MAJOR Win in IRS Lawsuit

This is Jordan Sekulow. Today on Sekulow, a major win against the IRS in federal court. 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. We alerted the IRS to our FOIA back in July 23rd of 2021.

I can hold that up for people watching the broadcast here. That is right here from the ACLJ. Then we had to take the IRS to court and that began again August of 2021. The IRS tried to file a motion to dismiss and yesterday that motion to dismiss was denied.

The ACLJ victorious. In fact, just to read a little part of this for you from the court's opinion, for all these reasons the IRS has not met its burden of showing the ACLJ's FOIA request as improper. It's hereby ordered that the IRS motion to dismiss is denied without prejudice.

It's further ordered that the party shall file a joint status report apprising the court of how they wish to proceed in this case, including a proposed schedule for briefing or disclosure of key documents. Remember the IRS initially had denied tax exempt status to a Christian organization called Christians Engaged. And in their denial, which I'm holding up right now for you, they created a legend. In that legend, it was interesting, the capital D is what stood for Republicans.

M stood for Word of God. And it said part of the reason why you were denied status. Now ultimately they got the status. What we are looking for here is whether or not there's a bigger IRS kind of conspiracy going on to target conservative groups applying for status yet again before the midterm elections. We saw this, we've been through this before at the ACLJ and representing those Tea Party clients. They wrote the letter, while your founder and President is a motivational speaker, former D congressional candidate, but D means Republican there, political consultant, and preacher of the gospel. Can you believe that the IRS uses language like preacher of the gospel?

And your vice President is a motivational speaker, former President of F, F being the Texas Eagle Forum, an intercessor, I guess that's a negative now that you pray for other people, and former prayer coordinator for promise keepers, but you have to look up for G, and a homeschool mom. So the fact that she's a homeschool mom was part of why they denied this group status. Now ultimately, because of our win in the IRS case, this group got their status that they deserved to get.

But there's something else at play here. And what we've got to find out, and the reason we went to court, is because what else is at play is who in the IRS decided that they could start putting down first this legend, D is Democrat, M, word of God, and why would the IRS be asking questions about your biblically held beliefs, your view of the Bible as it relates to policy, as if that's off limits? Considering we have a consent decree from the Internal Revenue Service when we went to court and beat them after three years, that says the IRS acknowledges that the First Amendment generally prohibits the government from discriminating against citizens on the basis of their viewpoints of protected speech and or protected associational interests.

And the IRS acknowledges that the criteria for selecting tax exempt applications for IRS review should focus on the activities of the organization, not their viewpoints. So here we go. You realize what happened here. As soon as the new administration came in, the Biden administration came in, the moment they came in, one of their first acts is to go right back to the targeting using the IRS as a weapon. Now we beat them back. And now what's interesting about this court case is this. Your American Center for Law and Justice, what the court said, the American Center for Law and Justice sued the IRS to compel disclosure of seven categories of records the ACLJ sought in a FOIA request. And as Jordan just read for you, we succeeded in beating back their motion to dismiss. But we sued the Internal Revenue Service when they're overreaching. We don't hesitate to sue the IRS when they are violating the Constitution. We fight back.

And that's where you come in, folks. Your support of the ACLJ makes all the difference in the world. We encourage you to go to ACLJ as we fight back on all of this. That's right, ACLJ.org.

A new blog op, too, so you can share it with your friends and family. ACLJ scores a win over the Biden administration in our lawsuit over IRS targeting of conservatives and Christians. It looks like it's happening again. We want to stop it before it gets out of control. Go to ACLJ.org, support our work, and give us a call. 1-800-684-3110, the Biden administration's attempt to silence you.

It's what it's all about. Welcome back to Sekulow, this attempt to silence conservative groups. We are seeing the Misinformation Disinformation Governance Board run out of a law enforcement agency of the federal government, DHS. We're seeing IRS, which also has a law enforcement division within it, and they work closely with the DOJ and the FBI. We've seen them again trying to deny Christian organizations that happen to be conservative organizations with these letters. Now, they fought back using our win in the IRS case to ultimately give that group status, but again, these groups had to go through legal challenges. They didn't just, again, they should have just been approved like any other 501c3. They applied for their status.

They're a new organization. They shouldn't be denied because of their biblical worldview. I mean, the fact that, again, part of the denial was that the vice President was a homeschool mom.

Think about that for a minute. Yes, they point that out, the first page of their denial letter. So this idea, when we talk about the attack on parents speech, when we talk about the idea of, like last week, the FBI and Department of Justice using the Counterterrorism Division to go after parents who dared to speak up at school board meetings and challenge school board candidates in political elections and said, you know, we're going to beat politicians, and they had FBI knocking on their door. This all is really, it's a copy of what the Obama administration tried to do before they were facing a very difficult midterm election, which is silence real grassroots American organizations.

I'm speaking to a group tonight. It's the same kind of organizations that get targets. It's a group that hands out constitutions.

They're partnering with the Bible Society, which hands out Bibles. And again, it's those kind of groups because they have, you know, Constitution in their name and their leaders might be more conservative leaning that somehow they should be, you know, targeted. Those were the kind of groups we were fighting for back in the IRS days initially. And what you can't give up is that this attempt, I think, Dad, which is so troubling to me, to constantly weaponize agency after agency against political speech and political organizing. And they weaponize agencies that have law enforcement capabilities.

Remember, people forget this. The Internal Revenue Service has a criminal enforcement agency, a criminal division of the IRS called the Criminal Division. And if you have a agency that we know in the past has without any hesitation tried to get other agencies, including the FBI and the FEC, to, quote, bring a criminal case against who?

Against one of these groups. This was Tea Party groups. And that will basically scare them all off. But listen to what this, in the IRS, what they put in their letter.

This is what's so outrageous about all this, and I'm glad we got a great resolution. Your mission statement indicates that you exist to awaken, motivate, and empower ordinary believers in Jesus Christ. Now, first of all, they wrote that in an IRS letter. Somebody had that dictated in or typed in and said that's okay. We've got that on the screen.

I mean, think about that for a moment, that that's okay. Then they said, here's the issues. Pray for the nation regularly. Vote in every election to impact the culture. Engage hearts in some form of political education or activism for the future of the nation. Strive to educate Christians on the importance of prayer, voting, and engagement in a nonpartisan manner. Now, they're not taking sides. By the way, then they say this. For example, concerning the topic of partisan political races, the blog indicates that the party platform should be looked at to see which candidate is most aligned with Christian biblical values.

The blog lists some of the most important Christian biblical values as sanctity of human life, government and debt, goes on and on. Here's the point. The IRS doesn't get to do this. Now, fortunately, our friends at Liberty Institute, Kelly Shackelford's group, was able to get the group tax exemption. But as you'll recall, we went to court, and I mentioned it briefly in the last segment, and obtained both the monetary damages and a consent decree for our clients in three and a half years' worth, almost four years' worth of litigation with the IRS. So this goes a long way back, to let them not do this. So the question then becomes, is this some rogue agent, which is what President Obama called it years ago, until it was found out it was a nationwide campaign orchestrated by the head of the tax-exempt division, Lois Lerner, or is this, in fact, a policy? And when you've got a policy like this, you have to have a situation that becomes very, very clear. And that very, very clear is the nature and scope of what's going on here, and that is targeted enforcement. The silencing of conservatives. That's why I'm going to take your phone calls on 1-800-684-3110, trying to scare you out a bit to be silent, to scare you from entering into the school board meeting because, oh, the FBI is showing up at some of these parents' homes, to scare you out of organizing a group because the IRS might deny you status, to scare you away from the abortion battle.

I mean, because let's all be honest, there's two things. There's the midterms coming up, and there's a lot of big primaries tonight. We'll cover those tomorrow on the broadcast. Hopefully we'll get most of those results in by the time we're on the broadcast tomorrow. But, remember, there's also a major cultural battle about to begin, and it's already begun because of the leak of that draft opinion from the court. If that opinion holds or something very close to it and Roe v. Wade is overturned, there's going to be this grassroots surge at a very local level, state and local level. We're preparing for it. We're going to announce something on Thursday on this broadcast.

You definitely want to be listening on Thursday about a new effort we're launching at the ACLJ precisely for these battles. And now we're a big organization with a lot of attorneys, so when we go to the IRS and apply and work with that, that's one thing. But it's something very different when you're a small organization doing this on your own. Think, hey, there's no problem here.

There's lots of groups like us that exist. And then you get these denials, and you've got to figure out who's going to represent me, or do I even continue on in this battle, or maybe they're so invasive I just stop. That's their ultimate goal. They want you just to sit back and stop. It's not even about going to vote. They're fine with you going to vote. What they don't want you to do is to get other people to go to vote. They don't want you educating people on the issues like they talk about here, educating people on the sanctity of life, biblical justice, even the U.S. and Israel relations. That's mentioned in an IRS letter. They're getting into foreign policy. That the IRS is sitting there writing this.

I want you to put yourself in visual—see this. An IRS agent, tax-exempt agent, is doing this, is putting this in writing. And that is absurd.

To say biblical values, mission, then to go ahead and say prayer, word of God, and they come up with this fake legend as if all that's okay. That's the problem. Yeah, I think again, when you look at the entire scope of this, you put everything together that we're working on with this IRS win we've got, but again, you've got to keep fighting them. You've got to be an organization like the ACLJ that can double down on your fights. They're not going to be over in a month.

They're not going to be over while they're on TV. You've got to fight these battles to ensure it does not become widespread. We learned about the IRS targeting because so many groups got the similar questionnaire. But now we've learned, let's not wait for that. Let's get ahead of that to make sure that the IRS isn't implementing a broad-scale plan to shut down these groups. In that situation, what they did was they kept slowing the process so far down that the groups never got a yes or no answer.

For years. Right. And then that affects, of course, your ability to get insurance if you need to rent a bus to go to an event or host an event, so you need insurance to host an event. Things like that.

Basics of running an organization that you need. That's why these groups decide voluntarily. I always like to say this, by the way. All of these groups went to the IRS voluntarily and submitted their information and said, if you need more information, let us know. And instead of that, they got denials back because, hey, you've got a former minister, you've got a homeschool mom on your board, and you talk about US and Israel, and you talk about border security. You talk about the Bible too much. Well, if you talk about the Bible too much, you know that's helping Republicans, which they label as capital D in their letter.

They don't want to spell that out. I mean, this again shows you what the danger of a mis and disinformation board can be, especially when it's embedded in a law enforcement agency and why we're taking these actions so seriously at the ACLJ. We don't just fight them when they're in the news.

Oftentimes, you'll see, you know, you can comment on that, and that's when it's sometimes good to utilize those moments to get people educated. Certainly, we're doing that right now with this case. But realize now to fight this case, to continue on to find out, do they have another be on the lookout list, another bolo list where they're trying to target conservative groups in the lead up to the midterm elections, and especially pro-life groups as well. Because there's going to be a whole new group of pro-life organizations. You know, it's been at the national level for so long, there's going to be even more local groups at a community level trying to apply for taxes and status.

And you're right, they're going to go after them, and I think that's where it becomes, again, extremely dangerous. I'm not going to play it in the next segment, but I testified before Congress on this very issue right when this broke, and it's pretty dramatic. Now, I'd liken Will, if we could get the question, not just the answer so that people understand what the question the Congressman asked me was. But we testified on this very fact, and that's when we started getting some results. Of course, then we did the FOIA requests, which we've done now, and that has been obviously beating the government in court.

I want to stress this for a moment. The Internal Revenue Service, under Joe Biden, fought to dismiss the case. Okay, that's their rights litigation. The court denied their motion to dismiss and said we get to proceed, which we are. By the way, we've got lawyers in court today on a case on behalf of Israel. So your team is working, and we're getting great results. I want to encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ. If you're not getting your email, sign up for those at ACLJ.org. Follow us on all the social media platforms we have, which is now multiple. Of course, we have Twitter, Truth, Facebook, YouTube. Parlors are preferred.

A place for you to view the broadcast if you're viewing it. Go to ACLJ.org for more information. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back to Secula. We are taking your phone calls too as well at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. And just to read from your portion to from the application of law section that this group got. I just want you to understand the extent the federal government, the IRS, and these agencies are weaponizing against you. They wrote this, quote, You educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental, including areas of sanctity of life. The biblical teachings are typically affiliated with the D party, but the D, remember, in the legend, that means Republican. So biblical teachings now happen to fall between partisan politics. So the IRS sees your faith only as political, which is absurd. They don't need to be in the business of getting involved in theology. That is not the business of the federal government at all. Certainly not the IRS. And so because you're typically affiliated with the Republican Party and candidates, this disqualifies you from exemption under the IRS 501c3. This, again, the idea that the IRS was starting to look into people's theology.

So, you know, your theology is too conservative for us, so it's going to favor conservative candidates. So you're now not qualified to be a C3 organization. It's absurd, but you have to then put it the big picture together.

The big picture is this. Do you feel like there's an attempt to silence you? That's why I'm asking the question today for you to call in about.

1-800-684-3110. To silence you about speaking out on the issues that you care about. And then you get demonized immediately. If you care about border security, you're somehow inhumane. Even if you talk about the inhumane treatment of the people crossing the border illegally and how that's creating a humanitarian crisis. If you ask questions about where is the baby formula going? Is it going to the border instead of into the American shelves because of the border crisis?

That's somehow inhumane. No, it's just a question. Where's the government utilizing its resources? Are we shipping it all to Ukraine? What is the issue when you've got to take care? The idea again that it's bad now to say take care of Americans first.

Because America first is a bad term in Washington, D.C. Ultra maga now has become Joe Biden's favorite thing to talk about. Harry, I want to ask you this as Director of Policy. When you look at this entire case, it's good that we beat the government back on the motion to dismiss. What do you see here?

Well, I see several things. First, the Biden administration has launched an unmitigated attack on grassroots Americans, on Christians, on pro-lifers. And this is all part of a war on truth. And it is also part of the Biden administration's attempt to eviscerate Americans' freedom of speech rights and free exercise rights. The Biden administration seeks to entangle religion with government policy contrary to the United States Constitution. And so if you subscribe to certain religious or political views, then the Biden administration seeks to use the entire weight of government to deny you your rights within the meaning of both the law and the Constitution. Albert Einstein has said a clever person solves problems while a wise person avoids them.

The Biden administration shows that it is neither wise nor clever. Instead, it invites problems, leaving the courts to solve problems the IRS unnecessarily causes. This idiocy must stop.

I want to follow up on what you just said about the unnecessary causes. Now, here they're on notice already, the IRS, Harry. I mean, they've been on notice that you can't do this targeted viewpoint discrimination.

We don't allow that in the United States. Yet they did it anyways. They did it because they are political ideologues. They believe in ideology over the Constitution. And so they see the Constitution merely as a stepping stone to power. So they will utilize the Constitution when it serves their interests.

But they will deny opponents the right to deploy the Constitution to protect their interest. We have done this in court now with beating back the IRS's motion to dismiss. But we also went to the halls of Congress. Well, there was a hearing and they asked us to testify.

I did. This is a question from then Representative Devin Nunes, now the head of Truth Social. And my response, take a listen. What should Americans be looking for? What should Congress be looking for? And I look forward to you just answering that, providing information for us.

But thank you all for being here. So, Congressman, the problem is not just the individual agent. I do not believe for a moment that an individual agent wrote a letter to Christians United, not reviewed, with a legend including M equals the word of God, you know, D equals Republican. I mean, and first of all, just think about that for a moment, the idea that they would even do that. To me, that still is the issue, the fact that the IRS thought they could do this.

That's what's so absurd. Yeah, I want to go to the phones. Tim in California on Line 1. Hey, Tim, welcome to Secular. You're on the air.

Thank you for taking my call. Sure. Why is the IRS so intent on doing whatever they can with other branches of the Biden administration to make America like China? Listen, I think there's two things at play.

One is elections, politics. They control the bureaucracy. They know the bureaucracy is very favorable to them, so it's not going to go after all political groups. So that's the difference between kind of China and us.

Well, it's kind of similar, actually. They'll protect the liberal interest groups. I can imagine a liberal group getting a letter like this, a liberal religious group, getting into their theology and saying, well, you know, you're going to help the Rs too much, but the R means Democrat, and getting deep into, oh, well, your kids go to a progressive school.

Like they pointed out the homeschool mom in the letter. So if they go to a progressive school, that must mean that you're a progressive group, so you're not going to be eligible for C3 status. The idea is political control. So the silencing of your free speech rights is political control. And if they silence your free speech rights, they're silencing your right to organize, your right to petition the government for redress of grievances. They are silencing your religious freedom rights, the free exercise of religion. These are all, the free press, all are based on the idea that we have the freedom of speech, and that the government very, very rarely gets involved and says this kind of speech is not going to be allowed. And in those kinds of situations, the government, even when it's criminal, even when it's really vile speech, the government and the courts have been very weary of condemning that speech. That's why when they start saying awful but lawful speech, they have a very different view of what they think.

They think we should be the Europeans who don't have real freedom of speech, who rely on parliament and laws to say what you can and can't say that year. What's interesting here, of course, is that the IRS, I keep going back to this, thought they actually could do this. And Harry, I think the dangerous thing here, and I'm glad that we were able to file this lawsuit, and we're going to find out if this was a national campaign, and we're going to shut it down. But the fact that they did it shows the hubris, shows the fact that despite a consent decree saying you can't do it, filed in Washington, D.C. by a federal judge, they still did it anyways.

I think that's correct. And so many of the bureaucrats in government, many of the individuals who are part and parcel of the deep state believe that free speech is a luxury which we can no longer afford. Elites in America, like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada, they admire China's social credit system and they seek political control, as Jordan suggests. It's all part and parcel, I would argue, of the World Economic Forum's attempt to control rank and file Americans.

And I think the American people should not stand for it. We want you to support our work at the American Center for Law and Justice. That's ACLJ.org. This week on Thursday, so you don't want to miss the show, we're prepared to launch a new initiative. So we're going to be getting into that Thursday and Friday on the broadcast to really, again, engage at a level that we can't engage as a C3.

So a little bit of a hit there. But more coming from the ACLJ to combat this. Be right back. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today.

ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome back to Sekulow.

We are continuing to take your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. This idea, I just want to get a sense from you. Do you feel like the Biden administration is trying to silence you? I mean, it looks like by all efforts, they're trying to scare you away from political organizing leading up to them. We have elections going on all the time right now with primaries, a lot of primaries tonight that have been in the news. But there's going to be primaries all leading up to.

And then there's the actual midterm elections in November. And the idea of silencing you or making you feel demonized by being part of a movement that they, this government disagrees with. I mean, the way even saying that out of the words, but they are demonizing the idea that we would put baby formula first for Americans. If we could figure out where those supply chains are, they're not giving us information about how much is going to the border, how much is going overseas instead of when we can't even fill our own shelves in many states across the country where that's becoming a crisis. You think about these crises, gas price crisis, baby formula crisis. Do you think there's a reason why they want to shut you up?

They want to make sure you don't get involved in politics. I mean, foreign policy has been a disaster to say the least. I mean, we've seen Russia invade Ukraine and become this kind of stalemate, horrible war. And we're going to get into some of that later.

Other countries trying to join NATO now because they're worried about Russia invading them. I mean, this is real world issues, but they don't want you engaging on. There's a lot of domestic issues at play here.

The schools, the curriculum. Again, are we getting into another summer of violence? We saw this horrible violence break out over the weekend again. It's that sense of feeling that we defunded the police, we demonized the police, now we're going to demonize conservative activists and we get them to try and stay held. And to add to that, we're going to add a misinformation disinformation campaign or a committee governance oversight committee for misinformation to disinformation. And we're going to put this, not with some benign agency, no, no, no, we're going to put it with Homeland Security because they have criminal enforcement power.

So think about that one for a moment. As the IRS is worrying about whether you're using the word of God and coming up with legends where D equals, I mean, T equals Republican. I mean, they think we have no idea what they're doing here, so we're going to find out who did this and that party could well end up being a target of a lawsuit, frankly.

Yeah, because here's the truth. There's a 501c3 organization, fine with me, that they exist, called Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. They were in question 40 years ago for having views related closely to the R, which would mean the Democrat party.

And they even just last week signed on to a letter from Media Matters sent to big tech advertisers on Twitter to try and force Twitter to keep their current content moderation standards or face a boycott. So again, the IRS has no problem with these groups. And if they treated everyone the same, we'd have no problem with the IRS. But they aren't treating everyone the same. It's a bureaucracy.

President Trump talked about draining the swamp. It's a bureaucracy filled of left-wing Democrats. That's who controls Washington, D.C. And they're powerful because they remain when politicians come and go. And when they think that they're getting signals, like they got from President Biden, that this is the most extreme political movement in American history, that is their signal to go after conservative groups.

And that's when all of our kind of antennas went up and we said, you know what, this is exactly how it started with Lois Lerner. She thought she was following what Barack Obama wanted the IRS to do, as well as members of Congress who were Democrats sending the IRS letters saying go after these groups. What happens is they get nervous. They see the polls, so they attempt a scorched earth political strategy. The scorched earth is Republicans. How do we disband them? How do we get them un-unified? How do we get them to stop speaking out? How do we get them afraid to put the sign in their yard, afraid to talk to their neighbor, afraid to show up at a meeting or attend an event? We're afraid to express their view, period.

Just their view. And by the way, when they do express their view on social media platforms, the new public square, we will try and shut it down. We will either de-platform them, we will put them in Facebook, jail, and all these new terms that have come apart. It is a full-on assault on your freedom of speech rights to try and silence you before an election so they can hope, I mean they are hoping to maintain some power, specifically in the U.S. Senate.

Welcome back to Sekio. This is one of those issues too. It's like if you support it, if you come out against it, if you say maybe this is the wrong time, maybe it's the right time, are they going to take you off social media as well?

I mean this is because foreign policy also now is a disinformation against Russia, is a disinformation for Ukraine, and this idea of can you just share an opinion about the news. That's really what we're talking about with all this speech. I want to continue to take your calls too.

Give us a call. Do you feel like that's the Biden administration's goal? Is just to get you to say, you know what, maybe I'll go vote, but I'm not going to really talk to my friends and family about who I'm going to vote for. I'm certainly not going to join a group because I don't want to be targeted by the IRS. I'm not going to start a new group. Let's not run against the school board candidate because we've got the FBI on that.

I mean the list goes on and on and it's pretty atrocious. And then on top of that, DHS adds their Disinformation Governance Board to specifically start targeting you on social media. So that's my question out there for you today at 1-800-684-3110. All right, we want to talk about, because this broke over the weekend, it's been brewing for a couple of months now, and that is with the situation, the war in Ukraine, what I call the war in Eastern Europe, you have now Finland, who has not requested membership in NATO before, who has the longest border with Russia in Eastern Europe, in Europe, saying they want NATO membership, they want a session to NATO. And you ask yourself, what does that mean and why now and does that escalate the situation?

Colonel Westmith is with us. First, what's your reaction to this? Turkey, by the way, we'll get into this in a moment, who is a NATO member and has supplied Ukraine with tactical weapons, including very powerful drones, is very hesitant on this.

They are. You know, Sweden and Finland both feel threatened by Putin and that's Putin's own fault for invading Ukraine. Finland also has bad blood with Russia because Stalin invaded Finland in 1939 and slaughtered thousands and thousands of Finns. So they, for their own national security, both Sweden and Finland want to join.

Finland in particular is a strong candidate. They have a huge military. They have the largest artillery units, the largest amount of artillery in all of Europe. They just bought 64 F-35 fighter jets from America. And that 830 mile border you mentioned, Finland has such a large military. They will not require any NATO troops to replace that border. They're already policing it themselves. They also already spend two percent of their GDP on national defense, which is technically required in the NATO alliance, although many of the nations don't do it. So both of these countries are strong candidates. Putin said that his reason for invading Ukraine was he was afraid of NATO.

He didn't want it to get any larger or more powerful. It has backfired. NATO is more united than ever.

Let me use this question though, Wes, because this is, I'm going to play contrarian here just for a moment. It would seem to me that while you're trying to figure out, the world is trying to figure out how to de-escalate this war in Eastern Europe. And granted, it hasn't gone well for the Russians, but as Jordan has pointed out before, the Russians have something a lot of these other countries don't have. Nuclear weapons.

Many of which are pointed at the United States. Exactly. Okay, so you asked this question. Does membership and ascension to NATO right now in the middle of all of this, is that going to inflame the Russians, give them more reason to do something unorthodox and dangerous like using a tactical nuclear weapon? Yeah, and that's a legitimate concern. I don't think you can really base national defense policy or defense of Europe based on whether or not Putin will be provoked.

But that is a legitimate concern. Why wouldn't you, I'm just playing an advocate here. Yeah, yeah.

Why wouldn't you, wouldn't you have to play nine-dimensional chess here? You would think that, you would think that if you're going to make them, and believe me, I think what Russia did to Ukraine is, I think they've committed war crimes. Sure. I think they violated international norms and there was no justification for them going into Ukraine. Having said that, tens of thousands of people are dead. Yes. Children displaced from their homes.

It's horrible. Why wouldn't you look at, as a military analyst in the Pentagon, aren't you thinking, okay, if we say yes to Finland now versus three months from now when maybe this has calmed down, maybe that's a better time. Is this sending the wrong signal from the United States because we're still the big funder of NATO to do this now?

Yeah, and again, that's a legitimate concern. I think part of the thinking, though, is that we really waited to arm the Ukrainians. We were very hesitant to do that because we did not want to provoke Putin.

He invaded anyway. And so I think we're a little bit gun-shy in the West of trying to avoid provoking Putin because he is so unpredictable. And the fear is that if we don't let Finland and Sweden join at some point, he will probably invade one of those countries. There's another interesting dynamic to all this, Jordan, and you mentioned that, is there's a $40 billion request right now for money from the United States to go to Ukraine, and it has not gotten universal support.

No, no, it is still stalling in Congress. I mean, I think the idea there is because there's questions about, one, how long it takes the money to get there, our own economy. And what a lot of elected officials are saying, especially on the Republican side, is it's not that they don't want to assist Ukraine against this Russian aggression.

There's pretty much unified support for that. But it's like we can't throw out the United States and our interest for that. You've got to take care of your own people first. So when they're hurting at the pump, when their mortgages are going up, when prices for everything are rising at extreme levels, when you can't buy baby formula in the United States of America, do you send money to Ukraine, or do you first figure out, let's get baby formula on the shelves. Let's put in, I mean, a major plan, and they don't have one yet, of getting back our shelves full in the United States of America. Let's not look like a third world country when it comes to baby formula, where people now are having to resort to taxes like they created themselves, very dangerous, difficult situations.

But again, they've got to feed their children. And so this idea that that's not priority one right now for the administration. If I was the President of the United States and a baby formula, that would be our number one priority.

Number one, getting that fixed right away. But you can do more than one thing when you're President. So you'd secure the border so you wouldn't be sending so much of the supplies, the baby formula there. You can also figure out how to get more European engagement in Ukraine so you aren't the only country sending billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars to fight this war. Which raises the next question, which is, because you have this kind of stall and this $40 billion, are the Europeans engaged, you've been monitoring this for weeks now, are they engaged at the level financially? Have they made the commitments they need to be making, Wes?

For the most part, our major players have. But the thing about giving this $40 billion, as Jordan alluded to, is that inflation is so high and federal spending actually increases inflation. But the other thing, too, and Rand Paul brought this up about Ukraine, and that is they have a long history of corruption. We can't just shove cash into Ukraine. And so what Rand Paul has suggested is we have an inspector general who will actually oversee where Ukraine spends this cash. But for the most part… I wouldn't be shocked, though, if the Ukrainians object to that. I wouldn't be shocked if they object to that. I agree. Because you've got Americans involved in their internal governance.

However, I don't think Rand Paul's wrong. I understand exactly the concern. Exactly. Folks, I think this is another issue, and we can take your calls to this as well, 1-800-684-3110, because these are issues that affect America greatly. I mean, we are the number one supporter of Ukraine.

This does not seem like something that's going to be ending anytime soon, unfortunately. That's very unfortunate for the people of Ukraine. The isolation of Russia, but are we forgetting China as well?

We talked about that with Secretary Pompeo, Rick Grenell. Every time they're on, don't pull your eye off what's going on around the rest of the world, especially with China and Taiwan and the situation there, the genocide going on inside China. I mean, these issues are huge. Our administration currently, the Biden administration, just seems to play them all down. It's like when you see him give a speech, it's a horrendous speech.

And it's not just to be mean. It's Vice President Harris saying 14 times we're going to work together in the same 60 seconds. And she can prepare for these moments. She has a huge staff to prepare her for these statements.

That's all they've got to say? I mean, when you go try to figure out the answer on the baby formula, they blame one plant. Why not be working on opening up another plant? Cut the red tape. Make sure it's safe, but cut the red tape and fill the shelves. This is absurd in the United States of America. When I'm on my Facebook page and you see families who have the money to buy it, who are saying, you know, I'll pay double if you can pick it up for me. If you see it at the grocery store, I'll Venmo you the money and pick it up from your house. I'll do everything and I'll pay you double for what's already very expensive.

And this is to keep their child alive. Wes and I will remember this. You were not even born yet. This is the Jimmy Carter era all over again.

I feel like we're the same thing. Couldn't get gas, couldn't get fuel, couldn't put heat on. Remember because of the shortages. This is unreal. It is very unreal. The American people have not struggled like this since the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Both of them happened to be Democrats. And it seems like the Biden administration is a bit tone deaf. I don't think they understand the depth of the struggle or the depth of the American people's dissatisfaction. Seventy-five percent in a recent poll of Americans saying the country is going in the wrong direction.

Last question, Colonel Smith. Where do you see the next? What happens next in the Ukraine, do you think? I think there needs to be a compromise and hopefully there will be. I think the Donbas region, we're going to have to consider that a loss. Ukraine is and let Russians keep it. Hopefully that will give Putin an exit ramp because militarily Russia is being defeated on the battlefields of Ukraine right now.

But they couldn't, long term though, they could keep engaging probably longer than Ukraine could. Oh absolutely, yes. So very interesting. Alright, we've got more coming up. Don't forget folks, support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice, ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to open our phone lines. Any question or comment you have about any of the topics we talked about.

Ukraine, the IRS, the speech codes with the governance board, oversight board, we'll take those. 1-800-684-3110 or you can get your comments in on our social media applications as well. So again, if you want to talk to us on air, 800-684-3110.

Alright, welcome back to Secula. We're going to take your phone calls again. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. This is a very interesting comment from Josh on YouTube. This is talking about the IRS and they were talking about disinformation by the way. The Board of Governance for Disinformation should be looking at the Internal Revenue Service.

Here's what Josh says about the IRS denial letter. Clearly they named it D to equal Republican to try and throw off anyone reading it thinking D equals Democrat. They're pulling a sleight of hand deception. Right, misinformation, disinformation.

What is their possible excuse for saying D equals Republican other than that? It's ridiculous, absurd. I mean there is no other explanation except to throw people off when they're doing document searches.

Yes. So what they're now, they're preparing their documents to make it tougher for groups like us to find the information. Exactly. By using absurd legends, you know like the legends, what does this letter stand for, what's this acronym mean. Absurd legends that wouldn't show up in a basic search so they'll say oh nothing came up in your search about that.

That is to try and again it's an attempt at deception and to deceive and to keep you from the information. To me, this again, it's the biggest issue we face right now is an attempt to silence the opposition voices in the United States of America. Especially right now. Yes. Let's go ahead and take a call. Sure. Bill in Montana on Line 1.

Hey Bill. My question is what is stopping the U.S. government from eliminating FOIA requests altogether? That's a great question. So here, you have a federal statute that authorizes Freedom of Information Act requests, came in the kind of the shadows of Watergate. What the government does, and there's exemptions to where some things are exempt, but what they do is when you file, it starts with a letter. So we send in a Freedom of Information Act letter and then usually the government doesn't respond. And this was the FOIA letter we sent in. Then they don't respond. And then we've got to go to court and we file this, a federal lawsuit.

And then they try to dismiss it. So you're, and not always the case, but I would say 75% of the time we end up in federal court over this. So what the government, even though there's a statute, Harry, that says get this information to the public and the idea of government transparency, the reality is they don't want you to see any of this. I think that is correct.

Because you'll find out what happened. I think that is correct. But it's also important to keep in mind that the deep state leaders have a low opinion of the American people and they are quite willing to engage in behavior which insults the intelligence of rank and file Americans. But it's also important to note that organizations like the ACLJ are equipped with lawyers who've actually read and litigated the statute and hence we are prepared to fight them at least on equal terms. And to the extent that we have competent jurists who are basically reviewing these requests, more likely than not we will prevail in the end. But I think it's also important to keep in mind that the government objective, beyond attempting to block us from gaining necessary information, they are also engaged in a somewhat successful campaign to delay the disclosure of offending information. And I think that to some extent is what's going on here and that I think is a central issue with respect to FOIA. I keep on coming back to this though.

For the entire audience. Somebody at the Internal Revenue Service sat down at a keyboard or somebody up above them did and typed all this out. Put D as Democrat, M as word of God, you believe in the Bible, you're pro-Israel, you're pro-life. You're a homeschool mom.

You're a homeschool mom. They put that in a document thinking that was never going to see the light of day. That's their hope. Their hope is that you get your denial and you say, you know what, it costs money, I've got to find attorneys to appeal this, then I've got to fight this. And it seems pretty bad when you get a denial from the IRS. I mean it was a multi-page denial. It wasn't like a one-pager that you filed something wrong, fix that, and resubmit. This was like we really looked into you.

We know who you are. And then it gets people thinking, do I want the IRS involved in my life any more deeply than they already are at this point? Even though I did voluntarily submit this information, they're going and looking at how I educate my kids, deciding if my group is going to get political. I arrest C3 status because I happen to decide to homeschool your kids or what's next if you just go to a Christian school. So again, they would never do this if you sent your kids over to some liberal private school. There's no way that letter exists. I guarantee you the letter does not exist. It's never gone out. But this comment from Joe I think is really important.

Because he said, good work ACLJ. The problem is, and this is true, it costs lots of money to sue the government while the government has a seemingly, and they do, endless money pit and an incredible amount of lawyers. They do. They have an entire department of justice with lawyers. But they also have endless resources. So you have to be committed. If you're going to fight these battles and not just talk about them, you have to be committed to the long-term fight.

You have to have donors that support your work. You got to understand that it's not only, and this is where this is a good question, he talks about this endless pit of an incredible amount of lawyers. It's not just the Department of Treasury has lawyers. The Department of Justice has lawyers. There is a FOIA division of lawyers inside the Department of Justice. So Harry, when you talk about deep state activists, it's deep both in the legal part and in the compliance area.

And the fact of the matter is we're Jordan's right. That means we have to be committed. I think that is correct because if you look at the deep state, they have been unleashed to go after, for instance, mums for liberty. They've been unleashed to go after individuals who believe in the Constitution, who believe that the United States, for instance, is a republican form of government. So if you believe in the Constitution, it's very possible that the Attorney General, that the Department of Justice will come after you under the leadership of Attorney General Merritt Garland, who basically suggested that parents were engaged in domestic terrorism by showing up at school board meetings and basically contesting the right of school boards to insist that kids wear masks or that kids study critical race theory, you name it.

We have to be vigilant because at the end of the day, the government, particularly in Washington, does not have the best interest of the American people in mind. You know, nine years ago this month, it was May 10th of 2013 when Lois Lerner admitted in the law school classroom what the IRS was doing. Just as a flashback to remind you that they could be back at it, but we're getting ahead of it this time by 20.

They used names like Tea Party or Patriots and they selected cases simply because the application had those names in the title. That was wrong. The IRS would like to apologize for that. That was wrong. The IRS would like to apologize for that. I want you to think about that one for a moment when you're audited next time.

You leave out a receipt. Oh, that was wrong. I apologize for that. But here's what bothers me.

This is what she says. They used names like Tea Party. They selected cases simply because the application had those names in it.

That was wrong. And then she said the IRS would like to apologize. She was the head of the tax exempt division of the Internal Revenue Service.

She was keeping her name onto those questionnaires that we know then originated actually from Washington, D.C. Remember, she was still initially trying to blame the regional office for this problem and the targeting. Again, I think where it's a reminder is when you put all these agencies together and you've got an administration facing bad poll numbers, they start freaking out. They start doing things that are wrong to try and save themselves politically.

And they're willing to do things that Republicans never would be willing to do. And they shouldn't because it's wrong and it's really illegal to weaponize these branches of government. But where it scares me is that they're weaponizing law enforcement agencies. They're weaponizing the enforcement agencies, not just policies and ideas, but they're weaponizing them to scare you and to silence you. Go to ACLJ.org. Support our work and get informed on the issues.