Assessing Foreign Threats with Ric Grenell

Today on Jay Sekulow Live, the international threats facing the United States in 2021. Live from Washington, D.C., Jay Sekulow Live. Phone lines are open for your questions right now. Call 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Welcome to Jay Sekulow Live.

This is Jordan Sekulow. We are going to, again, get into this discussion that's so important as we prepare for the new year, which is the threats facing the country in 2021. And, you know, at the ACLJ, we prepare for all outcomes where most of us are attorneys. We've got government affairs experts, of course, international affairs experts.

One of those will be joining us in just a minute for the entire broadcast today. And it's important that you always are prepared for the worst case scenarios, that you're prepared with the right information, that you know what the potential threats are, and where there could be, again, the most concern for our country, regardless of who is necessarily in the White House or how you feel about this general election in 2020, which I know how most of you feel like I do. That there were problems, that there were issues, and that, again, it was not right.

But we're all realistic people that have to deal with reality, whether we like it or not. And, again, we're going to be talking about today, Dad, which is basically looking forward in 2021, and we've got a great expert who's been part of the ACLJ team even before the election and has been walking people through this through the election, but now even after the election, too, these international threats. Rick Rinnell is the former acting director of national intelligence, former ambassador to Germany, is a senior advisor and special advisor to the ACLJ, especially as it relates to national security threats. Rick, I want to take some time here and look forward because one of the things that we talk about at the American Center for Law and Justice is that we don't just talk about the issues here. We take action, whether it's at the UN, where you have a lot of experience, or other international tribunals. It was this time last year I was at the International Criminal Court in The Hague arguing a case. So we've done, which was, by the way, a process like you've never seen anywhere in the world.

I mean, you learn to appreciate the justice system in the United States with all of its problems, versus going to these other countries with the judicial process that's – well, I won't get into the details. We'll save that for – that's going to be a whole other program. But, Rick, I think it's important for people to understand what you did.

What does a DNI, director of national intelligence, do? Look, first of all, it's such a pleasure to be here. And as we go into the new year, I think that we've really got to double down on action. We have to be able to support organizations like the ACLJ to be able to take the action that you were talking about in multilateral settings. And I can tell you I am so proud to be with this organization because I am a person of action.

I'm somebody who doesn't just like to talk about things. And I feel like I've got great partners in UJ and the whole team to be able to look at court cases and figure out how do we take action to be able to get and achieve the rights that so many deserve. And so I think it's a long answer to say at DNI we are looking at intelligence and trying to figure out what the truth is. We get a lot of information, a lot of raw intelligence that is coming in. And we're trying to assess what the truth is. And that's I think the most important thing is to have a U.S. government that pushes truth, that pushes facts, and sometimes those are difficult and sometimes that requires all of us to push the government to be more transparent. And transparency is our friend and that's what we push for because that's the clarity that we need, the facts that we need. You know, one of the things we do, Rick, of course, and you're aware of this, is that we have served Freedom of Information Act requests when we thought they were appropriate. We've just actually done one, two, on the situation with Eric Swalwell.

We'll get into that after the break. But as Rick said, I want our listening audience to understand this, we don't just talk about the issues. We bring people like Rick Grinnell as part of the team to work with us to figure out what is the right course of action to take because we actually take action. So in this particular, as we're in the last days of our most important months of the year, the last moments here, your support of the ACLJ makes a gigantic difference. And we want to encourage you right now to join in our matching challenge with just J's left so we can meet our goals.

That's right. At ACLJ.org you can double the impact of your donation. We have a group of donors, they said we will match every donation that comes through the month of December. Donate today at ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. Whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy, and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress, the ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's Matching Challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our Matching Challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, the play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to Jay Sekula Live.

It's Jordan Sekula. This is a special broadcast. We want to bring in our Senior Special Advisor Rick Rinnell for the full hour for you. Usually Rick is able to join for a segment or two. It's been a busy time.

But he is a special advisor to the ACLJ, continues to provide that for us. And that is going to be critical because of the threats we face. And we just generally got into that in the first segment, Dad. But now we're going to start going through this kind of specifically.

I know one that's kind of on the top of everyone's mind. Rick's been talking about it a lot too. But he's also said there's a lot more there than just Swalwell and what we've heard about Swalwell. And again, I think it is tip of the iceberg on China's threat to the U.S. We focus so much because of the focus the Democrats had on Russia. Not that that's not a threat, by the way. And there's no threat from Russia.

They did a major hack on the U.S. over the last couple days. But China, so many on the left are afraid to call China a threat. Or you're xenophobic if you call China a threat because of money. Because of business.

Whether it's the film industry, whether it is the NBA, whether it is any major company. Because of the business interests they have. So they look past the other way on the human rights violations.

The imprisonment, mass incarceration, concentration camps of Muslims in China. And you would think the left would be all over that. No, they're not. And we've seen now they infiltrate congressional offices.

That's no big deal. But they impeach Presidents over phone calls that 35 people are on. Yeah, so let's start with China because I think it's obviously made a lot of news because of Eric Swalwell, the Congressman.

Yes, but the fact of the matter is that it goes much deeper than that. And Rick, what I wanted to get to first was, I mean we talk about China before we even get into the national security threat. You look at what they do to minorities in China. And a minority in China is defined as anybody that's not a member of the Communist Party. And also, and I need to say this, for religious minorities in China, and I've been to China. I have met with the lawyers that represent the underground churches. And I gotta tell you something. It's unbelievably impressive people.

Unbelievably impressive spirit. But unbelievably oppressed. Where they literally will arrest the pastor in the middle of a sermon. And I went to one of the state churches, the government sanctioned churches. Rick, I don't know if you've ever had this experience in your travels, but in China they have these, it's called the Three Self Patriotic Church. And that's the Christian church. And the pastor's sermon, when it began, I'm listening to it translated obviously. Is, you know, a good sermon.

With the importance of the gospel, helping the poor, Jesus, I mean it was good. But then in the middle of the sermon he stops and says, but of course, none of this could happen without the government. And without the party allowing us to be able to do these things. So he has to give this like nod to the government.

Then, for the, what we would call the more typical, I mean it's not evangelical, they're evangelical churches but it's a completely different cultural environment. They are worrying about, they're looking at the door to their houses or their office buildings where they're meeting to make sure the police aren't going to come in. Horrible human rights abusers.

I mean, unbelievably. So it's like when we, the Iranians, that's another one. You know, they throw a pastor in jail, they throw gays off of buildings and this administration is going to start negotiating. But let's focus first on China. Looking at the threat of, I got that off my chest. It really, China bothers me because we've done work there, Rick, for years.

And it's, these people go through, it's horrific. Yeah, look, I've spent eight years at the UN dealing with the Chinese and the spying and the duplicity. You hit it right on the head, Jay. We've got a huge problem, a growing problem with China. And it's not just in politics, it's in academia. You and I have talked a lot about how our work can really penetrate into academia and the Chinese influence there at all of our schools.

That's something that I'm looking forward to doing in the new year with you. Look, we, we as Christians right now are feeling the brunt of COVID and we're feeling like we can't express ourselves and that we don't have the ability to go to church and worship the way that we want to. But imagine being in a place like China or in a place like Iran. This is where your religion is completely taken away from you. You have to hide it.

You've got no religious freedom. We have to, as Christians in the United States, continue pushing our government to make a firm stance to understand that we can't just look the other way on China's human rights abuses. We've seen what China's secrecy and communist China's secrecy can do to the entire economy of the world, not just our economy, but every single economy around the world has been impacted by COVID-19. The secrecy of the communist Chinese ways is why we are in this dilemma. They were not honest with us upfront and we all know because the US intelligence agencies collectively sent out a statement, a rare statement saying that China is where COVID-19 originated. They should have been much more honest with the world, with the UN, with WHO, with the United States and all countries to say what they were dealing with. They knew it when they shut down all of these flights from Wuhan to other cities in China, but allowed flights to go from Wuhan to other parts of the world.

They knew exactly what they were doing and this is what we're dealing with. China is a crisis for the United States. We must really push our government. In this next year, it's going to really be incumbent upon Christians and activists to make very clear that we cannot have a country like China that is doing all sorts of business with American companies, systematically having human rights violations and abuses. That is just unacceptable and I think that we're going to have to get a louder voice to make clear that working with China and looking the other way is unacceptable. Rick, we see this now with the Swalwell matter, which you've talked about a lot, I know, but for our audience, it's like the tip of the iceberg.

There's so much more there. And then you see the Nancy Pelosi, they're just shrugging their shoulders. Yeah, we knew about it, but that happened and yet they're put on the Intel committee. And I mean, that's just one example of one Congressman that has access to a lot of classified information, was calling the President a Russian agent throughout this time period.

So I think he deserves all the criticism he's getting now because of the role he played in just trying to disparage President Trump and calling him basically this agent of an outside force while he's got this relationship with a Chinese spy, puts the intern in who was a bundler somehow. I mean, I remember interning on Capitol Hill. I cannot bundle donations for the Congressman I interned for when I was there, but I mean, it's the idea that, and it goes to Hunter Biden too, the shrugging of the shoulders. Now they're starting to pick up some on Hunter Biden, but remember on the election, Rick, the first debate, Joe Biden called the President a liar. The media ran with it. And now the headlines are about how Hunter Biden was doing this business.

I mean, now the same people who ran with it, yeah, the President is lying about Hunter Biden, are writing stories about Hunter Biden's Chinese business dealings. Look, we have a problem in the Intel community because the Russia team is highly political and very quick to make judgments on raw intelligence. The China team is completely the opposite. They are judicious. They're slow.

They're not political. They want to wait for raw intelligence to be assessed and have a collective assessment. The Russia team leaks out little pieces of the raw intelligence before it's actually collectively thought through and assessed. This is a real problem because what's happening now, because of this problem in the Intel community, we've seen Democrats completely downplay the China threat.

And that plays right into the COVID-19 problem. Look what we've just experienced through this last election period. We had a whole bunch of Democrats mocking the threat from China and really giving Beijing's line. I think that we've got to get to the bottom of this and understand why are so many Democrats and let's be honest, several of them in the San Francisco area are all taking the Beijing line downplaying the Chinese threat. And they're doing it not just on the supply chain issue or engagement with China, but on COVID, on the election threat.

It just seems to be on every issue what China wants is what Democrats keep saying, which is look over there and look at Russia. We're going to have a lot more with Rick Grinnell coming up in the rest of this broadcast. I want to make a statement though to our listening audience.

I think it's really important for you to hear this. Here we are at the end of the year and it's been quite a year, 2020. I mean, it's been tumultuous to say the least and stressful, but because of your faithful support of the ACLJ, we've actually expanded, which is miraculous in and of itself and have had tremendous, tremendous gains.

One of those gains was being able to have Rick Grinnell join our team. When I say join our team, actively involved in our team at the ACLJ and your support of the American Center for Law and Justice allows that. It also allows this broadcast and it allows the lawyers here in the United States and around the globe in places we don't even talk about where you've got lawyers that are affiliated with us helping people where their needs are met all over the globe. Support the work of the ACLJ.

It's our most important week, most important days here. It's at ACLJ.org. You double the impact of your donation. We have a group of donors. They say we'll match every donation that comes through the month of December, but you've got to make that initial donation to double the impact.

Do it online now at ACLJ.org. Again, it's so important for us because we prepare for the new year, but their work continues in between. We don't stop folks at the ACLJ. We'll be right back with more with Rick Grinnell talking about these threats to the US and potential threats in 2021.

We'll be right back. It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life. Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith. I'm covering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support. Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Jay Sekulow Live.

This is Jordan Sekulow. Rick Grenell, our special advisor to the ACLJ, is joining us for the full hour of the broadcast today talking about the potential threats and ongoing threats to the U.S. in 2021. Who better to talk about it than a former acting director of national intelligence, a former ambassador to Germany, someone who spent almost a decade at the United Nations dealing with these countries, dealing with the intel, dealing with the classified information, probably the overwhelming amount of countries that would like to harm the U.S. and the ones that actually have the potential to do it. And so we talked about a couple of the big players. We talked about China.

They have the potential to do it. Russia. They show that they do it through hacking. We'll get more to Russia in a minute.

Yeah. But they've shown through just recently, a few days ago, the hacking that they can do and major businesses on our intel committee. But then there's the countries that want to do more to harm us too. That's like the Iran's. They may not be as sophisticated yet as a China or Russia. But there's in some ways more dangerous because of the extremism that fuels their government instead of whether it's money that fuels the Chinese government. And the ability to destabilize an entire region where the Chinese will be cautious about destabilizing the region because they're such a big part of the region. The Iranians, on the other hand, and we know we have an office in Jerusalem, of course, but we have done work on the Iran issue, the Iranian issue. And the approach to Iran under the Trump administration was isolate, build coalitions around them that support Israel and Israel supporting them.

UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan. I mean, more coming. Change the whole dynamic. Now, I always start with the fundamental abuse of a society. Here's the fundamental abuse of the Iranian society. Persians are great people. Really great people. Great history. I mean, tremendous history. Just really great people.

We know a lot of them. But let me tell you what you don't have in Iran. Diversity of any kind.

Let's start with religious diversity. You're a pastor in Iran, good chance you'll spend six to 12 years in prison once or twice in your ministry. If you're an American pastor, by the way, and you happen to be in Iran or a dual citizen of Iran, guess what you get?

You can get life imprisonment at Ebon Prison. That's not pretend. That's real. Gays and lesbians, they throw them off of buildings.

Christian pastors, they have shot them. Now, that's Iran. Now, this President has isolated Iran and crippled them economically. As I look forward, one of the things that grieves me most about the election, Rick, was the reshaping of the Middle East that I know you were a part of that we helped on the outside on that was really coming together.

And now it's the old guard back in. It's Obama 2.0, and you know with Iran what they're going to be doing. Yeah, look, let's not forget Kosovo and Serbia with their new historic agreements with Israel as well. Look, I'm very concerned about the engagement with Iran.

Let's be very clear now. There is this idea that Joe Biden has pushed. It's called consensus. Now, it sounds like a really nice word, but consensus just means that the Europeans or the U.N. Security Council, 14 other countries get to water down U.S. policy and decide what we do.

So instead of having a potent U.S. policy that's America first, you have to go to all these other countries and say, well, what do you guys think that we should do? And it's the lowest common denominator of a policy. And that's what they call consensus. And they've tried to build up this idea of consensus. Look, as a diplomat, I love consensus if it's going to be something that the United States is going to improve our security upon. We need to be able to be very firm about forming alliances around our policy, not letting others water down our policy. And that's where we're going with Iran, is that the Europeans want engagement.

They want to be able to say, if we just engage a little more with Iran and maybe do some trading, that the the regime and the mullahs will just suddenly see the light of day and they will start moving towards the rule of law, capitalism and greater forms of democracy. Now, let's look at what we've tried with China. 20 years ago, we did that. We thought, let's engage with China.

Let's put them into the WTO, the World Trade Organization. Let's see if engagement would actually work. I'm all for engagement. President Trump has tried engagement with the North Koreans.

But at some point, you have to be smart about your engagement to have a benchmark and to say, did our engagement work? I think that we need to face the music and we should have faced the music about 15 years ago that trying to get greater cooperation with China by getting them into the WTO didn't work. We have seen human rights abuses get worse. Look at Hong Kong. Look at our companies that have their technology stolen.

WTO has not only failed to stop the theft of U.S. intelligence and U.S. technology, but it's also allowed the Chinese to be able to pretend like they're part of the international community working in cooperation when they have absolutely come at us in every possible way. This is where we're going with Iran. This is what the Biden team wants. They're going to start talking about consensus and engagement on Iran. And we need to stand firm against it. Of course, China and Iran already have them.

There's already a nexus. They're already connecting. Now, Rick, we've got three minutes left in this segment. I always like giving people hope because the one thing I don't want is people who are just going to say, oh, this is horrible.

This is terrible. We have to take concrete action, which is now if the Senate stays conservative, stays Republican, you're going to have a better chance on some of these. But foreign policy issues, as you know, because you've dealt with them, the President has a lot of authority. How do we tell our folks that are millions listening to us right now, hundreds of thousands watching us, how do we engage when an administration is taking contrary positions? Look, I believe that transparency is important. So we're going to have to push and push the administration. And maybe that means going to court and taking people all the way to the end to say you must show us or stop doing something that you're doing. So we need legal challenges. I think that it's incredibly important for organizations like ACLJ to be funded.

This match is unbelievable. I can't believe that we're getting the ability of someone to say, well, we'll match anything that you can do in December. So I would just say to people, take action. Prayer is fantastic. Talking about it on social media is amazing, but you've got to take action and be a part of ACLJ because we are taking action. I would not be a part of this organization if it wasn't about action. And I love the fact that we have smart people sitting around a table to figure out what are we going to do to push transparency, to fight in court legally. This is why we have a constitutional rule of law that allows people like you and I and the Trump campaign or anyone to petition the courts and to bring your case to an independent judiciary when you feel wronged. You've got to have representatives.

If you don't have representatives, people fighting for you, then your voice is lost. And that's what we want to do is be able to be transparent and fight in court where needed. That is the key with the ACLJ. You know, yes, as we've said, if you love this broadcast, your donation goes to assist us with keeping this broadcast in all the stations, all the different places you see it. But most of what that donation goes to is the work, is what Rick is talking about, is the actual work, not just talking about issues. That's important too, informing you, but getting the work done in courtrooms around the world, with offices around the world. Support the work of the ACLJ the month of December.

It's critical. You double the impact to your donation. Donate today at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org.

We'll be right back in the second half hour. At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. I'm talking about freedom.

I'm talking about freedom. We will fight for the right to live in freedom. Live from Washington, D.C., Jay Sekulow Live. And now, your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome back to Jay Sekulow Live.

This is Jordan Sekulow. As we said, this is a special broadcast we put together for you because we've brought in our special advisor for national security and foreign policy, Rick Renell, to join us for the full hour. Because, again, we're an action-based organization.

We were just talking about that with Rick as we were finishing up our first half hour. But we also want to constantly keep you informed with the best information we can provide. So we brought on people like Rick Renell to get you up to speed on all those intel issues, on all the national security threats. And we take action and now we've got advisors who can help us even kind of fine-tune that action when it may be a hostile U.S. executive branch. A hostile members in Congress. A hostile world, you know, where you've got the International Criminal Court and the UN and these institutions. So we're fine-tuning all the time at the ACLJ so that when we go into battle, we go into battle the strongest way possible because that's part of what we do. We do not just talk about these issues. We live and breathe these issues because we fight them.

Yep. So, Rick, we talked about China. We talked about Iran.

And there's a connection there. And in the next segment of the broadcast, I want to get into the Russia aspect of this. But before we do, you've also had a lot of experience at the United Nations. And we are an NGO, our European Center for Law and Justice in Strasbourg. We have done a lot of work at the UN.

Specific, we've used it where it's been helpful. And there have been, you know, the UN generally is something else. But there are areas where it can be helpful. I mean, we've had some help from the UN on these cases involving persecution for religious minorities. They have been helpful there, at least putting pressure on these governments. Having said that, there's other aspects of it. The hostility to Israel is incredible. And I think that's just going to get worse because the administration is not going to block it.

We saw that with Obama at the end where he would not veto these measures. Now, you've been in the UN business for a long time. What's your view of that? And I know, but people have to understand you still have to engage it even when you don't like what they do.

Yeah, look, I'm somebody who doesn't believe that the UN should just be a talkfest where we deliver speeches and NGOs just, you know, raise their fist and scream. I think you've got to fight. You've got to do exactly what the ACLJ has done, which is go to different courts, the Hague or, you know, a tribunal, wherever it may be, and fight. File amicus briefs.

Put up a legal fight and challenge where possible. Let's be really clear. I think the Biden administration or the next Democratic administration that comes in is going to quickly try to put the United States back on the Human Rights Council. That's going to be a disaster because that council has not been reformed. We've tried to reform it many a times. It's proven to to ignore basic human rights violations around the world, like from China, Hong Kong and Iran, other places, while completely picking on Israel in laughable terms. It is really to the point where you just can't be a part of this organization in any credible way. I think what Rick said, though, about the Human Rights Council, though, is something you can't ignore because that council.

Where we do a lot of our appearances. Yeah. But I mean, the anti-Americanism there and also the fact that they will put on the council, that the U.N. has like no rules about who's on, and so they stay. Sometimes the leaders are Venezuela. I mean, it's been crazy.

Oh, yeah. They're the worst human rights abusers in the country. They're in charge of it. So, again, it gives them the opportunity to silence or put down any of the good reporting that the U.N. rapid tours, the U.N. staff on human rights would be putting out on their countries. If they're able to kind of silence it, push it aside and see what the world is constantly, these bad actors are constantly thinking about America, is we have short attention spans. So if we don't really focus in on it and we kind of move forward, then we'll forget about what's going on in China. We'll forget about the human rights abuses in Venezuela and we won't stay on it.

And that's how they've used that organ of the U.N. Look, we're taking a break. We come back more with Rick Rinnell, but your support of the ACLJ allows Rick Rinnell to be part of our team, allows this broadcast to come on the air, allows our office in Strasbourg, France to engage the United Nations, our office in D.C. to engage the Congress and the Supreme Court. Your support makes a huge difference.

We're in a matching challenge last couple of days. ACLJ.org At the American Center for Law and Justice, we're engaged in critical issues at home and abroad, whether it's defending religious freedom, protecting those who are persecuted for their faith, uncovering corruption in the Washington bureaucracy and fighting to protect life in the courts and in Congress. The ACLJ would not be able to do any of this without your support.

For that, we are grateful. Now there's an opportunity for you to help in a unique way. For a limited time, you can participate in the ACLJ's matching challenge. For every dollar you donate, it will be matched. A $10 gift becomes $20.

A $50 gift becomes $100. This is a critical time for the ACLJ. The work we do simply would not occur without your generous support.

Take part in our matching challenge today. You can make a difference in the work we do, protecting the constitutional and religious freedoms that are most important to you and your family. Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, the Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to Jay Sekio Live. We're with Rick Cornell. He's been with us.

He's going to be with us for the full hour of the broadcast. And you know, we heard a lot about Russia during the four years of the Trump administration. I sure did. But we kind of not focused on where we should have been on the Russian threat. So just, you know, like as you're listening to this broadcast, there is still an ongoing Russian hack attack on major companies in the U.S., the Intel. I mean, I just got a breaking news alert that they just figured out a new way that Russia was penetrating all of our systems they didn't even know about.

So it is a real threat. But I think it got polarized as a political issue because it was, you know, people like Eric Swalwell and the Democrat Party calling the President a Russian agent. And the Mueller investigation. And that went nowhere and then it was Ukraine. And that was a violation to be impeached over because of a phone call with a new Ukrainian leader again.

So we didn't focus on the real problems. And see, I think this is why those world leaders, they love when America gets distracted by a phony dossier about Russia and ignores the real issues in Russia. We have an office in Moscow, the Slavic Center for Law and Justice. Their primary role is continuing to fight for religious liberty rights that were guaranteed at the fall of the Soviet Union. They're usually, they've been pretty successful. They are very successful. They usually are fighting regional governments because like Putin or not, at the national level, he's allowed more churches to come in.

But it's still always, it's a very careful balance that they are living in too. We have a big, it's a big operation in Russia. It is because Russia is massive and you still have a lot of these ex-Soviet elements running most of the country. I think they have, we have, what was it, 300 affiliate lawyers in Russia?

Yes. 300 affiliated lawyers throughout the country. In the whole base in Moscow. Moscow with a block over Red Square.

Yeah, it's right there. And they are very public about their work. And they've been able to, again, navigate, like we talked about these Chinese attorneys that we've worked with. I mean, they navigate a tightrope, to say the least.

It is a tightrope. But the threat from Russia is real to the U.S. We just were, we like ignored that because we got focused on this political Russia problem. Yeah, so taking away the political side, Rick is the former acting director of national intelligence. Russia on the threat matrix, how do you see it? Look, Russia is a problem.

It's always been a problem and it always will be a problem. It's largely, if not exclusively, but largely cyber attacks and misinformation. And the misinformation is usually around election period. You know, we used to call it propaganda, but for some reason they've removed this name propaganda and now they've been pushing election interference. But the reality is, is that what the Russia misinformation campaign is, is largely on social media and it inflames debate and pushes fake news, misinformation, wrong narratives. It tries to inflame our debates about policy issues, which sometimes are about the elections. But we rushed into and I would say that the Democrats largely pushed this idea of a election interference. They removed the word propaganda and pretended like there were vote machines that were changed.

Now, that's what the narrative was for years. When I came in as acting DNI, I asked on my first day for the team to give me the entire Russian collusion file. I wanted to read everything that we had so that I knew what the truth was. And shortly thereafter, what I found is transcripts from House Intelligence Committee meetings under oath where we also had lawyers present. And the individuals that were pushing this Russian collusion narrative on TV and in public said quite something different when they were under oath with their lawyer sitting next to them.

And it was dramatic. It was on TV saying that Donald Trump was a was was part of the Russian collusion efforts and that he was, you know, some people were even saying that he was a Russian asset. And then under oath, these same people would say, I haven't seen any evidence that says or suggests anything about Russian collusion in our government. It was so stark and so maddening to see a false push publicly and then under oath, a completely different story that that's when I started in on saying, well, let's just declassify this.

Let's show the American public what these individuals here in Washington, D.C. are saying when they are under oath. And that's, I think, the problem that that we face and that really ACLJ is going to be able to make a big impact on is demanding transparency, pushing bureaucracies to stop overclassifying information to protect their PR image. But to give the American people as much information as possible, we shouldn't be afraid of declassifying information. Of course, we have to classify something if it's got a source or a method. And what that really means is a source that we're using to find the information or the method in which we're using to get that information. And so I was very clear with the team to say, look, if you can show me that this is source or a method, then we will classify this information. But when you bring to me information that's overly classified because you're covering up a mistake of the bureaucracy or you're covering up something that that would help you politically, we can't have our intelligence community politicized like this.

We have to be honest. Let me give you an example that was really maddening on the Hunter Biden emails. We saw that the laptop was seized and right before the election, there was some attention from the center right media to say, wow, we've got this laptop. His business partner has come clean to say this is it. The laptop has some damaging information, not just about Hunter Biden.

This is about Joe Biden as well. And this was all coming out before the election. But we saw 50 former intelligence officials sign a letter that said this laptop is part of the Russian disinformation campaign.

Now, let me be clear. They were wrong. And not only were they wrong, they never saw any classified information or reports. That was a political manipulation that these 50 former intelligence officials did right before the election. They politicized intelligence by dismissing it as Russian disinformation. They never saw actual raw intelligence on this.

They never saw any report. They jumped to write the letter for political purposes and they used intelligence to do that. Now, I think that that is typical of Washington, D.C., but it's got to be cleared out. We've got to stop politicizing intelligence. It's too important. Transparency is not political. We need to push for more transparency. I want to get to it kind of on that broader scale as we talk about the threat, because you brought in these specifics that you actually dealt with.

But it's pretty scary to think. I mean, how much of a problem is the intel? We file a FOIA and information gets classified or sources and methods, things like that, Rick. How much of it is the bureaucracy covering up mistakes? Is there a lot of that going on?

There's a lot of it. I think the knee jerk reaction from the bureaucracy is just to not share. And that's the ways of Washington.

You've got a whole bunch of people who find it better to not share information because it would cause problems and people would then inquire and it would be more scandalous. And so Washington protects itself. It's the whole idea of a swamp. You know, we we we make fun of it and it's a funny name, but it's actually intellectually accurate where a swamp doesn't get outside fresh water coming in. It has all stale water and there's no fresh ideas. There's no new water coming in. And so it becomes really stinky, swampy.

And if you're part of it, you become stinky and swampy. And so I think that what we've got to be able to do is bring fresh ideas. We should demand that people who are working for the government be transparent and don't think the American people are stupid.

We can handle it. We can read reports and we can look at the gray area. We don't look and say everything's got to be black and white. We can be thoughtful. And I think that the media in D.C. certainly is not thoughtful. They're looking for a headline.

They want everything to be right or wrong, good or bad, black or white. And many times we have to look in the middle, the gray area and say, you know, some of this can be declassified or shouldn't be classified. And you're overclassifying information that the American public can handle. You know, one of the things I love about our broadcasts is that we have a full hour with you. So, you know, Rick and I, my dad, we do a lot of television interviews and the other five minutes, six minutes. There's some new networks that are getting better. I think at spending time getting into discussions, places like Newsmax and others are letting people talk a little bit more. And of course, our friends like Sean Hannity and others. But but you don't get to discuss it for an hour.

And we come back. I want to talk about Europe because of Rick's time as the U.S. ambassador to Germany and our allies there. You put that in quotes sometimes, but our allies in Europe and then also proactively. You know, we want to not just talk about the threats, but how we can proactively engage them in a kind of in a positive note, if you will, of how we can fight back.

You can support the work, of course, the ACLJ. We bring you all this information. And we haven't gotten to Europe yet in a full hour of broadcast. We're going to.

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Give a gift today online at ACLJ.org. So we've had our Special Advisor for Foreign Policy and National Security, Rick Riddell, with us for the full broadcast. He's remaining with us now for our final segment. We have hit China, Iran, Russia, these threats they pose in 2021, and also problems with inside our own bureaucracy and inside the Intel community, which oftentimes, as Rick said, which is just shocking to hear, someone who was the Acting Director of National Intelligence, that oftentimes things get classified or called source and method so we can't get access to it through FOIA, it never gets to the public, because they're covering up a mistake they made. What we haven't gotten to yet is some of the work in Western Europe, Central Europe as well, the Abraham Accords and kind of how will that play out with a potentially different administration. Well, let's also, Rick, in addition to being the Acting Director of National Intelligence and former Ambassador to Germany has been a special envoy for the President, for the administration on Kosovo, Serbia, and that whole situation.

Rick, let's talk about that situation, because a lot of people aren't as familiar with it as they need to be. Look, it's maybe one of my favorite jobs ever to be the Presidential envoy for Kosovo-Serbia negotiations. And so when I arrived on the scene, you know, we had 20 years of political fighting, and what President Trump said to me is, let's try to create some economic momentum. Let's see if job creation and bringing in U.S. and European companies to go into the region, see if that can somehow change the political calculus. Now, the old Balkan hands in Washington, D.C., hated it, because we weren't talking about all of their political issues, which give them jobs in Washington, D.C., and they've been writing about it for 20 years.

They absolutely don't want this issue to go too fast to the end, because then their careers are over. And so what we flipped on its head was the whole idea of first doing economic development, talking to our partners in the region, moving on past some of the hard political issues. We got four economic agreements, and it's really changed the calculus. I think any administration that comes after the Trump administration in the future is going to have to deal with a newfound love in the region for America, for the Trump-style economy, for job creation. And so I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to bring in some massive amounts of jobs, and that's going to change the political calculus. Certainly, Serbia and Kosovo are going to be closer to the United States. The perceived conflict that's there is going to create a lot of momentum, and it's certainly going to help on the other political issues that they have to deal with in Europe towards membership into the EU. I want to talk about Europe, too, because you are the U.S. ambassador to Germany. Germany has got the biggest economy in Europe. But your time in Germany as well, these are supposed to be our top allies. I know in a lot of matters, it's probably no question they are. But it seemed to be getting very hostile because they just didn't like our approach, which I think you've rightfully said is that it's not all about consensus under the Trump administration. I worry we're going to go back to that. But people, I think, also, we need to get kind of up to speed on what is happening in Europe.

Yeah. So, first of all, let's remember when we talk about Europe or specifically Germany, there are three concepts. There are the German people, there's German businesses, and there's the German government. And I think it's really important to not include all of them in how we're describing Germany.

And let me give you an example. Great story. President Trump meeting with Chancellor Merkel.

They were meeting one on one, but we say one on one, but there's really like four other people in the room on each side listening and talking. And so I'm there listening and President Trump just hones right in with the chancellor and says, look, I don't blame you for wanting to buy cheap Russian gas and I don't blame you for ignoring the obligations at NATO. You don't want to pay that much for a military because you've got, you know, thirty four thousand American troops there.

I don't blame you. But you have to understand that you now are dealing with somebody who wants America first, just like you want Germany first. We recognize in our policy that countries are going to seek what's best for them. So in Germany, there's a Germany first economic model. In France, there's a France first economic model. Brexit happened because the UK wanted to put themselves first.

And so we should be very clear that this is the standard that that Donald Trump pushing America first is only doing what every other country does. But the difference is, is that the people, many people in Germany, for instance, many Germans love it. They love when Germany is put forward first. They do think that Germany should have a working military.

They do think that Germany should spend money on its own people and abide by the rules. But I think that for too long we've had consecutive U.S. governments and administrations that have allowed the Europeans to act out in their own way to put themselves first and to demand or expect that the United States is just going to continue not putting itself first, that we're going to somehow take care of the world. We see it at the U.N. all the time. I've never been in a diplomatic meeting, a diplomatic conversation where the other side doesn't ask the United States for a long list of things that they want us to do. And every one of those things that they ask us to do are always going to benefit them. That's part of diplomacy. And we're the only country in the world that gets in trouble when it's our turn and we say, well, this is what we'd like you to do because it's going to benefit us. You know, Rick, to follow that up in our last question here, as you know with our work at the ACLJ that you're a part of, we are proactive.

We're going to take action on this. And that includes international tribunals, not just courts, but the United Nations. It includes other global institutions, European Union, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. We engage all of these international bodies. And I think coming from you, who's someone who has decades of experience in this, if you could just tell our audience how important it is to engage these international bodies, even some that you just don't like the way they operate.

But to have a presence there is so important to engage it. When we have a meeting at the U.N. or at The Hague or some international multilateral setting, countries always show up to talk. And it's incredibly important to have outsiders, NGOs, third party validators, as we call them, to have other voices. Because otherwise, Europeans or Arab countries are just going to say, well, of course the United States feels that way.

But they look around the room and they say nobody else is here saying it. I think sometimes we get caught up in diplomacy looking at the placards in the room. And if it's just the United States and then on the other side at some random other country that's up against us, it looks like it's just one voice versus one voice. And what we have to be able to do is represent the truth and show that we have a whole bunch of support. So having ACLJ in the room, having voices to say, look, we represent X number of Christians around the world or we are here to give voice to this situation.

The outside perspective in those settings is incredibly important to sway the rest of the body that it's not just a one on one conversation. Oh, I appreciate it, Rick. And it's exactly what we do every single day here in the United States and literally around the globe. And your support for the ACLJ funds operations in France, in Jerusalem, on the continent of Africa, in Russia, literally around the globe.

And of course, keeps this broadcast on the air. This is it, folks. We're in the last hours of our matching challenge campaign. Do it now.

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