FBI Offered $1 Million to Prove Trump Collusion

This is Logan Sekulow. We got breaking news.

The FBI offered a million dollars to prove the Trump collusion. 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, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to this edition of Sekulow. There is some breaking news. We're going to cover this right now. I know a lot of you are saying, well, what is this? How could this be possible?

That's right. Your FBI has come out and they had offered, we found out they had offered a million dollars, a million, $1 million to Christopher Steele. You may remember him from the Steele dossier to say, hey, Chris, can you prove what you put in here?

Can you prove that there was collusion, the big word 2016, the big word 2017, there was collusion between Russia and the Trump administration at that point, the Trump campaign. I'm here with Will Haines. I want you to break down, Will, how this happened, how this information came to light, because I think it's pretty fascinating, and a connection to maybe your favorite first son.

What do you call it? Presidential son? First kid? Yeah, maybe current first kids. We'll hear about that in a minute.

But why don't you give people why this is breaking and why it's breaking now? Right. So John Durham, who was tasked with doing a review back when Bill Barr was the attorney general of the whole Russia collusion investigation, is in a trial right now against Igor Danchenko. He was one of the primary sources of the Steele dossier, and he's on trial for lying to the FBI over the course of the investigation. And yesterday, John Durham, in a surprising move, was actually questioning one of the witnesses. This witness is an FBI intelligence analyst, Brian Auten. And now Auten was up there. Remember that name?

Yes. Remember Brian Auten? He was up on the stand and John Durham was asking him about the corroboration of the Steele dossier in order to get the FISA warrant against Carter Page back in 2016, just a few days, two weeks before the election. Well, it turns out Brian Auten testified under oath on the stand that the FBI couldn't corroborate the Steele dossier. They asked other intelligence agencies if they could corroborate it, which they could not. So they offered Steele, Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier, a million dollars to prove the claims in his dossier, to corroborate them, give us a little more evidence, show that these are factual. And we'll move forward because they were so adamant that they could investigate this and turn out go after President Trump. You said this was like someone doing a book report and then being like, OK, instead of showing us your sources, we're going to give you a million dollars for that source sheet.

We're going to give you a million dollars to just tell us where you got this information. And the person being like, well, I can't. And then you still proceed with an investigation. You still proceed with what happened here. Yeah, this was not like this came up recently where they said prove it. This was back 2016, 2017 as things were still rolling out.

That's right. And because they needed this corroboration to move forward with the allegations that were in the Steele dossier, they offered this million dollars. Christopher Steele could not provide the corroboration, so he didn't get the million dollars, but they still opened up the case against Carter Page and got the FISA warrant without the corroborating evidence. So it just shows more corruption, more misdeeds at the FBI. And there's actually some more tie ins that we'll get into here in the next segment. There's more tie ins with some people that you guys like to talk about, especially those on Rumble. I'll say that you Rumblers, make sure you stick around because you're going to want to hear the next part. Maybe it ties into some more current news. What's going on?

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That's 1-800-684-3110. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to get your thoughts. Those are on hold. We'll get to you in just a little bit as you go through the process.

A lot of people are commenting on Rumble because we teased out a little bit. Let's maybe reset just a tad, which is that the FBI, because a lot of you listen to terrestrial radio. You'll listen for a couple minutes, so we make sure that we reset. The FBI, it was uncovered that when the Steele dossier was written, they were like, Man, there's some stuff in here. We want to corroborate it. We want to make sure it's real. So, hey, Christopher Steele, if you can prove to us this is real, it's almost like a magic trick. One of those, if you know what's in this card, I will give you a million dollars. And then the guy reads mine.

He's like, you can't do that to me. That feels the same way. It happened to Chris Angel, because Chris Angel hates people who read mine.

Chris Angel, Christopher Steele, yeah. I see an Instagram reel happening here. Go find that.

It's one of my favorite clips. But it feels like that. If we will give you $1 million if you can prove this is real. So I think for them, it wasn't like a bet. It was more like a, oh, if it's here, we have to do this. Like we have to. And of course, they come up with nothing.

He can't do it. And the next thing you know, instead of saying, well, maybe then this investigation is fraught with lies. They go, continue on. My favorite thing about this as well is that this is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And they also reached out to other intelligence agencies within our federal government. And they couldn't prove any of this. They're supposed to be the elite, the best in the world at intelligence gathering and investigating.

And they pride themselves on that. But when the FBI decided to go to other intelligence agencies and they couldn't corroborate it, they had none of this data. Then they go to the person who gave them the dossier and said, look, buddy, we really need this. Here's a million bucks if you just give us some of the sources.

Just let us know that this is real because we could stop Donald Trump from being President. This is the insurance policy we've talked about with old Carter, not Carter Page, with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. A lot of pages. A lot of pages. A lot of pages in the Steele dossier. Yeah, I'm sure. Pages and pages all around.

A lot of them. Now we've got to tie into what's happening right now, because I think a lot of people go, what does this matter? This is old news. This is 2016.

You're talking about cresting on, what, seven years at this point. Right. What does that mean for now? And some of the players, as we said, you may find a little interesting because maybe they're still involved in some of the deeper state corruption that's going on. Maybe now it's front state. I don't know if it's deep state corruption. Not deep state anymore. Not deep state anymore. Now they're the front office.

Cream of the crop. Yeah, they're running the house. Let's talk about this. So be prepared, Rumblers, because I know there's a name here that's going to trigger you all, but let's hear from it. So this was, as I said, on trial, the person who revealed this was a witness that was being questioned. And it was the intelligence analyst from the FBI, Brian Otten.

So when I'm reading this, I'm like, man, that name sounds familiar. What's it from? Well, we've been talking about FBI corruption around here for quite some time this year, as we've seen the FBI going after parents at school boards or conservatives, or maybe revelations that they were squashing the information before the 2020 election about the Hunter Biden laptop. There it is.

So tell us. This is from a letter dated July 25th of this year, and it is from Senator Chuck Grassley addressed to both Attorney General Merrick Garland and the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray. What was the date again? July?

July 25th. Of this year. So you're talking about a couple months ago. Right.

We're only in mid-October, so. So he writes this letter regarding the way that the FBI was handling the information surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop. And it says, first, it's been alleged that the FBI developed information in 2020 about Hunter Biden's criminal, financial and related activity. It is further alleged that in August 2020, FBI supervisory intelligence agent analyst Brian Otten, that name, opened an assessment which was used by FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and cause the investigative activity to cease. Based on allegations, verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation. So based on the report, the intelligence analyst opened Brian Otten, the one who testified at a hearing that other information they were trying to corroborate, well, they were paying people a million dollars to try to corroborate for them.

He opened this assessment, which was used by the FBI to falsely discredit the information in the Hunter Biden laptop as disinformation. Yeah. The reason a lot of you got flagged on social media, the reason a lot of you got shut down for a year and then until that became truth. And it's the same people.

It's the same actors that are in there working on these campaigns. We have to be very careful on who you're messing with and who you're talking to, because a lot of these same people that are there to cause destruction and are there to spread more lies. And we come out here, we tell you, and I tell you this every day, I tell you I'm on secular brothers podcast.

There are times where you're going to disagree with us, but we tell you the truth. We give you the facts at hand and how you look at this and you can't not see the corruption that's happening inside the FBI. That's inside of these how politicized it's become to where there are attacks specifically on former President Trump, even when he was before he was even President leading into even now and how that's still part of the narrative going on. Obviously now it's been released that he was involved in this and was involved in the squashing of the Hunter Biden laptop stuff, which we heard obviously Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan saying, yeah, you know, the FBI calls us and they tell us maybe we need to like, maybe it wasn't just that.

Maybe for other things, look out for some things, come up with it. Twitter completely bans it. Then you have Facebook says they turned down your volume or whatever they say to make sure people don't reach it. It's pretty fascinating. I think that there's a lot of people who I'm sure go, aha, this proves that it's right. Well, yeah, it does.

I think there's a lot of people out there who can see through this and a lot of them in our listenership. It's just wild. When you look at the two stories side by side, one was a false allegation against President Trump, then candidate Trump that he was colluding with Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton, and they wanted that to be true so badly. They were willing to offer a million dollars to the writer of the report to give them more information.

Then you fast forward just four years. They were so wanting Donald Trump to not win that they took a laptop which came from a U.S. source. It was at a computer shop.

It had been dropped off. There were a lot of ways to corroborate that because it was on U.S. soil. And what did they do? They had one of their own analysts write a report, a dossier, if you will, to be able to be used to discredit that as what? Russian disinformation, Russian interference. So on one hand, they're trying to prove Russian interference, and the other, they're like, this has got to be Russian interference because how could this be possible?

We're going to let it go away. Who did they pay a million dollars to to try to get research on the laptop? I think that's the big problem is you look at this and go, the million dollar thing is so wild because I don't even think people think that the FBI is making these kind of deals.

These little transactions. There's a million dollar deal on the table between a source and a person. Yeah, maybe for big, big crime rings or something that that's happening. But I really don't think of it that way until today. I haven't really thought about the fact that, oh, yeah, they're out there offering just cash, cold, hard cash to people to get information right on American citizens who are running for President. That doesn't really feel number one, just feel proper. But it's something I don't even know if the audience is considered as a reality.

I'd certainly haven't. Right. You almost think of like if there's a cartel bust, maybe the DEA deals in those kind of things to try to get people sure.

There's expenses. Exactly. But not just a straight payoff to a source to prove what they're saying. That just seems so wild that I mean, if you if you're Chris Steele, you're in good business.

If you can just, hey, prove what you're telling us. Here's another million dollars for you. After the DNC and the Clinton campaign through the law firm already funded this. So he got paid to write the dossier. And then he was getting paid to prove it. And fortunately, he was unable to prove it because it was all lies.

He didn't get a million dollars of our taxpayer money. But my goodness, let's go to the phone. Let's go to Fred, who's calling on line one in the state of Tennessee. Fred, welcome. You're on the air.

Yes. OK, thank you. Thank you for taking my call. I've listened to your show for a long time. We've been a long time donor. Appreciate it. Thank you. What's so frustrating for me is that you have all this breaking news. You know, this guy's caught that guy's got as far as anybody I know has has any information.

Nobody's been a held accountant for anything they've done. I get that. It's unacceptable. I get that, Fred. I know that's frustration for everybody.

I can like picture my mind. You know, James Comey walking out with here's all of the evidence of why Hillary Clinton has done all these things. And then, by the way, we're doing nothing.

I think a lot of people feel that way. Truth is, the only way to win if there are ways to win, we could take it to court. We could do different things.

We could file Freedom of Information Act requests. But one of the big things is going to be at the ballot box. It's going to be voting. And that's not very far away from midterms. And then honestly, we're not that far away from a general election.

And Fred, two things that you can kind of take as hopeful. This came out under oath at a trial. And this is the Durham investigation. So some Igor Dinshenko is being held accountable for lying to the FBI.

But it leaves me to believe that maybe there's some more out there, that there is still more accountability that can happen. But also, as Logan brought up the ballot box, Chuck Grassley is in the minority party in the Senate right now. And Jim Jordan is in the minority party in the House. In just under a month, there's an opportunity for them to potentially be the majority parties. And then they have a lot more power, not just sending letters, but having hearings.

Oversight by Congress is a very powerful tool if the right people are able to conduct it. And I think that we could see that coming, but we'll know in three weeks whether or not. I know, just a few weeks away, but you got to get out there and do what you need to do. Not going to tell you who to vote for, but go out there and vote. We definitely do encourage that. So don't listen to the people. There is people out there saying don't.

It's ridiculous. Go out there. Vote. Speak your mind. Make sure you're heard.

All right. When we get back, we're going to discuss the Jake Tapper interview with President Biden. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Sekulow. You may have seen last night, probably not, but I don't know what the overnight ratings were on this, but you've seen probably some clips going around. But Jake Tapper had his big exclusive interview with President Joe Biden and broke down a lot of different issues. If you're watching during the break, you got to see if you're watching on social media, you got to see some of those clips where he said, yeah, there's a slight chance there'll be a recession. I don't think there will be, but there's a slight chance.

Give himself a lot of room. I'm curious what the overnight ratings will be on that. We'll see if we can pull those.

I don't think they're out just yet as we're doing this show. But there was some interesting context, a lot of questions asked. And let's hear about how President Biden thinks he's doing by 13. One poll shows that almost two thirds of Democratic voters want a new nominee in 2024. And the top reason they gave was your age. So what's your message to Democrats who like you, who like what you've done, but are concerned about your age and the demands of the job? Well, they're concerned about whether or not I can get anything done. Look what I've gotten done.

Name me a President in recent history that's gotten as much done as I have in the first two years. Not a joke. First of all, that wasn't the question, though. I don't think that's why they're concerned. Because Jake Tapper said they like what you've done. They're concerned about your age. He says they're concerned about what I've done. It's like, no, that wasn't the question.

He wasn't listening. Realistically, we all should be concerned with aging Presidents like this. When you have a President that I believe if he completes his second term would be in his late 80s, mid to late 80s.

Sure. We should have that discussion. That should be happening amongst the Democrats specifically.

What they're going to do in the next couple of years. And we've seen that kind of go back and forth where he was labeled as going to be the replaced. Then I felt like back in June, July, they started to pump him back up. And then we've seen now a turn just in the last week.

Just last week. Whether that's SNL, which spent an awful amount of time on Saturday Night Live. Really making fun of his age and making fun of the way he speaks. Whether that was in the opening monologue or weekend update. Taking jabs that were not very Saturday Night Live.

Again, felt like a little bit part of the plan here to have Jake Tapper bring this up. And there also is that thing of, OK, what has he done? What are those big accomplishments? We all know some of them have been sort of hidden. Whether it was the Inflation Reduction Act, which we knew was really just a green energy deal and flipped it on people.

It made sure they weren't comfortable. But there is a lot of things, Will, that he has done. Right. Yeah, I agree with the President that he has gotten a lot done. And he says, name a President in recent history who has gotten as much done as I have in the first two years. We make the comparison to Jimmy Carter often that it kind of feels like that era. So maybe we would name Jimmy Carter because he has gotten a lot done, but it has been mostly negative.

And we compiled a list here of just a few things and we can start going through them. But I mean, things like soaring gas prices, record high inflation, historic labor shortage, passing an inflation reduction act, which only increases inflation, a bear stock market, taking America from energy independent to energy dependent. Right there, those are just more the economic side. We have other that are more foreign policies. He has done a lot.

You're right. But right there, just on the economic side, yes, he has been a consequential President because of the things that he has done in his first two years. Things that took us from a stable economy and even coming out of the pandemic was looking more stable to just a what looks like a freefall every day. When you if you turn on CNBC or Fox Business, you see these headlines that are can be frightening or disconcerting. Obviously, they're financial focused.

So those networks are going to have more of them. But it is a disconcerting time economically when the President is touting all he's done and it's not in check with reality. Yeah, a lot of people have also discussed with President Biden about the recession or lack of recession. I know this is a key word that maybe there's some issues with, but let's hear a conversation a little bit more with Jake Tapper and President Biden about the potential for a recession. This comes off of what is trending right now on Twitter, which is J.P. Morgan. One of the people, J.P. Morgan, saying likely we are to tip into recession in six to nine months. Let's hear what the President and Jake Tapper had to say.

Let's go for the longer version of this. Let's go to bite 14. Midterm elections are four weeks from today. The economy remains top top of mind for voters. J.P. Morgan, CEO, said the U.S. is likely to enter a recession in the next nine months. Bank of America says the U.S. could start losing one hundred seventy five thousand jobs a month. Gas prices are on the rise again. Should the American people prepare for a recession?

No. Look, they've been saying this now how every every six months they say this. Every six months, they look down the next six months and see what's going to happen. It hadn't happened yet. It hadn't.

There has. There is no there's no guarantee that they're going to. I don't think there will be a recession. If it is, it'll be a very slight recession. That is, we'll move down slightly.

It'll move down slightly. Will there be any. Do you think there could be a recession? Yeah, there may be a slight recession.

No one wants that. Like he brings up, they bring it up every six months. You've been the President for 20 months. So every six months is not that infrequent. Three times.

Three times to be like many things are going not going well. And look, we can all look outside. We could see the gas prices. You can see how much things cost, the food prices, everything that's gone up so insanely.

I mean, it's just getting to the point where every time that you take your family out to dinner, every time you go try to do anything, you look at that bill and you can't believe it. And people are responding to that. They will try to take some of these issues, though, and flip them at the midterms and just say, you know, I'm doing a great job. Look, that's typical politics. President's not going to say I'm doing a bad job. Unfortunately, it is part of the game, which is in politics, a dirty game.

It's a blood sport, as they say. And the line could be off the charts. They could just say, no, everything's fine. It's probably not going to happen. Well, maybe it's going to have maybe a little bit. Maybe it'll be a slight.

I don't think it's going to happen. But maybe just the reset, maybe slight little recession. I don't want to say that word. Maybe not. Maybe we'll just say it's a drought.

I don't know. Or maybe it's we'll start throwing in words that sound worse than the look we did. We didn't have a drought. We totally know we didn't have famine. We told you there could be slight famine, but there wasn't slight famine. Just a little recession. So that's not that bad. You know, it doesn't matter what JP Morgan and Bank of America have to say.

Only two of the biggest in the country. Man, it is really sad to see these kind of interviews. I am happy that that Jake Tapper pushed. I think he pushed him on some of these things. A little bit. A little bit. Said, well, you're saying there's recession?

Yeah, there's a slight chance of recession. Jake Tapper also. Obviously, we know there's a big shakeups at CNN. It's probably like, man, I probably need to ask some real questions now because my job is probably on the line. Brian Steltered. Right, exactly.

Or Don Lemon or anybody. So it's just the nature of the beast. You want to hear a few more accomplishments by the President before we end this? Is this from your list? Yeah, this is from my list.

I put it together this morning. So we've got a war in Ukraine with escalating nuclear tension. Yeah, I don't know. I've heard about the Armageddon coming. I didn't say I said Armageddon.

In times, didn't say it. There was only a slight Armageddon. It was just the Armageddon. We thought there'd be a little Armageddon. It was just a slight Armageddon.

It's just a step. Not full Armageddon. Not full Armageddon. Not full. Didn't even go to Megiddo. Didn't even happen. Just sorry.

No, you're fine. It's good. I mean, it's not good.

It's terrible, but we also have- I don't mean to be joking about it, but it just feels like we're in an insane world. Palestinians renewed attacks on Israel, including Jerusalem. That was something that was tamped down during the Trump years. It was really quiet. I mean, to the point where they were naming like train stations and- After Donald Trump, right? After Donald Trump and they were- It was Abraham Accords.

It was Abraham Accords. So yeah, that one was a big one with the Middle East. I feel like people, whenever the Middle East gets quiet, America forgets about the Middle East.

Until there's a Democrat in office, just being honest, that happens. And then all of a sudden, tensions rise. Things happen. ISIS is back.

Don't worry. The Taliban back after 20 years. Those are the kind of things that people forget about. I'm hoping heading into midterms, people don't. It will be an interesting time to see what the results will be in that midterm election that's coming in just under a month at this point. Make sure you're staying tuned.

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

If you're just joining us and we're leading with the FBI's fun offer of a million dollars to Christopher Steele, if you can actually prove what was in that dossier back in 2016. But we're moving on. If you want to hear that first half hour, go back.

Listen to that. I know we have some calls. We'll do our best to get you. No guarantees.

We'll try. Well, we're setting up our next segment because we have Rick Renell joining us. And there's a lot going around around the world. It's not just what's happening domestically. And we know there's a lot of threats out there. We know there's a lot of things happening. I want to give you the opportunity to kind of set up what we're going to talk about with Rick.

That's right. So Rick joined yesterday with Jordan to talk about the headline out of The New York Times that said Biden to reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia after the oil production cut. And that probably could go under another accomplishment of the President's of a collapsing relationship with Saudi Arabia. But new reporting that kind of is in line with that is out of Wall Street Journal today that says days before the major oil production cut by OPEC and its Russia led allies, U.S. officials called their counterparts in Saudi Arabia and other big Gulf producers with an urgent appeal, delay the decision for another month.

The answer, a resounding no. U.S. officials warned Saudi leaders that the cut would be viewed as a clear choice by Saudi Arabia to side with Russia, and Saudi officials dismissed the request, which they viewed as a political gambit by the Biden administration to avoid bad news ahead of the U.S. midterm elections. So this decision was made on October 5th. If they delayed it a month, it would get them past the midterm election. And then, oh, we're cutting two million barrels a day of production. So the Saudis said, no, we think that you're just doing this for political gain and didn't listen to the President. So it sets up a lot of questions about the U.S. influence around the world, how strong our leadership is. If we can't go to these supposed to be allies and make requests, even if it was for political gain, but something that would definitely help the American people since we're now energy dependent, not energy independent. And so we have a lot of questions for Rick about how he reads this when the United States goes to these producers and say, hey, we need a little bit of a break here.

Can you wait? And they say, no, we're good. And Jake Tapper did bring it up.

I'm not sure it's the answer really, even the question that you wanted answered, but you know what? You should hear it. It's from the President, from President Biden, Jake Tapper, again, talking about what was going on in sort of the freeze in Saudi Arabia.

So take a listen by 10. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez, just called for a freeze on cooperation with Saudi Arabia, including most arms sales. Senator Durbin, the number two Democrat in the Senate, says the Saudis sided with Russia against the United States. Do you think it's time for the U.S. to rethink its relationship with Saudi Arabia?

Yes. And by the way, let's get straight why I went. I didn't go to one about oil. I went about making sure that we made sure that we weren't going to walk away from the Middle East. While at the same moment saying, do you think it's time we need to reevaluate and rethink our relationship with Saudi Arabia? And he says, yes.

Now, here's the deal. I'm not going to go out there and defend what happens in Saudi Arabia. There's there's it's certainly not the Western world and that's it. Maybe more so than Saudi Arabia. I'm not going to go out there and defend what happens in Saudi Arabia. I'm not going to go out there and defend what happens in Saudi Arabia. I'm not going to go out there and defend what happens in Saudi Arabia.

It's certainly not the Western world and that's it. Maybe more so than people think. They're doing a lot of damage control right now to try to kind of bring things back. And you and Jordan got into that yesterday on Sekulow Brothers.

Yeah, you should go listen to that. We talk a little bit more detail about even sort of the way they're moving with media and what's happening in the world of Saudi Arabia. But right now, when we're on the verge of, to quote the President, nuclear Armageddon. Do you really think this is the time when you start reevaluating our relationships with Saudi Arabia? I don't.

I personally don't. Again, I'm not not making up for any bad atrocities they've done. They've certainly done some bad stuff. But why in a time of recession, slight recession, maybe a recession, probably a recession. Plus war in Ukraine and Russia. Plus a looming nuclear war. Do you think it's time to now we're going to tighten our relationship, change our relationship with Saudi Arabia? Do that when we're at peace.

Do that when there's time, when there's other things that can get done, when you can sit down at the table renegotiate. This is not the time for that. We all know it. You know it.

I know it. Coming up in the next segment, Rick Grenell is going to be on the broadcast. We're going to talk about this and a lot more. So stay tuned.

If you're watching online, just a couple minutes, it'll be a segment. We'll be right back with him. If you want to call in now, we'll take some calls in the final segments of the show.

1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secula. We are joined now by Senior Advisor for National Security and Foreign Policy, Rick Grenell. Rick, we just talked about in the segment for kind of set up what was happening in the world right now with what's going on with Saudi Arabia.

And we have things like the Wall Street Journal. They're now reporting that the U.S. officials have kind of begged the Saudis and OPEC to delay their decisions to cut oil productions for a month, which would be after the midterms, of course. And they were snubbed at their request. But what does this tell you about the, I guess, the administration's clout now on the world stage when you're hearing, can we get a meeting with North Korea? No. Can we get a meeting with the Saudis?

Also, no. Look, I think Biden has been very murky on what his plans were. He messaged to all of us that going to Saudi Arabia was not about oil.

He made that clear. He said, I'm not going there about oil. But now suddenly he has been caught where they've been lobbying members of OPEC to delay any decision on production until after the election, as you say.

It's clear after the election means it's a political move. But the recent statement from President Biden was that now Saudi Arabia has to be punished. And so I'm confused if you didn't go there for oil. Why are you punishing them now? What was the decision?

What was the reason? What was the sudden change that made you say the Saudis need to be punished? I thought it wasn't about oil. At least that's what you told us.

Yeah, and he even said that in the Tapper interview. It wasn't about oil, but then immediately it was like, yeah, but we need to reevaluate our relationship with them. All right, then what's the point? And why now? Why is this the right time when you're threatening nuclear Armageddon, when the stock market is in crisis and gas prices are back rising? Why is now the right time?

And Will, you can share another question. Why is now the right time to reevaluate our relationship with Saudi Arabia? Well, and to play off of that, Logan, it's not just the President here. This is the entire Democratic leadership, especially in the Senate. We're seeing very similar type statements come out and it's all targeted against the Saudis right now. And I just my question for Rick, what do you think their end game is? So, Will, that's a great point about the Senate Democrats to being a part of this, because let's rewind for a second.

And I think I answer your question this way. Remember that the Senate Democrats joined Joe Biden and they dropped the Trump sanctions on the Russian pipeline. And quickly thereafter, we saw the Ukraine war. I don't think it's too much to say that the Senate Democrats dropping the sanctions on the Russian pipeline pipeline gave Putin the green light to start a war. So so I would put their actions directly at the feet of helping cause a war. You also look at what the Senate Democrats did by removing the Houthis from the terrorist list, working with the Biden administration to make that happen. Then we saw pretty fast missiles launching at the UAE. Now what we see is a move by Senate Democrats to punish Saudi Arabia. I have to say, isn't anyone watching their debacle every time they make a decision about the Middle East?

It inflames the situation. It's gotten worse. And now suddenly they want to freeze out the Saudis.

Come on. We definitely got past them. I got past this difficult period during the Khashoggi situation. We were very blunt with the Saudis. They felt the pressure and the consequences of what they did. And we were moving on. And then Biden kind of brought it all back just to be able to deal with the Iran issue.

That's the calling card. And that's the problem. We talked about this in the last segment, which is, sure, we're not sitting here defending the Saudis. We're not defending what happened in the Khashoggi incident and everything that happened there was horrible. But it just feels like the wrong time to be doing this.

And it feels like it may be the wrong person to be leading it. You brought up the Middle East. In general, I think Americans, and I would put American Democrats as well, are quick to forget about what happens in the Middle East. Because during the Trump time, and I said this during the 2020 election ad nauseam, and I honestly wish it was brought up more in the debates. It was brought up more when President Trump was running. There was relative peace for years.

There was quiet. There was the Abraham Accords. There was all these positive things happening in the Middle East.

Something very emotional, very connected to personally. So to me, this was such big steps forward. And I told people, if this happens and you have a President Joe Biden, remember that ISIS will be back. Remember that Afghanistan will be in crisis. Remember you're going to hear about the Taliban. You're going to hear about these things that you forgot about because we have a very short attention span. You may remember 9-11 in theory, but you don't necessarily remember the fallout that happened right after it.

You don't remember the 20-year war because all of a sudden things were quiet. Then you have Afghanistan in ruins. Then you have ISIS returning.

Then you have all of these things. And now we're poking Saudi Arabia. And when you look at the rhetoric that's coming out of the administration, it's almost as if the idea of nuclear war or war in general is almost inevitable, which is horrifying. It's very scary. I don't personally necessarily believe that, but the way they're talking, the way they're throwing out there using terms like nuclear Armageddon, it's ratcheting up the rhetoric.

It feels like it doesn't even it doesn't feel like there's any sense of control that is de-escalating. Well, it's certainly ratcheting up the military talk and the war talk, and it's pushing aside the diplomatic talk. I mean, we don't see any diplomatic action. We don't see Anthony Blinken rushing to the area with some sort of a deal. You know, Elon Musk came up with some idea for the Ukraine issue. Wasn't a great set of points.

There was a couple in there that we could probably build off, but they had a couple of points in there that were bad. But he was trying to do something diplomatically rather than just giving to this war talk. And, you know, let's also be very clear that the reason why the Biden administration is currently attacking Saudi Arabia is because they're trying to get an Iran deal. What they're trying to do is show the Iranians that they know how to be tough on the Saudis and that they can be trusted. And so this is all a ploy to build trust with the Iranian regime. So, you know, while they're trying to wag their finger to say, you know, the Saudis are terrible and we shouldn't be dealing with them. They're dealing with the Iranians. And so I think that we need to call them out on that. Well, and you mentioned the diplomatic efforts here and we're fortunate to have you because you've been a diplomat.

You know this world very well. And the question I have is obviously this diplomatic failure with the U.S. going to the Saudis and trying to get them to delay a deal, regardless of the merits of whatever they were asking for. When U.S. diplomats go and try to frame the issue with the Saudis that if they don't do this, we're going to take it as a sign that you're siding with the Russians. And then is there the potential that they had the unintended consequence of actually pushing the Saudis closer to Russia by trying to frame this entire narrative this way?

I mean, it's a good strategic thinking that you're doing there. And yes, I'm very concerned about that because it boils down to the fact that the Biden administration doesn't have any credibility. Remember, as they came into office, you had Avril Haines repack, who's the head of DNI, head of all intelligence agencies. She repackaged the intelligence on the Khashoggi case and then released it just to stick it in the eye of the Saudis. That's how the Biden team came in. And then they were trying to deal with the Saudis' enemies, the Iranians, on some sort of a new nuclear deal, which would include giving them money, giving them billions of dollars, knowing full well everyone around the world sees that the Iranians, when they get money, they increase their terror. And so you've got that issue and then you've got the Houthis being taken off the terror list and the Saudis are looking at the Biden administration and saying, you're crazy, you don't know what you're doing. And so, no, we're not going to help you. But this is the bed that the Biden administration has made.

They're going to have to lay in it. And I find it to be consistently bad news for the Middle East every time the Biden team comes up with a new idea, this latest idea to cut ties with Saudi Arabia is a disastrous idea. Well, thank you, Rick, again, as always for joining us. I think that was incredibly informative. I know a lot of people were seeing comments come in, so we always appreciate your insight. As we head into this next segment, we're going to take some phone calls.

I'd love to hear from you. We've hit a lot of topics today. We have hit what happened with the FBI offering a million dollars to prove your facts with Christopher Steele.

We've hit what's going on in Saudi Arabia. We've even had some election talk. If you want to talk about any of those topics, I'll give you the opportunity to give us a call. If you're watching on social media, you're having that great debate and the conversation that always happens in the chat.

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Also play some more from that Biden interview with Jake Tapper and he discussed the nuclear arm again. We'll talk about that first. Let's take a phone call, though. Tom's calling on line one. And if you want to call in 1-800-684-3110, there are some lines open, so it's the perfect time to do it. Call in now before you're out of time. Tom, you're on the air.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. I just have an obvious question. Being the liberal environment in D.C., do you think Durham even has a chance of getting a conviction of anybody he brings to trial? It is an interesting question, Tom, because it is a more liberal district, so the jury pool that they'll be pulling for would probably have more liberal views as far as politics go. I hope that because – Do politics really – will they play into this kind of thing? Of course they will to some extent, but it's not like this was a good situation.

Exactly. He's on trial for lying to the FBI. So at the end of the day, I believe that a jury could put politics aside, hear the facts, and if they are presented in a way that proves that this gentleman, Mr. Igor Dushenko, was indeed lying to the FBI, that the jury will be able to find a guilty verdict in that case. But yes, whenever there's something that has such a rich political backdrop to it, something that is one of the more divisive situations in American history when the folks were trying to push a narrative that someone running for President was colluding with a foreign enemy in order to win the presidency, and those allegations were not just false but made up in part by the political opponent of that candidate, yeah, it really caused a lot of division. And we, for years, for four years of the Trump presidency, and now almost six years with the Biden presidency included, has been – we've been arguing over this. This has been the backdrop of American politics for a long time now, since 2016. It is hard to not put that out of your mind that a jury couldn't have some sort of bias going in as soon as they find out what the trial is about, because I don't think there's an American alive that hasn't heard of this, at least tangentially, to something else. So yeah, I understand his concerns, but I'm hoping that we'll see justice prevail. Yeah, I want to actually move our attention back over to this interview, and I know some people may be sick of hearing about the nuclear armageddon, but it was something said by the President. We do have to take that – as much as we're joking around, and on the secular brothers podcast yesterday, we did a whole show about – the Newsweek did a for-real article that was not done in jest about the best places to live if such a fallout was to happen.

It's a weird time to be living in, that's for sure. But he was asked this by Jake Tapper, was asked specifically about using these terms and whether it was a legitimate threat, whether those are things we should talk about. So let's play it by 25 and 26. You can hear a little bit more. We'll discuss. Again, give us a call.

Give a couple minutes to get your phone call in, 1-800-684-3110. Let's hear from Jake Tapper. When people hear the word armageddon, they get scared from – used by a U.S. President.

They get scared. Do you think in any way discussing this type of thing publicly, openly, Putin's possible use of nuclear weapons might have the opposite effect of what you want? It might make some of our wobblier European allies be even more scared of confronting Putin.

Well, no, I don't think so at all. I think, look, it was a directed – what I'm talking about, I'm talking to Putin. He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon as if that's a rational thing to do.

Okay. Coming up with something, saying, you know, that's not really what we're saying. We're just saying directly to Putin, this is not rational.

You shouldn't be using – you shouldn't be threatening nuclear war. Even though earlier in the interview, President Biden did call him a rational actor who's just miscalculated. So there is a little bit of a hedge there. I didn't hear that. Earlier in the interview, he said, you know, a lot of people think he's not a rational actor. What do you think he is? I think he's a rational actor who miscalculated. And then later, he's saying here that he can't just go around talking about nuclear war as if it's a rational thing to do.

So I think there's a little bit of a miscommunication about what the President's thinking here. By 26, this is more about the Armageddon. The mistakes get made, and the miscalculation could occur. No one can be sure what would happen, and it could end in Armageddon. And you still are afraid of that, though, that it could. Well, no, I don't think anyone, any rational person saying the initial use of tactical – of a nuclear weapon killing thousands of people does not have the prospect of leading to something that can be way out of control. Well, I already kind of – are you scared of that? No, but yes.

It's terribly confusing. He did it again because he said, are you still afraid of that, though, that it could? Well, no, I don't think anyone, any rational person saying the initial use of tactical nuclear weapons killing thousands of people does not have the prospect of leading to something. So you are still scared of it because that's still a potential threat.

Now, he may be saying that Russia's not going to do this, but you're putting this out there, and I think this is one of the biggest miscalculations of President Biden is saying these things, putting these terms out there, starting to float this narrative that freak people out completely. And it sends people into sort of more of a tailspin, and I would say that kind of happened even to some extent during the COVID crisis, which, look, we took very seriously. It's not something we joke around about here, but some of the rhetoric that came out during it certainly caused a lot of mental unrest. And when you start threatening a nuclear fallout, a nuclear Armageddon, we start using those terms, and you're the leader of the free world, you're the President, you take responsibility for the words that you say, and those are some big ones.

Those are ones that we do not take lightly in this country. There are people who lived through the threat of it, but they even said, never this much, never where it feels like it's almost inevitable because of the situation that's happening in Russia, situations happening in Ukraine, our relationship with Saudi Arabia, our relationship with all of the Middle East in the turmoil around the world. Mike Pompeo tweeted, President Biden's casual comments about nuclear Armageddon were reckless. It's a terrible risk to the American people. It's also, it's not only, yeah, exactly, it's a risk to not only the actual wellbeing of America, a nuclear attack, but to the mental capacity that we have right now.

Because we've all been stressed, we've all been through a hellish few years, and to now add on, by the way, you know what's happening in your kids' schools, you know the horribleness they're having, their shootings, there's all of this stuff. By the way, let's tack onto that, heading into election, the threat of nuclear war. Well, and Mike Pompeo's tweet talked about the casual comments. The diplomats and the Department of Defense, the back channels with Russia, there's communication going on. If the President wanted to get the message across to Vladimir Putin that, hey, let's not get to nuclear Armageddon, they can get that message there without him being on CNN with Jake Tapper reiterating something like, no one can be sure of what would happen, but it could end in Armageddon. That just isn't the proper place for that messaging, because while he said earlier that he was talking to Putin when he says that, I understand that may be his intention, but he's talking to the entire world when he makes those statements, and like you said, it brings up a fear level. It brings up a concern. It does raise the risk. It raises the risk that other nations could miscalculate, not just Russia or the United States. There could be a lot of miscalculations that happen that almost make it a self-fulfilling prophecy when you start saying these things on a global stage.

It's very dangerous. All right, that's going to do it for today's show. We'll be back tomorrow and obviously throughout the rest of the week, Monday through Friday, we're here live. Take your questions, your comments, and get you informed on what's actually going on in the world. In the meantime, check out the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. There's incredible content there every day. People like Mike Pompeo and Rick Grenell, our incredible staff, host new blogs, new articles, new videos. Find all of it there. Like, follow, share, subscribe on all your favorite social media platforms, and subscribe to the new Sekulow Brothers podcast, available at SekulowBrothers.com. Make sure you check that out again tomorrow. John Schneider is going to be on, talk about his brand new movie, To Die For, and so much more and what's going on in Hollywood. Again, that's at SekulowBrothers.com.