Rep. Jim Jordan Live: Demands Answers from FBI

Today on Sekulow, Congressman Jim Jordan joins us live and demands answers from the FBI. 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. Welcome to Sekulow, folks. We're taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Congressman Jim Jordan joining us in about five minutes next segment of the broadcast. I mentioned yesterday in the broadcast, he just sent a new letter to Christopher Wray because more whistleblowers have come to Congressman Jordan. These whistleblowers have talked about how this domestic violent extremism numbers are being ratcheted up by the FBI because they're treating all of the January 6 arrests as regional and state arrests. But the Washington field office is running all of the arrests. So instead of it being like there was one of it, it was bad, these are the people being arrested for it, it looks like there's all these people across the country consistently over the last couple of years being arrested for domestic violent extremism. And what you're not getting from, and the whistleblowers reported, is that what you're not getting the full context is these are all from the same incident. So it's not like there's all of these domestic violent extremism attacks happening across the country all the time.

These are the same arrest from the same day. And that again, it just shows you how politically they're thinking. Like they are going into, even law enforcement I think is legit, those people broke the law, you can arrest those people who trespassed and broke into the Capitol, of course. But even then, they politicize it. Well, not only they politicize it, let's be clear, and this is to me probably the most troubling aspect of what Jim Jordan wrote. He said in addition, the whistleblower disclosed that the FBI is sacrificing its other important federal law enforcement duties, which he alluded to yesterday, to pursue these investigations. The whistleblower recalled, and this is what he said, for example, being told, quote, that child sex abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies. And then Jim Jordan writes, such a posture is not only a dereliction of the FBI's mission to investigate violations of federal law, but it's a grave disservice to the victims of sexual abuse and other crimes that do not advance the FBI's leadership's political agenda. To me, that is actually the most troubling aspect of this, that they would take sex crime, sex abuse of minors, deescalate that as a problem and say, oh, what we want you focusing on this is this other, and now at least you got FBI agents coming forward to talk about it. Well, and I think the FBI's job is to take on the bad, the real bad guys, the guys who shoot back, the guys who are running the drugs, the cartels, but it feels like they have backed off that completely and instead they just want to play politics. And it's a lot safer to arrest a pro-life protester and raid Mar-a-Lago when it's empty than it is to take on child sex predators or people running sex trafficking, the cartels doing that, or working, you know, dealing with fentanyl because again, drug dealers shoot back too. So I think the whole reason we have an FBI is to take on the toughest of the toughest crime, criminals in our country and those who want to hurt us like terrorists. And yet they are focusing it on Americans and even if like that Pennsylvania incident with the pro-life protesters, let's say that that was a full, the full on crime was pushing.

Okay. Why is the FBI involved? Well, they turned a state trespass or assault at best to a liberal federal case. So they're playing abortion politics at the FBI now. That's wonderful. Well, they did that in the 1990s under Bill Clinton too. So let's, I remember those days.

So I was there. All right, folks, we're going to take your calls and comments 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ file to brief. It's going in today, Kentucky Supreme Court.

The issue is life and an attempt by Planned Parenthood type groups to enshrine a right to abortion in the Kentucky state constitution. By the way, good news out of the eighth circuit court of appeals. Looks like we've got a complete victory on our case for Governor Noem on the informed consent law there.

So that's some good news. All right, when we come back from the break, your calls 800-684-3110, your reaction to all this. How do you feel about your FBI saying, you know, child abuse cases involving online pornography, obscenity, and we're not going to do those anymore. We're going to do these other cases.

1-800-684-3110. Don't forget, download the Secular Brothers podcast, secularbrothers.com. Back with more in a moment. All right, welcome back to Secular. We're joined by a great friend of the American Center for Law and Justice, someone fighting for all of us in our nation in Washington, D.C., Congressman Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee who has been uncovering through whistleblowers coming to Congressman Jordan so much of this politicization of the FBI. And in a new letter to the FBI director, Congressman Jordan talks about how even when it comes to the January 6th arrest, they politicized how they're reporting those arrests to make it look like, well, Congressman, I'll go right to you, to make it look like there's all this domestic violent extremism, DVE, going on all across the country instead of misleading people, that these are all arrests stemming from a single event. Right. They're trying to make it look like there's an extremist behind every door to satisfy this narrative of Joe Biden, where he called half the country fascist, half the country extremist.

And understand the pattern here. We've had now over 14 FBI agents come to our office as whistleblowers. They come to us, I think, because they know they can trust us and they know how bad it is and they're willing to come to us even in the minority just because it's so ridiculous what's going on there. It started first with whistleblowers coming forward last year in relation to the whole school board issue. And then more recently, we had this whistleblower who come to us and said, look, they're cooking the books in a way that makes it look like there is domestic violence extremism everywhere. And they're so focused on this is the troubling aspect of this, too. And maybe the most troubling was they're so focused on this, they're pulling agents off of child trafficking cases to focus on this political narrative at the Justice Department. You know, Jim, this is when I read that part of your letter, I was outraged.

I mean, this idea, I'm going to read it for everybody. In addition, the whistleblower disclosed that the FBI is sacrificing its other important federal law enforcement duties to pursue January 6th investigations, which they have a huge team on. It's not like they can't do that. The whistleblower recalled being told that the sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority. I mean, think about I think about that for a moment where sex trafficking is such a huge problem across the country at the border, but throughout the United States. Online pornography aimed at children where children are utilized in those videos is a huge problem. I argued a case at the Georgia Supreme Court a few years back where I was defending the state of Georgia's law on what they called predator situation was basically these people that were grooming young kids and then ultimately meeting with them. They flew in a big First Amendment lawyer from Texas supposedly, you know, then the state of Georgia asked me to do what I did a pro bono and we won the case. But the point is now the FBI saying, oh, you know, we're so busy with these other cases, we can't continue to make child sexual abuse and trafficking a priority, Jim, that is really dangerous.

Yeah. Well, and then couple it with what appears to have happened in Philadelphia with this homeschool family, this pastor, where they're focusing on those kind of issues all to satisfy this political narrative. I said it this way, the first whistleblower that came to us a few weeks ago on this issue of DVE cases, domestic violence extremism cases, said that they were juicing the numbers.

They were pressuring agents to categorize all cases as domestic violence extremism. And now we find out they're cooking the books. So juicing the numbers, cooking the books all again to fit this political narrative. And as you point out, as this whistleblower told us, at the expense of protecting kids, that's wrong. And it's why if we get the majority, we're going to do everything we can to expose this and try to hold people accountable who are responsible for it.

Yeah. I mean, Congressman Jordan, one of the things that I see of all of this is that not only is the politics seeped in, but as you keep talking about diverting the resources away from the real, the bad actors. The reason why the FBI exists is to take on the worst of the worst, whether those are criminal actors inside the US that are US-based, whether they're foreign terrorists, whether they are foreign cartels. And with the fentanyl crisis, with all the drug crisis we're seeing hitting all of our communities, it does not matter where you are in the country because of what's happened at the border, those drugs are everywhere. And when they start to say, well, we got to prioritize the arrest of January 6th or the pro-life protester outside of an abortion clinic, instead of going after the really bad guys, that's why they exist.

Can we get them back on track? Well, I think it's even worse. The other thing the whistleblower told us is that they're using the most extreme tactics when they go after these people for political reasons. When they go after the January 6th group, the tactics that this pastor in Philadelphia area has mentioned that they're busting in the door, coming in guns drawn for a homeschool dad who was praying at an abortion clinic. So I think that is a big concern as well.

I hope we can. The good news is there's lots of these agents. I've never seen this, Jordan, where we've had now, like I said, over 14 come to us, bunch of whistleblowers that went to Senator Grassley, they're coming to Congressman Comer on the oversight committee of the House, they're coming to Senator Johnson. And they're doing that because it's so egregious, so political now, that they just, I think, feel compelled. This is not the FBI they signed up for.

And some of them now come public. As you know, Dan Bongino had a whistleblower on his show, an agent on his show this past weekend who talked about this whole area and how political things have gotten. You know, of course, and I witnessed that as did you firsthand when we were in the middle of impeachment proceedings for the former President of the United States. It seems to me that the leadership of the FBI is entrenched. You know, we talk about the deep state.

You don't have to dig too deep to find out who's controlling this. And of course, the question of the day is the director, Ray, you mentioned that homeschool dad who's in front of an abortion clinic, somebody assaults his son and he pushes the guy away. The police come, they could have been an assault charge on either side. They don't write either party up. The guy files a civil lawsuit, the lawsuit gets dismissed.

Then what happens? Six days after the lawsuit's dismissed Congressman, the Department of Justice through the FBI sends 20 agents to his house. And you know what the FBI comes out and say, because people were saying, oh, it wasn't the SWAT team.

It was just 20 agents with weapons drawn. I mean, this tells you the abuse, but where is Chris Ray on the over 100 incense of violence by groups like Jane's Revenge on pro-life crisis, pregnancy centers and pro-life groups? And all that violence happened just after the leak of the draft opinion. And they did squat because we brought that up in hearings. When Chris Ray, when FBI agents went and had the wrong person in Alaska, they said she was at the January 6th event and she was not there. She was not part of the riot, was not in the Capitol, whatever. They held her for four hours, interrogated her for four hours. They had the wrong person.

Chris Ray didn't even know about it when he was in committee when I asked him the question. So that's the part that I think is so frustrating to so many Americans. You're the darn director of the FBI.

And you can't answer some questions about incidents like what happened in Alaska and this terrible thing that happened in the Philadelphia area this past week. You know, Congressman Jordan, it's always great to have you on. And we, again, we want to continue to uncover all this information and keep those letters out. We keep covering on the broadcast.

It's great to have you on too. Again, I'm glad that those FBI whistleblowers are there coming out of that institution. We, you know, it's one that we needed our country to be functioning. Congressman Jordan, as always, we appreciate having you on. Congressman Jordan is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, which soon could be chairman very soon. And I think, again, that could help correct a lot of these problems, Deb, because when you have the leadership of the committees in Congress, the power of the purse, who then are pressuring to say, you need to reprioritize.

Exactly right. And Jim Jordan's been a good friend of ours, and he would be a excellent chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Let's go ahead and take Jerry's phone call. Hey, Jerry, calling from Rhode Island, online one. If you want to talk to us in air, 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Hey, Jerry. Hello, team, and Representative Jordan, if you're still listening, thank you for the work you're doing. Cavalry's coming, hopefully in November. Where's the inspector general when you got 14 guys coming forward as whistleblowers? Where's the inspector general?

Well, they could be. I mean, the inspector general could be commencing. They take a very long time. But those investigations, as you know, Jerry, because you know you've listened to this broadcast, could take two years. So what you've got is, if there is a change, and there will be in November, in the House of Representatives, and Jim Jordan's the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, you know what you do? You start having real hearings, and you bring these guys up, and you bring them before your committee.

And then the ACLJ simultaneously issues Freedom of Information Act requests about how this came out, and they'll fight it, and then we go to court. And you know what? As Andy always says, it's finding a nugget in the dirt. It's needle in a haystack. But you know what? Every single case we've had, we've found that nugget.

Every single time. There's something there you go that's breathtaking. So that's how we're going to approach it, and our team's working on that now at the ACLJ. Hey folks, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we'll take your calls. 1-800-684-3110. That's 800-684-3110. Senator Hawley is demanding some things as well. Answers over that FBI raid of that homeschool dad.

We want to hear from you on that one. 1-800-684-3110. What was your reaction when you heard that?

800-684-3110. Secular Brothers podcast, day two today. Yeah. We're doing another second episode of the week. Yeah.

Yeah, so this is week three. I watched it yesterday. You could watch it, listen to it, download it, however you do it. Go to secularbrothers.com. That's secularbrothers.com to subscribe. Put a comment there too on the ratings.

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It's ACLJ.org. We'll be back with more, including your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110, your reaction to the FBI rating of Father's House parents.

All right, welcome back to Secular. We're taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. You just heard from Congressman Jordan. The FBI, it's good to know that there are those whistleblowers still there willing to go to members of Congress to say this is how out of control it really is. So even when it comes to the January 6th arrest, they couldn't just legitimately arrest people who trespassed into the Capitol violently. No, they had to make that even a political move so it looks like there's all these different domestic violent extremist events happening across the country as Congressman Jordan said, which I wrote down, an extremist behind every door is how they're painting Americans. And instead of, and now we have confirmation that because of their political focus, they're not doing their real work. So they're actually pawning off real serious crime. I mean, crime that to take down, it means you're taking down some bad actors, bad hombres, if you will, to quote President Trump before. And yet they're pawning that off. And I've said this, they're pawning off to the local police departments who are overworked, highly criticized by the left. The FBI doesn't have to deal with any of that.

You never hear about them on body cameras, like overreaction. For instance, 20 FBI agents showing up in a pro-life father's door because he pushed somebody a year ago, in that case got thrown out. And that's not an overreaction that we should all be screaming defund the FBI?

No. So Senator Hawley wrote this in his letter to Merrick Garland. It says, not only did your office turn a local dispute into a national case, but the FBI reportedly executed the search warrant in an extreme manner as one can imagine.

Reports state that the FBI sent as many as 20 to 25 agents to conduct the arrest. Now, the interesting thing to me on this, Andy, is it says not only did your office turn a local dispute into a national case. So in Bray versus Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, another pro-life case, ended up at the Supreme Court, ended up being the predicate case to the overturning of Dobbs. I argued that the application of the statute there turned a state trespass action literally into a federal case. This particular dispute turned a local dispute that the police decided to write no one up on.

And the plaintiff in the case, in the civil case, the guy that says he was touched or pushed after asserting expletives against the homeschool dad's 12-year-old, he doesn't show up in court, his case gets dismissed. But they are literally turning state trespass actions into federal cases. And that's not the job of the FBI unless it's politicized, which it is. It has become a political arm of the Biden administration.

It has become a political arm of the left. Listen, this is, assume the worst facts. It was a case of assault, a simple case of assault. That is a typical state crime and it should have been taken care of on a state level.

Well, it was. Then the state decided not to prosecute. Well, because the FBI is pushing this leftist agenda, they said, we can't allow this to happen. We've got to go in there guns are blazing, you know, with 25 FBI agents when what they should have done is if this man committed a federal crime, if he did is call him up or call his lawyer up and say, we've got a warrant for your arrest, come down and surrender yourself and bail out because you have the right to bond in a case like this. But no, instead they descend on him as if he was some kind of a drug dealer, you know, from across the border and terrify him, terrify his children and do something that I as a prosecutor would never have done to one single individual who was nonviolent and who had not shown any inclination to flee. Senator Hawley also wrote that the reports are especially shocking given that your office has so far turned a blind eye to the epidemic of violence across the country by pro-abortion extremists against pregnancy resource centers, houses of worship and pro-life Americans. And there was recently also a, I mean, I know it's being investigated, CC, it was an 83 year old woman was, was shot by somebody for handing out a pamphlet at their, I guess we're doing canvassing, election canvassing, but you know, those pregnancy resource centers, there's been like 104 incidents of violence and I'm hearing nothing out of the FBI.

Absolutely. That's what's so shocking. And that's why when representative Jordan said, you know, the FBI is satisfying a political narrative.

They absolutely are. They go after a homeschool father for a, an alleged assault charge, which Andy rightfully said was resolved at the local level and they go in guns blazing and yet they have 104 attacks. Some of them very violent firebombing against pregnancy resource centers and they have not done one investigation into that at all.

So Jordan, I'm trying to, you know, politically, who's the satisfying in their base? We do nothing. You know, we, you know, does, does their base like good pro-life resource centers should be attacked? I mean, Yeah, they do. I think they should be shut down. I don't know if they, I wouldn't say they all agree that they should be firebombed, but I think they have little sympathy for the firebombs because they're done, you know, they're not, they would say, well, they're done in the evenings, they're done with their clothes. So they haven't actually hurt anyone, but yeah, they believe that those should be shut down. They believe that the priority should be us. You know, they think the far left thinks like half the country are traitors to whatever view of their country is. And while we don't see Antifa arrest and we saw also that on our TV, we don't see the bad actors through those riots, the summer riots took over federal buildings, burned them down.

Yes. And those cities have recovered, but that's not the FBI's priority. The FBI's priority is a old case out of Pennsylvania and a pro-life dad. That's where they send 20 agents, not to whoever was running the encampment in Seattle, which is rife with drugs, not to the Southern border to deal with cartels. No, no, no, no, no, because those people are dangerous and don't score them political points with their friends in Washington, DC.

And I think that's where we're at right now with the FBI. And it's easier. Let me tell you, it's a lot easier. I'll say I work in politics. It's a lot easier to work in politics than it is law enforcement. No one's shooting, well, they shouldn't be shooting at you in politics. And they're not shooting at the FBI.

When they're showing up at this father's door, the kids are crying. Like you said, if they wanted to arrest him, how about, you know, just inform him. Call his lawyer and ask him to surrender, Andy. Or arrest him at work or arrest him during the day. Call him and have him come down and surrender and voluntarily surrender himself. You don't put him in shackles. You don't put all this wire around him, throw him in a car and take him down there.

Why would you do that? Well, we are representing, uh, uh, pregnancy resource centers, DC in New York state, California, all over the country. And this attacks on them. It's for real.

Absolutely. And, and, um, you know, the letter that was sent to Merrick Garland, he was specifically asked, you still have not identified a single prosecution the department of justice has taken in response to this epidemic of violence against pro-life Americans, including PRCs. Not one case has been brought against them. I mean, I'd like to know that they're at least investigating these. So I'd ask the attorney general that. I would ask the director of the FBI, are you actually looking at these and investigating these? All right, we're going to have more on this in the next half hour of the broadcast, because we are down to the last minute here before we go to break.

Your support of the ACLJ, by the way, is critical for all the things that we're doing, including bringing you this broadcast, ACLJ.org for that. We've got some calls coming in. We'll take those. When we come back from the break, we've got, uh, we don't have time to play this vice-President.

Do we have time to play it? We'll save it for the next segment. I'm gonna play this statement from vice President Harris, because I think it tells you where they are.

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ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host Jordan Sekulow at 1-800-684-31 to talk to us on air. Rick Rinnells coming up next segment of the broadcast. We're going to talk a little bit more about what's going on inside of Iran. We covered it a lot in 2009 during the green revolution when it was the Obama-Biden administration that refused to listen, to even really acknowledge the protesters. Jake Sullivan is back again and he was trying to explain away this weekend.

We'll talk to Rick about that, why they ignored the protesters in 2009 and are they ignoring them yet again? But let's go to the phones at 1-800-684-31. Christine in Alaska on Line 1. Hey, Christine. Hi. How are you? Thanks for taking my call.

I'm a fellow homeschooler, a parent homeschooler in Alaska, and I'm also pro-choice. And I'm outraged what happened to that father and son. Just outraged. It's upsetting.

I have a question for you. Everyone is saying, just wait till the elections in November, wait till the elections in November. Yet I have sat back and watched. I don't feel like there was any follow-through, no resolution, there's no enforcement.

How do we know that these elections are not going to be corrupted again? Here's the thing that you got to do. Go ahead. Well, I understand why you say Alaska because of that ranked choice voting. I still can't figure it out.

Absurd. I don't think it's American. I don't think it's Democratic. You don't get your second pick in politics. You make a choice and that's it.

Your choice when they're losing. So I think it's not election integrity, Christine, because that's your state adopted it, but I will tell you it's incumbent security. And what it means is it makes it very difficult for incumbents to lose. You get stuck with Lisa Murkowski.

Maybe you might like her, but you can't even like challenge them because they'll be the person's second or third choice because you go with at least who you know after your first choice. And we saw that happen to Sarah Palin where people who didn't vote for her, then their second choice was Democrat. Right. So then a Democrat comes in. Yeah, the system is ridiculous. But that's a system prob, not a... Right.

Legally, first of all, the elections do matter because then it's who heads up these committees so you can have investigations. What we do though also with the ACLJ is important to understand that when we're able to do it, and it depends on the nature of the case, we will immediately dispatch a Freedom of Information Act request to a governing agency and start getting information that way. Now, it usually requires litigation because they usually respond or don't respond, but we've had great success in getting information and we can get to the bottom of some of this. It just takes time.

Yeah, absolutely. And the Freedom of Information request that we do get a lot of times, if we do get a response, it's heavily redacted or there's a lot of exceptions. And we go back at them, yes, and then end up in court and usually get what we're looking for.

But it is a battle and it does take time. Let's take Rick's call from Montana on Line 4. Hi, Rick. Welcome to the broadcast. You're on the air. Hey, guys. Thanks so much.

Hey, thanks for taking the fight for us to wherever it needs to go. My question is, so this dad that got arrested, the charges were dropped or the guy didn't show up for trial and the judge dropped the charges. Isn't that considered double jeopardy when you come back and charge him again? So, Andy was the assistant DA here as well, and I'll let him answer, then I'll chime in.

But go ahead, Andy. The answer is no, there's separate sovereignties. The one is under state law, the other, the FBI's so-called enforcement action is under federal law. So that does not qualify as double jeopardy because two different sovereignties are prosecuting. And also, there were no charges made, so jeopardy never attached in the state proceeding, which is what makes this so ironic. No state charges, the civil suit's dismissed, and the response to all that instead of saying, okay, that matter's been resolved locally, it's over with.

He can go hand out his pamphlets, counsel people going into the abortion clinic. What happens instead? Six days later, the FBI decides to do a basically no-knock raid. I mean, when I say no-knock, I'm sure they knocked.

They founded his door with guns in armaments ready to shoot. Like Jordan said, not on the drug cartels right now, but they'll take 20... Why can't we take those 20 agents and handle the border crisis or handle the sex trafficking up and down the major expressways? That would be a good use of resources. Yeah, let them spend their time on that, partnering up with law enforcement to prevent the FITNO from getting into the communities while it's going up the expressways. I mean, listen, they can't... I wouldn't say the FBI can solve everything, but they can certainly take down... Their job is to take down massive criminal elements and terrorists. Not us, not Americans. They're not someone for pushing even.

I mean, even that, to me, 20 agents are wasting their time on that while FITNO's killing 20 Americans a day. We'll be back on Secular. All right, here we are in these moments in history, and you say, well, how could the US use its influence internationally to tilt outcomes in a positive direction? We've seen major protest movements in Iran before. The most recent massive protest movement was 2009. So what was similar? Well, you had the Obama-Biden administration, you had Joe Biden there, Jake Sullivan, similar advisors around, and they get asked, why so silent then?

I want to start with this point. We're going to go right to Rick Riddell, but I want to start with this from Meet the Press this weekend with Jake Sullivan. Why the Obama administration, the American people? I remember wearing the green t-shirts around on campuses. Why so silent then?

Take a listen. You were in the Obama administration during the green revolution in 2009. You're well aware there were many folks who thought that the Obama administration then was a little slow to respond to those protests. Is the Biden administration's response a response to that criticism way back when?

Is there going to be an attempt to be much more forward leaning on these protests going forward? Well, Chuck, part of the reason that there was a different kind of approach in 2009 was the belief that somehow if America spoke out, it would undermine the protesters, not aid them. I think what we learned in the aftermath of that is that you can overthink these things, that the most important thing for the United States to do is to be firm and clear and principled in response to citizens of any country demanding their rights and dignity. All right, Rick, it took a couple of decades to have that revelation that stands strong for what's right.

If you stand strong for what's right and good, you don't need to overthink things. If people are putting up in a foreign country that has this foreign language signs in your country's language and you're the most powerful country in the world that speaks that language, maybe they do want your help. Of course they want our help. This is a story of a stupid State Department old argument where it's put forward by people who hate America, who blame America for everything, and somehow when there is a crisis around the world, they say, well, we don't want to become the issue. Well, guess what?

You're already the issue, so start fighting. It's ridiculous to think that in 2009 that these people, and by the way, it's the same old. Anthony Blinken was Susan Rice's deputy.

Avril Haines was the deputy. She's now running CIA, all the intel organizations, including the CIA, and Blinken is running the State Department. Same old people, same old ideas. They wanted to have a nuclear negotiation, nuclear negotiations with Europe, and they didn't want to spoil that idea that somehow the Europeans and the Americans would agree, so we had to water down our policy to let the Europeans veto America policy. The opposite of America first is consensus with the Europeans. This is what they wanted, and so they didn't want anything to get in the way, and look at Ned Price just said from the State Department podium yesterday that basically we can do two things. We can keep nuclear negotiations and we can stay away from these protests and we can treat them separately. I don't think that's true.

Well, I think that's impossible. You know, the failure of the Obama administration during the Arab Spring when it came to the situation in Iran, it was breathtaking historically if you look at what the end result of that was. You had millions of people in the streets of Tehran ready to overthrow government, and listen, this is a country that's had a history of protests in Tehran overthrowing governments.

And we had a unique opportunity, as you and Jordan were just discussing, Rick, the signs were in English. There were signs aimed target, I remember, at Americans, and instead the Obama administration basically told the protesters to stand down. So you're thinking elections have consequences and policies have consequences, but here we are again.

We're going to be talking about this with Colonel West Smith the next time. I think there's protests now, Rick, in 80 different cities throughout Tehran, throughout Iran, including Tehran, and you wonder what this administration is going to do. And what they want to do, as you said, is they want a nuclear deal which will be meaningless with Tehran, with the leadership in Tehran, and so that Iran goes to the table and Biden can then announce some nuclear deal that they'll be violating before they start. Meanwhile, the people in the street lose the support of the United States government. Look, the Biden administration and the Europeans have already missed the boat on Nord Stream 2. They really helped create this war in Ukraine because they were unwilling to take a tough stance when it comes to European energy. Now what we see is negotiations with Iran while the regime in Iran, while the very people they're negotiating with, are literally killing women and gays in the streets.

And so this is an outrage. Where are the NGOs? Where are the media?

All of these people. You know, where are the human rights organizations when people in, you know, Hamas is throwing people off the top of buildings? Or in our case, you mentioned the examples you just gave, we had a pastor that was stabbed 47 times, Rick, and we've talked about this before, on the streets of Gaza in broad daylight. And it was us working with the Israeli government to get that family out.

Jordan and I will never forget that. We were there during Operation Cast Lead working. In the middle of bombs coming in, we were working on this. Talk about the ACLJ in action. That was quite an example. But it's like the administrations are tone deaf on this stuff.

Look, now is the time to really support the people of Iran. And the way to do it is to guarantee that our big tech corporations make sure that the internet is not shut down. There are ways to do it. We have the technology, but we don't always want to do it.

And I get that the United States government shouldn't be doing this. But the outside groups can. Technology companies can.

I'm on the outside now. I'm looking at all sorts of ways of helping to make sure that big tech does its part. And thank God for Elon Musk. Elon Musk announced that he was going to have his satellites make sure that they were doing everything they can to keep the internet going inside Iran. Now, there's a challenge with his satellites because we need hardware inside.

But there are other ways to do it through VPNs. We have the technology. It just takes the political will. Yeah, I mean, so going back to the political will, this administration, you cannot, we know with the Iranians and with their leadership, there's no way for the Biden team to go in there and say, let's do a nuclear deal and also support the overthrow of the government. So we have, they have to choose, Rick. I mean, this is like these moments of choice. They chose in 2009 to go for the nuclear deal over the people and over human rights.

Are they going to make that choice again? It's because they preach at us about human rights and act like we all do nothing about it. And I feel like we're the ones really doing something about it because we do say, you know what, put the politics, let's take the politics out of it when it's necessary. Look, taking the politics out of it means that we don't jump to the conclusions that we are immediately going to overthrow the government. I think it's a fault idea to say we're either going to have nuclear negotiations or we're going to work to overthrow the Iranian regime. I think that right now, when you see human rights abuses in the streets and people are not able to protest, women being killed for not wearing their head covering the proper way, even though, by the way, Leslie Stahl didn't wear it the right way in front of the Iranian leader, we need to be able to just fall on the side of people, human rights and the ability to protest. Let the protest go wherever they might.

But we should just absolutely be clear that America stands for the right to protest and government's regimes not killing those people when they're on the streets. Last question I have, and that's this, you look at the situation as it is right now, Iran plays such a strategic danger in the region for Israel, for the Gulf States, for Saudi Arabia. I mean, one of the great things you all accomplished in the last administration was the Abraham Accords.

I was thrilled to have a copy of the Golan Declaration. I mean, the move of the Jerusalem Embassy and the unity among the Israelis and these other governments because you have a common foe and that common foe is Iran. Iran is the largest exporter of terrorism in the world. There is no one that produces more terrorism supplies or terrorists than Iran. And the idea that the people of Iran have finally taken to the streets again, to their credit, we should be doing everything we can to support them. I would say regime change. We should also be very clear with our European allies that having daily flights from Europe to Tehran, Tehran to Europe is unacceptable right now.

You have to choose in moments like this. We should be squeezing the Iranian regime. The Europeans must do their part. If they're going to claim that they're for human rights, then you must stand with the people in the streets. You cannot do business as usual.

You cannot try to continue doing commerce with Iran. And this is what's happening in Europe. It's happening all over the place and the Biden administration is allowing them to do it. Rick, as always, we appreciate you. Rick, of course, part of our team at the American Center for Law and Justice because of your support for the ACLJ.

Rick has always appreciated me. He talks about those Iranian airlines. I remember the days when doing a lot of international travel and you wouldn't see that in Western Europe. I remember the first time I saw them boarding off the same plane was in Sub-Saharan Africa. And that's, again, it was very awkward at the time. It was around these protest movements because of who's getting off the plane and what they're doing. But what I will tell you is that's become a norm now, too. And like Rick said, they have to say, no, we're not going to normalize you flying in like you're a normal airline, like you're a normal country as part of the world because you're the number one exporter of terrorism in the world.

The largest exporter of terrorism in the world is Iran. We're sitting down at a table negotiating with them. Makes no sense. We've got more on this coming up. We'll take your calls to 1-800-684-30, 110-800-684-3110. secularbrothers podcast again, a new episode today with Jordan and Logan secularbrothers.com tells you how you can subscribe. Back with more in a moment. We're taking your calls as well. Some of the calls about the FBI's actions towards the pro-life activists now.

And again, a repeat of history, but this time we're seeing, you know, at the highest levels in Washington, DC. So let's go to the phones. I appreciate folks holding on. Roger in Oregon, first online too. Hey Roger. Yes.

Thanks for taking my call today. I'm doing the program a little on the late side, so I'm not sure if this has already been covered, but I read that a Fox news digital article stated that just basically in response to this man's arrest and the 18 acts of vandalism and arson committed by James revenge, a pro-abortion group that was formed after the Supreme Court decision that the FBI is using the face act. The freedom of access to clinic entrances to justify their actions in this case.

And you know, I know it's, like you said, it's been at the state level and it should have stayed there. But I think it gives them cover to justify what they're doing. I'll tell you where it doesn't give them cover because you're talking to a lawyer that's litigated the free access to clinic entrance act. And you're talking to the lawyer that represented operation rescue in blockades against abortion clinics, which was taking a state trespass action and trying to turn that into a federal case.

And we won that three times at the Supreme Court of the United States. Now face is for, if you are impeding access, but impeding access cannot mean literature distribution or oral exchanges, which are totally protected by the first amendment. And in this case, I think it's a total misuse of the department of justice to go after this guy for violating the free access to clinic entrances act, especially when state and local law enforcement's already said no. So I just don't, I just think it's, I think it's the wrong way to go. I want to go to Iran for a moment.

Then we'll, we'll end with the two calls that we've got, but I want to go right to Wes. We just had Rick on, Rick Rinnell, of course, former director of national intelligence. You're currently United States, retired colonel of the United States army. What's the situation? You've been really researching this.

I know you've got a blog going up on the aclj.org. What is the situation right now in Iran? How big are these? They are huge demonstrations. Comparing them to what happened in 2009 when the Obama administration was so slow to respond.

These are much more widespread geographically. We know that there were about 2 million plus demonstrators in 2009. I cannot find a number today, but I suspect there's more than that because in 2009 it was restricted the demonstrations mainly to the larger cities. Now it is in 80 cities.

It is actually not only in 80 cities, it is in all 31 provinces, 20 universities. There are thousands of people in the street. And so I think that these demonstrations are so much larger and it's mainly led by young professionals and women who have really known nothing but an oppressive state government, a theocracy all of their lives. Jordan, I remember during that 2009 revolution, you were very concerned.

You were a younger lawyer then. Are we destined to see the same reaction? Because it's basically the same people are running the state department as we're running it then.

I think so. I mean, listen, the Iranian people, you know, you could say, well, maybe they've organized better. Maybe they've been able to use technology better as Rick was talking about using satellites, repositioning those. We saw that very effective in Ukraine when Elon Musk did that. But as Rick said, they've got a little bit different hardware situation issues in Iran.

I think so, unfortunately. And, you know, I wish the Iranian people, they can't pick these moments out. You know, these moments happen that generate massive street protests. Unfortunately, when it's happened, you've had a really weak leadership inside DC who is trying to get back into a deal with their leaders.

Same thing as 2009. That was the first time they were trying to get into Iran nuclear deal. So they ignored the people. They ignored the human rights.

And I fear this is what will happen in this go round. That's the irony of all this, Jordan. And that is while this is going on and while part of what's fueling their rights to, in addition to the murder of the young woman is that their economy is in shambles, what she got murdered for. I mean, this is, yeah, she was wearing her job so that a strand of her hair was sticking out and she was confronted by the morality police because not all of her hair was covered. They took her into custody.

She died from massive head injuries, was literally beaten to death. But here's the irony Jay, while all this is going on, Iran also has former US officials, like one of our colleagues on an assassination hit list there, everything is, is horribly oppressive there. And in the middle of this, the Biden administration is still seeking for a signature from the Iranians on the reentering the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, they are prepared. And they have said so to lift significant portions of the sanctions against Iran. If Iran will only sign the JCPOA, the only reason that this new Iran nuclear deal has not come into effect is that thus far the Iranians have refused to sign it, but the Biden administration is perfectly willing to negotiate with the Iranian government. And that is so ironic and sad in light of what's going on there.

And the thought was against our colleague Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state, our senior counsel for global affairs. All right, we're going to take more calls now. Let's go right back to the phones.

Yeah. Brenda in Maryland online one. Hey, Brenda. Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my call.

I appreciate your service and I do support you with my finances and prayers. Um, I want to know what we can do as ordinary people to show our outcry of what our government is doing against us normal citizens. It is, it is just, it's outrageous that they would let so much go at the border and have it open so porous and all these criminals coming in, the drugs coming in, the, the, uh, the sex trafficking it's, and they're not doing anything. I mean, and then they would, they would take this person who is not, you know, a criminal and, and, and do what they did and do what they, the way they did it in front of his family.

I am outraged. I want to know what I can do before the elections, definitely for the elections, I'm going to be involved. And in fact, at one point several years ago, they had some, uh, uh, uh, pamphlets that showed the platforms between the two parties. I mean, black and white, there was their platforms.

I showed it to a younger man, young man, and he said, oh, I didn't know this about that party. So, I mean, it's like, people need to have knowledge. They need to know what's going on.

Yeah. So I mean, we have ACLJ action. That's part of what we launched ACLJ action is to do more issue advocacy so that people learn and they see, okay, here's the platform of the parties. I'm not, I don't have to rewrite the Democrat parties platform to show how extreme it is.

I just need to get it in front of people because they don't want you really to read that. They don't want you to, to see that the Rashida Tlaib wing of the party that, that, uh, that wants to destroy Israel has become the strongest wing of the grassroots of that political party. I think what you hit on is key. There's these moments in between elections.

They can, sometimes they feel very short. Sometimes we feel like we're always in an election cycle. I kind of feel like that right now, uh, lately these past, uh, five, six years, but you cannot let up pre and post election. So if you elect good people, you got to make sure you continue the work.

And then if you didn't get to elect people of your choice, start that education campaign again with your community, take it to take it to people who aren't going to be tuned into cable news, who may not tune into broadcasts like ours. You're you play key roles. You're absolutely right.

Uh, I got one last question. What's the title of the article going on? It is, uh, Iranians, the Iranian people's fight for freedom goes up this afternoon.

Okay, folks, you need to, and what's the basic thesis there, Wes? Uh, that this is an opportunity for the world to stand with the Iranian people. They are trying to bring reform and to have a new government there.

They are fighting literally for their freedom and their lives. There you go, folks. That's up at ACLJ.org probably in the next hour or so if you're watching us live. All right, well that does it for the broadcast today. Secular brothers podcast dropping this afternoon. They're doing one secular brothers.com. You can subscribe to however you get your podcast.

Great way to do it. Of course, it's also on Facebook and YouTube if you want the video copy as well. All right, folks, and I encourage you to check it out. It's different every episode. They're also different from this broadcast is it's say, you know, it's not just news. So if you missed a, an earlier episode, you enjoy the broadcast, you're still going to be entertained. There's much more of an entertainment aspect to it. Maybe a lot more. You can write your own opinion. If you're checking out the broadcast, secularbrothers.com