NOW HIRING: IRS Agents Willing to Use Deadly Force

Today on Sekulow, now hiring IRS agents, yet again, willing to use deadly force. 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. Hey, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. The IRS, back at it again.

I love catching the IRS. We've done it before at the ACLJ. As I hold up our case, this was the consent order.

Pretty thick, if you see it right here. From the IRS, this was the Tea Party case, the Linchpins of Liberty case the ACLJ did on behalf of all those Tea Party organizations when they were being targeted by the tax-exempt division. Remember, they were asking for the content of prayers. They're back in access to their email list.

Hey, what did you say? We need transcripts of every speech that's ever been made at your local grassroots organization. Ultimately, of course, we want all those cases. There was both the consent order and then there was also the financial penalties case that moved forward with the IRS also paid out millions of dollars to these groups. Then again in 2021, so years later, a group comes forward. And again, this group, interesting enough, was again, I think it was, what was the exact name of the group, Will? Christians Engaged.

Okay. And then they get denied. Remember, this was in 2021. Now, ultimately that's been resolved. That was resolved because there was public outcry and of our case, because this consent order buys the IRS not to do exactly what they did to Christians Engaged. And what they did, remember that one where they came up with their own ledger and they said for the, they're too Republican, but they put D party to stand for Republican. I mean, it was on the documents. It said party D or something like that.

And it was like, as you would see, like a democratic Congress person, you know, with like the D at the beginning of their name, it was that, but D stood for Republican. So it'd be harder in a FOIA type situation or case when you're getting discovery, if you put down R searching for it, it wouldn't come up the right way. If you kind of Republican would come up backwards, that case has been settled, but we filed a FOIA because we said, you know what, usually when they're doing this to one group, a lot of other groups got denied or ignored. Sometimes you just got nothing back from the IRS and they just say, okay, I don't want to mess with the IRS.

We'll just move on. Cause these are a lot of times small grassroots organizations just getting started. They have just gotten to the point where they're fundraising enough, where they need to even file and you file really so you can get insurance and things like that, or else you can, you know, you don't have to actually go through the process. These are groups that voluntarily subject themselves to this scrutiny to get the official tax exempt status from the IRS. You don't actually have to go through that process. You don't want to, but most of the time you need to get insurance and things like that. You've got to go through it or big donors. They want to know that you've got the status.

Yeah. They're looking for the tax break. So we now have our FOIA, right? Our FOIA goes out two years ago. Finally, the court comes back. They want a status report. It's called a joint status report. That's up on the screen now.

I have it in my hands too. Why is the IRS taking so long for our be on the lookout list? Because we want to know, is this happening again to other groups? Well, Logan, they said the plaintiff search terms, that's us, have resulted in defendants collecting over 43,000 records. Not pages. Records.

43,000 individual records with words like Christian, Republican, conservative, tea party, prayer, word of God. Going through those phrases are some of the terms that were used again. And this was all on that. We said, what's happening right now? Oh, it's just too much.

We can't handle it. That means there's that many documents floating around having this conversation. So we're battling the IRS, but I want to put it on the screen now. You know what the IRS wants to do with your taxpayer dollars? Hire 300 more of these special agents at the IRS.

Can we scroll down too to show them what they look like? Yeah. You've got to be ready to use deadly force against American taxpayers. That's where your taxpayers' dollars are going. If again, the house is battling to keep this money from going to the IRS, we've got to stay on that. We'll take your calls. A weaponized IRS. That's a weaponization of every branch of the federal government. 1-800-684-3110 to talk to us on air. A week ago they said they were going to arm just with a calculator. Yep. We'll play it off.

And as we've seen, not that. Give us a call. As you said, 1-800-684-3110.

Check out all the work at the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. And welcome back to Second. You know, I saw two.

Janice wrote in on Rumble. She said, does the ACLJ do Second Amendment defense? And we do. I want to remind people that we've stood strong on the Second Amendment. Every major case about our Second Amendment rights, the ACLJ is filed on the right side. And in fact, we're working on one right now in New York on places of worship and making sure they have the ability, especially synagogues. Just to have security. To have security that they can then deem. Like if they need to deem someone in their synagogue to be armed because the synagogues are open. They're almost open all the time. I mean, they've got, again, depending on what kind of Judaism you're talking about, you basically have an open door policy because of major holidays and also just the prayer schedule, things like that. Kind of like a lot of Catholic churches that are open. Oh, Episcopal churches. Yeah, 24 hours a day.

The doors are never locked. Yeah. And so they were having an issue, of course, with the state of New York and being able to get their own security. So I just want to remind our listeners, our supporters out there, we are engaged in those cases and we're working on one right now at the ACLJ in one of the toughest states when it comes to Second Amendment rights and gun rights.

And that is, of course, in New York. So we've been, throughout our history, on the right side standing with the Second Amendment, just like our First Amendment rights. I mean, these are the key rights in our country. And so when they say, like, free speech, it's too bad we have a First Amendment or we got to get rid of that Second Amendment. That's when, you know, we step in and say, absolutely not. We have these to protect ourselves from government overreach, both the ability to speak, the ability to petition our government, the ability to have arms in our homes and be able to defend ourselves.

This is what kind of defines America. 1-800-684-3110 because, Logan, you might want to make sure you have a strong Second Amendment when the IRS can come knocking on your door and they're not just knocking on your door just like they did to Matt Taibbi and they've done to reporters while he was testifying on Capitol Hill. They showed up at his house and said, oh, we'll come back next time. And now you realize when they show up at your house, we're supposed to believe from the IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, you know, that they're really not a bunch of armed agents. They're just a bunch of nerds with calculators, right? He said that, right?

Yeah, take a listen. Let's play it. Let me note something about our civil side compliance employees. Despite what some might think or say, these public servants within the IRS are armed only with calculators and their skills to help us address complex issues. Their work will give people confidence that all taxpayers, regardless of means, are being treated fairly under the tax laws.

Okay. The key word he used there was their civil side. But you know, the IRS has an expanding now criminal side. Now they've always had one because they go in sometimes with the FBI.

Like if there's a raid on a business, they go in, the accountants go in, and sometimes those accountants need to be able to defend themselves if it's a surprise raid. But they usually are playing a secondary role. Yeah, the way he said that was this isn't happening. This is a conservative talking point. Oh yeah, they all laughed. Yeah, exactly.

This is like, I feel like Maury Povich being like, and that was determined to be a lie. You know, that's what it feels like. We know now that they are trying to hire an additional 300 armed special agents for their criminal division, bringing it up to 1,200. I mean, it's like, why do we need so many government agencies that are willing to use deadly force against Americans? Is the IRS knocking on this many doors? Are they raiding that many dangerous businesses?

That's what I'm saying. Like, imagine the amount they're talking about here when you're hiring this many people. That is the amount of people that they are sending out into the field.

Not people that are getting phone calls, not people who are getting intimidated by letters or emails or anything else like that, which we've all gotten those. This is the amount of staff they have to have to have people in the field enforcing it, and that just doesn't seem to add up. It's actually adding 1,200 over five years to their existing number. I mean, so they're doubling in size about. Is that what they're doing? It looks like they're doubling their weaponized side.

And they try to play it down, but members of Congress are calling them out. And by the way, they tried to take down that job posting once, remember, because it said the use of deadly force. It's back up.

It's back up. I'm reading it in my head. It's even more, I'd say. Key requirements. Oh, major duties. Be willing and able to participate in arrest, execution of search warrant, other dangerous assignments. They are supposed to be playing a secondary role in those. They're not supposed to be the ones busted down the door. If something happens, sure, they can have protection. We obviously want that. But this feels like they are the enforcers.

Right, that they're not playing. It should be the FBI going in, clearing it out. Then the agents come in to do their account work to get the documents they need, either from computers or files.

But that's not how this reads. You've got to carry a firearm. You have to be ready to protect yourself and others from physical attacks at any time without warning. And you have to be willing to use deadly force, the use of deadly force. You have to be willing to kill other Americans. Now, listen, the left always talks about how we have too many police.

That's what I was about to say. They're the ones who talk about the fact that we need to have these human resource officers kind of out in the field to make sure everything is okay, not police officers only. And if you agree with that, then you can't agree with this. You can't say, I don't think we should have police forces. Instead, we need to have people in health and human services stepping in and working with people in mental health cases. It doesn't always need to be cops with guns.

Well, then it can't be the other way around when it's just talking about going up to somebody's house because of, at the end of the day, sure, there are some bad actors they have to deal with. But I have a feeling that's not the mass majority of the people that are being raided in the IRS. Well, I mean, this happened yesterday. Remember, Congress did the exact same thing you just did on the debt limits and federal spending hearing yesterday. It's Congressman Reshant Haler from Pennsylvania. I hope I said that right, Congressman. Reshant Haler.

Yeah, Reshant Haler. Take a listen. The question isn't the exact number of firearms that's being issued to the IRS. The question is, why does the IRS need firearms to begin with? And I find it absolutely rich that the party that wants to send social workers to answer domestic police calls, that party, they want IRS agents to have fully automatic weapons.

Let me just put this in perspective. When I was in the JAG Corps, I was sent, I was in Baghdad, sent in the red zone. You know what I was issued? A nine-millimeter Beretta. And that's what I got to go in the red zone. And you got, and your party wants agents, IRS agents to have fully automatic weapons?

That's even next level. So he was using his own. So he was saying in the military, as part of the JAG, Judge Advocate General Prosera, as a military attorney or judge, when he had to go into the danger zone in Iraq, because he was not part of like an infantry group, but part of, again, the legal side of the military, he only got a handgun to defend himself.

And that was in a war zone, in the worst part of the war zone. They want, I mean, that's pretty wild. You're a military official. You're thinking about, they want fully automatic weapons, the IRS? Is that what it says? Yes. Fully automatic. They're going in with machine guns?

Yeah. Yet they try to take away an AR-15 from America. They're going in with machine guns into your, why? The IRS should never be in the lead with machine guns. And this is, this is my whole problem is we need a military and we need police. But what we don't need is to weaponize every single agency in the federal government. If the IRS needs to raid a place that's dangerous, we have the FBI to help them. You call the FBI and they come in and say, have you?

We have U.S. Marshals. I mean, Lord almighty, I could go through a whole list of all these different law enforcement agencies that already exist. It just seems like the left- Yeah, what's the National Guard do with this column? They love giving automatic weapons to the feds, but they don't want your local police force to have SWAT teams. I mean, seriously.

Yeah. They don't want your local police to have access to those same kind of weapons in the trunk of their police cruisers if they have to stop a shooting or violent event. They don't want that.

But if you messed up filing the taxes, sorry, we're coming for you. I mean, if it's that danger of a place to go in to get the files from, they should not be taking the lead on that part. That part should be led by major law enforcement agencies who we have entrusted with those resources.

Look, we're not also just being hyperbolic here. Sure, do some of these agents maybe need some kind of security safety training? That's what the Congressman was talking about.

Sure, of course. But what is this? Why is it so extreme? Why do they need 1,200 more?

Right. And it just, to me, whose door do they knock on? Journalists they don't like.

Who do they come to? Middle-class Americans to audit more of your money. I mean, they're trying to downplay the fact that they've hired so many different – they want to hire 80,000 more auditors and people like that. That's to go after middle-class Americans.

Because let me tell you something. The poorest of the poor don't pay taxes, and the richest of the rich have lots of people handling their taxes. So who is in the middle trying to comply on their own? Middle-class Americans. Actually, even there, it's kind of working-class Americans who are trying to comply and figure things out with this giant Internal Revenue Code. But why – I mean, it's got to be shocking to people that they want automatic weapons. They want machine guns to show up.

And just the IRS. Yeah, I mean, I think maybe, like you said, maybe people – because they're really talking about having a handgun on them for safety in case there's production. A lot of people in our audience, I'm sure, feel that way in their normal, everyday life.

But this is not what we're talking about here. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I mean, the IRS obviously has always been controversial. It's been a controversial department for the last few decades. And as we've seen them go after conservatives, weaponize their own, you know, departments.

But like the FBI, they have become politically motivated in this idea of protecting the Washington swamp and protecting the political ideology that they support from their higher-ups. That's dangerous. Yeah, absolutely. So give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. We're going to keep this conversation rolling and also talk a little bit more in the next segment coming up about some of the new border plans as well. So we'll be discussing that coming up here in the next segment, so if you want to stay tuned. If you want to call in specifically about this or some of our other topics, it's Friday. 1-800-684-3110.

Support the work of the ACLJ by going to ACLJ.org. We are headed towards the very end of our matching challenge. We're talking about two days left.

And then we take a little break from the match. We're in court right now with the IRS because they just said, oh, we can't comply with your FOIA. Why we targeted Christians engaged? Because there's 43,000 records that are relevant to what we asked. You have to be on the lookout list again targeting Christians and Republicans.

I guess they do because they got 43,000 records they don't want to give us. We're going to get them. We'll be right back.

Alright, welcome back to SECIO. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110.

I want to go to the phones. Because as you know, I just want to reiterate, when the new IRS commissioner came in, who was an old IRS commissioner, who actually came in under the Obama administration after we took them apart, the IRS, bludgeoned was a term used by the Washington Post. I like that term. And they brought him in to kind of try to clean house Danny Werfel. So it's a name we know from the IRS. He was a commissioner then. He's back as a commissioner now. And he made the joke, you know, we're really not about weapons.

We're about calculators and our civil division. Well, yeah, yeah, but what he forgot to mention there is they have an entire criminal division that they are increasing in size. Under that new budget request for their $87 billion, they want to increase with an additional 1,200 armed special agents. And they've put back up that job posting that they took down once because they said it was inaccurate. They put it back up, the job posting that says, first of all, they have you dressed up like you've got, again, a flak jacket on.

We didn't add that image. That's something new that they've added to the job listings. Basically, you're going to be wearing bulletproof vest and automatic weapons. And under your major duties is the use of deadly force. Why is anyone at the IRS's major duty the use of deadly force? They are supposed to, in a situation where they're going in to a surprise, I mean, that's where they're talking about.

When they're going into like a corporation or individual and they're surprising them and seizing their documents, they should not be the lead with the machine guns. Yeah. No, I don't think anyone would think that would be the case.

I don't think people would think that's what was happening. Right. They're supposed to come in after this. We want them to be the guys who were only armed with calculators.

Good. Right. They're supposed to come into that situation, at least that's how I thought it was. They come into that situation after the facilities have been secured and then they seize the documents that they need or they go into the computers that they need. They don't play both roles. The FBI or U.S. Marsh, someone else is supposed to assist them in the initial raid. And so why do they want 1,200 more? It's like, are there not enough FBI agents available?

Because it seems like they're always missing the ball. Every time we hear about some major tragedy in the U.S., it was like, oh yeah, we knew about it. We just didn't take any action. More federal law enforcement, they're all about. What's interesting, Harry, is they want to defund our local police but fund the feds.

Absolutely. And that is consistent, utterly consistent with the totalitarian agenda of cultural elites. They want local police officers to stand down and force citizens to surrender all of their rights to the federal government. So it's important to keep in mind that in February of 2023, this year, news reports surfaced suggesting that the IRS was prepared to go after waitresses and waiters in terms of their tip income. So imagine individuals from the criminal investigation unit armed with flak jackets and automatic weapons going after a waiter or waitress who has failed to fully disclose his or her income.

This makes no sense except if we are prepared to move toward some form of totalitarianism. I want to go to the phones, Logan, 1-800-6843. Let's do it. Bill is calling in Wyoming here on the air. Hey, Bill. Thanks for taking my call.

Appreciate you taking my call so quick. I'm just wondering because of the fact that this asks at least two questions. Number one, they've already got agents at home checking out the returns. What's the problem with their internet connection?

Is there a problem there? They need to be able to take care of that. Plus the fact that what kind of people are they hiring? And now that you mentioned waiters and waitresses, what happens if they get lower tax, lower tips one year?

Are they going to be in trouble for that business too? Again, they're trying to go after folks that are just trying to get by. People are working those jobs, jobs that are paying tips. Those are tough jobs. And yeah, for the last three years those jobs almost didn't exist. Now we're trying to rehire those folks and no one wants to take those jobs because they realize they can be lost very quickly. Not good to rely on because we have government shutdowns now in the United States of America. And you lose all those jobs.

So every industry is still having trouble finding people to even take these jobs. But what it goes back to, Harry, is we have all these other federal law enforcement divisions to assist the IRS if they feel like they are going into a dangerous situation. Why do they need their own army?

That's my question. Why do we want to give another agency that we've had a lot of problems with and that we've talked about for years as Republicans and conservatives totally reforming? When we have such a mess with the FBI, let's not weaponize and militarize another government agency. I think you're right on the basis of policy, but it's important to keep in mind that the federal government increasingly is driven by ideology. And so now they want to arm up, if you will, each and every federal agency, which means that each and every federal secretary, cabinet official, IRS chief can send in armed individuals. Pursuant to their own whim. Unlimited, if you will, by the United States Constitution. So I think we have more than an adequate number of federal armed officials without arming our IRS agents. But nonetheless, keep in mind, this is what a majority of Congress voted for. This is what the President of the United States signed on to.

And this is consistent with the agenda of cultural and political elites, and the American people need to stand up against this. All right, folks, again, we want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. There's a lot of interest in this, Logan. Do we have time to take one more call before we get to the second half hour?

Yeah, we could probably come up with something really quick. Let's go to Kevin. You're on the air, line three. Hello? Quick.

Can you hear me? Kevin, put you on hold. We'll get back to you in the next segment because we only have a couple minutes. Stay on hold, though. We will get to you just to make sure that we got you here.

We got one line open right now. Oh, gone. And it's gone. And it's back up. There you go.

Well, you know what? We want to hear from you on this. Of course, we get your comments in on places like Rumble, Facebook, and YouTube. If you're watching there, share it with your friends and family.

So if you're watching, you can take that link and share it out right now because we got a second half hour coming up. And I think people need to know about this because they tried to act like they shut this down, just like they did with the disinformation board, you know? They tried to act like they shut it down.

They took it down for their website. They had the new commissioner go up and say, we're just armed with calculators. But if you really listen to what he said, he said, that's our civil division.

And now they're trying to expand their criminal enforcement division with special agents. And this is what we have to, again, focus on at the ACLJ. We are in court right now with the IRS. I mean, I want people to understand that we're in court right now because they are continuing, it appears, to target conservative and religious groups applying for tax exempt status, which they cannot do. We beat them once on that issue in court when we represented all the Tea Party cases. If you're part of the MAGA movement, you know, we were there when it was created.

It was years ago. I think the Tea Party birthed MAGA in many ways. If you look at the leaders that were there, the people who were there early on to bring in this kind of say, let's drain this.

All those ideas were starting there. And every time you get close to another election, they want to shut these groups down. So they told us they got 43,000 responsive documents for us. Now, in the last two years, we asked for, are you targeting conservatives?

We used the words of conservatives, Christian, all those ideological terms. Yeah, they got them, but they don't want it. It's too much work for them to go through 43,000 documents. We're going to get them. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow.

We're also looking at two. Does the IRS have a history where they need this kind of protection on their own? Like they can't rely on the FBI? It's one of the job requirements. You're posting it on the website that you have to take deadly force to be ready to take deadly force. And that did open up a couple of questions.

With automatic weapons. Yeah. Okay.

So we looked it up. Since the IRS was founded, four agents have been killed in their criminal division. None in any, this is how it's quoted. None of those four died in such a way that a weapon or the person would have been necessary. There was no shootout with an armed suspect.

So was it a, I don't know if it was a vehicle incident or something else happened, stress induced something, you know, but it was not involved in an actual violent crime. Okay. So it wasn't part of the raid. So they have no real history. Yeah.

And that's their entire history. Then you flip it the other way and go, if one of your major job responsibilities to use deadly force, how often are you expected to do this? And how often, by the way, is this happening? How often is an IRS agent actually using deadly force with an automatic weapon? That would be very interesting to see my mind.

Cause look, I think for a lot of people, we didn't even think that this is what the IRS did or does. My mind would be very little, but this is not happening that much that they are showing up and getting into this. I could be wrong. Yeah.

So there was one heart attack, two car accidents, and one struck by a vehicle. Even there. So zero people have been killed in a shootout and the situation where you think like they're going in with guns a blazing, basically, which is what they, you would, if they only justify. So really no justification to need a division, which already has about 2000 armed special agents.

The gun wouldn't have done anything. It doesn't seem like it. I don't know all the details, but it seems like these were true accidents or medical emergency.

They are not supposed to be. And I'm sure they weren't, they weren't the front line to go into a building. They came in after you, after the FBI, after another law enforcement, after a law enforcement agency that is armed, who would then secure the premises. And then you go in and take the documents you need. Back then it would have been just taking the documents. Now it'd be getting the computers, the files that you need, plus the paper files as well. But they want machine guns. They want automatic weapons. This is the same time with the same people pushing this, same Democrats authorizing this money, want to defund your local police when there is a massive crime increase, a massive homelessness crisis, a massive drug crisis.

We had Senator Haggerty on earlier. We were talking about the FITNO crisis. It's the number one cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45. You know what isn't?

Not paying your taxes is exactly right. You know, the government has a role to get that right, but it's really, is this the priority? It's weird that they prioritize this, Logan.

It's not weird. We know why. They love weaponizing the federal government because they control the swamp. They want to defund your local police because they're actually responsive to the community they serve.

They want to take those guys out, replace them with agents that can't use the deadly force of which obviously, if you had to look into it, does your local police officer, is he running into much more harm than your IRS agent? I would assume that's true in almost even the smallest of little towns. Every time they pull someone over for speeding, it's dangerous. Right. I'd say that's even in the smallest of small towns, police force.

Especially because of the drug crisis that we've seen through, meth, places like that, which a lot of times is in small towns and is in rural areas. Yeah. They're dealing with a lot more real armed dangerous violence.

If you're in a major city, you probably lost more police officers in the last two years in violence than the IRS has ever lost in any kind of situation. Yeah. Non-violent situation. I mean, you'd say yes, a car accident. I don't know if they were trying to, whatever happened there, but these were accidents likely or medical emergencies. It's weird that they even marked those. Maybe. I mean, the automobile ones, I guess, could be in pursuit or something.

If it was while you were on the job, it would be considered you were working while it happened. Again, it's not to downplay those people's loss of life. It's to say, what is your need? Why is the FBI not enough for you? Why do you need machine guns? And why do you need more of them? Why do you need 1,200 more?

Why are you always trying to add more guns at the federal level and less guns to protect us on our streets, in our communities? 1-800-684-3110. Join us. Welcome back to the show. We are taking your phone calls.

Let me encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ. We have been battling with the IRS for years. I mean, the Tea Party cases, we're in court right now with the IRS. It takes bold action because for so many years, people would complain about the IRS, but they were scared to fight back against the IRS in a proactive way.

You might fight back in a defensive way if the IRS was coming after you, but you didn't want to proactively poke the bear, if you will. We've decided the ACLJ, we're not going to stop keeping track of the IRS because what they did to these Americans who were organizing grassroots groups with the Tea Party movement, and Christian organizations who got looped into that as well, was not only unacceptable and unconstitutional, it was un-American. And we got people removed from the IRS. We got the directors of their tax-exempt organization. They tried to blame it on lower-level staff and field offices. That was all bogus.

We got the consent order. There was also financial damages for those groups as well in a second case. Then they did it again in 2021 to a Christian group. And what we said was if this group was the one willing to stand up and say something, Christians engaged, likely because we were dealing with the Tea Party cases, the IRS said they sent out hundreds of those same unconstitutional requests for info like content of your prayer, speeches, back-end access to your website, your email list, your database, all of that that, again, was something they had never asked for before.

It could only be used for bad. For political targeting. Viewpoint discrimination is what we call it. You want to target this group because you think they're conservative. And for Christians engaged, it was because they are conservative Christians. They must be just a front for a Republican political group.

So you can't just be a Christian engaged. You have to be a Christian who is right in line with Republican parties. By the way, what do we know is that less and less people are even aligned with these political parties even more. And you kind of start your own group because you support your own ideologies and methods you want to teach people about, you want to educate people about, because you don't support the major party apparatuses. We're not like Democrats in the sense of the conservative movement is bigger than the Republican Party. Well, even if you did, that's the weird part about this. Let's say you do support more conservative values because you're an evangelical Christian and that directs your values.

Well, of course it does, but you being harassed for it or intimidated about it, it's not the country we're supposed to be living in. You want to take some calls? Yeah, let's go back to the phones. We've got a lot of people about to hold for a long time, so we're going to keep going through and then phone lines will open. If you hear someone on, that means the phone line is about to open back up. Let's go to Kevin who's calling us try once again in New England, Nebraska, Nebraska, Nebraska. Hello. You're on the air. Thanks for taking my call.

I support you guys every week and every month. And my question is, is are they just going to zero in on conservatives with this? And why are they even questioning what we pay in because generally people have their taxes prepared by tax firms and what the federal government takes out of my check, they determine that I don't have any determination over that. So why do they think they need to be armed? Because they're trying to go after the folks who aren't utilizing those services because they can't afford it.

So it's the gig economy, it's the tips, people who are making more transactions maybe through these new services like Venmo and Zelle and things like that. We know they want to go after more of those. They want to be able to track more of those and have access to more of those financial transactions. They want to lower it to like, what was it, 600 bucks?

They want to track everything. Everything over 600 bucks. That's a lot of transactions. A lot of people just refunding each other for a trip.

It's like, you know, you have a buddy booked the round of golf. It's a way a lot of us just pay for things. Yeah, instead of, so you can get one person can put their credit card down at dinner and then all of you just quickly, and it's instant.

So it's not like some complicated thing to pay them back where you never get paid back. You feel like you kind of handle it. Like if you need to tip somebody now too, oftentimes that I'll just take a picture of their, what do you call it? The Venmo little QR code. The QR code, right?

Yeah. And honestly, I've had Uber drivers who don't really speak English, but we can understand QR codes and things like that. And just being able to transact that way, it's very American actually that we use this. But that's who, Kevin, they want to go after is people who, unlike some of us who can, it's great that we might be able to afford someone to help with our accounting. A lot of people can't, or they're using maybe like an internet, like some kind of a computer program. Yeah, easy file type stuff. That computer program is not as, it's not like you can have them say, ah, blame it on them.

They're not the front facing like an accountant might be for you. It's already an agency that's impossible to deal with. If they wanted to take this money and say, we're going to revitalize this so when you call the IRS, we'll pick up the phone, when you apply for tax exempt status, it won't take three years to get.

Yeah, it'd be nice. Okay. Then I wouldn't say we should abolish you. But when you say, no, we want to take that money and buy automatic weapons with it. Well, at the same time, they're trying to take our guns away and defund our local police. So two things they're trying to do always, the left, take your guns away, but also take your police forces budgets away. So those are two dangerous things and give them more like military power. But that's what it feels like we're militarizing. When I say weaponization, I'm not just talking about like law enforcement. It's like a militarization of law enforcement. And that they've criticized so much at the local level is how SWAT teams are too militarized.

They don't need those special vehicles that are bulletproof and things like that. And a crowd control vehicles. That's what they want. They want more of it.

And who is the enemy? Look at Joe Biden's campaign launch. Yeah.

Everyone who pretty much those search terms that we were looking for. That was the second thing he showed up. Did you support Donald? Are you MAGA?

He used that too. MAGA extremists? Because you can't be MAGA and not an extremist. Can't want to make America great again and not be a white supremacist who's violent against the United States. So you are the enemy.

But then of course the next part of it was, I'm a uniter bringing together red and blue people. Well we talked about it at Tulsa yesterday and it's all about freedom. But the only freedom, you don't have freedom of speech under their view. They've corrupted the word freedom.

They've tried to take it back. Freedom means woke. And by the way, just try to stay up to speed with that.

You need like, well, people do. They hire those people at their office just to keep them woke. Because it's a changing term.

You know, you've got to keep changing the terms. Yeah, but I think we're finally seeing some corrections. I think Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch. Yeah, I saw the ads Bud Light was running on the NFL draft last night. It was like, they're all tailgating and the pouring rain. I was like, okay. There is some major course correction happening here.

Very interesting. The immediate ad they put back out was a replay ad of the... The Clydesdales. Yeah.

Yeah, which I mean, great ads. We're going to take some more calls. Let's do one more call before the break. And then we'll come back and we will get through as many of these as we can. Who's been on hold the longest?

Ron in Nevada. You're on the airline six. How are you? We are good.

Go ahead. You know, in my experience, you know, 1,200 extra IRS agents, they have their own investigation piece officer precinct, if I'm correct. I don't understand why they need to add another 1,200 more. Can you understand what I'm saying? What Congress is saying is why the need to weaponize more agents?

Like, what is your need? It's not just because we want to. Congress decides what your budget is and what you get paid to utilize your budget. So why do you want to use this budget for this when you have a failing customer service which is what it should be department, you don't answer phones. You're still using fax machines and typewriters. No one has gone back to the IRS offices. They're still working from home. It's in effect, it's a failed agency when it just comes to dealing with the American people and they admit it. I mean, how many times have you gotten things from the IRS saying we're going to be six months delayed, a year delayed? All the time. I think under COVID, was it like two years of delay? I got my refund check last year and then they sent me a letter the next day saying do not do this, we've miscalculated your refund, you're actually going to get more.

And then I never got that check by the way, so I'm still in kind of a fight with that. But that's the problem. Don't give them more guns. Don't give them more guns.

Make them either correct or abolish. Don't let them just keep weaponizing. And that is what they are trying to do. Now, we at the ACLJ have not let up on them.

You kind of have to keep the, I guess, the best way to say it is you have to continue to poke the bear. You have to be willing to poke the IRS bear. Most groups and most people have run away from the IRS. We went proactively against the IRS and we stood with, out of all of those Tea Party groups, this is what we're always concerned about. Out of all those Tea Party groups, they sent out hundreds of letters.

There were only about 25 who were willing to file a lawsuit against the IRS. Because most people, understandably by the way, were worried about poking that bear. So when they went after a group two years ago that was a Christian group, we said there's no way they just went after them.

So who else did they deny? And we just got back last week in the status report. The reason why it's taken so long to get their FOIA response is they found 43,000 responsive records. And can we please limit what we need because that will take them too long to do.

This is an agency with a billions of billions of dollar budget and they can't go through documents that show that they might be, again, inappropriately targeting Americans. We're doing the work. Support ACLJ.

Donate today. ACLJ.org. All right, welcome back to Sekulow.

We're going to take your calls. And by the way, the IRS and the case that we're in, they wanted to dismiss it. So we had a reason why to file the FOIA because they, again, were targeting a Christian group. They resolved it because of public outcry. And it's great that we can get that resolved so quickly now with public outcry, that you don't have to go through years of court battles. That's because of our initial case where we did go through years of court battles with the IRS on behalf of the Tea Party groups.

But what we did say is, oh, it's wonderful that because this group was willing to speak out and you got all this bad press attention, you approve them, but how many groups did you send this letter out? There were people that applied for exempt status that just didn't want to follow up because they don't want to fight with the IRS. Because remember, even when you're filing as a group, a lot of individuals, you have to have a board, you have to have your officers, you got to put your name down, your address down. So you're putting yourself for a second time because you're asking the IRS for a special status. And as we've always said, you're voluntarily submitting to their oversight. Actually, under the tax code, as a lot of people don't know, you can have a tax-exempt organization without filing for the status.

How does that work? The status is that so, because many companies would require free to get insurance and a lot of bigger donors would want you to move forward. But it's kind of like churches under the tax completely just exempt, no filings. Now, I mean, some of them have other side things like schools and then other properties, they might have other ministries that are not part of the actual church. And so a lot of them still end up filing some kind of tax returns.

But, what the problem is, usually with the IRS, is that you'll see them do it to Matt Taibbi and he is willing to say something. But how many people they show up to their door and they're like, I don't want to talk about it. Most. Right. And totally understandable.

How many times you're getting a bill and you're like, I'm just going to pay it. Right. I mean, because you're getting back and forth with them. By the way, they don't respond. When they do, it's very hostile and you always seem like when you're dealing with them, they're mad.

Yeah. You're not responding to them. You're the problem. Except you're supposed to be giving me money back or I'm supposed to be giving you money.

I mean, we're all Americans trying to, most people, I'd say 99.9% of Americans are just trying to comply with a tax code that is this big and impossible really to fully comply with. All right. Let's go ahead and take some calls. Let's get Tim on the air in California on line one.

Tim, you're on the air. Thank you for taking my call. I believe what the Biden administration wants to do with these central America processing centers, just go back to the system that worked. The Trump administration had the border under control and as usual, the Biden administration wants to make the situation worse. Yeah. Well I think, listen, uh, we, we talked about border.

I want to play the bite from Mayorkas because this, this, I loved, he doesn't even hide the ball anymore about how open they want the board and what they're going to do when title 42 is called, which is like next week or May 12th, May 12th. So there's like at least 40,000 people at the border right now and they know that there's families. So he got asked, okay, you know, there's families, are you going to basically house them? Are you ready to put them into some kind of confinement? You know, basically arrest them or, or you go because you can't expel them anymore immediately without the title 42 power. So what are you going to do with all these, all these people and these families?

Take a listen. We have no plan to detain families. As I mentioned, we will be employing alternatives to detention, including some innovations in that regard and we will, on a case by case basis, use enhanced alternatives to detention as a warranted. Enhanced alternatives to detention, so you're just going to give them a house?

These are illegal immigrants taking the spot of somebody who's waiting in line from those same countries, trying to come here legally. I love that he, the first question is we have no plan. We have no plan. We're not detaining anybody. And in fact, we're going to use some new enhanced set. Sounds scary. It does sound scary, but it's an alternative alternatives to detention as warranted sounds a freaky, but what they're saying is, but if you define what enhanced alternative, we're going to give you an area of detention. Yeah.

That means hotels, apartment buildings, taking over your city, and then the hospitals in that town had to shut down because they can't afford to treat everybody or there's not enough police in the streets and so people leave those cities and we're seeing that all over border cities. Yeah, absolutely. Let's keep going. Try to get some more of these calls. Uh, Denise calling in Pennsylvania online for you on the air. Yeah.

Hi. Thank you for the work that you do. I have a comment about the IRS agents getting guns, um, and like why they feel that's necessary yet they want to defund the police and try and take guns away from Americans is every time I watch the news, I'm just looking, I feel like at a bunch of hypocrites who, who say one thing and do another. And what I was wondering is how do you get, um, just the truth, um, out on, well, this is, it's become more difficult, right? To get the truth out. Because when you say things, I read a headline yesterday on Instagram, literally I did Instagram video before the show, but we're going to talk about it was in the news of the Taliban killing the leader of the ISIS K, uh, in Afghanistan. And I got a warning from Instagram about supporting violent groups, obviously it was AI because no human was listening to say that was just reporting of news. But like you said, we know there's places like rumble. Yeah.

Uh, and, and of course our broadcast stations too, where we're able to speak out without being censored. Then you've got to elect good people who are not just going to give lip service to this, but to really reform the IRS will take a bold Republican President because look what they did to Donald Trump. The first time he tried to get rid of any of these people, okay, they're still going after him in multiple ways. Uh, then you've got to have a conservative house and Senate and not just for two years. Okay.

You've got to, you'd have to have it for probably eight. It's that historically is very difficult politically to keep both the white house, the house and the Senate. But if you're going to get real reforms done at the level we're talking about, that is what we will need to do, which means we need to convince our fellow Americans to join our cause. Yeah, absolutely.

And that's why you guys support the work of the ACLJ by going to aclj.org. I don't know if we have time for the remainder of their calls, got a minute and a half. Uh, we have two minutes take, all right, let's go to Robin in New York. Last call of the day. Keep it quick. I'm Mary. I'm so sorry.

We ran out of time. Go ahead. Robin. Uh, my question is, should we be more concerned with IRS agents carrying weapons or weaponizing calculators? Great. Great.

Great way to wrap up. And that's what they are doing. They're weaponized. They're calculators are their weapon.

And that's what Danny said. The commissioner of the IRS, their weapon is their calculator, but that's not how they should be looking at it. In most cases, these are just Americans trying to comply. Now they might sometimes get tax bills that are tough for them to pay right away.

They need to negotiate their payment plan. They do that. They're supposed to do that because most people are just trying to follow the rules. There's only so many bad actors in the country that want to even potentially get into it with the IRS are willing to take that risk. And they have a division for that, but they have weaponized their calculators. They weaponize their documents.

They weaponize the tax exempt division against Americans and against your rights. We're fighting back to ACLJ. We want you to go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. By the way, we've also launched to a new website, new campaign at ACLJ.org slash cover up. So we want you to go to that link and that's a great one to share with your friends and family who might not know a lot about our work because it gets into just one of our cases that we're working on, but it gets deeply into it in a really interactive and cool way. So share that link with your friends and family ACLJ.org slash cover up. I'd really ask you to put that on social media and donate if you can at ACLJ.org. Talk to you next week.