BREAKING: ACLJ Sues FBI

This is Jay Sekulow. We've got breaking news.

The ACLJ filed suit against 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, Jay Sekulow. As if there wasn't enough in the news about the FBI and discussions that they had before the election and keeping information, the situation with Hunter Biden's laptop and all of that off the grid, so to speak, on Twitter as if that's not enough. So we filed back in August a FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request.

This was before Elon Musk took over Twitter. To get information, I'm putting it up on the screen right now, basically to get information about the discussions that were going on between the FBI and the social media platforms related to election-related information involving the Bidens, involving a whole host of information. So we sent in this request like you normally do. We got a very interesting response back, which was we've administratively closed the file.

No, we're searching. We're administratively closing the file. This involves third parties.

We're neither admitting nor denying. There's a copy of the letter. So if those are listening by radio, we're putting that up on the screen, which was an unusual request. So then we filed what's called an administrative appeal. Inside the FBI, there's a process to appeal the denial of a Freedom of Information Act request. Let's put that up on the screen. So here is the FBI's appeal that we did. American Center is the requester, and there you see it. And they did not even respond.

Not even a response. Then today is the day, effective today, we can file a federal lawsuit against the FBI for their actions on this, which is precisely what we're going to do to find out what's going on. And that comes while all of this discussion is going on, and Elon Musk is releasing all this information involving. And when we're talking about the FBI, remember, who was the general counsel of the FBI? Jim Baker. Who was the general counsel of Twitter since he left the FBI? He was his deputy general counsel? Jim Baker.

Same guy. Yeah, there's a lot going on. Obviously, there's the whole Twitter files that came out, and a lot of those even have the statements of the fact they're meeting with the FBI pretty much every week, getting reports, getting tweets, saying, hey, take this down, take this down. Sometimes Twitter was like, hey, there's nothing even violating our rules here. They're asking us to take stuff down. So we know, even though they closed the file and said there's nothing to see here, move along, that that's simply because of the leaks from the Twitter files or the uncovering all the documents from the Twitter files. That's just certainly not true.

They were in constant communication. Yeah, and it's interesting, and we'll get into it more. There's a whole other batch of disclosures about to happen that could happen. How much notice are we getting when these disclosures happen, Logan?

Not much? A day or so, maybe, at the most, when they said they're going to drop another one. A lot of times they just start, and then they go on for hours now. It's actually kind of hard to keep up with. Hopefully they get kind of consolidated and put somewhere, because it gets to the point where you're still following an account like Shellenberger was this weekend, and you're following it for hours and hours as stuff comes trickling out.

It's kind of a fun way to do it. I've enjoyed it, but I am kind of at the point where I'm ready for them to just say, okay, here's our report, here's what we found, and not do it this way, because I think people are starting to get a little fatigued. Yeah, because there's so much information, but let me tell you who's not getting fatigued. The lawyers at the American Center for Law and Justice, because this is what we do. And we're able to convey this information to you on our broadcast five days a week, an hour worth of content. We also have, as you know, lawyers that are actually litigating this issue, and when you talk about what the FBI was up to, well, we're going to find out, because we're suing the FBI.

It's not the first time, by the way, and you always find out information when you do this. And we're insisting on governmental transparency, and that's why we have an Office of Governmental Accountability, and that office is very aggressive. Ben Sisney heads up the litigation aspect of this with a team of lawyers. That's why your support of the ACLJ is so critical, whether it's this broadcast, whether it's going after the government when they're overreaching, whether it's finding out what happens with your taxpayer dollars, talking about that coming up.

That's why we're here. Your support of the ACLJ could not be more critical than it is today. And I say that because right now, we're in a matching challenge campaign, and this is the most significant month of the year. Any amount you donate, we're getting a matching gift for. So let me encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org, and any amount you donate, someone is going to match. So if you donate $50, we get another 50. So we get 100. You gave us 50, someone else gives us 50.

ACLJ.org. Back with more in a moment. Welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. We're taking your calls at 800-684-3110. I guess we can start playing Christmas music now during the bumper. It's about that time of year, isn't it? Or do you want to wait until the 15th? We normally wait until around the 15th.

I don't know if people tune in for the Christmas jams. But this was music by the band. Yeah, okay. All right, we can do that.

All right, we're going to do that. All right, joining us right now is the senior counsel at the ACLJ, Andy Econimo, who was also a former US attorney for Atlanta and also worked with the FBI, as we all did in our various incarnations of our work. And Andy, this one is the most unusual in that the FBI just said, you know what, we're going to close this file. And this is, of course, at the same time that Jim Baker is on both sides of the transaction.

He was the DOJ general counsel and then became the deputy general counsel of Twitter. And it's the same issue involving both the agencies and the social media platforms, and that's what we've asked for this information. But they don't even respond.

Yeah, this is an unusual situation. And what it indicates to me, really, Jay, is that they don't want to disclose what is in their files with a vengeance. They don't want to disclose that they want to Stonewall us. They want to say that there's this exemption that applies or that exemption that applies.

I've read our letter and it is perfectly appropriate what we're asking for. But this is something in which they're circling the wagons to make sure that whatever they've got does not get out. And what that tells me is that there was in that there was improprieties taking place that the FBI was involved in censorship or attempts at censorship.

Put yourself on high alert. They were telling Facebook in elections that they should not have been involved in. They were doing the things that are not only odious, but illegal. And we have caught them at it and we are going to pursue them in federal district court very soon on this by filing a lawsuit and saying to them very simply, you can't just close your file and get out of producing the information that the law requires to be produced. Well, that's because there's a federal statute that is the Freedom of Information Act that says you've got to respond. Now, we did an administrative appeal.

They didn't respond to that either. And that's why we're going to court so quickly on this. But here's what's interesting. During an interview on a podcast, Mark Zuckerberg, this is, of course, the head of Facebook, said that the FBI, he said, basically, I'm reading exactly from the transcript, came to us and folks on our team was like, hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. And then he said, we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016. We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of that similar to that.

Just be vigilant. And that was the FBI saying that to Mark Zuckerberg. And then Mark Zuckerberg, Logan, said they were vigilant. They stopped the, I guess, how it worked is they decreased its availability. They decreased the, I guess, the way that it gets sent around, as we said.

They get sort of shadow banned the content where Twitter actually was actively taking content down or was not allowing it to be shared even in direct messages. So we know that was happening. And I think we said that on Joe Rogan.

That's probably close to a year ago now, six, eight months ago when he had that conversation. And as things have come out and obviously the Twitter files have come out, we've seen a lot more and a lot more information. We actually we have a clip from Zuckerberg we can hear.

Yeah, let's play it. Our protocol is different from Twitter's. What Twitter did is they said you can't share this at all. We didn't do that. What we do is we have if something is reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation. We also have a third party fact checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false.

And for the I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being being determined whether it was false. The distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it. So you could still share it.

You could still consume it. Yeah. So what does that mean? When they say that they are de-escalating the what does that mean?

Yeah. So instead of it going out to all of your followers or all of your friends, it only goes out to a select number, usually a very much smaller number. And sure, if someone was to go onto your page, it's not like the content was not there. It just was not spread.

Now, most people get their content from a feed. They're not getting it from going to individual people's page. So, Andy, I'm holding in my hand also that the internal appeal we did to the FBI regarding their lack of response from the Freedom of Information Act.

It's up on the screen right now. Let's put the complaint up there, because that's what I'm talking about that we filed against on the appeal. No response on that at all.

Zero from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It's obvious they do not want us to have this information, because, look, some of it's coming out through Facebook, but like Logan said, Twitter was being – Zuckerberg said it too – handled it differently. So – and this was not just as to Facebook or Twitter. This was to all social media platforms that the FBI, quote, warned.

You know, Jay, this is unheard of. You filed an administrative appeal within the agency. That's what's provided by law.

We did that, and we stated the reasons why we thought the FOIA request was appropriate and it should be granted, and the exemptions that were claimed were not appropriate to withhold the turning over of this information. And what do we get from the FBI? Absolutely zero response.

Totally. No answer. No denial. No response whatsoever. They're just saying that, you know, you can take your appeal and go to the four winds with it. And that's exactly what they're doing here, just telling us that we're not going to even reply to you.

What this tells me, in having been at this now December 18th, Jay, it'll be 48 years as a lawyer, and five of those years in the United States Attorney's Office working with the FBI. They don't want this information to get out, and they're doing everything that they possibly can to prevent it from being disseminated to us, and we're not going to let that stand. Let's go ahead and take phone calls at 1-800-684-3110, and as we do, Logan, we have a lot of people that are watching specifically on Rumble, and actually YouTube as well. What do people need to do on Rumble to share this feed so we get more people, so we don't get suppressed?

Facebook, we know suppresses it. Yeah, Rumble won't suppress it, but if you're watching on the desktop, you can click the little plus sign, you can comment, make sure to share it with your friends. Or if you're watching on the Rumble app, you can hit the thumbs up. Same on YouTube, hit the thumbs up, comment, make sure you're subscribed to all the channels, and if you're new on Rumble, I know they feature us a lot, so if you're new, make sure you subscribe. If you're on YouTube, do the same thing. Make sure you're getting all of this into your feed. And if you're on Facebook, share it with your friends. We know the Facebook numbers have been great recently. Not great, I mean, they're down 50%.

And I don't think it has to do with the content here, so if you could share it, we'd appreciate that. Alright, let's go ahead and take phone calls. 1-800-684-3110. Jerry in Rhode Island, you're on the air. Hi, Jerry, how are you?

Hello, team. I think Mr. Economo, if he's not right on the bullseye, he's close, because the current people who would have to answer for the wrongdoing done by previously disposed people, they just don't want to go there. They don't want to be there to defend what you guys are alleging, what Mr. Economo knows, from experience. Jerry, I think you're exactly right. I mean, you've got the main player in all of this, the keeper of the keys to the kingdom, was the lawyer, who was the general counsel of the FBI. And that would be, of course, Jim Baker. He leaves the FBI and ends up where? At Twitter, as the deputy general counsel. He's now been terminated. So he's on both ends of this transaction, so to speak, so no wonder the FBI doesn't want to get this information out.

That's exactly right, Jay. And how can James Baker live with himself with a conflict like this? He leaves the government, he goes to Twitter, and he's got conflicts all over the place, and he's protecting himself in many ways because of what he may have done at the FBI and what he may have done at Twitter. So he's coming up with these conflicting positions.

I can't see how he can live with himself as a lawyer and have these conflicts existing as he does. This was actually brought up at the last press briefing, the White House press briefing, so let's hear a reporter followed by KJP's response. Elon Musk this week fired the former FBI general counsel, Jim Baker, who was serving as a top Twitter lawyer.

Musk alleges that he may have been involved with countermanding his attempts at transparency, and I was wondering if anyone in the Biden administration was in touch with Baker either regarding moderation decisions that critics call political censorship or regarding his transparency efforts recently? So it's up to private companies to make these types of decisions. We were not involved, I can say that. We were not involved.

Okay, Andy, you can't make this stuff up. I mean, they're not involved, they're not involved. They sure don't want to be involved, but how would we know? We filed notices, we followed the law, we followed the rules, and they did nothing.

Now we're going to find out because we're going to court. But it's disingenuous for them to make these statements when they know that James Baker was on both ends of this transaction. Exactly right. And of course, Ms. Jean-Pierre, who is the master of doublespeak, I thought George Orwell in 1984 was the master of doublespeak, but Ms. Jean-Pierre has taken that role over and taken it to new heights and simply saying things that make no sense and thinking that she can get by reporters by doing this. But James Baker's got a serious problem. James Baker, Jay, is protecting James Baker.

That's what he's doing. And that's why we're going to court to get the answers to this on your behalf, the American people. So go to ACLJ.org, support our work, because when you do that, you're hearing this broadcast on radio, TV, social media platforms. You're also allowing our lawyers to be dispensed around the globe, right now in Washington, D.C., in federal court. By the way, talking about federal court, we'll talk about it next. We've got a brief going to the Supreme Court of the United States today.

Again, we had two cases at the Court of Appeals last week, now the Supreme Court of the United States. Your support of the ACLJ is absolutely critical. I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. Any amount you donate, we're getting a matching gift for. That's ACLJ.org.

ACLJ.org. When we come back, your call is 1-800-684-3110 and update on two other cases. Back with more in a moment.

There you go Logan, we did a little Christmas coming in. What are your favorite streaming platforms? Shockingly, I mean, I guess I shouldn't be shocked, but a lot of people download that album. Yeah.

It's a Jay Sekul band, and I'm not exactly sure. How do you get, would you go to Spotify? Spotify or Apple Pie, Casper, probably what, seven, eight years?

Yeah, but we'll play more of that coming up. Alright, we've got a big hearing today. Five years, it's the five year anniversary. The five year anniversary of the album? There you go.

Alright, so we'll start playing that this time of year, we get to play it. So, here's what we've got right now. We've dispatched lawyers last week, Libby from our office, actually was in Dallas on another matter, I think on a family trip. And hopped up to Colorado because we had the pro-life clients were denied access to participate in a hearing that they were invited to.

And that was last week, so let's tell everybody what was going on there, Cece, and then what we've done. Sure, so Pueblo, Colorado, they were having an executive committee meeting where they were discussing this ordinance that's a pro-life ordinance. And they had invited both sides, pro-life side and the pro-abortion side to come and testify about this ordinance. The night before the meeting, the pro-life side was given notice that they were no longer invited to testify. And I think we had in writing one of the council members basically saying they didn't want to circus in their court, they didn't want to hear from the biased side of the pro-life. Yeah, she actually said that to another council member. Yes, so they didn't want to hear the biased pro-life side. So we stepped in a meeting, like you said, we had an attorney in Texas, she flew up to Colorado and we had a demand letter that they had to hear both sides. It was viewpoint discrimination. They did allow our attorney to testify at that executive committee. And then we actually had a win where the committee decided that they would indeed hear both sides of the argument. The hearing is today.

Yes. So what we did, because we're concerned about what's going to happen, is Olivia State, our senior lawyer's state, and that hearing is going to go off today. I think, Logan, we've got a media team out there as well. We did, we sent a camera crew out there to make sure we cover it.

We're going to cover it. To make sure this hearing goes off without a hitch. Because the argument here was over, put aside the ordinance for a second, the problem was the hearing was going to hear from one side of the debate. Which is exactly what viewpoint discrimination does not allow. And our argument was you can't engage in viewpoint discrimination and of course it was worse here because our clients were invited to participate.

Yes, absolutely. In some meetings, depending on the city council and what the status of the meeting is, there are some meetings where there's not going to be a vote held where they can hear who they want to hear. This was not the case here. This was an executive committee meeting, but they had invited both sides, so they had opened up the forum, they had invited both sides, and then they disinvited only the pro-life side. And so now tonight, we actually have 20 minutes for each side to speak, which was not going to happen the last time.

The key here is the fact that we mobilized within, this all happened within about a 36 hour period. From denial, not even, probably a 24 hour period, from denial of our client's ability, well, the night before they were told, yes, you're going to participate, then disinvited the night before, that was a couple days before that. And then we got involved when the denial, in other words, when they were told they can't participate, that's when we got contacted.

The idea, and then we immediately went to work. I mean, literally within hours, we had out information, including a demand letter, as Cece said. Our lawyer was on the agenda to speak, she did. She presented the argument that if you engage in this kind of viewpoint discrimination, and even some of the people that were not in favor of the ordinance, said, you know, we really should be hearing from both sides of the debate here. So the end result of that is, we got a great victory.

But you know what you don't do in these cases? I call it the ministry of presence. Don't leave until the hearing actually goes off.

That's right. And Olivia is still there, and she will be at the meeting. The executive committee meeting starts at 530 in Pueblo tonight, and then they'll have the public forum at 7.

And so we will have, the pro-life side will have equal time to speak during the executive committee meeting, and then there will be, obviously, speakers during the public forum time. And you've got a media team out there. We do.

So we'll have footage to show of that very soon. Yeah, so we're going to cover it for you. We've got the lawyers out there.

That's one case, Colorado. Now let's move to religious liberty in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Remember last week, we had two cases, both of the Sixth Circuit, interesting. One involving an issue of religious liberty was argued on Thursday, or Wednesday, and the other, or Tuesday.

They're all falling together now. And then, I think that was Tuesday, and then we had a pro-life one, argument before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal, that was on Thursday. In the interim, a group of us were working with Walter Weber, who heads up a lot of our Supreme Court practice, to get a brief in response to the city of Ocala case.

Put the city aside for a moment. This is a quintessential example, the perfect example of what I think is, they call it a fended observer. The city engages in a prayer vigil because they had a high crime rate, and there was a lot of crime in the area, and the ministers came together and wanted to do this prayer vigil. They complained, the people that filed a lawsuit, because they went there knowing they were going to be offended.

It's called a fended observer. In other words, I don't like what I'm going to hear. I know I'm going to hear it. I'm going to go there so that I hear it and I'm offended.

Thus, I can file a federal lawsuit. Right, and so this one, this offended observer status case, is particularly egregious just because of that scenario, is that these people, I think proclaimed atheists, heard about this prayer time. That the community actually had come together, the community had come together, and they had decided, we have a high crime rate, it's targeting our children, we want to come together, we want to pray. And they specifically went there knowing that they would be offended, intending to be offended, just like you said, just so that they could bring a lawsuit against the city. And of course, in their view, they were offended. And then the court issued a preliminary injunction saying violations of the Establishment Clause and these individuals had a basis to sue. What we've taken up to the Supreme Court of the United States is, do offended observers really, the fact that you hear something you don't like, which is, I thought, the cost of living in a free society, you're going to hear things you disagree with? How do you deal with things you disagree with?

Not by censoring speech, but by more speech. I actually went back and listened to a couple of oral arguments I did. This was in the late 90s, mid-90s, early 2000s, involving these kind of issues. It was interesting when you go back through the questions because the justices were saying the same thing. You know, the way it used to be, if you heard something you disagreed with, other side would say, you know, kind of like the situation in Colorado, you're going to have the pro-abortion side and you have the pro-life side. Apparently, that's not the way the left views the Constitution anymore. So it's this one-size-fits-all, let's hear one side of the debate because we're offended. We're offended with the idea that a group of people got together to pray for their city. Thus, we can file a federal lawsuit.

And that's what this is all about. If this case gets granted review, it will have dramatic impact on the establishment clause, the whole church-state separation. Actually, you don't know if these things are going to get, what we're doing, the briefs were excellent on our side. They're up.

Like I said, they'll be all filed by tomorrow. The fact of the matter is, if they get review, if we get review here, this was probably the most significant religion case in the last, I'd say, 40 years. Bigger than Murgon's.

As big, which was a Bible study. Thanks for joining me to support the work that we're doing here. We only got a minute left in this segment. And hey, we will have a full extra half hour coming up. So if you don't get it on your local station, find us broadcasting live on your social media platforms.

aclj.org also to support the work, make your donations into the year. We're in the middle of a matching challenge, so we appreciate that to make your donation today. And join us right now. We are broadcasting again for an additional half hour live on Rumble, on Facebook, on YouTube. I know people have had some issues with Facebook recently. I see some of the comments saying they're having trouble with Facebook. I'd love to hear in the comments on Rumble.

If you used to watch on Facebook and you moved to Rumble, I would love to hear that. Let me know. But you can support the work of the ACLJ at aclj.org and you can give us a call. We will be taking more phone calls and Rick Rinnell will be joining us later in the show. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Again, support the work of the ACLJ. Go to aclj.org, make your donation there and check out all the incredible free content that we provide. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110 to be on the air today. And also, if you're joining us on social media, put in your comments. We'll take some of those as well. So we just got, I mean, literally, I'm holding it up.

I don't know if we have it in the, no, we just, I mean, literally, it was just handed to me. This is the draft of the complaint that's going to be filed, American Center for Law and Justice versus the FBI. And this is because of the lack of information. And it was involving the social media situation. And again, James Baker was the general counsel for the FBI, ends up going over to Twitter. Now, this lawsuit's broader than Twitter.

It's all social media platforms. We don't know what the FBI was telling people during this last cycle. And the FBI did not respond to our document request. They didn't respond to the administrative appeal that you're required to do under the statute, which we did internally. They said no response there. And they closed the file as if, sorry, we're done. Good luck. Probably not thinking we'd file suit, but they probably know better by now.

Yeah. And I think that's the most, again, that's an egregious thing that the FBI does is they can't just determine, hey, we're not going to answer, you know, any of the questions that you've asked in your Freedom of Information Act request. And we're just going to close it out.

You know, usually they'll give redacted information or we'll kind of negotiate a little bit back and forth of what they will give. This time they are just like, nope, we're not going to answer. And it's closed.

I think that's because this is particularly Logan sensitive. They got a unique problem here. We're pressing. We know who's on both sides of the issue with James Baker. The general counsel of the FBI becomes deputy GC of Twitter. Twitter in the interim of all of this gets bought by Elon Musk. Elon Musk decides on the efforts of transparency. I'm putting this stuff out.

Yeah. I think it's somewhat to try to save his platform, if you will, to make sure people know that, yes, they were right and it's okay to come back because a lot of people had deactivated. Now it's kind of working on the converse where a lot of your more liberal commentators or your more liberal celebrities are deactivating their accounts. But yeah, this was in transparency and you knew some top independent journalists to get that information out there.

It's a fascinating development when you think about it. When you can hold the government accountable like this, their pushback is to ignore it because in court what's going to happen is they're going to have to disclose the information because by law we're entitled to it. That's right. And I think you're right. They're scared about that. They're delaying the inevitable. We will go to court and we are going to court. Like you said, we have the complaint right here. We're going to ask that the court makes them turn over this information. You know, I think they're worried about it. You know, my theory is, and again, it's just a theory. They're worried about it because they don't know what Elon Musk is going to do with Twitter.

They don't know what he's going to disclose, what information he's going to put out there, and they know they've got their information of what they were telling these agencies. And Mark Zuckerberg went forward on it. You want to take this call? Yeah. We can go to Michelle in Oregon on Line 1. Michelle, welcome. You're on the air. Hello. Thank you so much for being the resource that you folks are and putting your lives into it. I have a question.

I can take the answer on air or off online, you know. But my question is concerning information storage for that matter. We live in a society now that's very Orwellian where it's not that information is being disposed of.

It's just never existed in the first place because it's all electronic now. We live in an age where Hillary Clinton can actually have her embarrassing material just smashed with a hammer. Yeah, but let me tell you what they can't do. Let me tell you what they can't do, Michelle. When we send an information request, and it's interesting you brought it up, we cite 28 CFR, that's Code of Federal Regulation, 16.3b, which requires the electronic data to be provided, including dates of who sent it, who it was sent to, where it went, and what the subject matter is. So it's not like they don't have the information here. I'm not accusing them of destroying information.

They just don't want us to have it. That's what this is about. Yeah, absolutely. And they need to maintain when you get into a court and get into a case, people have a duty to keep records as well. So, you know, hopefully they're going to do that as well.

Once they get notification that there's a potential case here, they will not destroy any records. We're going to find out soon enough on all this. And again, the unknown for them is Elon Musk. Yeah, absolutely. And Mark Zuckerberg talking publicly.

Didn't help them either. No, I think that started off, honestly, this kind of kicked it all off. And now, because now everything's a little less shocking after he said, yeah, this is what happened. We even found the portal of how they submitted their information.

But we found out it wasn't even just a portal. We found out that on Twitter, they were just in direct communication. Coming up next segment, we have Rick Grenell on the broadcast. We'll be right back with him.

Share it with your friends, everybody. Back with him. Welcome back to the broadcast. We are joined by Senior Advisor for National Security for Policy here at the ACLJ, Rick Grenell.

So, Rick, all right. This is something we've been dealing with, and now we've got some movement. Well, the movement is, of course, stonewalling. So, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request back in August to the FBI about the whole Hunter Biden thing, about stuff, the information that the FBI was sharing with Facebook, Twitter, any of the social media platforms that were out there to the executives of these companies. Mark Zuckerberg came forward during an interview and said, hey, look, we did get contacted by the FBI and we did throttle things back. Elon Musk ends up taking over Twitter, buys Twitter, and starts releasing what was going on. And we find the causal link here to be James Baker, who, when you were in office, was the general counsel of the FBI. He leaves the FBI and then becomes, lo and behold, shockingly, the deputy general counsel of Twitter. Elon Musk fires him last week because he was stifling the release of the information. At the same time, the FBI closes our FOIA request, no response.

We filed an administrative repeal, no response, which now allows us to go to court because they know what the exposure is here. But I think it's interesting to me that all this has happened kind of simultaneously, Rick. Yeah, look, they've been caught, right? They have been caught utilizing the guy who weaponizes government, who tries to silence dissenting voices.

And this is what is really scary. We need to have a media that puts checks on these people who weaponize government. There should be media pushback of James Baker. There should be media pushback on the outrage that we are finding out with Twitter.

But yet there's not. And I think that in lies the whole problem, that these people are feeling emboldened to keep going after dissenting voices and crush their political opponents simply because there's no pushback. The media are not saying to them, stop, what are you doing?

This is getting crazy. So the interesting thing here on this one is that, you know, normally you get a response that says, hey, you know, here we're going to give you this, but we're not going to give you this or, you know, we've got, we're reviewing, nothing. They finally come back and say, we're not going to admit or you'll love this. They're not going to admit or deny any of this because it involves third parties.

I'm trying to think. The third party is really the social media providers. The third parties are not the government employees that were doing all of this. So we ended up after the appeal was not responded to filing a lawsuit in federal court.

Yeah. And, and we're specifically tomorrow, we're specifically pointing out exactly what you said that we've asked for. We've asked for all the records pertaining to the FBI's interactions with the social media platforms. They're trying to come back and say, oh, we don't give information on third parties. So we're not admitting or denying anything.

And we've closed out your case before we could even respond. So, so Rick, the thing is this, it looks like, I mean, if you look at it retroactively, it looks like the FBI and Department of Justice was putting their thumbs on the scale, not thinking they get caught. They get caught on multiple fronts.

Zuckerberg starts talking about it and then Elon Musk ends up buying Twitter and all of a sudden their entire scheme, if you will, is exposed. Thank God for ACLJ. I mean, literally thank God for ACLJ. This is one of the reasons I'm a part of this team is because we don't give up. We don't just take the multiple times where the government says, oh, go pound sand or we've closed your case. No, when there's an outrage, we take it to court. We do action.

And I and I just want people to understand. I know that we have so many people, Jay, that are so frustrated with conservatives and conservative organizations who step up and they scream and holler, but they don't fight back and they don't take them to court. We're not issuing just a press release. We're not trying to embarrass them on Twitter.

We are taking them to court and we are saying that you must prove why you're being so shady. And I got to just say thank God for that whole team. I'm a very small part of it, but thank God that I'm a part of it. And please keep keep fighting like this.

This is what people want. You know, Andy O'Connell famously said on our broadcasts, our senior counselors, it's like a needle in a haystack. You know, and you know this, you get you get 20,000 pages of documents, but there's one thing. I'll never forget the disclosure that we got in the Israel FOIA litigation that found out that the Department of State, the State Department gave a million dollars to Mahmoud Abbas's son under the guise of some humanitarian aid to his son. That's the head of the Palestinian Authority for those that don't know.

You would have never known that. And like Rick said, we're not just like, oh, this is horrible. The sky is falling. We're taking action. Now, Rick, you look at this now and we just came through an election season. Now we're gearing up for another election.

It seems like we're always in the election season these days. But this has got to be, you know, you got to, they cannot, the government can't put their hands on the scale of which party succeeds. That's just not the way, the American people can. They can elect whoever they want that's running for office. But the government doesn't get to make that call. They shouldn't get to. And they are getting away with it lately because we don't have the media.

I know it keeps sounding like a broken record, but it's true. But here is the key. When organizations like ACLJ file an actual lawsuit, then you really put the media in a position where they can't ignore that. They're going to have to report that ACLJ is filing this lawsuit. Hopefully then somebody somewhere will say, well, what is the lawsuit? Let's look at it. But emphasizing this in Washington, D.C. and with the media is going to be incredibly important.

I'll look forward to pushing it out on my social media. And everybody listening to this should. And we should ask our representatives to petition the government and say, you need to answer this lawsuit. This is a serious issue. This is a serious legal case.

This is not just something flighty. When ACLJ does something, it's a serious case. You know, there's a reason that in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, we frequently cite the religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion, freedom of speech. Like I said, freedom of the press. There's also a provision in the First Amendment that says petitioning your government for redress of grievance. And that's precisely what we are doing here. But it has taken in this particular case, we are they have totally we have had issues where they kind of hide the ball. But, Cece, on this one, they are totally stonewalling.

Absolutely. They typically we expect requests that say that, you know, they won't answer they'll answer partially or we get documents that are heavily redacted. And we do have to, you know, go back and forth and sometimes go to court on those cases. This is the first time that I know that I can recall that we literally just got a no comment, basically, and we're closing out your case. We got nothing. So, Rick, I mean, I know I don't want to disclose anything.

Obviously, you can't. But there's something here. I mean, obviously, what Elon Musk is putting out there is showing that. What Zuckerberg alluded to is showing that. And that the government was saying, hey, watch this, watch that, which basically was putting the thumb on the scale. You know, I would say, you know, the way to handle speech you disagree with is more speech, not the silencing of one side.

But, you know, whether it's a city council in Pueblo, Colorado, where we dispatched ACLJ lawyers or a prayer case in Ocala when they had a crisis in their community. This idea that you're silencing, you're putting your thumb on it or silencing one part of the debate is not the role of the United States government. And you have been our United States government at the highest levels as a member of the cabinet. But that's not the role of the government here.

No. And I got to tell you, we've got a whole bunch of lawyers and a whole bunch of regulators who work permanently for the government who will bring cases to you, to me. And they will say things like, well, you know, we're going to put them off. We're not going to disclose this. I many times in dealing with FOIA requests would say, why not?

Why don't we just share it? Why don't we be transparent, even if we've made a mistake? I think that you get credibility when you are transparent and you're open about even mistakes that you made. This is what should have happened early on in the Russian investigation, the Steele dossier.

It didn't. They kept covering up more and more. And it's the reason when I was DNI, why I got in all sorts of trouble for releasing 52 transcripts and unredacting all that information. They swore that I was giving up, you know, terrible secrets and that I was going to be sued personally. Well, none of that ever happened. And I disclosed all of them.

I think transparency is a good thing and I think the American people can handle it. I appreciate it. Rick, thanks for your comments and your support of the ACLJ as part of our team. Folks, this is where it comes in. And Rick said it. Don't go yet, Rick, because I think this is important for people to say. Folks, when you're supporting the ACLJ, you're not just supporting this apparatus that you're seeing on air. And Rick can tell you this, when we're filing these lawsuits, this is serious stuff and takes a lot of time. And your support on this, the people watching this broadcast right now, their support on this, especially the matching challenge, Rick, is critical to our success. Well, the reason why it takes a long time, I just want to emphasize this, is because we're serious and we're trying to do it the right way.

We're not just trying to issue a press release. When you go to court, you don't want to have your lawsuit completely just thrown out. You want to be able to have serious substance. That takes time and that takes lawyers and that takes people really thinking through this.

So what you get is a serious team. I hope people will support the ACLJ. That's the reason why I'm here is because it's a serious organization that I know has leverage and push.

And when they speak up in Washington, D.C., people have to listen. Thank you, Rick. We appreciate it. Folks, this gives you a great opportunity to, if you're able, we encourage you to do this. Support the work of the ACLJ. This is the month where we determine the budgets for the next year. We've got big expansion plans that we're going to share next year.

Your support makes all the difference. We're in a matching challenge campaign. Logan's going to let you know how that works, but it's really critical that we hear from you.

That's right. And you can do that at ACLJ.org. You can also right now, look, we're going to take some calls in the next segment. If they come in, give us a call. 1-800-684-3110.

1-800-684-3110. Phone lines are open right now. You can also get your comments in on social media, but we'd love to hear from you, but also support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Look at all the great free content we put out there on all of our social media platforms, whether that's Rumble or YouTube or Facebook or Instagram. We are everywhere. You can find all our content. We make it available for you to be able to share it, to get the word out there as well.

Not just a one way street. We need you to be out there and supporting the work, not only financially, but also by liking, sharing, commenting. We'll be right back. For the last segment of the day, we will be taking your phone calls. If you have any calls or questions or comments, give us a call right now. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice on the air. So last week on the broadcast, we talked about this idea that Congress passed a bill and the President put all this into play that authorizes 80,000 new IRS agents, but they sure could use help on the border. So why don't we divert that money to border protection that protects the entire country, because I think just providing $80 billion to the IRS and 80,000 new agents is going to do nothing institutionally.

Interestingly, Representative Claudia Tenney from New York has introduced a bill. It's called the Diverting IRS Resources to the Exigent Crisis Through Direct Funds for Border Security. This again, you got $80 billion was allocated for the IRS. She says that the, and this is true, that the IRS was going to hire all these new enforcement agents and they had all these issues about going after mid-level taxpayers.

Tenney herself is a former tax lawyer and she said this, what my bill simply does is this, don't hire 87,000 new IRS agents. It could be directed to the border where we really need assistance. The Border Security, Customs and Border Patrol are dealing with an unprecedented number, numbers like we've never seen in our country. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol reported an all-time record, 230,000 migrant encounters at the U.S. border in the month of October alone, including 64,000 migrants crossing without being apprehended.

So 64,000 got into the system. And then all the drug cartels get drugs in and then the sex traffickers, which are also cartels, get the sex trafficking. And every state is now a border state. But Andy, the idea, Andy's kind of most senior counsel for the SGA back with us, the idea that redirecting this money, I think is brilliant. We've been calling for it. I'm glad she's introduced the bill. Obviously it's not going to get voted on now, but I would think when the new Congress is put in place, this could actually pass. Now there'll be a fight in the Senate, but you never know. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with this huge allocation to the IRS, recognizing what the IRS is capable of mishandling.

Well, I agree with you, Jay. I think that instead of 87,000 new IRS agents, we need 87,000 new customs and border patrol agents. Because as you just said, every state is a border state, not just those that are geographically located at the southwestern border of the United States, because the migrants who are coming in illegally are disseminating into the entire country. They're not limiting themselves to California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. And that's a stupid thought to contemplate. They're going everywhere.

They're everywhere. But I think that what the President has done when he says there's more significant things at the border is really than the border is a very significant statement to make, because the border is an existential aspect of America, of any country for that matter. The borders in Greek, those are what define us as a nation. Even President Obama said that borders were a sacred thing. Could you imagine President Kennedy making the statement that the borders are more important things to do and more significant things to do than the borders?

Can you imagine John Kennedy, the Democratic Party in 1960 making a statement like that? And yet we ignore the borders. The President will not go down to the border. He'll go near the border, but he won't go touch the border and admit face to face the crisis that is happening there. We don't need any more IRS agents. We need more border patrol agents. Well, that's what Representative Kennedy's bill does. And, you know, I was thinking about this, Logan, as we look at this. I still want to go down to the border.

I know we've been invited in the past. We really need to do that and bring a crew down there and be able to produce it for our own eyes here, because this is, we are at a, I hate using the words pandemic, epidemic portion, but that's what this is. It's out of control and it's going, it's all 50 states are border states now. It's definitely impacting everyone, everyone, whether it's family.

Yeah, exactly. Every family in terms of the, what's coming across the border, whether that be drugs or other, other weapons or whatever it may be that's happening. Obviously we, you do have to look into the big picture of, of the border in general, figure out how you secure the border and how we also fix the immigration crisis happening.

Both two things that are not impossible, but are certainly uphill battles right now. You know, it's interesting. We got a comment on rumble that says it's clear that the Democrats agenda, they want an open board and they want the IRS to go after $600 transactions. So one of the things they're trying to do, the IRS wants to do is if it's $600 on Vimeo, they want to now go after it.

No, it's happening. I mean, it's, it's in the plans for, for this coming year. So. Which is called gig income. And as if that, first of all, you know what the tax is on $600 for most people?

Like nothing. I mean, for people that are doing gig economy, maybe they make the threshold of where they got to actually pay tax. But the idea that this is where you're going to spend your resources, Andy, when the border's out of control really is absurd.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I've dealt with IRS agents. I've supervised them in the sense that I was in the US attorney's office and they work for me. They're a good crew, especially the special agents who do criminal investigations, but we don't need to take 80 plus billion, billion dollars and hire 87,000 new IRS agents to go after what are really pennies and, and insignificant amounts of tax dollars. When you've got a serious, serious crisis at the border, when you've got thousands and thousands, and you saw the video that we just showed in which people are just in single file coming across the border, walking across the Rio Grande and simply making their way into the United States. Look at this, going into the population without any question whatsoever being raised about them, just sort of sauntering into the United States. What does that mean about the sanctity of our borders? What does this do to law enforcement? What does this do to schools? What does this do to hospitals? It's overwhelmed law enforcement.

It is overwhelming our medical system. 64,000 migrant crossings without being apprehended. That means more than 50,000 in the month, a month. This was in October.

Came through the United States to the United States, crossed without being apprehended. No data, no notice. We have no idea. We know there were 64,000.

We have no idea who they were, where they went and what they were up to. And this is dangerous for the United States. So at the ACLJ, what we're doing is we're on top of this. We're dealing with Congress.

We're dealing through this through litigation. We're talking, we're getting calls from state representatives and governors of states that are concerned about what's going on in their borders. As Andy said, this is affecting everywhere in the country right now. Every state is a border state. I mean, you know, where our media headquarters are towards the middle of the country, let me tell you what happens. You got these expressways, that's what the sex traffickers use.

You stop to go get your snack to eat, other cars are stopping and they're involved in drug distribution. This is what's going on. And instead of hiring 87,000 new IRS agents to work on a system that doesn't work, could you imagine adding 87,000 new custom and border patrol agents down on the border? What that would do, Andy? Almost 100,000 new agents? That would tighten things up.

Yeah, I would say that it would tighten things up dramatically. And that's exactly what we need. Look, we need to protect our borders.

That's what we are all about as a nation. That's what Germany went to war with. I mean, England went to war with Germany over what? The Polish border. So learn something from history. Borders are important. They're existential entities.

They mean and define a country. We cannot just let them be porous. That's what the Biden administration is doing.

And that is absolutely existentially wrong for the United States. Very good. Appreciate it, Andy. Again, folks, this is a great time.

Look, we're not quite at the midsection of the month yet, but getting close. And your support of the ACLJ makes a huge difference. We have big plans for next year, big expansion. Your support of this is absolutely critical. This is where you come in. If you donate anything right now, we're getting a matching gift. So if you donate $50 or $100, we get another $50 or $100. If you donate $20, we get another $20. So what that means is those amounts of money get added to the ACLJ's budget.

And that's where you come in. If you donate today, we're going to get that matching gift. So I encourage you, if you're able to go to ACLJ.org, that's ACLJ.org, and support the work in the American Center for Law and Justice. Secular Brothers podcast today? Yeah, we'll do a new show. It'll be out about 4 o'clock Eastern time. So you can find it on secularbrothers.com, subscribe on Rumble YouTube, and your favorite podcast app.