect your ATM, which is, you know, typically or how it would affect the utilities. Or the internet. Yeah. Or bringing down the internet for a period of time. This was, this is what the FBI director said. This was sponsored by the attack, sponsored by the Iranian government, aimed at Boston Children's Hospital. Now think about what the computer systems do at Boston Children's Hospital. Not just records, but robotic surgeries.

I mean, just you could go through the list of horrors. That's why he said it's one of, he doesn't explain the exact reason, but one of the most despicable cyber attacks I've seen. But it was also interesting in talking about this, he said we have ongoing threats from Russia, North Korea, Iran, and he included this time, China.

We've got Mike Pompeo joining us later in the broadcast to talk more about that. But I thought that was interesting too, the way he's categorized that. He added that the Chinese government is prolific and effective at cyber espionage, threatening the United States. I think what's key there, we were having our morning meeting, is that China is included in that category now.

At least by Christopher Wray when he's talking. So he's not afraid to say Russia is the same as China, is the same as Iran, is the same as North Korea. He's putting them in that group. And what's interesting is that Russia, Iran, and China, we don't, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, we don't have serious economic relationships with at all. In fact, we have sanctions against economic relationships with. But China, while they're trying to conduct the attacks similar to what he's saying Iran, North Korea, and Russia are doing, we have so many economic attachments too, that it's impossible right now to just say we don't want to do business with China anymore. We're not ready to do it. We could put ourselves on a path, but that's like putting yourself on energy independence, you have to put yourself back on manufacturing path, or find other countries to work with as well. Or both.

And do both. This administration is doing neither. But what we are finding out is that they're sitting down with the Iranians or attempting to, to negotiate a nuclear deal and there's no indication that President Biden is even having second thoughts about that. No, I mean, I think that the only thing stalling that out has nothing to do with the Biden administration directly because of the invasion of Ukraine and Russia was the go between, between the United States and Iran. I don't think Russia is in any rush to help the United States right now on a deal or help the Biden administration get some deal.

And because of that, it's been stalled. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't take it tomorrow. Right.

They would jump back into that deal tomorrow with the same bullet points, two pages, unsigned deal. Right. No question about it. Folks, we've got a very interesting broadcast coming up.

Marco Rubio, Senator Rubio is going to be joining us later in the broadcast, as is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. So we're going to get into this issue. We've got other issues we're going to hit as well. We'll take your calls at 800-684-3110. Don't forget, support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.

Welcome back to Secular. So again, called one of the most despicable cyber attacks I've seen, an attempted cyber attack thwarted by the FBI on Boston Children's Hospital. And there's multiple reasons why Iran would want to do this. One is you could wreak havoc and cause the loss of life of children, sick children who are in the hospital.

But second, also, Boston is a hub for medical research hospitals. And if you get into one, you can kind of get into all of them and start stealing all sorts of data, bio data, personal data. So the chaos that can come with it, it was thwarted. But I want to play this from Christopher Wray, the FBI director, Byte 17. Packers sponsored by the Iranian government tried to conduct one of the most despicable cyber attacks I've ever seen right here in Boston when they decided to go after Boston Children's Hospital. You realize what they're doing here. We said this in the last segment.

When we talk about cyber attacks, we're normally talking about financial institutions, utilities, things like that. You've got to pay a criminal, pay us this money. Here, Andy, the Iranians upped it by going after a hospital that serves sick children. This is why Director Wray calls it despicable. There are other words to describe it, but despicable is just an understatement of what it is. You have sick children, dying children in cancer units and other kinds of units, all dependent upon machines, computers.

I'm not computer savvy to give the right words. But all these things, I mean, even doing cataract surgery on little children requires the use of the internet and requires the use of these facilities. And they're going after those to disable those, to steal from those, to kill those patients. At the same time, what the irony of this, Colonel Smith, is that you have the United States almost begging to still get back into this deal with Iran. And you said before we went on air that in these talks, you cannot mention terror, you cannot mention a cyber attack, that it's only related to this nuclear situation. Under the original agreements of the JCPOA, as that was hammered out by the Obama administration, the two things that they agreed they would not address was Iran's ballistic missile program and their terror activity. Believe it or not, we're negotiating with the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, but in our negotiations, we can't bring that up. That was in the original JCPOA, so when the new talks began in Vienna last year under the Biden administration, those same agreements apply. They are talking about nuclear enrichment only, they cannot bring up terror, and this attack on Boston's children was a terror attack, and they cannot bring up Iran's ballistic missile program. But there's only reports that the uranium enrichment capabilities of Iran are already reaching the point where it's quite feasible that they could have a nuclear weapon in short order. And the JCPOA only went for, what, a total of ten years, and six of those are gone.

Yes. One of the things we pointed out on our website just this week is that right now, we've discovered that Iran, we've known for a while, but the head of the IAEA confirmed it last week. And that is they now have uranium at 60% level. 90% is weapons-grade.

They're only supposed to have it at 3.76%, but here's the deal, Jay. Because they have this, we discovered this week, they actually possess 95 pounds of 60% enriched uranium. 90% is weapons-grade. However, in addition to that 95 pounds, which is enough for one nuclear bomb, according to the IAEA this week, but in addition to that, they have these advanced centrifuges, which they're not supposed to have. And the IAEA has confirmed they have them, and they say that they can take that 60% uranium, and in two weeks, and wrench it to 90%, and with that 95 pounds, that gives them enough for one bomb. We are on the cusp of Iran becoming a nuclear power. At the same time, I would say this, when Christopher Wray announced, this is what we want the FBI to be doing. This is the work of the FBI, not politics, foreign actors stopping cyber attacks on children's hospitals. And yet at the same time, remember, politically it doesn't make a ton of sense because you still have an administration that would love to get back to a deal with Iran. It's like we talked about earlier in the week.

What is enough for people to say, enough already? We're not going to try to get back to this deal. Listen to Ted Cruz talk to Tony Blinken. This is about Iran pledging to stop trying to kill U.S. government officials.

Take a listen. Is it true that American negotiators made specific requests for a commitment that the IRGC will stop trying to murder former American officials, and is it true that they said no? Senator, I'm not going to get into the details of any discussions or negotiations in a public forum.

Happy to come back and talk privately about that. But let me address a few things that you've raised because I do think that they're important. First of all, I share your views on the IRGC and especially a number of its component parts, notably the Quds Force, which is primarily responsible for the egregious actions that it has taken in terms of targeting Americans and, as you rightly say, continuing to do so. I want to get another affirmation from our government that Iran is still trying to kill U.S. officials and Americans that we now know about the cyber attack on children's hospitals.

Two questions I have, Andy, following what Jordan just said. Number one, we've got basically an admission by the Secretary of State, it's no shock, that of course the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are taking actions or trying to take actions to harm American officials. And we know that the FBI thwarted the attack on Boston Children's Hospital. You work closely with the FBI. We've worked with the State Department on various matters. The concern here has to be, and you know the FBI, and Jordan's right, this is what the FBI is supposed to do.

This is what they're trained to do. We're seeing just a little bit of it. There's got to be a lot more.

An enormous amount more that is here that we don't know. But what is bothering me is when I hear Secretary Blinken basically saying to Senator Cruz, I don't want to get into anything that may disturb or distress the Iranians. This is not anything that we want to do that was going to disturb. I share your views, but I'm not going to, and there's component parts, a lot of this double talk, and I'll come back and talk privately about it. But publicly, I don't want to do anything that's going to disturb or distress the Iranians because we, the Biden administration, is determined to get this JCPOA-type deal through at all costs, no matter whether they attack Boston Children's Hospital, Grady Hospital in Atlanta, the Massachusetts General Hospital, or whoever it is that they attack.

Don't distress and don't disturb those poor Iranians, even though they're trying to kill us. You've got an interesting comment that came in on Facebook from Jones says, why does President Biden want to deal with a nation that wants to destroy both the United States and Israel? That's a good question because it borders on the insane. I think part of it is a political victory for them because the JCPOA started out in the Obama-Biden administration. Part of it is naivete.

I'll give you an example of the naivete, Jay. Last week, Robert Malley, who is our chief negotiator for the Iran nuclear deal, now testified before Congress, and they brought up things like the terror attacks. And of course, this attack on Boston's children happened last summer. When they brought it up to him, he said, yes, but still the benefits of this agreement outweigh the risk of negotiating with the state sponsor of terror. Our lead negotiator actually said that before Congress last week. Jordan, the problem here is, and we've dealt with the Iranian regime through the State Department, obviously, in cases that we've had persecuted, imprisoned pastors. We know what this regime is capable of.

The idea that we are still begging for a resolution here is breathtaking. Yeah, especially because of what their domestic political situation changed, even from the Obama administration to today. They went from trying to put in what they call a moderate regime, a more moderate regime, to now a much more radical regime. So we're much more like – remember the days we uncovered that the Obama team was even trying to work with Ahmadinejad and those guys? It's back to those type of guys. Raisi and the leader of Iran, these are hardliners again, so they're not even trying to use the fronts that they used to use as these kind of more softer-touch leaders with the kind of – the extreme leaders behind them.

But now they've got the extremists back in. So there's so many reasons, whether it's the cyber attacks, their nuclear program, their actual killing of U.S. troops in Syria, but using their proxies like the Quds Force in Hezbollah. It's interesting, Andy, I go back to you on this because talking about the FBI, Christopher Wray also said when it comes to potential Russian hacking threats to the U.S., the FBI has been on what he calls, quote, combat tempo with a 24-7 command center during the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.

This is according to Christopher Wray. What does that mean? Combat tempo means that it's prelude to war. We are looking at this as a prelude to the possibility of having war, so we are on that kind of a high alert. Why that same sort of alert is not applied to the Iranians, I don't understand.

Why we coddle the Iranians and make sure that they're not unhappy and we won't answer before the United States Senate as to what we are doing, as Senator Cruz said, to stop the murder of former American officials is beyond me. I don't understand it. All right, folks, we'll take your calls to this to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. A very cool show coming up to get into all this more. We're also getting into school security with Senator Marco Rubio. Another issue domestically here that is very important, I know, to me, with three kids in school, my third on the way to starting school next year. So, I mean, you know, it's something on everybody's mind and he's trying to do something about it. So, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida is going to be on.

When people say there's no solutions and no one has anything to plan, well, he's actually got two pieces of legislation. Also, Mike Pompeo will join us when we get to more of the international issues of this cyber attack and also what's going on with China with him. So you definitely check out the broadcast and go to ACLJ.org.

All right, welcome back to SECU. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. We have a couple of ACLJ issues for you as well that we're working on. One of those issues, and if you're listening to the broadcast, if you're watching the broadcast, you know one of those issues we focus on a lot is, of course, support for Israel. We have an office in Jerusalem.

We had Jeff Balaban from our office in Jerusalem on earlier in the week. But we also, of course, have to work on those issues all over the world because there's an international effort to delegitimize the Jewish state of Israel. That's the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement. We've seen it popular on college campuses, also in some liberal cities, so states have taken action across the country. States like Texas and Arkansas have taken action to say, we're not going to do contracts with companies who support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.

No state contracts, no city contracts as well. And we filed in both of those states because there are either cities that want to do business or companies that want to do business with the state who have these policies. And this, again, is a policy to delegitimize a country. Take out the Jewish state first. It's delegitimizing a nation. We talk a lot about Ukraine and the borders and having sovereignty over your borders. That's what this movement's about.

It's about removing your sovereignty, removing your independence, and attacking your right to exist. We have a series of cases. We've got a direct case, two of them, involving BDS matters where Palestinian groups have sued our clients, including well-named clients, sometimes what they call settlements, but these are portions of Israel and Judea and Samaria.

Jeff Balibon talked about that early in the week. And we're defending them in federal court in the District of Columbia in the D.C. Court of Appeals. Then you have the flip side of the BDS movement, which is they go after, they try to get companies not to do business with Israel because of the policies they disagree with. And this BDS movement has been around for 10 years, but we have dealt with it at the U.N., we've dealt with it at the college campus, we have dealt with it in federal court, but it is unrelenting.

It keeps popping up. Absolutely. It's not just in businesses. We see it, like you said, on college campuses, so they're targeting young kids to make sure that they're basically poisoned with this ideology that Israel is bad. You know, you take it a step further, too, Andy, and that is here we've got two cases in federal court, we filed briefs at both the Eighth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit, where the states have said, look, we're not going to support companies that are engaged in boycott. First of all, what BDS is, boycott, boycott the state of Israel, divest, don't invest in there, and sanction, penalize Israel. So states around the country are starting to say, we're not going to tolerate that anymore. And then these businesses are saying, well, we support that, so you're not going to do business with us.

They file a lawsuit. State has the right to take a position. Of course it does, and that's what we're advocating and what we're saying. Look, the objectives, activities, and effects of BDS is definitely anti-Semitic.

I don't see this against Greece, I don't see this against Italy, I don't see this against France. Why are they targeting the state of Israel? Because they are seeking to undermine its very existence. So the Texas law, which passed unanimously in the House with overwhelming support in the Texas Senate, prohibits states from contracting with companies what? Who discriminatorily boycott Israel.

Texas does a lot of business with Israel, and simply put, it makes bad business sense for the state to contract with suppliers and others who actively engage in economic boycotts with one of Texas' largest business partners. And that's what we are supporting. So I'm holding in my hands, we can put them on the screen as well for those watching on our social media platforms, two briefs in the Court of Appeals.

One in the 5th, one in the 8th Circuit. Now, in addition to this, we've got an active case in the District of Columbia, the DC Circuit, where we're dealing with this issue, and understand that they don't stop. And it's the same group of lawyers that we dealt with at the International Criminal Court in The Hague are the same lawyers that back these moves here in the United States. So the entire attempt of this is to delegitimize Israel. We've got professors that we have to defend and we're willing to defend, honored to defend because they've made pro-Israel statements. Talk about Israel being the only real democracy in the region that protects religious freedom.

For instance, it's getting better with some of the Abraham Accords and some of the partners in the region now. And then you have a situation where we have students that are harassed because they are pro-Israel or Jewish or both on campuses like Harvard and others that have significant Jewish populations. And then you have the litigation strategy that they're engaging in.

So all of this is taking place simultaneously. Yeah, I think what we have to underscore here is the work of the ACLJ. So we're in Israel and the work on the national security issues for Israel there. But we've been at the ICC for Israel, the International Criminal Court, defeating them from attempts to criminally prosecute Israeli.

And they're always trying to go back to that. They're trying again now because of someone from Al Jazeera who was caught in a crossfire, it looks like, in a protest. Or may have even been a war journalist, unfortunately. It's a dangerous business. It is dangerous. It doesn't mean you get to file lawsuits or bring International Criminal Court cases because you decided to be a war journalist and put yourself in those situations that you know are dangerous.

I mean, that's unfortunate. Again, for any journalist, I don't care what network they come from. But it doesn't mean that the Israelis are directly responsible. Then we see the BDS movement. When you say we're going to fight for Israel, when a group says that, if you hear somebody say that, to really understand what that fight is, you've got to understand the multi-pronged. So you've got to say there's a fight in the U.S. on BDS, and that's also in Europe especially. Then you've got the ICC. Then you've got the actual national security interest of Israel because of Iran and bad actors.

There's also positives, like the Abraham Accords bringing more peace to the region with Sunni countries. So I think all of that is very important. And the ACLC were involved in court, in policy, and in governmental levels. Also, we have filed a submission, Cece, with the U.N. Human Rights Council urging protection of our case involving a Christian woman in Pakistan.

What's the latest on that? So the Human Rights Council is in its 50th session right now, and one of their agenda items was protecting women. And so Pakistan typically has at least a thousand young Christian and Hindu girls and women that are forced to marry Muslim men each year.

And so we address that issue. We specifically bring up our case that our affiliate with the ECLJ, we have an affiliate law office in Pakistan. We have a client there, the parents of a 14-year-old girl who literally, the day before she disappeared, she's been kidnapped, just disappeared. But the day before she had, I think it was over 40 contacts, inappropriate contacts on her cell phone, they don't even know how this 45-year-old Muslim neighbor got her cell phone, contacted her out of the blue 45 times.

The next day she's gone. They go to the police. They can't get the police to investigate. We've taken this case. We've gone all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court literally told the parents that if you can tell us where your daughter is, we will have the police. We will force the police to go get her. We've also are thinking or contemplating and maybe have already action at the UN on, in addition to the Human Rights Council, the arbitrary detention, those kind of things. Those are options we're looking at. Yeah, so we always look at the options that we have on the international stage and particularly at the UN. And we bring this case up every chance we can before the UN.

So, you know, we're hopeful that we can find this child, but it's, you know, two years and she is gone. We are fighting, folks, on so many levels. You see it, whether it's dealing with Iran and crime impact policy, whether it's in the courts with BDS, whether it's in the halls of Congress.

We'll be joined coming up by Senator Marco Rubio and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. None of this happens without your support of the American Center for Law and Justice. We encourage you to do that at ACLJ.org. We'll be back with more in just a moment. Of all these issues that we talk about, you can learn a lot more. So if you want to spend time writing or share with your friends and family, it's all there at ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back. Senator Rubio, Mike Pompeo. Become a member today.

ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome back to Sekulow. And, folks, a great half hour coming up live, Mike Pompeo.

But next, in the next segment after this short segment, Marco Rubio, Senator Marco Rubio, and talking about a topic that, again, if you're a grandparent or parent, it's still on the front of your mind. And this is the school shootings and what we can do. Are there common sense pieces of legislation that can be done at the federal level? And maybe they've been also done at the state level before. And people say, well, there's no one has any solutions.

No one has any ideas. Senator Rubio has two pieces, two pieces of legislation that should not have opposition from the Democrats. I think he probably really has to explain it more to conservatives and make sure that some of the Second Amendment groups don't just outright oppose it. But we're going to have him on to talk about it because I think that it's on the front. You know, I know that I'm talking to folks who are supporters of the Second Amendment. We filed in every one of those cases.

So ACLJ. So it's not about that issue. It's about what do you do to secure our school so that your thought of the day is not maybe, you know, I hope to pick up my child that day or hope they get dropped off home from school safely.

And then you've got to worry about all the other things you have to protect from. But this should still be a safe place, whether it's a public or a private school. We're also going to be joined by Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state, our senior counsel for global affairs, about some of the comments coming out of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on China and how he is basically repeating the Chinese Communist Party's talking points. But I want to go back to the Iran situation that we talked about earlier. The idea that we've had an attack attempt that's now public on Boston Children's Hospital by the Iranian regime, while the Biden administration is begging for a nuclear deal with the Iranians, to me is, Andy, frankly, disgusting. It is disgusting.

It is despicable. And it's unbelievable that a United States administration is negotiating with the great with the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world. And that is the Iranians. But during those negotiations in Vienna, we are not allowed to talk about terrorism or cyber threats or anything that may upset or discombobulate the Iranians in some fashion to upset them or worry them because we're so anxious to give away everything that we have gained through prior administrations in terms of a stopgap on the production of a nuclear bomb by the Iranians. We can do everything, but we can't upset them. They are trying to reset the Biden years when he was the vice President with President Obama.

That's what this is. This whole going back to Iran is a reset of their glory days, as they view it, even though the Iranians violated the agreement the entire time and have now uranium enriched at 90, which is close to making a nuclear weapon. Yeah, I mean, this is the deal. There's no reason to be doing a deal with Iran. We should be looking at how to sanction Iran more, how to make it more difficult for Iran. We should be carrying out cyber attacks on Iran's nuclear weapons system. We should be working with allies to convince them that Iran is no good. And we have a good potential allegiance in the region of not just Israel versus Iran, but Israel plus the Gulf states. And so you've got very wealthy countries.

They're smaller than Iran, but combined, they have a much better economies and good militaries because their militaries work with the US very closely. So it's no longer this just Israel, the US versus Iran. And these are countries that are going to say, you know, if Iran goes nuclear, Israel doesn't really deny, but everybody believes Israel's got nuclear weapons. OK, so what about us? You know, we've got the money to do it.

So do we need to purchase it from you to protect our own citizens? That would go to all those Gulf states who have made. You know, we're encouraged by the US to go into those deals with Israel. You know, right now you can travel to Saudi Arabia on Israeli passport. Saudi Arabia is not part of the Abraham Accords, but that's how open things are becoming. And we should utilize Iran, isolate them, but bring together a region of the world that is usually so volatile.

And they always are trying to distract you with the Palestinian issue, but use it as a time to actually build up a whole new alliance against Iran. And we at the American Center for Law and Justice, we have an office staffed in Jerusalem, the American Center for Law. And it's an ACLJ office. ACLJ Jerusalem, Israel. Your support of the ACLJ makes all that happen.

ACLJ.org. Back to Senator Rubio. Because I have two kids already in school and one on the way next fall. And when you see these school shootings, which is, it's a plague in our country. We see it too often, way too often, to similar people, similar problems with security. And then people say, well, there's no solutions. But there are senators with solutions, putting forward solutions.

And sometimes there's not getting enough attention. We wanted to make sure Senator Rubio could get attention on two solutions he's got in the US Senate. So Senator Rubio, thanks for being with us. This is Jacek Hill.

I'm glad you're on. You've got two bills that you've been working on for years to prevent, to help prevent these mass shootings in schools. Will you explain this? Because I think we have to have, you've got reasonable solutions here that need to move forward. Yeah. So part of what bothers me every time this happens is that they come out with a bunch of solutions that people are in favor of because they want to restrict guns or whatever their personal views on it might be, but it has nothing to do with the actual shooting. Like they wouldn't have prevented what actually happened. My point is we can continue to debate that other stuff, but if the goal is to stop these shootings, then we need to be focused on passing things that will stop, have the chance to stop these shootings. So two things. The first is we now have sufficient and have had for a long time research that tells us by and large, who are the people that do this? There's a lot of commonality. And generally you're talking about a young man who suffers some early childhood trauma of some sort, child abuse, sexual abuse, broken home, whatever it may be, who starts to feel, get disconnected, starts having self-hate, transforms that self-hate into hatred of others, starts blaming others, starts to get fascinated with guns, making threats for a suspended period of time.

In some cases, even acting out. And then one day walks into a gun store, registered legal gun store, passes a background check, never committed a crime before, and buys a gun and commits a mass murder. So the first piece of legislation is to use the Secret Service's well-established National Threat Assessment Center to identify people who are headed in this direction weeks, months, potentially years before they become a killer. And the second piece of legislation is an intervention that allows states, like Florida has done with due process, to be able to go to court and show the evidence to a judge and say, look, this person is headed in a really bad direction, we're worried about it, and put a red flag on their record so that they can't go in and buy a gun. And obviously, the person is going to get due process and make an argument against it. And in Florida, we have penalties for false claims and things of this nature. And I think it's best done at the state level. You don't want a federal law that does it because most cities in America, many cities in America don't have a federal courthouse and federal agencies aren't going to do this. I mean, it's going to be a local sheriff's department or police officers are going to do it. But the notion of identifying this profile and intervening before they actually kill people is the best way, the most effective way. And I believe primarily the only way that we're going to keep this from continuing to happen.

So Ruby, I wanted to go to the second bill first, because I think people probably want to know more about it, because it involves a legal process. And when I read about this piece of legislation and your work on it, and how it's been used in Florida specifically, because people use Florida as kind of an example of a conservative state they like to follow. This is a law similar in Florida, and it's been used, you said, over 3,000 times. And likely those 3,000 times prevents another parkland, it prevents another shooting like in Texas, it prevents another one of these horrendous events. And it adds another tool for law enforcement, but it still allows for due process.

So key items for people who are listening right now. Yeah, and it's not permanent. So you're going to have to keep going back to court every six months. And to prove your case, if you think this is an ongoing threat from this individual. And generally, the way it's used as a family member becomes very concerned about somebody. And in many cases, it's not because they're going to kill somebody else, it's going to kill themselves.

And so they're like, look, I'm really worried about this person, this person has a bunch of guns has become fascinated with guns are talking about hurting themselves hurting other people. And this is a restraining order is what it basically is like we have existing restraining orders for domestic bonds and things of that nature. But it also and it also can only be filed by law enforcement methods, you have to convince the police department to do it, right? They have to go to court and do it.

You can't do it yourself. You can't just go into a courtroom and say, Hey, my, you know, my ex boyfriend or ex girlfriend is dangerous. Will you take away their guns? So there's that extra step of protection. And obviously, look that they have to go in and, and make the case, there's got to be evidence provided to convincing a judge or a court order, just like we do when they police want to go into your home and search it, they got to have a court order. So it uses the same process that we don't have, at least as of now seen evidence of it being misused. There's a push to have a federal version of that. I don't think a federal version of it is a good idea. I don't think the FBI and these agencies are going to be focused on this stuff.

I just don't think they have the manpower or the focus on it. I think it's best left at the state level. And states don't need us to pass a bill to do it. We're just trying to incentivize them to do it. Senator, let me ask you this, amongst your colleagues, because I'm with you, I think we've got to have common sense measures here.

You can protect the Second Amendment and also can protect children's lives. What's your sense among your colleagues, both Republican and Democrats on this legislation? Look, I think they haven't received these bills have been out there for four years now.

Okay. And they haven't gotten voted on for two for one primary reason. Let's not forget now Joe Biden's been in the White House for over a year. Democrats have had Congress for over a year.

They haven't moved on any of these things yet. And the reason why is because they they're based people that are out there demanding want things like preventing guns based on what they look like, not what they do, not how dangerous they are, but what they look like, or expanded background checks. We already have expanded that virtually every gun that's going to be sold in America today is going to have a background check conducted. Every one of these mass shooters pass the background check. So there's still a perception out there among people that you can just walk in and buy a gun in the store and nobody checks you out.

That's just not accurate. Almost every gun sold in America today and every day is virtually all of them have undergone background checks and all these shooters have. So the question really is, but that's what they're fixated on. So they want to, you see the House proposals, right? Oh, let's ban bump stocks and stuff like that. That all might be great and good ideas, but it has nothing to do with this, with the shootings.

Wouldn't have prevented these shootings. So I think that's what's been standing in the way. Maximalist demands that have nothing to do with how to solve the problem. And hopefully that'll change. Hopefully this time people say, look, enough is enough. There's some things we can do that we agree on. Let's do the things we agree on. If there's something that works and we agree on it, why not do it? Well, what's good about both of these bills, Senator, is that it tailors to the situation. It's not just a Band-Aid, so to speak. It actually impacts the actual situation that unfortunately is occurring in the United States too common, too frequently.

Yeah. Well, we have another gun crisis in America, and that is a bunch of criminals running loose in the streets, buying guns off the black market, stealing them from people's cars and shooting each other up. And we've seen that violent surge, but these aren't people buying into gun shows or online or anywhere. These are just people buying stolen guns from each other and then shooting each other up. That's a huge problem in America, but that's a criminality problem. That's what happens when you let a bunch of criminals out of jail early because you're trying to be compassionate and trying to get people the fifth chance and things of that nature. So that's another problem.

It's probably from a numerical standpoint, the most serious one. The solutions I'm talking about are very specifically tied to disturb young men that head towards violence and commit these mass murders. And they're giving warning signs well, and in Parkland, well in advance, that this was going to happen. And in fact, there were efforts to get the local police to intervene. The sheriff's office didn't do it. That guy's no longer sheriff.

The school district refused to do anything about it because they didn't want to criminalize kids. The FBI dropped the ball with two calls and warnings to their hotline. So there were a lot of missteps there that could have prevented this. We just got an alert that President Biden is going to be addressing the nation tonight after this last shooting at the hospital and this wave of mass shootings. So this is what I'm concerned about is that typically what we've seen with President Biden in these comments is that statements that he keeps dividing all of us as a nation.

And so it's divide, divide, divide. It's so political. It's about banning guns, banning this, banning everybody instead of targeted solutions. Like you're talking about targeted solutions to the school shooting issue and who is usually responsible for those and how to red flag them.

Or how to give family members at the state level using state laws rights. But now we're going to hear from President Biden tonight. What I'm concerned about is that we're not going to hear solutions like that. We're going to hear solutions that keep dividing the country apart, which doesn't do anything to help keep our kids safe.

Yeah. And let's hope that that's not what happens. But traditionally, the response from him and others in the following lie to people and tell them that there is a bunch of laws out there that could stop all this from happening. But we can't pass those laws because evil Republicans are blocking them.

If they would only have voted for these bills, these things wouldn't be happening. And it's just not true. It's just absolutely inaccurate. It's not true. It's a blatant lie. It stands in the way of progress on this issue. And I hope that's not what he does again tonight, because if he starts rolling out a bunch of a bunch of ideas that have nothing to do with these shootings, nothing.

It may be what he supports on gun legislation, but they have nothing to do with these shootings. I think we're back to score one, unfortunately. And then people wonder why nothing ever happens. Well, that's why.

Because I hope that's not the case. Senator, we appreciate your work on this and you've been working on this for a long time and we fully support it. We think this is the right way to go. Thank you for being on the broadcast. Thank you for sharing this with our audience. It's important that people know what's happening here and that there are solutions. Thank you, Senator.

Thank you both for having me on. And that's Senator Marco Rubio. The legislation is to its Senate Bill 292, Senate Bill 391. He's got Democrats support for this. Again, they've been out for years because they were dealing with Parkland. And we see these again and again and again. And there's solutions here. These are tailored to make sense for these school shootings. It's a state, Florida already is doing it and it's been used 3,000 times, but it's a state incentive program. The other is just to make it, again, we know who is usually carrying these out and it doesn't have to impact everybody's rights, which is what the Democrat solution is usually or what we think we'll hear from Joe Biden. These impact the people who should have their rights impacted and they're short term.

And I would say, even if you thought, OK, this is not right, six month kind of programs, these are not. And it takes people taking action, but it gives people who say all the time, yeah, I knew this person was this. We knew this person is something they can actually proactively do that can protect that person and other, you know, helpless children. And I think we all have to understand that. I think everybody that listens to broadcast either a grandparent or a parent right now.

And they understand why it's of concern. We'll be right back with Mike Pompeo. All right, folks, welcome back to Sekio.

It's been a great show today, PAC show today, and we continues on. So we just had Senator Marco Rubio. Now we've got former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senior Counsel for Global Affairs at the ACLJ. Secretary Pompeo, this was something very troubling to me because we saw the U.N. High Commission for Human Rights, the High Commissioner for Human Rights. And we do a lot of work at the Human Rights Council.

It's not the greatest place to always be. And the U.S., I know the Trump administration pulled out. Which made sense.

Which makes sense. But she was there and she starts parroting the CCP talking points about the treatment of the Uyghurs. She actually said that the Chinese Communist Party's policies in that region of China to combat, quote, violent acts of extremism and terrorism and called the concentration camps. The U.S. has identified this as genocide as, quote, vocational and educational training centers. At this point, should the U.N. be saying, and I think more countries in the U.S. could be more vocal too, should she resign?

Jordan, this is infuriating and it is immoral. Yeah, I think she's lost all credibility. Even the traditionally progressive human rights groups are now calling for her resignation. There's Michelle Bachelet. We had trouble with her too.

She didn't want to talk about what was taking place in Venezuela and Cuba either. She has been soft. She's been at the left. I had no idea that she was such in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party. She, Jordan, she went and took this trip.

There hadn't been an inspector in there for years. She took this trip. She was guarded. She saw what they wanted to show them. And then she walked out and literally uses the Chinese Communist Party's talking points to talk about what is truly some of the worst human rights violations in this century. They are taking a million people, Muslim people, putting them in what look for all the world to be concentration camps, separating from their families, conducting forced sterilizations.

And she walks out, says, it's all good. You can't have this. I hope Secretary General Guterres will fire her if she doesn't resign herself. This is a stain on Secretary Guterres as well. He needs to understand that what the Chinese Communist Party is doing in Western China, it will be a stain on his time if they refuse to call it what it is, which is genocide against these people.

Mike, the High Commissioner also praised the Chinese government's, and I'm quoting here, achievements in poverty alleviation and health care in other parts of their country. Now, what reality are they in here? Because this is absurd. Jay, it's absolutely absurd. But there's long been a strain in American politics as well that says, well, we brought five or six hundred million Chinese people out of poverty. Fair enough.

That's likely true. The freedoms that were destroyed, the way in which this was achieved, frankly, on the backs of American workers as well, is not something we should laud, but rather it's something that we have to be deeply concerned about. For her to walk out and laud the Chinese Communist Party with what they're doing with these lockdowns, the way they treated our athletes when they came to the Olympics, the surveillance state that's being conducted against these people, the denial of basic property rights and human rights.

There's zero religious freedom. Jay, Jordan, you all know this list is really long to have this senior person, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, come out and say the Chinese Communist Party is essentially a model for what society should look like. Frankly, it tells you how far the U.N. has fallen and how much damage the U.N. is now doing to its own credibility as an institution that actually delivers for people around the world. We always knew it was problematic.

This is about as bad as I've seen. We still have a client, and you came right at the end of your administration, and you were helping us on this. We still have a client in prison in China for Christian work, and there were negotiations going on where you all were in power, and then, of course, that has totally stopped now. But, Jordan, this is a real situation, and then to have the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights of all people say this, please. Secretary Blinken, the current Secretary of State, framed the visit as, were concerned the condition Beijing authorities imposed on the visit did not enable a complete independent assessment.

Surprise, surprise, anyway is there. But as you said, Secretary Pompeo, even if they didn't say, even if they did impose those kind of views, that's what the Human Rights Commissioner should have focused on, is that, honestly, I couldn't even see what I came here to see. They would not – they prevented me from going to the places that we've been concerned about. But instead, it's – she's on their talking points.

I mean, and to me, I think what you said is very important. It goes to that bigger picture of the U.N., take it out of just the Human Rights Commission and go to the entire U.N., and we've seen this with the World Health Organization. Are we seeing a repeat inside the U.N. that just everybody is afraid of upsetting China? They have no problem condemning us. They have no problem condemning our allies.

It's precisely – you nailed it, Jordan. It's precisely the same phenomenon. They don't want to criticize the Chinese Communist Party. They are underwriting it. They know if they do, they'll get even less cooperation from China, and they, frankly, have become dependent on them, whether it's the World Health Organization or, in this case, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. I mean, let's – your listeners should know, there is extensive satellite imagery of what's taking place there. The reason both I originally and Secretary Blinken confirmed there was genocide wasn't because we didn't like China. It was because the treatment of these people is horrific.

It is genocidal. No one disputes the data, and for her to go there and walk away and basically make the argument that my Chinese counterpart would make with me, Rong Zhixue, would say, Mr. Secretary, this is about stopping terrorism. These were terrorists. These are Muslim terrorists.

That is just a flat-out lie. She mouthed those words, and that is unacceptable for anybody who cares about human rights. She's got to go. I hope Secretary-General Guterres will let her go and that she will finally put someone in a place that will demand that the Chinese Communist Party treat its people with the dignity they deserve because they remain the image of God. My final question today is on Ukraine. The President published an essay in The New York Times saying what he will do and what he won't do in Ukraine. Telegraphing the strategy from the President to the Russians, to me, would hurt the United States, not help us. You know, I kind of like some of the stuff he said he would do, so sign me up for that. It's four months too late, maybe eight months too late, but some of it's good.

That will be helpful for the Ukrainians. But to spend so much time dwelling, sending a clear message, right? We think about drawing red lines saying these are things you won't do.

He drew a red line around ourselves. These are things we won't do. That violates, you know, when I was a kid at West Point, too long ago, 40 years ago now, this was military strategy 101. Do not tell the enemy what you won't do. Exactly.

Certainly in public. And they've done that. It puts America at risk. It destroys the capacity to deter Vladimir Putin.

And I'm afraid this will get more Ukrainian innocents killed and will drag this out for longer than it needed to go on. All right, folks, as always, it is great to have a former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as part of our ACLJ team. I want to thank you, Secretary Pompeo. Folks, just to underscore again, he's on the ACLJ team now and has been on the ACLJ team because of your support for the ACLJ, that we're able to bring this team together. So when these issues come up, and that's why I love when we talk to Secretary Pompeo. We're not just talking about the news or reports or even the work of the ACLJ. He's able to say, yeah, I was talking to the official.

This is what he would try to do to me. You could see how they were engaged with the same officials. And on this issue alone, how absurd is it that it is only us, when I say us, on the right, willing to call out China for genocide against Muslims? Well, they tried to justify it as, well, see, we're just going after it against Islamic terror.

And we know that that wasn't the case there. This is a very different Muslim population culturally and ideologically. And so they tried to use that to get the world to give a pass, which usually the left would not give you a pass on, but they are, to China. And the global left, it's not even just the left of the U.S., it's the global left of the U.N.

It's absurd. There should be worldwide unity when it comes to genocide and condemnation. And the administration continued that designation. It's important to point out that the Biden administration continued the designation put in place by Secretary Pompeo and the Trump administration. But they could demand that this commissioner is gone. She did not have to talk their talk, or she should have said they wouldn't even let me go where I needed to go.

And that would have been a clear cut. Go to ACLJ.org, stay updated with our work, and support us.