“SURPRISED” Biden: I don’t know what’s in the documents

Today on Sekulow, Joe Biden's surprised and doesn't even know what was inside those classified documents that were inside his cabinet, inside his private office. We'll talk about that today with Rick Renell and Mike Pompeo.

And now your host Jordan Sekulow. All right folks, Joe Biden, President of the United States, of course, finally had to respond during his trip while he was in Mexico City meeting with the leaders of Canada and Mexico and talking immigration primarily. Had to finally respond to the story on the classified documents being found at his private office. Again, a private office that was set up in 2017. So there's already questions about where were those documents in between. When he left office as Vice President and that pin office was opened up in Washington, D.C. and that it was being shut down and his attorneys, private attorneys, were the ones who went through. Supposedly he was behind a lock in a closet and found that they weren't just government documents there, but top secret level, SCI level, which we went through yesterday on the broadcast and the hypocrisy. Joe Biden says he's surprised.

Now here's where I don't give him the benefit of the doubt on the surprise. This is different than President Trump who again was asserting that these documents were mine from the beginning. So Joe Biden is not saying that these are not classified documents.

He's saying my attorneys didn't tell me, you know, they said don't ask what's in them. I guess that's fine except for he can read the media accounts now and know what was in them, at least peripherally. We know it's out on Ukraine, Iran and the U.K. And what makes me more suspicious here is all of his dealings in Ukraine and his son's dealings in Ukraine and Burisma and being in Ukraine just before he was out as Vice President. So three days before he was done as Vice President, he traveled to Ukraine. And so what they find then, so you got to understand what happened. So GSA packs these things up generally, ships them to a storage facility, then eventually gets moved to his think tank office, which is what it was. And then finally, and this is where I think you have to drill down on this, legally do I think that President Biden can be prosecuted while he's President for these issues?

I do not think so. Why? Because I argued on the floor of the United States Senate and I argued at the Supreme Court of the United States that a sitting President cannot be indicted. Now, he did these acts as Vice President, but he is currently the sitting President of the United States, so he can't be indicted. But that is not the final issue here because they are prosecuting or appear to be Donald Trump where they executed a search warrant on his property, his personal residence at Mar-a-Lago. And so it's the dual nature of this, but I think we have to be clear. What's happened here is the weaponization of, in this particular case, the FBI, these federal agencies, to turn a document dispute for both of these guys into literally ending a federal case.

Well, I think that's right. And to nuance the weaponization, the criminalization, you have a document dispute. You've got a special prosecutor appointed in the case of former President Trump.

You want to make a criminal case out of it because you've gone to a United States magistrate and you've gotten a search warrant. That's a criminal process, okay? So now the Democrats, if you will, the Biden administration, wants to take Merrick Garland, this approach as to President Trump, but now it's happening to your man. And so don't criminalize document productions.

Don't criminalize document productions because it could come back to haunt you. But I suspect, Jordan, that's the reason the contempt action that the government brought against Donald Trump failed. Yes, but now we've got a U.S. attorney in Chicago investigating this, a special counsel investigating President Trump, and this whole hypocrisy of Washington, D.C. Joe Biden cannot just get through this with being like, I'm surprised. Oh, you said from a political standpoint, advertising, he lost a whole approach.

Yes, you can no longer run an ad saying Donald Trump put our national security at risk by having classified documents in his private home when Joe Biden had them for six years at his private office and his attorneys who probably didn't have SCI-level security clearance are the ones that found them. We'll be right back. We'll take your phone calls, 800-684-3110. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. And it's important to point out, too, who else was at this Biden Center that was created jointly with the University of Pennsylvania. So 10 senior Biden officials that are currently in the administration were there, including the current secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, the undersecretary of defense for public policy, Colin Call, the White House counselor was there, Spencer Boyer, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO, the list goes on. I mean, a deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. was there, a senior advisor to the national security advisor was the director there, as they all had different levels of positions. So, I mean, it was clearly more active.

It was only for a few years. It's where they hold people, these think tanks, as they contemplate, in this case, running for President. So that two years where they're basically getting it all together, they put their people into a group. And this group was the Penn Center with Biden. And that's where these documents were.

But you've got to ask yourself this question. If we believe that the real issue here is that the FBI is amping up a document dispute, whether it's President Trump or then Vice President Biden, but now President Biden, either one, the federal government is weaponizing the FBI to take a document dispute and execute search warrants and criminal process. And I argue to the Supreme Court in the United States that asserting criminal process against the President interferes with their duties as the executive. And that under Article II of the United States Constitution, the President is uniquely the only person in government that is a branch himself.

Put all the trappings away. It's a branch of government. Congress is members of Congress. The executive is one, a President, the President. That's right.

We have a unitary executive in the United States, and that is a branch of government headed by the President. But I think you're right, Jay. There are perils, and this is one of them, of criminalizing document disputes. I think that's what they've done in both of these cases.

And that's exactly what's happened in these cases. Yeah, and where it's going to fall to the benefit of the former President, Jordan, is I can't imagine a political situation where Merrick Arlen is going to authorize a criminal process, in other words, an indictment against President Trump and his team, when they let this other one just go. Who can make an actual argument in court about the power of declassification where President Biden, because this was taken as vice Presidential office, cannot. So at the time he took these documents, he cannot make any case about whether or not he declassified them because he didn't have that power.

So that dispute between whether the judiciary would even want to get involved in that can't even be raised by Biden. And then it's – I think you look at these cases, you see this. These should be document disputes in a civil matter where you go back and forth between National Archives and the Biden folks and National Archives and the Trump folks. You say, OK, we think these are ours. We think, OK, sorry, we had these.

These are yours. And then the ones that are in dispute, judges can figure out, courts can figure out, but it doesn't have to be anybody going to jail. The only people then that should be going to jail are if somebody tried to illegally access them for nefarious purposes. Now, if there was info – except for the fact, this is what concerns me here, is the Ukraine.

Yes. If there wasn't Ukraine there, I would say, OK, Iran, that's bad because it's nuclear. UK, it's our ally. But Ukraine, he was bizarrely heavily involved in his vice President. Is it obstruction of justice?

I'm not saying it is. Is it tampering with evidence? Well, should we have had access to him during the impeachment?

Possibly. Or at least the White House counsel. Because the President was being impeached over Ukraine.

Of course. And specifically to the Bidens. Because that document, yes, we raised that on the floor of the United States. That could have been exculpatory evidence. It could have been exculpatory. That's what I'm saying. It could have been exculpatory evidence.

Well, in that case, it should have been delivered to us because under any fair standard of criminal procedure or civil procedure, exculpatory evidence or evidence favorable to the accused or that being charged should be turned over to their counsel. Let's go ahead and take phone calls. 800-684-3110.

1-800-684-3110. Yep. Jody in California online too. Hey, Jody. Hi. Hi. Thank you guys for all you do.

My wife and I are members. Great. And I love your music. I'm a software engineer and an opera singer myself.

There you go. So my point is, in the 80s, I went to the Soviet Union. I had a job in Finland.

And I studied the Soviet Union in college. And I think we're barking at the wrong tree when we care about hypocrisy because the left, they don't care about that. It's by any means necessary.

So you can point out their hypocrisy, but they don't care. Any crime is okay as long as you get what you need. Well, except for they don't want to have their kids going to jail or their advisors going to jail. So take out the fact that you can't prosecute sitting President, but all the people around him can be prosecuted. And so, including a son who was heavily involved in these Ukraine dealings, and did it benefit him for the father to take these documents away from the U.S. government? And again, that would take the review of the U.S. attorney who's now involved in this in Chicago to say, you know, was this just random documents on Ukraine? I highly doubt that considering he was threatening to have people fired there and withholding U.S. aid, that he was there three days before he left office as vice President, and that his son was on the board of this huge oil and gas company, Burisma, which with no experience at all on oil and gas. Well, Jordan, you raised, which I think is the biggest issue here, and that is we had a three week long trial in the floor of the United States Senate on an impeachment that was involving a phone call to Ukraine and Ukraine activity. Joe Biden, when he was vice President, goes to Ukraine. The last trip he makes is three days before he is out of office.

Let me raise another one. I want to play the soundbite that we had yesterday. This is really important because it sets up what Joe Biden was doing in Ukraine. OK, so this was a situation where Joe Biden had gone. He was vice President of the United States at the time when went on the on the trip as a as the United States representative. The issue was there was investigations going on of Burisma, a company that his son was serving on the board of directors and receiving a fee for doing this.

So that's number one. Number two, Joe Biden threatened the President Poroshenko at the time that, in fact, if you go forward and don't get rid of this prosecutor by the time I leave. By the time I leave, you're not getting a billion dollars.

Quid pro quo, prosecutor goes, get the money. Listen to what he actually said. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didn't. So they said they had they were walking out to press conference and I said, I said, I'm not going to we're not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You're not the President. The President said, I said, call him. I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.

I said, you're not getting a billion. I'm going to be leaving here. I think it was what, six hours. I look, I'm leaving in six hours.

If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. Oh, son of a b**** got fired. Yeah.

So ha ha ha. You know, investigating. So are those are the documents that you have at the Biden Center that didn't go to the National Archives that could have been used when we were litigating the impeachment? It's bizarre to me that there's an investigation of Ukraine going on right now and his son's involvement and there's a there's a criminal inquiry going on there.

Is that evidence being tampered with? Of all the countries of the world at that time. This is pre-war. I mean, they did lose Crimea at that point. That was the Obama administration.

But all these business dealings there, all of this relationship there as vice President. I mean, the sun being involved, it's like if you had to pick countries involved at that time period where the vice President would need a quick visit to right before leaving office, you wouldn't think Ukraine. No.

Like, you know, you got to rewind and remember the time. Exactly. There was no war with Russia. There was a there was the annexation of Crimea, which took a day or two, and there was no response.

No red lines crossed, nothing like that. And but this had nothing to do with that. This is all business.

Yeah. So what's interesting to me, Andy, in all of this is Jordan's, I think, raised the key point here. We actually have had process, a constitutional process in the Senate. There was a criminal investigation going on. These documents were found putting the document why they had the documents. This could have been relevant evidence. Of course, it could have been relevant evidence. It could have been evidence of innocence on the part of the charge the accused in this case that was not disclosed to us. And that under any standard of criminal proceeding or civil proceeding, as I said, is impermissible. It could be evidence that's harmful to the son. It could have been.

Definitely could. We don't know. I mean, but but it's on Ukraine. They're leaking that out, by the way. I mean, we need to be clear on that. They are putting this information out. Yeah, definitely. No doubt about. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, the leak here is a big tell of what's going on. Yes. I mean, the fact that they were getting, you know, the three main topic points.

Ukraine, Iran, UK. And he's tried to. We haven't played the sound yet from Joe Biden. Yes, we did. The larger response? No. We haven't played that yet. Yeah.

We're right up on time. This larger response, his walkthrough in Mexico City. Oh, yeah.

No, we don't do that. About, you know, not only surprise, but he's not going to be asking about it there. This is, again, politically, they have taken a huge blow because they have lost an entire argument against a Donald Trump. New President. A second term. Yeah.

I mean, and by the way, other Republicans have lost that, too. This is interesting. We'll talk about that during the next segment or during the next half hour.

It's a good point. Yeah. So, again, we're going to take your calls. 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ. That's at ACLJ.org, ACLJ.org. And always check out ACLJ Action.

We're talking about life when we come back as well. And the ACLJ Action needs your help. It doesn't cost a thing. Check it out to protect those babies born alive. After nearly 50 years, Roe vs. Wade, the tragic ruling that manufactured a so-called right to abortion has been overturned by the United States Supreme Court. This is the moment the ACLJ has been fighting for. It's the biggest victory we've achieved in our three decade long fight against the soulless abortion industry.

And believe me, abortionists like Planned Parenthood are devastated. This victory would not have been possible without the steadfast prayer and support of ACLJ members like you. On behalf of the entire ACLJ, I thank you for standing with us against the abortion industry and helping us save defenseless babies. I thank you for making this victory possible. And I ask you for your continued prayer and support as we continue to battle against barbaric new abortion laws across our nation.

Welcome back to Thank You, Alyssa. We got Rick Riddell and Mike Pompeo coming up in the second half hour. We're going to get back into this very issue and these national security implications of these documents. Remember, this is not a six month issue like with President Trump. This is six years that these documents were sitting there. We don't know what kind of cameras were on this place and who was going in and who was going out, but we do know that private attorneys were the ones who stumbled upon this.

And not secret service, not government officials who may or may not have had the correct kind of clearance to even see these documents. But we do want to update you because there's a lot of action going on right now on life in the House of Representatives. Again, for people who question Ken McCarthy's commitment to conservatism, especially the core issues like life, just listen to us here on what's going on in the House. Well, I mean, yesterday Mike Johnson, our friend from Louisiana, Congressman, introduced a sense of Congress resolution condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches. Because, you know, it fell out of the news, but it's been a huge issue.

Jane's Revenge, all these other groups. And this is a national issue right now because they're trying to close down the crisis pregnancy centers. Just be clear on that. That's the front line of defense on the life issue and they're trying to close them down. And what's interesting here is not only is the Congressman getting the sense of Congress resolution on the floor of the House, which is great, first couple of things they're doing, but we've got cases literally from coast to coast.

Yeah, absolutely. So his concurrent resolution condemns those recent attacks. It recognizes the sanctity of life and the important role that these pro-life facilities and groups and churches play in supporting pregnant women. And it calls upon the Biden administration to actually protect them. But we know how important these pro-life groups are and we represent them. In fact, after the leak of the Dobbs decision when these pro-life groups were attacked viciously in many cases, we have been in talks with pregnancy resource centers from California, Oregon, Washington, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Iowa.

And in fact, right now we represent four in New York, three in Pennsylvania, one in Vermont, one in Iowa, and we're talking with three others for legal representation right now. So folks, the ACLJ is on the front and center on this issue of life and the Congress comes back and they are putting forward this concurrent resolution condemning violence at these pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, pro-life resource centers. At the same time, ACLJ action is taking action as well.

That's right. We've got an email that went out last night and it will go out today if you didn't open it yesterday and you're on the ACLJ action email list. That's ACLJaction.org because the House is taking a vote today on a Born Alive Act, which is interesting because there is no federal protection right now for babies that are born alive during botched abortions. So the House is going to take this vote.

It will be, again, I'm sure it will be pretty party line. It will be tough to get it through the Senate, but we're starting to get this legislation, starting to put the markers down so that when you have changes in the Senate or in potentially the White House, you are taking the steps in a post-Roe world to make sure that there are those protections. We see some of these protections in states. In deep blue states, they do the opposite. They kill the baby after they're taken out of the womb.

Remember, I mean, we had that with Ralph Northam in Virginia. So this is very important. We're asking you to go to ACLJ Action and we've got the tool in place. You can contact your member of Congress to let them know and the House of Representatives to vote a yes on this legislation to protect babies who are born alive.

And again, that doesn't cost you a thing. Anybody can go to ACLJ Action and take time, take just a minute and get involved there. Yeah. So what's great, what you just said, Jordan, is absolutely a fact. It's shocking that this is not already law. It's the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

And of course, you would think if a baby's born alive, they're going to be protected. But Nancy Pelosi, who's been in charge for years, has blocked this vote. Today, the vote is actually going to be taken because we have different leadership. And just in less than 24 hours, actually, in about 12 hours, we've had 10,765 people individually contact their member of Congress. And the way our tool is set up is you put your name in, you put your address in, and your email, and it pulls up your exact member of Congress.

So even if you're trying to figure out maybe you had redistricting, who exactly is it, how do you spell their last name? Our system knows. We do that. We have a preset and a letter for them. But we encourage you to, you can take the whole thing off and write your own response. You could add a couple of sentences on your own.

You could just use ours. And again, over 10,000 people have already done that since that email went out last night. That's amazing.

That is amazing. But I will say this. It is shocking that in 2023, there is no protection federally for children born alive during an abortion that didn't terminate the life of the child. None. No constitutional protection, no statute. I would argue constitutional protection because it's personhood. But statutory protection here, you would think that would have been, who would object to that? But they do.

Absolutely. They've objected to it for years, not allowing this particular act to even come to a vote on the floor of the House. That's what Nancy Pelosi has been doing in her position, stopping this from even coming to a vote.

And I love how quickly this has now, this obviously life is a priority for the conservatives and quickly they have brought this act to a vote today. So just like Jordan said, get on the ACLJ Action site and let your voice be heard on this. Yeah, ACLJAction.org.

Let me say this also about all of us. You're seeing what the ACL, we're talking about it on air. So we've got the capability to broadcast around the globe, but it's certainly here in the United States, both on radio and TV and on social media platforms. Our ACLJ Action is working on the legislative angle. Our government affairs office at the ACLJ is working on this as well.

Our lawyers are deployed. CC just gave you a big list of states where our lawyers are working with pregnancy resources centers right now to ensure their protection and their ability to function. Because they are the ones on the front lines, they are the ones that are communicating with women that are pregnant, that are looking for alternatives to abortion. They are the front line fighters in this debate right now after Dobbs overturned Roe vs. Wade and said there's no constitutional, federal constitutional right to abortion. They're the front lines on this. What we're trying to do is make sure they can operate because you've got states like California and New York want to close them down to not exist.

Absolutely. The New York law where we have four clients there, it literally is basically a report that wants to look at the impact of PRCs on the ability of women to obtain accurate, non-coercive healthcare information and timely access basically to abortion. And that's all code words for we want to shut PRCs down and we're trying to in any way that we can.

Vermont the same way. They have been trying to shut down the PRCs in their state and now that they've passed basically a constitutional amendment that codifies Roe, our client there is very fearful that this is just going to embolden their attempts to shut down PRCs, the pregnancy resource centers. And like you said, they're on the front lines. They're the ones that are saving babies' lives and helping pregnant mothers and they are the target of the pro-abortion group.

Yeah. Again, if you want to take action today, there's going to be a vote today in the House of Representatives on protecting children who are born alive in botched abortions. You go to ACLJAction.org.

This doesn't cost you anything. We have a tool that we invested in so that you would just put in your name and your address. And the reason why we need your address is so that it pulls up your exact member of Congress.

Remember, there's a lot of new members of Congress. So you want to make sure you're contacting the right House member. Over 10,000 people, almost 11,000 people now, have used our tool since the email went out last night. Another email is in your inbox this morning if you missed that one, if you're on the ACLJAction email list. But you don't even have to be on that email list to go to ACLJAction.org to get your voice heard on this. The letter is pre-written for you, but you can add your own language as well.

So it's a tool that you're able to customize on your own. I want you to take action. That's why we call it ACLJAction.org. We'll be right back. Mike Pompeo and Rick Rinnell joining us, second half of the hour. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. So Joe Biden finally had to respond. He's in Mexico City during this immigration summit and his response was, I'm surprised. We haven't played it for people yet. They should hear the response because this is something that's going to dog them.

Not just for like a day. This is something they've got to deal with because you've got a special counselor going after President Trump that involves the same matter and a raid on his home. And now you've got a U.S. attorney out of Chicago who is a Trump holdover investigating President Biden and this classified documents issue because they learned about it, of course, a week before the midterm elections. I mean, just classic so that they could try to use that DOJ policy if we don't want to affect elections, even though he wasn't on the ballot. Neither one of them were on the ballot.

Right. But again, I want you to take a listen to Joe Biden because he was not able to escape this while overseas. As soon as they did, they realized there were several classified documents in that box and they did what they should have done. They immediately call the archives, immediately call the archives, turn them over to the archives. And I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office. But I don't know what's in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were. I've turned over the boxes.

They've turned over the boxes to the archives and we're cooperating fully cooperating fully with the review and which I hope will be finished soon. OK, by the way, these documents were classified documents, at least a dozen of them, some of them SCI, one of the highest levels of classification, special compartmental. And what's interesting here is he didn't say that his lawyer said, don't look at the documents.

He said, my lawyers have not suggested that I ask what the documents are. I mean, so you've got to listen to what this whole... For him, that was a carefully prepared statement. Yes, I think so.

Yeah, absolutely. I think when you look at what he has to say, it's not... It feels very legalese.

That was not just off his cuff. No, that was a lawyer said, this is what you're going to say, because I'm sure conversation with the documents, don't ask what the documents were. But if you don't ask what the documents are, then we can just move on.

That's clearly what the conversation was. And now you're seeing that presented, like you said, almost feels like a filing. Here's my official statement. It does feel that way. I think what we've said before is both of these now show you this. Don't let a federal agency get weaponized. Don't take a document dispute and turn it into a criminal case involving former Presidents or current Presidents.

It's not really a good thing to do. You want to try to grab a call in? Yeah, we can try to grab one call. Let's go to Debbie in Pennsylvania on Line 1. Hey, Debbie. Hi, Jordan.

Thank you for everything that your team does. My question pertains to the documents. Wouldn't there be a process to obtain documents? Don't you have to request them? Do you sign them out? I mean, when we go to the library, we have to sign out a book.

Sure. Who is accountable for getting the documents returned? That's one question. And then from 2017 to 2018, before he moved into the Penn Biden office, where were these documents and who saw them? So we're going to talk about that with Rick Riddell. He's brought that up.

There's a gap here that has not yet been explained. As vice President, he could, of course, request classified documents. He had the highest level. He had the clearance level to review any classified documents. What we're talking about is that he did not have the ability to declassify documents, nor is he trying to make that in a statement that was carefully worded. When I go back to that lawyer statement, too, my lawyers have not suggested I ask. I mean, it is such legalese. In other words, I haven't asked, but my lawyers have not suggested that I ask. Not that they told me not to ask, they haven't suggested that I ask. Don't ask. But yet it's in the media.

Don't ask. What Logan said, this is- All he has to do is open up the news and see- It's Iran, Mr. President, it's Iran, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom one's interesting. Yes, but the Obama administration was all about spying on our allies. Including Germany.

And getting caught doing it on their phones. Making Merkel's phone, yeah. So we come back, Rick Rinnell's going to be joining us, we're going to talk about that with him as well. You know, there's also, again, Mike Pompeo's going to be joining us. It was Angela Merkel, not Meghan Merkel. I guess they've been in the news the last- Merkel. Merkel. Yeah, okay, there you go.

Merkel, Merkel. We'll be back in a moment. We're taking your calls. 800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ, ACLJ.org. All right, welcome back. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Rick Rinnell's joining us now. And we're back to the documents issue. This is doggy and rightfully so, the Biden administration. He had to address it in Mexico. And it was a very, especially for Joe Biden, a very prepared statement, very legalese and a lot of carefully worded statement. Because of the way he's gone after former President Trump, who, by the way, has classification power and declassification power.

That's not even something the Vice President could even try to argue in court or even try to get a federal court to consider because you don't have that power. But I want to go right to Rick Rinnell, who's the acting director of national intelligence, dealt with a lot of classified documents. And, Rick, what you brought up is that the gap, there's also a gap here because there's the timeline between when the Vice President would have taken these documents and left office and this pin center with this personal office being opened. Look, they went somewhere. When they left the Vice President's office or home, they went to Joe Biden's property in Delaware or his office.

They went somewhere before they went to Penn. And so we need to know, are there other documents that are in those other locations? And why isn't the FBI immediately raiding the Biden home in Delaware to figure out are there documents still left behind? We do know that somehow someone put classified documents into the Penn Biden Center where there are no individuals who are authorized to handle classified information.

So we've had six years, Jordan, think about that. Six years at least that we've had documents circulating, classified documents circulating in multiple locations. We don't even know the tip of the iceberg. For the media to say that this is just 10 or 12 documents, they don't know. You know what's interesting to me, Rick, is of course we're looking now at some of the other documents. And the three areas that have been leaked, of course there's leaks, Ukraine, Iran, these are two sensitive areas, and then the UK, which I'm going to ask you a question about that in a moment. Because Ukraine, Biden was over there as Vice President, he was working with Poroshenko, the then President, trying to get the prosecutor fired, which he did while his son was on the board of Burisma.

We've been through that. But you know, I spent three weeks or so to Jordan on the floor of the United States Senate defending an impeachment on the former President of the United States involving Ukraine. And if this was exculpatory evidence that we didn't get access to because he had it locked away in a closet in his Biden Center, creates another problem in my view. Look, I've been a part of a meeting between Poroshenko, the former Ukrainian President, and a Vice President. It was Mike Pence where I did this negotiation with and this meeting. And the reality is, is that Poroshenko had a lot of dealings with the Biden administration, the Obama Biden administration, and forged a very close relationship with then Vice President Joe Biden.

These documents, which we need to figure out what's in these documents, because to your point, we had this whole Poroshenko issue fall flat in to the Trump administration's lap. And the reality is, is that now we're understanding that Joe Biden has classified information about Ukraine that clearly would have impacted not only your legal dispute that you handled for the President, the impeachment hoax, and also could be Burisma. It could be Hunter Biden's business dealings. Is Joe Biden protecting Hunter Biden's business dealings by taking classified information about Ukraine and Burisma?

We don't know. And there needs to be an immediate investigation. And I would suggest that Chris Wray needs to direct the FBI to go look at the chain of custody on these classified documents and figure out exactly where they were and go raid each and every home and business that held these original documents before they ended up at Penn. You know, turning to some of the politics of this too, Rick, the idea, I mean, the way that President Biden hammered, tried to hammer for President Trump and other Democrats, and there was a raid of Mar-a-Lago and threats of potential other raids and criminal investigations. It just seems to me, I mean, we know Washington is very hypocritical and oftentimes the left doesn't care if they look like hypocrites, but, and it matters of this seriousness because of your knowledge about, you know, dealing with all the classified documents and national security information. Just to explain to people for a minute, I mean, the importance of, again, it's a little bit of a difference than having a document dispute over six months as a former President and a vice President who's had these documents for six years and one of them, you know, happens to be on the hot button issue under not just the current war in Ukraine, but because a President was impeached, but the importance of the security of these kind of documents. Well, there's two things that govern the Trump-Biden documents. One is the Presidential Records Act, which governs President Trump. The other is the Federal Records Act, which governs Vice President Biden.

Vice President Biden was not a President when he took these documents and so he's got to abide by the Federal Records Act, just like cabinet officials and everybody else has to abide by. We don't have the ability to declassify or I should say I did because I was director of national intelligence. And there are two people that get to declassify the director of national intelligence and the President of the United States.

We don't have to ask permission. We get to declassify and inform. And I think that's not the vice President. It's very important to understand that that's the DNI director, you and the President, but not the vice President. The vice President has to ask for permission and be approved to declassify information. The President and the director of national intelligence only have to inform. And even then, who are they informing?

It's a nicety. It's a courtesy because you're certainly not informing anyone that needs to approve it. Well, the President, I mean, who's the President? He's the chief executive.

Who's he informing? You're saying it's a courtesy if you were the DNI, when you were DNI, if you were going to declassify something, you'd let the President know. But that's not because you have to.

That's just because of the courtesy of doing it. But the President, there's no one for him to go to. But that's the difference between this case and you know what the problem with both of this, I said this Rick, the problem with all this is? The federal government has weaponized document disputes and every administration has these, by the way, when they leave, has weaponized document disputes into criminal cases. And when you do that, you interfere with the President of the United States or the former President of the United States.

But when you do it to a sitting President of the United States, it raises all kinds of other constitutional issues that I argued for President Trump. And this is why the FBI weaponized like this is so dangerous to our republic. Well, look, the one thing that I learned years ago is that when the Democrats accuse you of something, you immediately know that they are doing the same thing. That's why they're accusing you. So I no longer panic when I get accused by the Democrats of doing something.

I immediately think, OK, well, now I got to investigate them because this is exactly what they're doing as they're accusing me. This is the classic rule and what's happened in this Biden case. Joe Biden was on 60 Minutes. He was out there clutching his pearls, pretending he was so outraged that there were stupid people that were not able to caretake classified information. And yet he had classified information in his office when he made that 60 Minutes interview. He was guilty of the exact same thing that he was so shocked that Donald Trump was doing. And again, as you point out rightly, he was the vice President. He didn't have declassification authority. President Trump did. It was unreal. The tone which President Biden said this about the former President. Do we have that bite?

Let's go. When you saw the photograph of the top secret documents laid out on the floor of Mar-a-Lago, what did you think to yourself looking at that image, how that could possibly happen, how anyone could be that irresponsible? I thought what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods. By that, I mean names of people who helped or et cetera.

And it just totally irresponsible. I'd like to know when that interview took place, when you said that. September 18th, 22. Okay. And in November, they start the document. I mean this is just, you call it coincidence, but to be outraged, the double standard here is ironic at least.

Yeah, and I think that the fact that we all know Ukraine is involved here, it's highly suspicious. Again, Rick, as always, we appreciate you joining us. With your insight, there's no one else who can give that kind of insight because there's two people on earth that have the power to declassify Rick. And you just heard from one of them when he was in the DNI position, which is great.

We're glad he's part of our team. Listen, folks, this is where we're giving you information and knowledge. I'm going to also tell you this. The reality is that when you're dealing with these issues and you have a cabinet member, the director of national intelligence, on your team, it's pretty good.

Coming up, former secretary of state, also a cabinet member who's also on our team, Mike Pompeo, our senior counsel for global affairs. We'll talk to him about this as well. We'll take calls at 800-684-3110. Your support of the ACLJ is critical right now. We just got an email going out on the life issue. You saw how many cases and how many requests for help we're getting from across the country for these crisis pregnancy centers, pregnancy resource centers.

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It's got information up on that issue as well. After nearly 50 years, Roe vs. Wade, the tragic ruling that manufactured a so-called right to abortion has been overturned by the United States Supreme Court. This is the moment the ACLJ has been fighting for. It's the biggest victory we've achieved in our three-decade-long fight against the soulless abortion industry.

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I thank you for making this victory possible. And I ask you for your continued prayer and support as we continue to battle against barbaric new abortion laws across our nation. There's a lot to talk about today involving our national security. We talked about the documents. We might talk about that a little bit with Secretary Pompeo as well.

But I want to start with this, Secretary Pompeo, our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs. It's great to have you back on the broadcast. We learned yesterday, I think this is a great move. I remember tweeting it out, getting it out of my social media accounts. That Speaker McCarthy is following through and has removed Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff from the Intel Committee and Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee.

We've talked about how dangerous it was to have them on. Schiff, known for leaking documents when he was chair of the Intel Committee. Swalwell with the whole issue with Feng Feng and Chinese spies. And then, of course, Ilhan Omar on the Foreign Affairs Committee with her anti-Israel statements and a lot of statements against other allies as well of the United States. But explain to people why this is the right move to get these individuals off because, of course, they're all complaining and saying this is just politics.

Well, Jordan, thanks for having me on again today. A couple thoughts. First, Speaker McCarthy said he would do it, so it's very important that he follow through.

I'm happy about that. As a substantive member, each of these three have demonstrated their inability to actually do what it is members of Congress are supposed to do. I lived, I personally experienced Congressman Schiff when he was the head of the Intelligence Committee.

I watched as he didn't take care of information the way he needed to. We all know the story with Swalwell. The Democrats kicked Republicans off because they didn't simply like their views. In this case, this is Speaker McCarthy protecting the institution from those who are trying to undermine it. I think it's absolutely most deserved that each of these will no longer be serving on what are two of the most important committees in all of the United States House of Representatives.

Hey, Mike, I wanted to follow up on that because I think people need to understand when the whole debate was going on for a week about Kevin McCarthy becoming the Speaker of the House, I'm glad that's been resolved and that he's the Speaker. There was a lot, I kept saying, you know, understand these committees, Judiciary Committee, subcommittees, all these committees, nothing's happening while this goes on. So, you served in Congress, how important are these committees to what Congress is supposed to constitutionally do?

They're at the very center of it in that. You worked with many of them, Jay, right, as the ACLJ working alongside oversight committees across the full spectrum. The work of the Congress is done through committees and committee leadership and the committee staff, they're the ones with the capacity to get documents, they're the ones that have the capacity to analyze and review them. The work that this Republican House of Representatives will do while we still don't have control of the Senate and President Biden is still in the White House, will be driven by good committee leadership. And so, not only making sure that we have good conservative people leading and chairing those committees, but making sure that you don't have someone who, you know, was connected to China in ways that are unimaginable for an elected official. And someone like Adam Schiff who perpetrated the Russia hoax on America for two years, serving on a committee that gets to see classified information at a level that the other members of Congress don't get to see is perfectly appropriate.

You talked about China. We have new reporting, Secretary Pompeo, that lobbyists for TikTok, and there was a whole battle during the Trump administration as well, and they had to open up a U.S. subsidiary to even try and survive, but now we know about their relationship with the Biden White House. They made eight meetings with their lobbyists in just the past year. How concerning is that to you? I mean, I know they're trying to play to Biden, hey, don't get rid of this because it's good for you politically, but we've talked about the national security threat to this should really overcome whatever political benefit this might be for Democrats. Boy, how many Americans would like to have eight chances to speak with the most senior leadership of our country to talk about something that was actually good for our country? Instead, you've got folks with deep business interests, also solid ties to the Chinese Communist Party inside the White House, allowing them saying nothing to see here, folks. This is all good when we know the reality. We know the reality that that Chinese-owned company is spying on our kids.

They are pushing disinformation propaganda to undermine our country through the very same telecommunications channel through their software. I hope the Biden administration will simply do the right thing. We weren't able to get that done in the Trump administration.

I regret that. TikTok should not be accessible here in the United States. We should make sure that the military leadership, the intelligence leadership inside of China doesn't have that kind of access and to watch their lobbyists go and lobby our elected officials. I try to imagine the converse, some American company trying to lobby Chinese officials to put American software on the phones of ordinary Chinese citizens. It's laughable to even think about.

We shouldn't let that happen here. There's a lot of news the last 48 hours on documents at places they're probably not normally supposed to be. It's now been reported that the Department of Justice is investigating that when the President was vice President, he had documents that were classified at his office that was in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania. That these documents, some of them were SCI, so very significant classifications and involving of all places Ukraine, while there was investigations of a son involving Ukraine and an impeachment I might add during that period of time, Ukraine, Iran and then the UK.

What's your reaction to this? I don't like this weaponization of the FBI that's turning document disputes into literally criminal cases, but you can't go to one and then not the other. This is where I think it is out of control. For SCI documents, Jay, you know this, Jordan, they don't just wander around. No, they are.

They are. So there's some stuff that is classified at a lower level that, you know, a little bit loose with a set of restrictions on appropriately. So but FBI documents are closely monitored every document accounted for how they wander there, how they stay there, why they were found.

There's lots of questions that we just simply don't know the answer today. I said when there were classified documents found in Mar-a-Lago, they shouldn't have been there. Nobody gets to keep classified documents in a place they're not supposed to be. And the fact that they were there and the President says he doesn't know how the heck they got there.

We'll see what that story ultimately turns up. But the fact that they were there and as you reported earlier, that institution has such deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, it just erases all kinds of questions about American security and how then former Vice President Biden was handling important documents that were aimed at being classified to keep America safe, yet set in a place that they had no business being. You know, it's interesting to me when President Biden made the statement about the documents, he said, but I don't know what's in the documents. And this is what he said. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were. In other words, my lawyers didn't tell me to ask what documents were.

Thus, he takes a negative and turns it into a command. I think the whole thing is outrageous. It really is. You're right. Plus, my documents should not be floating around. It's crazy. By the way, if we were in that position and somehow we'd made a mistake in those documents, we'd say, I want to know what the heck was in there and how it got there.

We'd be working to solve the problem. Not to say, I'm ignorant and I want to remain so. It was a bizarre statement. Kind of like when he says my team has told me I'm not allowed to take questions from the media. Right. Like, who are you the President of the United States?

We're getting the same. Get after this fix. It solved this problem. Address the American people. Be transparent.

It's not that hard. All right. We appreciate it. Yeah, we appreciate it. Always, Secretary Pompeo, our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, he has a new piece up too.

We didn't even have time to get to this. It's been a busy news week. New piece up at ACLJ.org. The Biden administration must be held accountable for the immigration crisis in light of President Biden's recent trip to the border. A very quick trip to a sanitized area.

It's like the Disneyland version of the border. And so that piece is up. And those are exclusive to the ACLJ. You've got an ACLJ Action.

Our ACLJ Action team has info up as well. That's right, because there's going to be a vote today in the House on Born Alive protection for children who are born alive after botched abortions. There's right now no federal protection for their lives. So we've got over 11,000 people taking action. You can too. It doesn't cost a thing. Go to ACLJAction.org right now.