BREAKING: FBI Returns Seized Trump Passports

Breaking news today on Secula as the FBI. Nice of them.

Return President Trump's seized passports. 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. You gotta like the letter, the FBI. They couldn't drop it off themselves, by the way, because they're not big enough agency. They had to make the President's legal team, which by the way, it doesn't sound like a trap too. Like a Jim Comey style trap. Just come by our FBI office.

Yeah, our WFO, Washington Field Office. Come pick up three passports. One was expired. One was like a pre-Presidential passport. I guess one is a post-Presidential diplomatic passport, which was accidentally seized by the team that was supposed to be making sure they didn't accidentally seize private documents that were not granted under the search warrant. But somehow that team, this is the FBI's own words, says that their team was put in place who are these filter agents that were the ones that already, I guess, didn't do a good job because they took the attorney client documents. But also these were the people they're blaming for taking the passports. What I think this underscores too is this was a warrant that we're not supposed to issue in the United States, which is you're not supposed to have these general warrants where you could go through and take whatever you want. And then after the fact say, oh yeah, here you go.

Sorry about that. This is not a piece of paper either. This is something again.

They knew exactly what they had the moment they had them. Now what can interesting to me is this is according to the letter. So they take three of the former President's passports. And they say that they were filter agents that were there that did this. So the filter agents you would have thought would have known, we probably shouldn't be taking passports because that has nothing to do with this warrant. But nevertheless, Andy, they do. They take these three passports, as Jordan said, and one is his active diplomatic passport, former President Trump's. And what they do then is hold onto it for a week. Then they notify the lawyers, oh, at two o'clock today, you can come by and pick them up.

We took these. Sorry. Well, there's no excuse for that whatsoever. An FBI agent filter or otherwise knows what a United States passport is. And they know that it is not evidence of any of the crimes alleged to have been committed as a basis for the search warrant, which deals with Presidential classified documents, allegedly mutilation or destruction of documents, secreting documents, hiding them. How in the world is a passport in court going to be evidence of any of the commission allegedly of those criminal offenses?

It's not. It's overreaching and it is in the nature of a general search warrant that is prohibited by the Constitution and laws of the United States. And yes, the agents knew better and should have known better.

This is overreaching, nothing less. And you said something very important here in that general search warrants. In other words, go in and check everything kind of search warrants are prohibited under law. Courts don't issue those. Yet here, it seems like if they swooped up in this whole process, the passports, you wonder what else has been taken here.

Well, that's exactly right, Jay. This is, this did turn out to be a general search warrant. They just spent the day they're going through the documents that the President has or had in his house, as well as in his office.

In his house, as well as his safe and everything else, seeing what they would like and pick and choose. That's exactly what was abhorrent to the founders of the United States, the drafters of the Constitution. We know what general search warrants are from English law. And we didn't, we knew that the king did not have the right to come into the house. And that in order for the king to come to the house, he had to go to a judge and get a reason for coming in.

And it had to be very proscribed and limited in nature and not just a general, let's go through and see what we can find and what we like. And if we don't like it or we shouldn't have taken it, eh, we'll give it back. All right, folks, we're gonna take your calls. 1-800-684-3110 to talk to us on the air. That's 1-800-684-3110. If you've got questions about how this would happen, if you have still continued questions about the raid on the President and what happens next, give us a call. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Let me encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. They're on our homepage. You'll find out a lot about the work that we're doing at the ACLJ, even work that we don't get to cover on this broadcast.

You can also support our work, be part of our matching challenge at ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. This email's from yesterday, 10.49 in the morning. We've learned that the filter agents, they seized three passwords belonging to President Trump, two expired, one active. We're returning them, but they don't actually return them. I love that the FBI, even in a situation where they screw up, you have to go to them. They don't drop it off.

No, no. You've got to go to their field office, which to me, in this whole situation, they play it off like this is like no big deal. They just raided a guy's house. Former President of the United States take an unprecedented step in our history, and they just act like this is normal business that they took as three passports.

Yeah. And by the way, now we have a letter from the Republicans that are on the Judiciary Committee, and they will be probably the majority of the... Jim Jordan will probably be the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to Chris Wray, specifically focusing in on Andy. The actions that were taken and the documents that were taken is basically a preservation letter. It says, all documents and communications referring or relating to the executive branch search warrant on President Trump's residence, all documents and communications referring or relating to a decision to seek a search warrant for the President's residence, goes on to say all documents and communications between the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the National Archives.

So basically, what we have here is a marker being laid down by the ranking member, he's not the majority, he's not the chairman yet, the ranking member of the committee saying, hey, when we're in power, we're going to get answers to this. Well, Jay, isn't it sad that the Congress of the United States, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives, soon hopefully to be the chairman, isn't it sad that he's got to send a letter to the Department of Justice, FBI, telling them, don't destroy documents and information, preserve it because we're going to need it for our investigation. It's sad that he's got to put them on notice not to destroy, mutilate, conceal, abandon, and screw up documents that we may want for purposes of oversight, investigation, and legislation. I've got to put you on notice because I don't trust you not to destroy those documents. So I've got to send you a preservation letter just as if we're in private litigation because I don't have any confidence in your integrity.

That's exactly what he's telling Chris Wray. But they have reason to do that. I mean, I think Congress is right here. And the reason they have to do this is that in the Mueller probe, if people will remember, when it came to getting Peter Strzok's phone and some of the other, and the FBI lawyer's phone for evidence, they wiped him clean. They said, oh, they were turned in, we wiped them clean, and we don't keep any records. Knowing the Strzok thing was under investigation by the inspector general's office and was an issue within the context of the whole Russia investigation, the Mueller probe anyways, they said, yeah, they got rid of documents. They said, we don't have that.

And they couldn't find Lisa Page's phone, been reissued. So there's a reason they're asking for this, Andy, and that is past history shows you better put this in writing. I agree with that, Jay. I agree with that. Totally. But I am saying to you, isn't it sad that we've got to do that?

Yes. That's what I'm saying. I think we have to do it to preserve and protect the integrity of the documents, hopefully. But isn't it a sad comment on our government that we have got to do that for fear because of past actions that they have destroyed those documents.

That's what's pitiful here. All right, folks, we're going to take your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We tell YouTube, it feels like just a phishing expedition. And when you see items like this, whether it's the executive privilege documents, whether it is attorney client privilege documents, or just passports, which were not mentioned at all in the warrant, it wasn't something... And taken by the tank team.

Taken by the people who are supposed to be looking for the info they're not supposed to take. I mean, that alone doesn't even make sense. It's a sentence.

I mean, think about that. What Jordan just said. So evidently they had a filter team on site, Andy, that was to make sure that documents that are attorney client privilege, documents are outside the scope of this, documents that might be executive privilege are not taken. This is the admission of the letter. The letter email from the Department of Justice to the lawyers for President Trump say very clearly, we have learned that the filter agents, so these are the agents that are supposed to know the difference between what you take and what you don't take, sees three passports belonging to President Trump, two expired, one being his active diplomatic port, and we're now ready to return them.

And they will be ready for pickup at the Washington field office at two o'clock. That's so interesting to me about this is this is the team that's supposed to be in there to know the difference between what you take and what you don't take, what you look at, what you don't look at. The Trump lawyers have asked, not a court, but they've asked in a letter for the Department of Justice to agree to a special master to review these materials, including attorney client privilege, because remember just yesterday it was reported that attorney client material was also picked up by the filter team. And yet the Department of Justice, of course, they don't want to have a special master. They want to have three different sets of their own eyes on this.

Right. Some filter team, by the way, Jay, you send in a filter team because they're supposedly trained in what is sensitive, what is attorney client privilege, what is outside the search warrant's terms, and the filter team can't even make a decision that is correct and in accordance with the law. They're supposed to be the trained agents that knows what you're supposed to take and what you're not supposed to take, as if the warrant wasn't enough to tell you that. And the filter team passes on the seizure of passports.

Now, how in the world can you justify that? What kind of filter team is that? What kind of idiots are put on a filter team that don't know a passport is not the evidence of the crime alleged in the search warrant? All right, folks, again, we continue to take your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Justin in California on line three. Hey, Justin.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. I have a comment on the question here. So it seems like there's no line the left will not cross. We see it happen again and again and again, and it's clearly not going to stop, whether it be abortion or other issues.

Real quick, my question is what happens next to President Trump and what are his options legally? This is the antithesis of liberty and justice for all. If they can do this to a former President, then they can do it to any political opponent. It's really scary stuff, guys.

No, it is. And, you know, the next actions actually should be taken or should have been taken by his lawyers. And Andy and I talked about this in the first day this search warrant was out. And that is the first thing that would be done is you would file, in this case, because the judge has compromised himself, the judge that signed the search warrant recused himself from a civil case involving President Trump and former Secretary of State Clinton. So former President Trump, former Secretary of State Clinton, civil litigation going on there, gets assigned to this judge, Reinhardt.

He says, no, I can't do this. I'm recused from it because it will appear that I have bias, so I'm not going to do it. But then the same judge who who bounces out of, on his own motion, a civil case signs a search warrant involving one of the parties that he said he's biased against. So you, so right there you file a motion to quash the subpoena, that means stop the subpoena. Then you file a motion to exclude the evidence, to say this evidence doesn't get to be admitted. And unfortunately, Andy, from what I've seen so far, inexplicable to me, but there may be some reason I don't know, that has not been done.

But that's what you would do. There is a provision in the federal rules of criminal procedure, it's called a motion for return of property. It was used on me when I was US attorney in Atlanta many times by defense lawyers.

It is pretrial because there isn't a proceeding that you can move to quash or exclude evidence, but you basically say, judge, they went beyond what the warrant said and took property of the President, former President here, that was not to be taken because it was not part of the warrant, nor could it be reasonably construed to have been part of the warrant as an instrumentality or fruit of those documents. I want it returned. Where are those lawyers seeking a return of the property? Nowhere to be found. That's the inexplicable in all of this.

Now, I don't, again, maybe there's something we don't know, but that's, so it's not like the President, former President doesn't have recourse, he does, just as lawyers have to be making those calls. Yeah. And so I think, again, as people have questions about, you know, where does this go next? It's kind of feels like there's this endless, right? Cause it wasn't, it's not like the A to B, and then you've got all these documents in between.

So we'll take your calls, your questions, what 800-684-3110. There's an interesting comment by Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University talking about, cause Merrick Gartland, you know, took ownership of this and now he's taking ownership of, I guess we're taking the President's passports and of this no special master. I think he's taking ownership of all, but here's what Jonathan Turley said. I wrote a piece in USA Today talking about the shrinking stature of Merrick Gartland for this reason. This is not the first controversy where he seems absent without leave.

He has had repeated opportunities in these controversies to take modest steps to assure the public that the department is acting in an apolitical way. I mean, I agree. I think he looks like a guy being pushed around. He's similar to Biden is that he gets put in situations by his staff, by liberal, you know, by the liberal advisors, and then he's not exactly sure what to do. And so he takes full ownership to sound tough. For two years, they wanted to get rid of him, the liberals.

They thought he was ineffective. I think he may have just made the decision, okay, let the crazies run it. I'll take the praise from the left. Remember from the left, you do have to get outside of your box of view that they think what all this is happening is wonderful. They think this is great. And they want it to continue. They don't think this has gone far enough. They want to see the President handcuffed.

That's their ultimate goal. Handcuffed, put in prison, convicted of crimes. They just don't know what the crimes are. Remember we played all those bites?

He's guilty of what? I don't want to talk to you anymore. 1-800-684-3110 to talk to us on the air. That's 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back on Secular.

All right, welcome back to Secular. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. We're going to talk about this throughout. I mean, the idea here that the FBI sends a letter to Donald Trump and his attorney saying, by the way, we took your passports, two which were active, one which would put during presidency against a diplomatic passport, and I guess his previous passport is still active.

And by the way, sorry we took these, but you can come pick them up. Like they don't have enough people to drop them off, which again puts you in a situation where you have to think twice because you're walking into their building where they're in control. And again, to me, the recklessness of how this was done. First, I feel like if this was a mob boss, they wouldn't make these mistakes because they're dealing with politics. And when they start dealing with politics, they are goofy.

No, it's like, it is like- They don't work. They just can't get things done. It's like they don't have the same set of rules. So you would think you would be overly cautious here. So if you have a filter team actually out in the field, usually filter teams are not necessarily in the field, but they can be. But if you have a filter team in the field, you wouldn't have thought they would have taken the man's passport, the former President of the United States, or maybe the legal documents too. But nevertheless, they did.

Right. You would have thought that they would have been exercising their discernment at the time where they were acquiring the documents. Obviously they didn't.

They didn't exercise any discernment at that time. They just grabbed anything they wanted, whether it complied with the warrant or not. And then they took it back and decided later, oh, we've got passports, so we better return those. Whoops. You can come by our office.

Like you said, Jordan, you can come by our office and pick it up. Yeah. The media tried to mock get on this. This is another time the media takes the side of the FBI and then you get the document from the FBI. They are admitting that they took passports.

I don't know. The liberal media, every time they try to play up and protect these FBI officials, first of all, the FBI officials are disgusting. Let's just go through. Peter Strzok should be ashamed of himself. He shouldn't be on TV. He should be ashamed of himself.

Andrew McCabe? Again, fired, pinching God for leaking classified documents. They should be ashamed. There should not be a place for them to work. They should be in the unemployment line.

I mean, legitimately. These are people that on paper were smart, who totally abused power, and yet they're able to go on television and spout off about Donald Trump and search for it. They're so obsessed still. And listen, they ruined their careers. Donald Trump didn't ruin their careers. They ruined their careers because they tangled with a guy who was much smarter than them and much tougher than them. And to this day, there's not many people who could go with a police raid into their home and be as tough as Donald Trump. Most people would be freaking out.

That's what I think they seized on is they think that they don't realize that you're dealing with somebody who's probably operating at 20 miles per hour faster than you are. Yeah. Well, no question. Listen, we've got some breaking news also on the pro-life front. You know, a lot of these what we call trigger laws have been going into effect since the Dobbs decision. So, Cece, let's first explain to everybody what the trigger laws are because this is important for people to understand. Dobbs comes out, reverses Roe versus Wade. States had things ready to go.

Right. So, trigger law basically says when Roe v. Wade is overturned, we're ready to say that our state doesn't recognize a right to abortion either. So, in Idaho, they have a trigger law that's set to go into effect August 25th that bans all abortions, but does provide exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. And what's interesting in Idaho is that Planned Parenthood sued Idaho over this trigger law and a heartbeat law in another law, but they did it in the state Supreme Court. So, the state Supreme Court tells Planned Parenthood, we're not going to grant your stay because we don't think you're going to succeed on the merits.

There's not a likelihood. The standard there is you have to have likelihood to succeed on the merits to get these kind of stays. The Supreme Court of Idaho says, we don't think you meet that standard.

Right. So, in comes the Department of Justice, once again, because they're going to say, well, if Planned Parenthood's not going to win, we're going to take up their cause, and we're going to now sue in the federal district court, and we're going to sue on this trigger law, and we're going to claim that it violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which is an act that requires that hospitals receiving Medicare funds provide stabilizing medical treatment without regard to a patient's ability to pay. So, basically, what they're saying is if an indigent woman comes in, you have to provide an abortion to stabilize her if that's what she wants, which is ridiculous because there is an exception for the life of the mother. But this is DOJ taking up Planned Parenthood's cause because Planned Parenthood is going to fail. But this is where the Department of Justice is putting their money and emphasis. You know, go raid the former President of the United States House over documents, and at the same time, go sue Idaho because they passed a law consistent with their Constitution, consistent with the Supreme Court case saying there is no right to abortion under Roe v. Wade. The case is United States of America versus the state of Idaho, and we're filing our brief, which I'm holding my hands. I don't know if we have a copy we can put up on the screen.

Well, we got it on the screen now because I'm holding it. And we're filing this brief tomorrow. So, your American Center for Law and Justice went to work immediately on this. But isn't it a dichotomy that the Department of Justice, how they're deploying, Jordan, their resources right now. Go after the pro-life citizens, pro-life groups, pro-life laws, and while we're going after people, let's throw a subpoena over there at the former President of the United States.

Yeah. And I think that, again, this is, it shows their priorities and it's all politics. So, from the top, going after the President of the United States, to going after Idaho because of pro-life legislation, which is going to be happening across the country, and taking up Planned Parenthood's fight for them when Planned Parenthood fails, we'll come in for you. This is, again, this is where they're using the resources. They want more resources because they got to make more audits, right? So, they got to put in more IRS agents with AR-15s coming to your house, which is on their website. I mean, literally, the fact that that's on their website. We're going to talk about that later in the program. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, the IRS and deadly force... Scary. They're supposed to get money back.

It's not supposed to be like about like... And be prepared to use it. Lethal force. Again, it's all about, we literally just talk about weaponizing all these agencies. They're literally doing it.

And they are. And they try to get you to say, you know what, I got to just step away. This is too much for me. I don't want to mess with my business. I just won't get involved. I won't speak up. I won't vote.

I won't tell other people how I vote or encourage other people to support the candidates I support. Anything they can do to get you to stop talking, to silence and be afraid to sit on your hands. They're trying all of those strategies. So, whether it's going after the state, going after the individual President and that whole idea, which they love the idea of you thinking, see, if we can do it to him, what can we do to you? I mean, if this is what we can do to him, how could they ruin your life? You don't have the resources of Donald Trump.

And few people do. So, again, we continue to take your phone calls at 1-800-684-30. We'll take one more. Ronald in South Carolina on line three. Hi, Ronald. Go ahead. Hey, hi.

Thank you for taking my call. My question is, I think Jordan hit on it last week concerning legalities from a caller. And that is this, I think that you think that it might be a strategy of the left to disqualify Trump from running in the Presidential election? Yeah.

I don't think there's a question personally. Yeah, I think they would like to. I mean, if you say legally disqualify, I don't think they have the ability to do that. I think the constitution is clear on the qualifications and all those laws that exist that say otherwise are just that. And that's why they've never been enforced at that level. And I think Congress should actually be giving up more power by even trying to enforce it because the Supreme Court likely come back and say, no, you can't add qualifications.

You can't have substantive qualifications to the requirements to run for President. But you can try to scare people off from supporting someone by holding up the idea that at any moment they could be arrested, which was not the operating practice previously. So you get second half hour coming up, support the work of the ACLJ. We have our matching challenge. That's at ACLJ.org. You can double the impact of your donation at ACLJ.org through our matching challenge the entire month. We got that group of donors that will match all of your donations that come through, but you're the trigger. You are what causes that match. 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. 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. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow for our second half hour of the broadcast as we take your calls and your comments at 1-800-684-3110. So we started the show today, this idea, and we kind of all week, whether it's the conflicted judge, the taken passports that we talked about today from the FBI, which they admitted to, the media tried to give information that they will not, you know, the media tried to give a pass for the FBI.

And then of course the email comes out from the FBI to Trump lawyers say, come pick up the passport. Sorry about that. You can see again, all of the problems this causes.

One, with the President of the United States. I mean, so this was a week. This wasn't like the next day. Oh, sorry. Cause they were in a box.

Sorry. Cause they were this. I mean, at this point you would imagine they've gone through everything. You would think, cause it wasn't that much material. No, I mean, they got a lot, they got as much staff as they want on it.

So that's part of this too. I think that a lot of people would say, I heard one of the media reports that this could take the months to go through the documents. You would think, no, not the FBI. No, I mean, we were involved in a case, we were involved in a similar case, involving high profile. Of course they do.

They have, they have the capability to put huge teams on this, but it's showing you what they're going after now. The concern here is, and we've said it, I mean, they could do this to the former President. They could do it to anybody, but this idea that they took the passports and then say, oops, we made a mistake a week later. We'll give them back to you.

Come by the Washington field office to get them. Uh, this is the approach they're taking. So that's, that's kind of number one in this.

All right. Number two in this is you got the judge that shouldn't have been on the case in the first place, but he's signing, you know, search warrants. And then number three, they say they've got attorney client information, but they won't submit it to a special master. They want to review it themselves and make a determination as whether it's privilege or not. Now that's your accuser reviewing it themselves. Some circuit courts, by the way, are very negative on that whole approach. Others not so much.

So it's a split circuit, but boy, if I was the, whoever's representing, why they're not in court, I don't know. But like I said, there could be stuff we don't know. Uh, but nevertheless, there's an issue. Then you've got the weaponization of the internal revenue service, literally 87,000 new IRS agents. You've got this whole, you know, if you're $400,000 less than income, remember they said, you're not going to get audited.

Well, they've changed that now. Well, you're, you may get audited, but don't worry. It'll be in the same proportion as the percentage of people in that tax bracket were getting audited before by the 87,000 new agents.

And by the way, who believes that for one minute? You really don't. And then you've got this, you know, special in the CID criminal investigation division, which is tax fraud. Usually that's what you're talking about here for the IRS. And they're literally telling them, you know, what is the exact phrase?

Well, I always want to get it exactly. Have they have it posted in their job bulletin? It's to, you must be willing to carry a firearm and be willing to use deadly force if necessary. I mean, I can't even, you know, I worked for the IRS. I'm trying to think, what are they talking about?

Corporation to pay your taxes? I mean, so there's a criminal case and they, these are white collar crimes, meaning that these aren't violent crimes, but that's now a requirement of the, so this just kind of tells you where it's going. So we're going to look at that and how we think the IRS is get right back into the business. They're not supposed to be involved in any more, which is putting under extra scrutiny nonprofit organizations, which believe me, the department of justice is already doing. As CC Heil just said in the last segment, we got DOJ Planned Parenthood loses the case, Jordan. And so DOJ says, forget them. We're going to come over and take it over now. We're going to go to federal court.

Yeah, we'll do it for you. And that's why we're seeing the resource, the government being used to literally weaponize against you. They're building up. It's an army of 87,000 agents.

I mean, shoot, take, kill. That's what they're being told. 87,000, that is bigger than the army of the UK. And so if they put together these kind of law enforcement divisions, and then you have the politics within, I mean, they've already got the FBI totally weaponized on their side. No one in the FBI is saying, I mean, we do have whistleblowers, but no one is publicly saying, you know what?

I quit. If this is what you're going to do, because the whole bureaucracy, like that's what I said, we got to stop saying most of the people there are great. If they are so great, why would they take this as their bosses?

So don't operate that way anymore. You'll never drain the swamp if you say, oh, 90% of them are fine. It's just the few bad guys in Washington. How about everybody there is bad. We'll start from that press. We'll start from there.

Everybody's bad. Prove me wrong to get your job or to keep these institutions in place. And it's no joke meeting. We're not kidding when we say we'd like to do away with these entire entities. You know, we're just waiting for the comeback.

All right, welcome back to Secchio. As we have noticed, and it's getting some reporting, but not as much as it usually would, that is increased terror attacks in Israel. Specifically, again, these kind of one-off attacks by individuals. This time a gun attack, but five Americans were involved. Now, no one has lost their life at this point. One of the people that was a part of the attack was pregnant.

I mean, they're in critical condition. So this all comes, though, as a time. Why is this happening in people's masks? Why does this ebb and flow the way it does? And I think one of the reasons this ebb and flow is the Biden administration has released a lot of cash back to the Palestinian Authority. $300 million, a couple hundred million dollars of that going directly to the PA. They're not supposed to do that under the Taylor Force Act, which has these requirements that clearly haven't been met, including the Pay for Slave program, which is still on the books with the Palestinian Authority as part of their law. So they're not supposed to do it, but the money is going to the Palestinian Authority.

And surprise, surprise, as the money goes, you see an increase in attacks. So we've said we're looking at the expenditures and priorities of the administration. And on July 14th, President Biden announced $316 million aid package to the Palestinians. $201 million of that amount goes through the UN. The other goes directly to the PA. The White House insists the funding is in compliance with what is called the Taylor Force Act, which was signed into law by President Trump.

The bill required the Secretary of State to certify that a number of things, including there'd be no pay for slave. In other words, not going to pay for your terrorists to kill innocent civilians and then give them money, which is what the Palestinian Authority has been doing for four decades. Jeff Balmon, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ based out of our office in Jerusalem.

Jeff, we've got a lot of things to talk about. Let's start with this one. When you give the terrorists money, they use it and they used it immediately. And then unfortunately in this situation, whether it was from the, you know, the pay to slave program is still around, we know that. But you give them money, they feel emboldened, so did their terrorists feel emboldened, and then they attack civilians, including five Americans in Jerusalem.

That's right, Jay. And in this case, you know, before President Biden came to Jerusalem just a few weeks ago, Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, who demands the right to use American tax dollars to pay for terrorists to kill civilians, announced that because Biden wasn't giving him enough, gave him hundreds of millions of dollars, wasn't giving me enough, he said there would be even more violence. And now he's just keeping his promise and using American tax dollars to do it. But the Taylor-Thorsek was put in place because an American student was killed in Jerusalem by a Palestinian terrorist. So, you know, you see all the progress of the previous administration in bringing stabilization to the Middle East. You would think you would try to build on that, Jordan, but instead they do the opposite. Yeah, it's not that there's going to be everything to be perfect in Israel or Jerusalem, but, you know, the idea is that things would be improving and that there'd be pressure on the Palestinians to, especially the Palestinian Authority, to start getting your people in line, you know, get the people in line. We're not going to celebrate death, we're not going to celebrate terror because they have lost, you know, without this kind of influx of cash from the United States, they've lost so much support inside the Muslim world. I mean, where you had their fellow Muslims say, enough, they've caused us too much trouble, we want to do business with Israel, we don't have these views that we need to destroy Israel or wipe Israel off the map.

But who comes in? The United States and the State Department with an influx of $300 million to a highly corrupt regime. I mean, Jeff, I feel like if this was any other government, any other political group, any other movement, other than the Palestinian movement, we'd never give money over to them just because of the corruption level. Take out the murder, take out the terror, they're too corrupt to get money from the United States.

Right. I mean, they don't treat their own people well. They are what's called a thogocracy, right? I mean, it's not, they claim to be a democracy.

There haven't been elections in, what is it, 15, 16, 17 years now. Mahmoud Abbas is the king, he's the dictator for life, he is a Holocaust denying terrorist. Let's remember the PLO, right, the Palestine Liberation Organization, is the PA, the Palestinian Authority, which is renamed in order to pretend that maybe we'll be able to negotiate with them. Well, that has failed. Mahmoud Abbas has announced that Oslo, under which it became the Palestinian Authority, is basically dead.

It's clearly dead in action. And so here we have, as you say, Jordan, America using American tax dollars to revive a terror campaign against Israel, while the Arab world has said, no, no, no, stop this. We want to move on. We want to have peace with Israel. We want to have normalization with Israel. We want to have commerce and trade and tourism with Israel. And here comes the Americans.

And by the way, the Europeans also, because that's the other thing we see here on the ground in Judea and Samaria, is that Europeans are pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars to build illegal Arabs, towns and settlements throughout Judea and Samaria to cut off Jewish growth there, an area that should, in fact, be controlled by the Jewish state. So, Jeff, we've got another issue, and that is, of course, we've been very involved in the Boycott Divestment and Sanction Movement. We've also represented students and professors that are getting challenged, losing tenure, being threatened because of their pro-Israel views. You've got an event that you're helping with tomorrow, the ACLJ's helping with, because we've got students we're representing. Tell us about what this issue is first and then about what's going to happen tomorrow.

Sure. Well, actually, first of all, it's been moved. It's actually now going to be August 23rd.

August 23rd, next week. It's going to be piggybacking on a fairly large annual event on Long Island because the community, there's a demand for this because CUNY, the City University of New York, is, listen, I'll tell you personally, Jay, I attended, almost every member of my family either attended or graduated from a City University of New York institution. My father taught there for over 30 years. It has become just a cesspool of anti-Semitism against the faculty and against the students. Sometimes they say they're going after, quote, Zionists. Well, when they say Zionists, I mean anyone who's a Jew. Sometimes they openly go against Orthodox Jews by making it impossible in terms of holding events on Saturdays when Orthodox Jews can't attend. There are faculty members who are attacking students in class. They're mocking the way Orthodox Jews dress modestly.

They're mocking what Orthodox Jews eat because they keep kosher, we keep kosher. They, of course, are attacking Zionists. And we, Jay, ACLJ, as you know, we contacted the City University of New York long ago to tell them, you guys are considering a BDS resolution. Well, let us tell you, every institution that adopts BDS becomes anti-Semitic.

And we see that that is, in fact, happening now. So what we did, what ACLJ did was we brought a complaint to the Department of Education, a Title VI complaint, about the pervasive years-long treatment of Jewish faculty and students on behalf of a number of faculty members. There's going to be an event here in New York where it's going to have local politicians, bipartisan Democrats and Republicans coming together to speak openly about the outrage about the way Jews are being treated here in New York, if you can imagine it, in the in the City University system. Yeah, this, again, I think for people to understand, especially people with college-age students, maybe got grandkids, this is, it's not unique to the college campus. I think in some of these places we see coastal and, you know, near some of the bigger cities and these institutions. It's on full display. But, Jeff, this is, again, I think that it happens, it's happened from coast to coast, whether it's a college that you would suspect would be like this or a college that you, it's pretty shocking.

So people have to, I think, be very on guard about what their kids are being taught and where they're sending their kids to, because who is lecturing them, you know, and maybe haven't spent enough time on these topics before they go off to school. That's 100% right, Jordan. Look, there is a consistency in institutions that adopt woke policies.

Here's the latest. This actually just broke, the news just broke last night that the City University of New York, one of the institutions now has, you know, a search project to find a diversity training officer. Well, on the search committee, they've explicitly excluded Jews. Jews are, according to all law enforcement statistics, by far the most attacked and assaulted minority group in America. There is no university system or no place in America which has more Jews than New York. And as you say, you would expect there to be therefore less antisemitism.

Well, no. The fact that there are more Jews means there's just more abuse of Jews. And the City University of New York, from the chancellor on down, has done nothing and next to nothing over years of terrible reports about what's been going on. Jews are leaving the system. The faculty are leaving and Jewish students are afraid to go now.

All right. Folks, we want you to stay up to speed with us at aclj.org. We're going to stay up on all these topics, keeping you updated, whether it's our work directly to Israel or our work standing with the Jewish people or the politics of this. Just having a pro-Israel position in this university system is, you know, untenable. Yeah, well, where's the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division coming in there to help these students?

You know, Jeff, I thought about that. Where's the Civil Rights Division coming in for that? You don't see them around this one. Well, I'll tell you something, because I've actually had conversations with people at the DOJ who are sympathetic. Internally, what they're being told is, oh, Jews, ready for this? Jews are not a minority, right? Even though their own statistics cite Jews as the minority in America, most susceptible to hate attacks, okay? Jews are not considered a minority. And when pressed for the explanation, you'll love this, it's that, well, Jews get along with the police, but they're not really a minority. You know, whoever said that needs to not be working.

If they're working at the Department of Justice, they should not be doing that any longer. All right, thanks, Jeff. We appreciate it.

Jordan? All right, go to ACLJ.org. Stay up to speed. We've got another segment coming up. We've got a question about what's going on in our country right now. It's a great time to ask.

There's no bad question. And I think every time we've answered a question, it's helping other people understand all these processes and what to expect, what is over the top, what's not over the top. And 1-800-684-3110 to be involved and support the work of the ACLJ.

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Be part of the matching challenge. Welcome back to Sekulow. If you've got some time, if you want to enjoy the show, 1-800-684-3110. But I would tell you, you got to call now.

1-800-684-3110. So remember today, you wouldn't know it. You would think they'd be celebrating it. And I'd have like some of it, though.

Jill Biden tested positive for COVID. So not sure how they'll exactly go about that. But today is a big day. They've got the inflation reduction act that they get to sign. So you'd think they'd all want to be celebrating that. You wouldn't want it to be overshadowed by the increase of the IRS and tax hikes on middle class Americans.

You wouldn't want that to be overshadowed by a raid on former President's home or the ongoing saga that's related to that. Because you'd really want this at the forefront as people are having a tough time trying to get out of a recession, or if you want to call it, the inflation that we're dealing with. But remember, today is when those 87,000 new IRS agents can start being hired. They should call this the IRS Mobilization Act instead of the inflation reduction act, because that's what this is. This is the IRS Mobilization Act. Professor Harry Hutchison, law and economics, and our director of policy is taking a look at this. It is now going into effect today.

I think you're precisely correct. So President Biden is poised to sign the so-called inflation reduction act today. This bill is really a climate change bill and a bill designed to provide full employment for IRS auditors. So I would like to call this bill the IRS auditors full employment bill, because the US government in its wisdom is going to unleash 87,000 additional auditors who have the power to audit the American people and conservative organizations with guns. So the provision at issue that we're talking about here in terms of hiring auditors will enable the government, which has already unleashed the department of justice to go after the former President of the United States, to now unleash auditors on all individuals and entities that upper class elites who populate the Biden administration disfavor. So unsurprisingly, this particular provision will enable the government to target working class Americans, middle income Americans, and conservative nonprofits, as well as pro-life organizations.

To be clear, targeting nonprofits is unlikely to result in greater tax revenue, but targeting has another nefarious purpose, which is to shell the speech of those particular organizations and perhaps to drive them out of business. And that's something we should be concerned about. Well, look, I mean, we took on the IRS, so we know firsthand we're the ones who brought the challenges against the IRS and their targeting campaign. We're acting like this stuff never happens.

It happened several years ago. They targeted conservative groups by the cost of their name. Then as soon as President Biden got in power, after they had a consent decree saying they couldn't do that anymore, they did it again. And remember, that was the one where, what was it, D equaled Republican, W was the word of God.

This was in an IRS audit letter. I mean, think about that for a moment. So now let's give them another couple of hundred billion dollars and increase their agents by 87,000 to bring what, more havoc on people across the United States. This is showing you, whether it's what we started with the beginning of the program or right now, it shows you the priorities of the administration. Yeah, this administration priorities is all politics, all the time. It's all politics all the time. And again, you should be able to fight back against that.

I think that we'll see, but it can be exhausting, right? We're just getting to the first midterm election. It seems like, and we're still litigating, literally, I don't care if they say like, don't deny the election, whatever you want to say about the election, they're still litigating the election on the other side too, forcing us all to litigate the election every single day. So they try to drive you down, but look at a Joe Biden type, nearly 80 years old, you're not driving them down. They got to this point because as old as they can seem, they will push and push and push and they'll continue to put the people around them to push and push.

They are 100% sold into the politics all the time, 100% of the time. That means every agency, every decision, it means law enforcement. And we don't want to ever be them, but it doesn't mean you have to prop up their institutions that they built. And I think that's the day of reckoning ultimately is taking down their institutions, not trying to turn them into political targets of the Democrats, just get rid of their institutions because they obviously have just been too corrupted by the human aspect of politics and they can't get past it.

And so it makes every decision questionable. And I don't like how the media says don't question the FBI, don't ever question. That media used to be the media that questioned authority.

What's happened to them? Why is MSNBC, what happened to liberal activists, love the Department of Justice and the FBI, they love law enforcement. They think the FBI has always been great, even though it put down civil rights movements and other movements before it.

It's been shown to have a lot of politics come into play, but they love it now because they have that authoritarian line, which is like why they kind of love the Chinese, why they kind of love these dictatorships and the idea of communism. And to have those regimes, you must have the state-run enforcement division. And in the United States, we happen to have multiple enforcement divisions, not just the IRS, but also the FBI. Then we have a secret police in the CIA. We have it all.

And at what point are there not enough safeguards where people just say, no, you can't do that. You try to grab Kim's call in California. Hey, Kim. Hi, thank you.

Bless you and wrote the check. People keep talking about the 99% of the FBI that are good, but from where I sit and what I listen to, there are 14 whistleblowers that have done the right thing with the FBI. And as far as I can see, all the other ones are corrupt and not standing up for it. They're powerless too, right?

So there's a lot of people that- Not necessarily right. It's not necessarily corrupt. There's just power. But we do ask all the time, every mass shooting, and they've been in the room with the person, they've interviewed the person, they've done nothing. So somehow they have not been empowered at the local level.

We all have these local field offices. They obviously don't feel like they can step up unless they are playing politics. And when they're playing politics, they get there.

That's how you move around. So for instance, the guy who ran the Whitmer investigation, which is disastrous, ongoing disaster in court for the FBI, because he had two people that won their case, two mistrials, and he got promoted. So it looks like the only way to get promoted in these agencies is if you take on political opponents. Then you get the attention of Washington. Even if you fail, you move on up. Well, that's what it's like, Harry.

It's like you can fail forward. Absolutely. So I think the FBI, to be fair to the FBI, either does nothing with respect to mass shooters, or they are actively engaged in entrapment. And so that is why more and more Americans distrust the FBI. There is clear and unmistakable evidence on the record with respect to the kidnapping trial going on in Michigan that the FBI informants were indeed sleeping in the same bed with the alleged perpetrators of the kidnapping event. It seems to abound within the Justice Department, unfortunately.

All right, folks. Again, go to ACLJ.org. You can stay updated on all the issues that we're working on. That's at ACLJ.org. Whether it's issues involving your security, your privacy, or if it's international issues, all there. ACLJ.org. You can support our work. Be part of our matching challenge at ACLJ.org.