Dept of Justice Scheme Against Trump Hits Roadblock

Today on Sekulow, the Department of Justice scheme against President Trump hits a major roadblock. 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. Alright folks, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110 on this Friday.

That's 1-800-684-3110. There's a lot to talk about. Action out of the court in Florida yet again. Remember, the Department of Justice fighting back every way they can against a special master, against the stay on the document review. Remember, they were told no more investigative team gets access to these documents until we have a special master review for privilege. Lots of different kinds of privileges as well. And the national security team can move forward, but the Department of Justice said the FBI can't do that.

They can't walk and chew gum at the same time. So they went to try and get this stay removed and they were repudiated strongly by the judge. We'll keep getting into it, but this is actually maybe the first time in a legal filing by a judge where she acknowledges the problem of leaking by the FBI directly of these documents. Hey, these are no less secure with us or with you because every time we see a news article, like every time they get an adverse ruling, something else leaks. Well, let me tell you what it comes up and it comes in the context of, you know, the government, the United States Department of Justice said that they have to maintain exclusive control over these documents. Nobody can see it. Not even the special master, by the way.

They didn't even want the special master to see this. But what's so fascinating here is, this is what she writes, the court nonetheless cannot abdicate its control over questions of privileges and does not find the government's arguments sufficiently convincing as presented first. There's been no actual suggestion by the government of any identifiable emergency or imminent disclosure of classified information arising from the plaintiff's allegedly unlawful retention of the seized property. Instead, and unfortunately her words, the unwarranted disclosures that float in the background have been leaked to the media after the underlying seizure, which of course was done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. So I think it is the first time we've seen it this direct that the disclosure itself was the basis upon which the judge said, wait a minute, you're talking about, you're worried about the plaintiff, former President Trump disclosing these documents.

You're the one leaking them. So, I mean, you know, so this is where the government consists, and I'll bring up some other points in the next segment. We want to take your calls on all of this.

I want to get people's reaction to this. It's a big win and a big repudiation of the Department of Justice. She also says, you know, we don't just have to take the Department of Justice word on this stuff. That's another big statement.

Yeah, I think that that's key. That's where the American people are waiting for is this idea that because they are acting as if no one can review these documents, even this judge that they agreed to should not be given access to the 100 documents, to the special master they agreed to. And the truth is, one, people can get to the right security clearances, but two, this is, I think that Washington, like Rick always talks about the overclassification so that they control everything.

And then you talked about so that there is no, they have no review. No one is actually, they have no oversight. That's what Department of Justice and FBI can't stand. They use the classification process, and especially the highly classification process, to remove themselves from oversight. Whether that's congressional oversight, now here it's in court. You know, I'll get to this in the next segment of the broadcast, folks, and we're taking your calls at 800-684-3110. But they talk about the no plausible claim of privilege issue, and the court says the court does not find it appropriate to accept, I mean, folks, these are big statements, to accept the government's conclusion on these important and disputed matters without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion.

And then she said some of these materials undisputedly constitute personal property and or are privileged. So, and then it goes on. I'll get to more when we come back from the break. A lot to discuss here on this, and we want to take your calls. 800-684-3110.

Yeah, that's right. Join us on the broadcast at 1-800-684-3110. As always, go to ACLJ.org as well. I encourage you to check out all the work that we're doing there. Oftentimes, we don't get to it all on the broadcast in the week, so you can check that out, too, for all what ACLJ is up to, what our team is doing, whether it's government affairs, the legal team as well. ACLJ.org. To be part of this show, give us a call.

1-800-684-3110. All right. Welcome back to Sekulow. You know, we have three branches of government. They are co-equal, the branches of government.

But you would not know that when the left, of course, you saw it with the Dobbs decision. We're now seeing it at the district court level, which is a trial court level. It's the level of court where you go through all the evidence. You go through all the tough stuff.

All right. So everybody loves talking about the appellate courts and going to the 11th Circuit and going to the Supreme Court. But the truth is, all of these, especially when you've got a heavy documents case, like this is all about documents. And this idea that the judge has no discretion. When they are a trial court judge, this is their job is to figure out how to move forward and protect both parties.

Rights. Not just the Department of Justice. I think they're treating this like a FISA court instead of an actual court where you have to have both sides getting fair treatment. Well, they're saying, basically, the government's saying... I think because they're not in Washington, D.C. either. In D.C., a lot of those, even trial court judges give a ton of deference to the federal government.

Yeah. But this is outside of Washington, D.C., and this is not like their home turf. Well, look, this judge, I think, she's getting a lot of criticism from the left, this judges, because they disagree with her opinion. That's just not the way it works. I mean, you could disagree with the opinion.

You could say the opinion's wrong. But, I mean, it's like almost vindictive in tone. But here's what's so interesting. So they talk about the two bases upon which the lawyers move to have the special master put in place. You realize, also, they're saying, we don't trust the special master. In other words, we don't trust a judge from the Eastern District of New York that the Department of Justice agreed to would be a good special master. We don't trust that person to review these 100 documents that the judge then points out that you have no problem leaking to the press.

But what's interesting here is they said, you know, they go, there are two bases upon which they're going to do this. They talk about 100 isolated documents by the government are classified government records. The plaintiff, therefore, has no interest in them. This is the government's position.

The second is that the plaintiff has no plausible claim of privilege to any documents. Here's what the judge says. The court does not find it appropriate to accept the government's conclusions on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expedited and orderly fashion. Now, you would think right there that would be a logical conclusion. Let a third party review it.

But no. But this is what the judge then says. Under these circumstances, and monitors of social media that want to say we're not quoting, I'm reading from the court's opinion.

Here it is. This is what the judge said about the Department of Justice on this. Under these circumstances, the court declines to conduct a subset by subset piecemeal analysis of the seized property based entirely on the government's representation of what is contained in a select portion of the property. So what she said was, I'm not going to just take it on the government's representation, but ask yourself this question. What are they so concerned about in these 100 documents? As the judge said, they're the ones that have leaked them to the press, or leaked some of them to the press.

I think that was clear what she said. Unfortunately, the unwanted disclosures that flow in the background have been leaked to the media after they have seized the documents. After they've gotten the documents.

So there's only one group that is leaking that. Because it's the DOJ. Every time they get an adverse ruling from this judge, something they don't like, they try to put it out that this is so top secret. What the judge is saying here, again, we're talking about pieces of paper. We are talking about, again, a classification process, which I think the American people are now saying is complicated at best when legally challenged. That's where the DOJ is running into issue. And courts are very wary to get involved in the executive power issue, especially when it comes to classification.

So I see the comments coming in. One of these guys is like an immigration attorney. He represents some, I think, of the 9-11, some of the people in Guantanamo. He said, I've been litigating against the U.S. government for 30 years. Never seen a federal judge disregard executive branch classifications considered to such an extent.

I think the reason why you're seeing it to such an extent, it's not disregarding, by the way. But by the way, he's been said, I've been litigating against the U.S. for 30 years regarding classified documents. And he didn't get the ruling, but he's upset that Trump's lawyers got the ruling. Right.

It's bad for you. I think to me, again, in his cases, it's one document, one person, one issue, one terrorist attack, something like that. And maybe he's right that he should have gotten access to more of information because we have heard directly from top intelligence officials that are part of our team at ACLJ that they go way too far with classifications. That was something President Trump wanted to address through not just himself and him declassifying documents, but also people like Rick Grenell came in as acting DNI to say these documents should not be unavailable to the American people.

We need to be more transparent. But I think it's interesting that the lawyer, right, had been litigating against the U.S. government for 30 years regarding classified records. So he's been litigating it before Democratic and GOP appointed judges. I've never seen a federal judge disregard executive branch concerns such as the extent as Judge Cannon did tonight.

So he's complaining. He raised the same issues for his clients and then said, but by the way, I've never seen this. It means you never got an order like these lawyers were able to get, but you've been trying to get those orders. All this to say, do we think that a co-equal branch of government has to just say, oh, we'll just take whatever the Department of Justice says as gospel and that's truth and that's it?

No, it doesn't. And I think this is what's happened here. Believe me, I've got a lot more to go through on this thing. The fact is the judge says that, you know, there's no image, this has been going on for 18 months. They've been fighting over these documents. There's been no leak of the documents until the FBI does its raid under its search warrant. And then there's leaks.

Not by the Trump people. These are leaks by who? The government. They're the only ones that have the documents.

So ask yourself that question. She, the judge, notedly raised it. Now they're taking it up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on an emergency basis, too.

Yeah, I think, listen, that point has to be repeated over and over and over again. Over this two-year process, not a single one of these documents has been released, leaked, utilized. They tried to say President Trump's utilize, he's tried to use it for blackmail and all that.

How does it happen? Okay, so whatever is there. And also, this all goes back to the idea of if they were truly concerned about these documents, you wouldn't wait two years, you wouldn't wait five days to execute a search warrant, the list goes on and on. And you wouldn't leak them to the Washington Post.

So they have a pattern here. I think the truth is when you look at their pattern of how they treat President Trump, it is unlike any other person. And I think they give more better rights and protection to these terrorists than they try him. And instead of just saying, hey, we need these documents back and we'll go back and forth and have this discussion. No, no, it's a national security issue. But for, the only reason we even know that there's a national security issue is because the actions by Department of Justice and FBI. But you gotta ask yourself- Because they could have handled this quietly. Why is it that they don't think that a federal court judge in a SCIF, in a secured environment, could review these hundred documents? That they had no problem leaking some out? Why is that such a big leap?

I mean, they're acting like this is some gigantic leap that they're taking here. But the judge says, you know, again, I'm going to repeat it. Presenting seized materials to a grand jury and using the content of the documents to conduct witnesses' interviews as part of a criminal investigation, that's what has stopped. You can't use those for witness questioning. You can't use those for grand jury proceedings. But the national security team at the Department of Justice can use those for their assessments.

But that's not good enough. What they're saying here is, what the government is saying here is that the temporary restraint that the judge put in place impacts their ability to do their prosecution and their job. Which also tells you what the government's looking for here, which is a criminal case. I don't think there's any question about that at this point. Alright, we're going to take your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. But I think to this point and to this issue, it seems to me like it's the first time, really, they're being treated the way they should by courts. Skeptical.

Not just get everything you want. And that's how it should be. Both sides should be treated with skepticism by a judge.

They go in that way. They're both making arguments, both trying to convince you of something. And in this case, what is interesting is how much they're freaking out of a procedural. Yeah, and they really are.

I go back to this. What is in these 100 pages, 100 documents, that's got them so concerned? And if they are that concerned, why would you be concerned about a judge reviewing them?

What do you think? The Department of Justice should just get a free shot? Which is actually what they do think.

They think nobody gets to seize these but the Department of Justice. Which goes to that whole issue of credibility. Yes, credibility. And then, remember, in the first order, the judge pointed out there were at least two instances where the taint team, that was the one supposed to be reviewing these separately, gave the documents over to the investigators even though they were privileged.

So just think about that for a moment. So you can't divorce the decision from the background of the case. And that's what I think is the fundamental aspect of it here. We've got calls and questions coming in at 1-800-684-3110. You may want to know, what does this mean for the future of the case? How does it play into it? We'll talk about all that.

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There's no bad questions here because it's complicated legal procedure. But we're trying to explain it, you know, to get it out so you understand where this is in the process. We're going to go to the phones now. And it's again, 1-800-684-31.

Ted, if you want to talk to us on air. Wade has called in from New York on Line 1. Hey Wade. Hey, how's it going? This is Wade from Buffalo.

Thanks for taking my call. So I just wanted to ask if it was more of a leak or was it more just the FBI being more like transparent? No, it was a direct leak to the Washington Post. So what we saw was the day the Special Ambassador was appointed. And they didn't like that, but they opposed that. They're still opposing that.

They're appealing it to the 11th Circuit. That was the day the Washington Post came out with a story saying their sources at the FBI let them know that one of these documents contained nuclear information about another country. So another country's nuclear programs.

Which, I mean, could be many different countries. But that's not the FBI trying to be transparent. That's the FBI undercutting a judge's decision and the legal process. And that's because I think it goes back to this idea, the whole issue with FISA courts, secret courts, classifying everything to a point where there is no oversight available. They got used to that at the DOJ and FBI. Where, yes, occasionally they'd get it and Andrew McCabe would get in trouble for leaking.

Occasionally Peter Strzok would get in trouble for the partisan politics. But the truth was the bigger picture is they controlled the info and no one else could see it. Well, and they're taking the position that they're the only ones that can control the info. They don't trust the co-equal branch of government, the judicial branch. So it's just the executive.

That's how they're doing this. So what's interesting here, and to go to Wade's question, is the court said that nonetheless we cannot abdicate, the court talking about its role, cannot abdicate its control over questions of privilege and does not find the government's arguments sufficiently convincing as presented. First, there has been no actual suggestion by the government of any identifiable emergency or imminent disclosure of classified information arising from the plaintiff's allegedly unlawful retention of the seized property. In other words, there's nothing that's saying this information is about to be leaked and we got to stop it like an injunction. Instead, and unfortunately, this is her words, the judges, the unwarranted disclosures that float in the background have been leaked to the media, emphasis added after the underlying seizure.

So the Department of Justice. That is what the, those are the background factors in all of this and this judge is saying, you know, you're asking us to just give you blind trust. And she says in another portion of the judge says, in another portion of opinion, we don't just have to take the government's word for it basically. We don't just have to take it, they say it, that's it. Also, she points out the limited scope of the order.

All the order says is, and this is what is so, I think, ironic to me, is that for a period of basically six weeks, eight weeks, this is what's going to happen. A special master's going to review these documents. The first hundred will be the priority because those are the ones the government has documented as they've said are these really privileged documents or classified documents. And the government's saying, no, that's not good enough. We don't want a judge reviewing it. So we need to take the court's word for it.

This is the problem. It's like the FISA court problem. You know, the FISA court problem was fine until you had a real problem. Now, that was the FBI misleading the FISA court, but that's because there is no defense lawyer at a FISA court.

And when you have a star chamber, you run that risk. And in a country like ours, I'm just not sure if the FISA courts are, it's a very close call whether that is a process we should be allowing without adjudication. Even if it wasn't the defense lawyer, but an appointed lawyer as a defense lawyer, it may be necessary. I think there has to be a review of the FISA system. And then what we saw under the Trump years was how they are abusing it to go after Americans by classifying them as foreign agents. Right. Which, again, they don't have the ability to make an argument to say, I'm not a foreign agent.

Yeah, I may have done this work, but I registered this or I put this application in. Also, we saw there's been a lot of selective use of law in the last few years. So laws that they've never enforced, laws that have been on the books never used by DOJ, some of the fairer laws, foreign agent registration, they never used. And then suddenly they're arresting people over it. And that's not a good legal system because you can't predict how, what actions are appropriate, what actions are inappropriate, and even like what line, at what point do you need to file a fare.

They're not real clear on. So it's like they selectively use it to go after political opponents, which is the worst kind of legal system in the world. And it's no legal system at all. So here's what's so interesting. Their motion, the government's motion, which she denies, requests the stay of the special master. And it says, number one, we want this injunction of further review and use of criminal investigation purposes of the records bearing classification markers that were recovered pursuant to a court authorized search warrant. That order saying we can't proceed on that should be set aside. And then secondly, they say what also should be set aside is that the government would have to disclose classified records to a special master for review.

Now, I want you to think about that for a moment. The United States government is saying we should not be compelled to disclose to a judge appointed by a judge. So it's a judge who appointed a judge. A judge, by the way, they agreed to would be fair because that will require us to disclose those classified records. And then she goes on later to say the court does. And by the way, the only leak of those documents have been because after the search warrant was executed, documents leaked to The Washington Post.

If you think about what the government is asking for, they want an unchecked, unfettered right to review these documents themselves, determine privilege themselves, determine ownership and control themselves without court review as if the Article 3 of the United States Constitution has been written out. And that's just not the way it works. And this judge is saying we're not taking the Department of Justice word for this.

All right. 1-800-684-3110. Yeah, go to J.D. in Nevada on Line 3. Hey, J.D.

Hi, how are you? Thank you for taking my call. My comment is years ago when I worked with the Department of Defense, I had a top secret FBI clearance. And even though I had that clearance, it didn't mean that I was able to see every single document. It was always a need to know basis. My question is, if these were allegedly top secret classified documents, did they make sure that every FBI agent that was sent to raid the property, did they have a top secret FBI clearance? So that issue came out and they may have had top secret, but it sounds like you really do know your classification issue, but they may not have had the FBI clearance, which is special compartmentalized information.

And so that became a question, too. But even then, Janie, what happened was, and the judge pointed this out in her previous order, even with the taint team in place, the taint team mistakenly gave tainted material to the investigators. At least twice, the judge says. So that was wrong.

And that's the problem when you have this internal taint team. It's all the same process. So, by the way, special masters are appointed all the time. But I again want to emphasize what the government's asserting in the brief.

They want an unfettered, unchecked ability to not give these documents even to a judge. Yeah, that's right. All right, folks. 1-800-684-3110 to get your questions.

That's a quick 30 minutes of the first five hour broadcast. Yeah, we're going to get more into this issue. If you've got questions about it, continue your calls about that.

We'll continue taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. But we're also going to talk some more of this immigration, the border issue. We've got the White House again claiming that the border is secure.

That's after 2 million. Are they kidding? Well, no, I mean, they're not kidding.

They have people in the media defending their viewpoint. But what we're starting to see is more and more this effort to let the rest of the country get a little taste of what this is like. You don't like that. Oh, it's back.

I mean, to the point where they want to, oh, we're going to sue them for kidnapping. Really. And by the way, if you're watching on our social media platforms right now, if you're on Rumble, you hit the plus sign. If you're on Facebook, you hit share.

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ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow, second half hour, 1-800-684-3110. We'd love to take your calls, your comments.

That's at 1-800-684-3110. There's been another victory. It's procedural, but substance in the sense that you have the judge in the case involving the Mar-a-Lago raid, the documents there and the DOJ's opposition to a special master to review the documents for privileged information because they already messed it up. That was one of the issues is they already messed up reviewing the documents and they gave privileged information over to the investigative team. That's a criminal investigative team. So information they did not have a right or should not have been able to access.

So the judge here said, okay, let's slow down a little bit. Let's appoint a special master who will just go through the documents so that you know clearly a third party has said, here's your documents you could use for your criminal investigation. Here's the documents you cannot use for criminal investigation that belong to President Trump. And they're saying we do not want to be required for the government to disclose classified records to a special master for review. That's what they said, the United States Department of Justice, even though that third party special master for review is a US District Court judge for the Eastern District of New York. But they don't want it disclosed there. And then they talk about, you know, worrying about documents being put out publicly and the judge wisely and correctly says, well, that's interesting, except that the only time the documents have been put out on this case was after the raid.

The only leaks were leaks to the media. So she's saying also, she says in her opinion, we don't have to just take the government's word for all this. Because there is no counter check here. Let's go ahead and take a phone call. 1-800-684.

I want to get your view on this, folks, and any questions. I know you've got questions on this. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go ahead and take a call. Alright, back to the phones we go. Justin in California online one. Hey, Justin. Hey, thanks for taking my call.

Appreciate everything you do. Okay, so on March 6 2020, March 6 2020, the Department of Defense replaced the term for official use only with controlled unclassified information in regards to how unclassified information is handled. If it turns out President Trump did indeed declassify these documents that were used in the Mar-a-Lago raid, do the parameters change after that March 6 2020 change based on the requirements for handling unclassified information?

That's a great question, Justin. And it might change for everyone else but a President. So the President is different than everyone else because only the President has the ability on his own to declassify information. Now we don't know the extent to that has not been litigated out here and they really have not asserted a lot about it but when your question is does the changing it from for official use only and I remember reading about that to controlled unclassified information. That means the government is it's not classified but the government just doesn't want it out there. Yeah, and this goes back to again, the end of the day, over classification, over control.

They're using the word there, control. We don't want you to have access to it. We don't want the public to have access to it and even though we can't use classification that will work here. We're still going to fight. We see this all the time in our FOIA work.

We're going to fight you on trying to get this information. And I think bottom line is there's a proper role, we all know that, for classification. That's a proper role for you need a legal system to take down terrorist and terrorist groups.

You need a FBI, a law enforcement agency like that at a federal level to go after drug cartels and to prosecute and to be able to put together those complicated cases against organized crime. But when they put their feet into this political world like decision making over what's classified and what's under the President having that unique role to declassify whenever, whatever they want and then litigating that, they are also running the risk of a court saying it's not our place. Correct. Well, they ran into that here. They acknowledged in the pre-motions before this order that they did in fact, at least on two occasions, give material that was tainted, in other words privileged, to the investigators which they shouldn't have done.

And they never showed any reason on how they were correcting it. So that's number one. And number two, as again, as the judge said, the only leaks of information here have been after the rate, after the search warrant was executed. That's when stuff leaked. So where did it leak from?

The answer is itself. All right, we're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. More about this, more about the immigration issue, something very troubling for our U.S. military too we're going to get into.

1-800-684-3110. We'll be back with it. Don't forget secularbrothers.com for the Logan and Jordan's podcast. It's incredible. It's great.

You've got to be listening to it, secularbrothers.com. All right, welcome back to the second. We're taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. We'll go right to the phones.

Sure. Andy in Florida on line three. Hey, Andy. Hey, guys.

Thank you for taking my call. I kind of have like a two-part question. Yep. One, if they go to the 11th Circuit Court and the Department of Justice wins their appeal, one, does the stage stay in place if the Trump team decides they want to go to the Supreme Court? Is that their next thing, is they have to go to the Supreme Court?

Well, it's multiple steps. So let's say – the government's already filed. So let's say the Supreme Court is going to rule – the 11th Circuit rather rules one way or another. They may say yes to the government. They may say no to the government. Then either party, the party that loses, could ask for a rehearing en banc, which means ask the entire 11th Circuit to hear the case on an expedited basis.

Or in the alternative, the losing party could then request certiorari to the Supreme Court, which will probably be on an expedited basis too. And I think – and I was just thinking about that from our standpoint at the ACLJ. I would weigh in on that at the Supreme Court level because this idea that the government gets a free pass and can't allow a judge to see the material in this context, but they had a taint team that was reviewing it.

And we don't know what their level of classifications were, and there were supposedly some issues with that. But Colonel Wes Smith is here, who in the military had clearance because he had to handle material that was classified. So Wes, you pointed out the fact that how this material – you've got to have clearance.

You've got to have a need to know. Yeah, it's supposed to be extremely, as we say in the military, close hold. And that is you not only have to have a clearance to see the documents, you have to have a reason that you need to see them, what's called a need to know.

And my fear, and maybe my suspicion, is that they are not really keeping that standard. I think this should be an extremely, extremely small group of FBI agents that even know what's in the material, and I doubt that that's the case. I think the judge kind of alluded to that could be a problem, but here's the question I have on this point, and that is you do understand, folks, that when it's classified, that doesn't mean people don't see it. So they don't want an Article III judge in a coequal branch of government to review it, sworn to uphold the Constitution, with security clearances, and certainly could get additional security clearances. But when it's deemed classified, Wes, it doesn't mean that people don't see it that have a need to know.

Oh, absolutely not. I mean, there are still people that can look at this. Because they need to know. Because they have a need to know, and they have clearance.

So I think we got to get that, I'm glad we're able to clarify a lot of these things, Jordan. Yeah, and I think, too, there's a question, too, I think of the procedural matters of Special Master, on that, remember, we were just talking about this for the break. The Special Master here is not telling the Department of Justice what's classified and what's not. They're not making decisions on that. They're making decisions on what's appropriate for you to review for your criminal purposes and what's not. What belongs to Donald Trump. That's the truth.

And that's it. Not what level this was classified at, whether the classification was waived, whether it was declassified. Because that is a whole other legal issue that I think the Department of Justice probably has a very weak case on. Because I think that the President's power to declassify so far outweighs...

Anybody else. ...their abilities to assert that after the fact... Well, no, the President has the ultimate ability to declassify him. He's the Commander in Chief.

There's nobody for him to appeal to. So, of course, if he did, and I don't know the details on that, but if he did, that's a whole different story. Here's what's interesting, though. In General David Petraeus's case, there was an issue of classified information, Wes, that he took and gave to his biographer who was writing a story about him. Yes. I don't recall, and Ali, take a look at this. I don't recall his house being raided by the FBI. Sandy Berger went to the National Archives and stole a document, put it in his... Socks.

Socks. Did they raid his house? I'm not sure.

I want to find those out. Because this was... I don't think they stopped him at Hardee's parking lot. Don't forget what happened here. What? They didn't stop him at Hardee's parking lot. It wasn't treated the same way.

Oh, the way they didn't, Mikey and Del? Yeah, it's a whole way people are being treated here. I think it's way over the top. Do you know, I think that on that one, I think on the... FBI just seems out of control.

This is... Way too many people. They're stopping the guy... First of all, he has a free speech right to say what he wants to say. About whatever. I mean, we do live in America. You could say, I thought the election was taken. You were allowed to say that.

Okay, you may not be right. But then to stop the person, in that particular case, in a parking lot of a Hardee's... I mean, and Hardee's made a joke about it. They said they had the fluffiest biscuits, just like the pillows. This is where the FBI, it seems like they're just... But they're looking ridiculous.

Yeah. But it doesn't seem to think that they have consequences. And then they tell the judge in writing, we don't want you to give this information to anybody else. Only our agents, like you said, Wes, who knows what level of review they had, who accidentally gave it to the taint... From the taint team to the prosecutors investigating it, which they weren't supposed to, and the judge said at least twice, and the government in their briefs never said what corrective action they've taken to avoid that. Well, and as you alluded to earlier, thankfully, the judge also pointed it out, rather pointedly, that the leaks were coming from the Department of Justice and the FBI, not from anyone else. The leaks started after they did the raid. Exactly. And it was the Washington Post one.

We could restate that. It was the Washington Post. The day a special master gets appointed, which may have been evening, so the next morning you wake up to the headline of there was nuclear information about another country in the documents. Now, for two years, like you said, and like the judge talked about, for two years you didn't hear any leaks like that. There was nothing in the news about Donald Trump has documents about Macron, or he has documents about some other country's nuclear info, until they got an adverse ruling from a federal judge. And then you start learning what they claim is in the documents.

They start leaking to their friends in the media. And I think that is what is so off-putting about this entire process, is that they just don't seem to follow anyone's rules. They don't seem to, you know, Wes, it's so specific as what can and cannot be done. And then the idea that, and I think this is something important for people to understand, it's not like classified information is not reviewed by people that have clearance. If they have a need to know, they get to review it. So to say the judge can't review, is the government saying, we don't want to be checked on this? I think that's what it's about.

That's what she said. And perhaps there's information in these documents that makes the FBI look bad. You know, Merrick Garland keeps being indignant about us not trusting the FBI.

They continue to do things that for the average American, it breeds distrust of their methods and their motives. Let me read you what the judge said about that very point. It says, under these circumstances, the court declines to conduct a subset-by-subset piecemeal analysis of the seized property based entirely on the government's representation about what is contained in a select portion of the property.

I mean, you can't be much more specific than that of her saying, you know what, the government just doesn't get a free pass here. That's not the way this works. All right, let's take another call. 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. Alex in North Carolina on Live 4. Hey, Alex.

Hey, thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. My question is, who is currently holding the documents and who said that they haven't made several copies already? Well, who's holding the documents, guess what?

Shocking breaking news alert. It's a great question, Alex. The Department of Justice. And they don't want anyone to see it, including the judge. So they are holding the actual documents, which does raise the question that Wes alluded to. Besides the classification issue, what are they so worried about? Are they worried that this whole process has been tainted? Because maybe you shouldn't have gone to a magistrate that had recused himself from a previous case involving this very plaintiff, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. And he recused himself because of concerns over bias, because he posted on social media anti-Trump statements before he became a U.S. magistrate.

Maybe that's where it should have started. Or that then when they do the actual execution of the warrant, they mistakenly give tainted material, that's what it's called, material that was being deemed privileged, either attorney client or executive, and mistakenly gave it to the investigators. Well, what happened to you, by the way, if you mistakenly gave it to the wrong party with your classification? Oh, wow. And you're in the military? Career ending.

Career ending? Absolutely. You know, we were held accountable.

Count Marshall? Does it reach that level? It's a criminal act? Yes, if it was done maliciously and intentionally, yeah, absolutely, sure would.

And it has been done. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm not saying anybody was malicious or intentional. I just find it ironic. You know, I find it ironic because Jordan and I did this for four years. Okay.

I said this to my wife this morning, and I mean this to Pam. I said, you know what? You know what this order did?

It vindicated everything we said for four years during the Mueller Ukraine nonsense that we had to deal with. It's just like, it never stops. It's always the same thing every time. Yeah, it's always, it seems like too much of a game for how serious they try to allege it. And then they make it this legal game of, you know, what won? Now there's a rush.

There's an election upon us. This went on for two years. No action whatsoever.

They start action early this summer. And now they're mad that they can't what? Leak enough of this out before the midterm election or try to leak out information, which is tough to counteract because they control the documents. Once they lose control of these documents to the special master, they can try to leak whatever they want, but all you can just say back is they're not in control.

But the FBI, the Department of Justice doesn't even want the judge to see them. So this tells you what it is. All right, folks, let me tell you something. We provide you a lot of content on this broadcast and Jordan and Logan are now doing three times a week. Secular Brothers podcast. It's incredible. It's detailed. It's news. It's funny at the same time. And they cover a whole host of issues.

It's a whole different side of this. You need to go to secularbrothers.com. You can sign up wherever you listen to your podcast and leave a comment as well. But I encourage you to do that today. It's really great. Yes, you can watch it and they're not so dated. So we have three new episodes this week that we did throughout the week. You can start with the first episode and I encourage you to do that over the weekend if you're driving the car. You've got time there so you can listen.

You can watch as well, secularbrothers.com. We'll be right back. All right, the code number is a call if you want to be on the show, 1-800-684-3110. I want to take a call on this where we get to a couple other topics in this final segment of the broadcast. Let me go to Michael in California on Line 1.

Hey, Michael. Yes. My question is can the court, can the judge hold the Department of Justice or parties within the Department of Justice in contempt of court for not turning over the documents to the court? Okay, so at the expiration of their appeal, so a court issues an order, you have to follow the order. The appointment of a special master unless you get a stay from a higher court or the judge could issue a stay.

The judge declined to issue the stay here, said no, the document should go to the special master for review. They then, the government, Department of Justice, filed an appeal with the Eleventh Circuit on an expedited basis. That probably is going to be decided this weekend is my guess, a three-judge panel. And then if that court says no, get him over to the special master, they could then go to the Supreme Court on an expedited basis and hold it up a bit. But they're not allowed to violate the court's injunction, which says you cannot use this information to question interviews, to go to a grand jury, to question witnesses. But that does tell you, folks, that they are looking at this as a criminal case.

Anybody that tells you, I understand why they're saying this is a document case, it is a document case, but you don't go to witnesses to a grand jury unless you think it's a criminal case. So that's how they're viewing this. So the lawyers here did the right thing, the former President's lawyers, by getting these motions now finally before the court.

And they got a judge that understands the scope and nature of it. Let's go to a couple other topics, one of which you talked about on radio yesterday, and it's got, I listened to it on your podcast, and it's infuriating, folks, for our U.S. military. Yeah, and it is, the American soldiers, Wes has got a new piece up at ACLJ.org about this, how they're being instructed to utilize food stamp programs.

This is disgusting. To be able to feed their families, put food on the table. We know military pay is not high. There are other benefits that come through military pay, but if you can't, during this time of inflation, while they're celebrating at the White House with the James Taylor concert, and our men and women who volunteer to risk their life to defend our freedoms can't put basics on the table.

Food? Yeah, the sergeant major of the Army, which is the senior enlisted guy at the Pentagon, issued instructions and guidance on how to apply for the SNAP program, which is a food stamp program for soldiers and the military. And on the one hand, I was glad that the Pentagon is recognizing that junior enlisted soldiers are struggling. On the other hand, it was insulting that people who wear the uniform, who sometimes die for their country, are having to apply for food stamps in order to feed their families. And some of them, I know this for a fact, have gone to church food banks to get food. These are people that serve our country.

It made the party on the White House lawn where he touted how much better the economy was and how much better the American people were. I was insulted watching the party knowing what was happening with our soldiers. When did the sergeant major put this information out?

On Monday, this past Monday. So this was while all this stuff was being played and done. Oh, absolutely. Here's the thing I don't understand. If this is the case, and it's horrible, and we don't pay these men and women enough that are serving our country. But if there really is, because of the inflation stuff, which is the Biden administration's fault, why don't we have a food program?

Okay, if this is really a problem, and obviously if it got the sergeant major's attention, it's a problem. Why don't we have a program so that we can respect the dignity of the men and women that wear our uniform, that we can provide food, groceries, on the basis, through the PX, or whatever it might be. Even if they have PX's anymore, through these systems so that we have the dignity of the men and women serving our country rather than having to get food stamps in line at their Kroger store. Well, everything has gone up. Food, gas, rent, everything. I looked at some figures just yesterday, and they got a 2.7% pay raise two years ago. Last year, they got a 3% pay raise.

This year, they're projecting for 2023 a 4.6 pay raise. When you put that alongside inflation, over the last three years, soldiers in the military have received a pay cut of 12.5% over the last three years before inflation hit. And they can't afford groceries. They can't afford groceries. The average E4, or corporal, with a spouse and two kids makes $2,400 a month before taxes. If they don't live on post, and most of them don't because housing is limited, they get an additional approximately $900 a month, depending on where they live, for rent and utilities.

What is that? $13 an hour? I've witnessed personally that soldiers live in undesirable, high-crime neighborhoods because that's the only place they can afford, and now they're having to apply for food stamps. I'm not a fan of President Biden or any President ruling by executive order and making pronouncements with a pen by decree, but he is their commander in chief. He is at the top of their chain of command.

He needs to issue an executive order to do something during this inflation period to give our soldiers relief. $15.62 an hour. And that's before taxes.

$15 an hour, which is I think what they pay if you work at Chick-fil-A or at the fast food industry. And they wonder why they're falling short of their recruiting goals. And we're embarrassing these men and women by saying you can't afford the food.

This is ridiculous. If there is an issue, there's a way to address it without it being food stamps. But we got rid of student loans. Yes. But not really. Not really. Right. $10,000 worth.

Yeah. And so think about where that money could have gone to how many families on military basis to make it where they don't have to have this stigma. There is a stigma with food stamps. I mean, I think the left may try to say, oh, there's not, but there is. And usually that stigma is you're going through it, you're not employed. There's a reason for a food stamp program.

Yes, there is. That's what I'm saying. But it does come with a stigma.

It does mean that something has gone on in your life. For these individuals, they're working, serving their country. They don't have that issue. So they haven't had like a catastrophic event happen or where they can't work and need assistance to put food on the table.

They are voluntarily working, serving our country and are being treated the same as people who are in these dire situations or who aren't working to provide for their family. Now, Wes, you've got an article, a piece up at ACLJ? Yes, sir, I do.

What's it called? It's talking about soldiers on food stamps, what you need to know. Yeah. I mean, folks, I mean, it's horrific. Now let's talk about the border. We only got two minutes. Go ahead.

I'm not going to get to the border yet today because I want to play that. I think that this all plays into it. This is the House Majority Leader, Sidney Hoyer. Remember they mock us about the deep state? But you remember like Schumer saying you better not mess with those guys? Right. Check out, this is the House Majority Leader last night in the U.S. House.

Take a listen. They made it quite clear. They want to eliminate what they call the deep state. The deep state is a cadre of professionals dedicated to honoring the Constitution, the laws of this country, and carrying out the policies of the Congress and the President.

Did Denny Hoyer just say the deep state is professional, that there's, A, there is a deep state, but don't worry, they're professionals? Yeah. OK, folks, we are living in another planet. Yes. OK, this is when this is, OK, when are the elections?

November 8th. OK. Because, I mean, really. So Denny Hoyer is saying, they made it quite clear they want to eliminate the deep state, but the deep state is a cadre of professionals, which he obviously... This is kind of like your Constitution.

This is kind of like the border is secured, if your definition of secured means it's unsecured, open, and a disaster. But see, I think this is a new strategy from the left, which is, we're not going to fight you on these issues. We'll own the deep state. Yeah, we are the deep state. We'll keep them on our side. And it's a signal to all those bad bureaucrats, which is really all we're talking about there is entrenched bureaucracy. And that's why we say deep state.

It's tough to remove them. And they're giving that signal to them as we're your friends. The side is not your friends. They want to get rid of your job. We'll protect your job. So come after and go after those guys.

Exactly right. Hey, folks, we want you to do a couple things. Support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice. You get this broadcast every day.

It's just part of what we do. ACLJ.org. You know about our legal work. We're going to work on these military men and women getting the pay they need to pay for their food and groceries.

The ACLJ's government affairs office can go to work on that. Also, secularbrothers.com. Brand new podcast. First week's done.

Jordan and Logan. It is great. You need to subscribe to it. You can do it on any of the places you get your podcasts. And just go to secularbrothers.com and leave a comment as well. And again, support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.