FBI Caught Spying on Christians

Today on Sekulow, here we go again.

The FBI caught spying on Christians. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.

Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow.

Folks, you heard that right. The FBI caught spying on Christians because the FBI drafted their own unclassified document on how to spy on a specific group of Christians. Happens to be Christians who are Catholics that attend Latin mass because oh, you know those Latin mass attenders. They are dangerous, right-wing, racist. I think the term they use is racially motivated violent extremists are taking over radical traditionalist Catholic ideology, which even that is offensive. Are you a radical Catholic traditionalist ideology just because you enjoy attending a Latin mass, maybe occasionally, maybe every week? I mean, that makes you a radical?

That makes you somehow dangerous in the United States of America to go to a Latin mass? I want to put up on the screen. Here it is. Folks, for those that are watching, this is the actual FBI internal use only. Do not disseminate externally. And it's called interests of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and radical traditionalist Catholic ideology almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities. And you know what they meant by mitigation opportunities? That they could get agents to befriend people inside those churches to become agents. To become informants.

Also, you need to understand, and for our radio audience, this is a multi-page. This is a seven-page document that has the FBI logo on the top of it. And the FBI comes out and says, oh, you know what? We looked at it now.

That didn't even meet our high standards. Let me say, this came out of FBI Richmond. So this idea that this is all the problem is in Washington, D.C., where I think most of the tone setting is the problem. Unfortunately, we're seeing that that tone setting has begun infecting field offices who are on the front line, supposed to be doing good work to protect us. And I think most of those agents are.

But we're starting to see how that Washington, D.C., tone and ideology now infecting the front line FBI offices all across the country, this case in the capital of Virginia in Richmond, because they go on to say that this assessment is based on reporting. And then they take that out. They black that out. That's redacted.

And liaison and contact reporting. So they've got people that they sit inside. So Latin masses.

Think about this for a moment, folks. Inside a church, and we're going to have Wes Smith come on and talk about what a Latin, he's an Episcopal priest in addition to being colonel of the military, what a Latin mass is. They're acting like it's some, you know, thing you never heard of. We have lawyers on the ACLJ staff that go to Latin masses.

I know that for a fact. Listen, the bizarre part is when it kind of bimbos coming to one conclusion or outlook on page four, they say, conversely, there is deep seated anti Catholicism remains a characteristic to many far right white nationalists. So most far right white nationalists would not like Catholic masses. But they say this gives them a unique opportunity to work together. That's what the FBI says.

This is nasty stuff that the FBI is getting away with. That's right. If there's a one-off person at one mass doing something in Richmond, handle it. You don't need to write a memo about going after all Catholics. No, but I mean, this thing is... You don't say like if there's an issue at a mosque with a terror thing, you handle that person. You don't say every mosque in every place. You would never allow them to do that. They'd never say that.

Well, let me just read the first sentence. I mean, FBI Richmond assesses the increasingly interest of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in radical traditionalist Catholic ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through the exploration of new avenues for trip wire and source development. This is the FBI... By the way, ACLJ immediately taking action, already sending out, getting ready to send out this afternoon a demand on this to the FBI is in the form of a FOIA request, freedom of information. Who came up with this great idea?

How did it get implemented? Why now the FBI is saying, oh, we're pulling this. We don't agree with this, didn't meet our high standards. Really?

You set the tone in Washington. It's now infecting the field offices. It sounds like they're only pulling it because it got leaked. Caught.

And it wasn't classified. So someone just shared it with the media. And now they say they have to pull it.

They weren't gonna pull it before. No. We know this FBI. Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. All right, folks, welcome back to Secchia. I do want to let you know, too, that we are going to be hosting the full three hours of Sean Hannity's radio broadcast today. That'll be me, my dad, my brother Logan will take some part in that as well. Some of our ACLJ team and great guests, elected officials, analysts who will be joining us. That's 3 to 6 p.m. Eastern time. You go to SeanHannity.com to find out where to listen if you don't already have a place where you listen.

But, again, the full show will be hosted by us 3 to 6 p.m. Eastern time. Okay. So let's go ahead. I want to – if you're just joining us, the FBI – a memo was received by the press that was an FBI memo from the Richmond Field Office assessing the increasingly observed interests of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in radical traditional Catholic ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation through exploration of new avenues of tripwire and source development. They also say these are Latin mass churches. Colonel Wes Smith is with us. And, obviously, the FBI now saying, oh, that document should – that was a mistake.

We didn't – that doesn't meet our high standards. But let's talk about what is a radical Latin mass? Yeah, what is a radical Latin mass? You know, not only – What is the Latin mass, first of all?

Well, yeah, a little bit of the history. In the year 215, the church – and back then there were not – there was only one church before the Reformation. They started celebrating the mass or what's called the Eucharist, it's Holy Communion, in Latin in the year 215. They celebrated it in Latin from then until the 1960s. The Second Vatican Council, they decided that in order for people to understand what was being said, that whatever the language was, the common language in a particular country, the mass should be celebrated in the language of those people so they can understand. So the mass itself, the Latin mass itself, like you said in the Episcopal Church, follows it pretty closely. It just – it's in English.

Yeah, exactly. As a matter of fact, the FBI is targeting people who prefer the Latin mass as somehow suspect that they're radicals, that they're white supremacists, that they're anti-Semitic, things like that. It's simply because the Latin mass went away in the 1960s and 70s. In the year 2007, because people pined for the traditional sound in the mass, Pope Benedict decided in 2007, without special permission from the Vatican, that local churches and dioceses could also offer the Eucharist, the mass, in Latin.

So it started then. It is not a – this is not a – it wasn't even a theological shift in the church. But what's said in the mass is what's said in Masses Everywhere, which has been English versus Latin.

Exactly. This is – So this is like a synagogue that's Orthodox. If an Orthodox congregation – most of the service is in Hebrew.

In the Reform congregations, most of the service is in English. But for the FBI then to target a group because of this is incredible. Unbelievable, actually, that the FBI special – the field office in Richmond thought this was a good idea.

That's the problem here. Yeah, I mean this is again – we've seen time and time again, we're seeing the targeting of pro-life students, parents, activists who attended museums. We are seeing the targeting by the FBI of churches now yet again. We are seeing – we've seen the targeting before of conservative groups by the FBI. We've talked about an FBI that's out of control, that has been completely weaponized. Jim Jordan started that subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, specifically law enforcement agencies, and yesterday he had Nicole Parker, a former FBI special agent, testify to that new committee on weaponization.

Take a listen. Yes, it was physically taxing and emotionally jarring, but I believed I was making an impactful difference. And every day I woke up and I embraced being an FBI special agent until things changed. Over the course of my 12-plus years, the FBI's trajectory has transformed. On Bureau – the Bureau's mission remained the same, but its priorities and governing principles shifted dramatically. The FBI became politically weaponized, starting from the top in Washington and trickling down to the field offices.

And we're seeing that with this case that's coming out of Richmond. And by the way, you know who you could thank for this, a lot of this? James Comey. But Chris Wray, you're the FBI director. You had the FBI issue this cowardly statement of, oh, this didn't meet our high standards of – this is targeted – He's a complete failure.

Yeah, total failure. And this is a targeted act by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of religious discrimination. Oh, yeah.

This is a ruse to attack conservatives. In my own church, for example, I'm an Episcopal priest. We have an order for the Eucharist or the Mass based on the old Latin.

It's called Right One. Most people that go to my church for the early service in Right One are older and they are socially conservative. They prefer the old traditional language.

In the Catholic Church, what is similar, older, more conservative Catholics prefer the old Latin Mass. And this is not even a theological issue in the church. It's a linguistic issue. You know what the problem with these agencies are? And that's whether it's the FBI or the National Archives or the Smithsonian.

Until they get caught, they try to get away with it. So, you know, we filed a federal lawsuit against the National Archives. We filed a lawsuit against the Smithsonian. We are filing today a preliminary injunction against the Smithsonian because they had the nerve – I'm sorry? Against the National Archives. Because the National Archives said the following as they apologized to the Hill. Have they communicated to us, the lawyers and our clients?

No. They go right to the media as their way to do it. That's why you've got to be in court against these people. And it says this, the actions by the National Archives, and this is what it says, as the home to the original Constitution and Bill of Rights, which enshrines the rights of free speech and religion, we sincerely apologize for this occurrence. Sounds like the IRS. We apologize for targeting you.

National Archives policy allows visitors to wear t-shirts, hats, buttons that display protest language, including religious and political speech. We are actively investigating it to determine what happened. And they said early indications are is that our security officers quickly corrected their actions.

And from that point forward, all visitors were permitted to enter our facility without needing to recover their attire. Well, let me tell you something. We had two separate instances, an hour apart. So it was like one was at 10, one was at 1045. Separate groups had the same experience.

And I'm sure there's more. So you know what it is? It's the FBI. It's the National Archives.

National Archives, they can't find Presidential records that are top secret and classified, but they can sure target students that have a message that says we are the pro-life generation. That they can do. The FBI can't catch the terrorists, but they're really good at going after radical Catholics because they have a Latin mass. I mean, this is the problem with the federal government. And I'm going to tell you something. If anybody knows the abuse that's going on in this, it's me and Jordan, because we represented a former President. I'm going to say it.

It was nonsense in 2015, 2016, 2017, 18, 19, and 20. And now we know the FBI is putting their finger on the hands of the scales. We know what they've done to the social media companies. And you look at the situation from Nicole Parker.

She was a decade-long special agent. That's the problem. But you can't- I'm curious about how bad it's gotten. Yes, but we can't let the National Archives say, oh, we apologize for violating your first commemoration. The first response, remember was- It didn't happen here.

It didn't happen here. You're being confused with what happened to the Smithsonian, but then they didn't read, I guess, that story completely because that was our case too. And it said it in the story they linked back to us. So they don't like being caught. They start backtracking very quickly.

And when they start backtracking quickly, usually those statements end up becoming misstatements. But this is why you go to federal court- And they open the door for us. And this is why you file an injunction, because it puts them on notice and it moves quickly.

And the key to success in these cases, and we've been doing it for 40 years, is to get in there and move. Don't send them a demand letter. We sent them a preservation letter saying, don't get rid of your records because the lawsuit's coming.

The lawsuit came, and today the next part of the lawsuit comes with the preliminary injunction. But this is nonsense, folks. And what the National Archives is doing and what the Smithsonian did and what the FBI is doing is outrageous.

Totally outrageous. The political bias in this is unreal. Search warrant for the former President's house, no search warrant for the current President's house, even though they now said that if they didn't agree to the search, they would do it. They're searching Mike Pence's house right now. The National Archives, like I said, they can't find a classified document, but boy, they can target a student. And Wes, you handled classified documents, and if you didn't handle them correctly, you wouldn't be Colonel Smith. Absolutely not.

There are servicemen today who inadvertently mishandled classified documents who have been sentenced to jail for that. Really? This is- And they're searching Mike Pence's house right now. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. Yeah.

Okay. I mean, I don't care what political party you're with. I don't like that they had to do the search of Biden's house. I don't like that they said FBI just got a search warrant on the former President's. This is like Venezuela. I mean, but look what the government has become. Early indications are that our security officers quickly corrected their actions.

Well tell the couple that went in 45 minutes later how quickly they did it. And by the way, that's also why you sue for damages. Don't let them get away with this.

No. And again, that's why we want you to support our work with ACLJ because we're able to do all of this work and represent these clients, protect our constitutional rights. That means your constitutional rights too because of your financial support of the ACLJ. These clients don't have to make a decision about, oh, do I need to hire a lawyer or not? We're there at no cost to them, representing them in federal court right away, walking them through the process. They're brave folks for speaking out and for standing up and are able to do that because of your support of the ACLJ. Yeah, and I would encourage you to do that at ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. Now, we're going to be on Sean Hannity's broadcast. We're hosting it this afternoon, so we got a lot. I'm glad that Sean asked us to do that. We've got a lot to talk about and we're going to be on for the full three hours of Hannity's broadcast this afternoon is three to six Eastern time, so you're going to want to stay tuned for that. We'll give you more information. I'm sure we'll have some information we'll be posting on our social media to let you know that that's happening.

But again, if you're watching right now or listening, it's going to happen and we're thrilled to be able to... What a day to do it with all this going on and it's going to be an incredible broadcast. Support the work of the ACLJ, as Jordan said. Folks, look, this is where the rubber meets the road. We're on top of this thing with the FBI today. I'm holding in my hand the draft of the letter. The demand letter is going in today. We've got it already, ACLJ.org.

All right, welcome back to SEC. I want to play this sound from Congressman Jim Jorman, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He's also chairing a special subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government and these agencies. They had their first hearing yesterday.

He played the FBI agent who testified, their former special agent, about how it's been politicized from the very top in Washington, but then its tentacles have now reached the field offices. We have exact kind of evidence of that because of this letter. It's out of the Richmond office of the FBI targeting Catholics and specifically the Latin mass and they call them radical traditional Catholics. Just that word coming from our federal government. They don't like the free exercise of religion, but they love this idea that they can get involved in defining religious people. They have no issue doing, I guess.

Jim Jordan, though, take a listen, Byte14. In my time in Congress, I have never seen anything like this. Dozens and dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents coming to us talking about what's going on, the political nature at the Justice Department. Not Jim Jordan saying this, not Republicans, not conservatives, good, brave FBI agents who are willing to come forward and give us the truth. And this comes, of course, on the heels of a FBI memo from the Richmond field office called Interests of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology. And they're talking about going into Latin mass churches.

Professor Harry Hutchinson, Harry, what's your reaction on this? Well, Jay, who would have thought that more than 50 years after the death of J. Edgar Hoover, that the FBI would be caught targeting conservative Christians simply because they prefer the Latin mass or a more traditional approach to Catholicism? Jay, who would have thought that the FBI would engage in behavior that threatens the free exercise of religion, particularly of people who support the Latin mass or who alternatively oppose abortion? So apparently opposing abortion in the view of the FBI is now seen as support for white supremacy.

That is simply a ridiculous claim. And then you got this thing with the National Archives getting out there saying, oh, you know, this reminds me of Lois Nolan, oh, we apologize for that, for targeting these people. But that only happened for a short period of time, which by the way is not true based on our complaint.

And that's why, again, Jordan and I authorized the staff today to file a preliminary injunction on that case because I see what's happening here. With this case, you look at the FBI, it's all the same. It's only a reaction from the government when they get caught every single time.

They're never proactive. No, they're issuing statements about, oh, that memo doesn't reflect the high standards of the FBI. But if it didn't get leaked, that memo would still be good memo within the Richmond field offices. Here's what the FBI say. Well, our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products.

That's why they call this, by the way, intelligence products. This particular field office product disseminated only within the FBI. Well, it didn't go to the CIA. It didn't go to secret service, just the FBI. Regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the standards, the exacting standards of the FBI. Upon learning of the document, FBI headquarters quickly began taking action to remove the document from the FBI system and conduct a review of the basis for the document. The FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft.

But listen to that one line. Upon learning of the document, the FBI headquarters quickly began taking action. Here's the National Archives. Upon learning of this, the security personnel themselves quickly, this must be the government's new word, quickly. So it got quickly with the FBI, it got quickly with the National Archives, quickly corrected their actions.

And from that point forward, all visitors were permitted to enter while with their insignia quickly. In other words, not caught, not happening. Right. And the fact is that they think they can do this, target the pro-life group, go after traditionalist Catholics. We know in both situations, both the Smithsonian and National Archives, our clients did saw people with political messages on hats and t-shirts when they were walking around. No one was acting up, no one was protesting. Those people should have the right to do that too.

But in fact, at the National Archives, they passed by a couple who were wearing pro-choice, my body, my choice shirts and pro-choice shirts, and they were not asked to cover those messages yet. I'm asking this question here. I mean, you think about this.

I mean, everything's quickly, we're going to fix this. But the fact of the matter is there's an underpinning here. They're obviously being told these things, these government agencies. Someone is coming up and saying, this is a good idea. Have the FBI go after traditionalist Catholics. Somebody is telling the National Archives and the Federal Protective Services, hey, if somebody comes in with a pro-life message on their shirt, remove it, tell them to get it off. Someone's telling them to do this.

I think your analysis is spot on. Someone is indeed telling FBI agents to go after traditionalist Catholics. Someone is telling individuals with the National Archives to go after individuals who come in with pro-life insignia. I think that someone or somebody is simply the leadership of the DOJ, the leadership of the FBI. They have triggered these memos that have now been leaked and they quickly back away.

Quickly, their favorite word. But no American should believe the FBI when they say they do not necessarily support this activity. I think what we need is a continuing investigation of the FBI. Which we're doing. When will the FBI begin to act in the interest of ordinary Americans?

You know what we should say? This program should be titled quickly. Because quickly the FBI took action on this memo and quickly removed it from its system. And by the way, good news, it was quickly only distributed to the FBI.

It didn't make it to the CIA, it's just the FBI. And they'd already... Started the process.

...blazons and contacts within. Oh yeah, because they thought they could get people inside. And don't worry, the National Archives, quickly. Quickly fix this. Yeah, it just happened to two different people.

Two hours later, three hours later, 5,000 people going through there, quickly. This is the nonsense of the... This is why folks were in federal court on that. They only apologize. They only say they're going to retrade after they get caught. This is why we're in federal court against the National Archives and the Smithsonian. This is why the demand for a Freedom of Information Act is going out today to the FBI. We're not waiting to take action on this. We're taking action right now. And that's where you come in, by the way, folks.

Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's how we do all of this. You're going to hear from some of our students coming up that are involved in these cases. Because this is interesting, this is very interesting to see what has transpired. Because those students, it wasn't so quickly. And they got caught. And the FBI's got caught, the National Archives is caught, the Smithsonian's caught.

It's nonsense, folks. Now, we're hosting Sean Hannity's radio broadcast this afternoon for three hours. So if you're listening to us live, we're going to be finishing up with this in 30 minutes. We're going to then prep for the next three-hour broadcast we're going to do for Sean's program. So we'll get you up-to-date information. You're going to want to stay tuned. You can do that at Hannity.com.

That's right. And again, we're going to have a great guest, elected officials, analysts. We'll go through some of the ACLJ work, the politics of the day, what's going on in our national security. All of that will be covered in those three hours on the Hannity broadcast today. So definitely check it out wherever you listen to Sean.

And if you want to look at Hannity.com, you can find out where to listen as well. But we really encourage you to do that. And as well, support the work of the ACLJ financially. It's how we do all of this work.

That's why we have that team of attorneys that we're talking about saying, get that preliminary jokes out today. That's because of your financial support of the ACLJ. It's ACLJ.org. That's where you donate. And again, this is an important time to donate because our work, as you can see, it is getting busy. There's, there's a lot of different clients here and we need your support.

We want to make sure we're protecting your constitutional rights, your first amendment rights, especially when they are under attack by the executive branch and the federal government. ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to secular. We are taking your calls, comments, 1-800-684-3110 and go to ACLJ.org.

You can make those in our, of course, the social media sites. You're maybe watching this on if you're listening as well. We have a lot to talk about today in this part of the show to get you updated on because we filed two federal lawsuits this week on behalf of pro-life activists who attended the March for Life and then decided they'd like to visit one of the federally funded, taxpayer funded museums in Washington, DC. And in each case, whether it was a student group at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, or another group of, of a mix of students, law school students and parents at the National Archives, they were all harassed by federal security services. What is office of protective services? What is the federal services? And so federal protective services, we have filed these lawsuits in federal court.

Yes. So it's, Jordan says two of them, two separate cases, both involving the same day. And that is, it was the day of the national, the March for Life event. And what happened was these group of students and others after the events went to the museums and some went to the Smithsonian and some went to the National Archives Museum. What's interesting is in both incidents, and it's actually three incidents because there's two at the National Archives, the, what happened, and this is to me is the fascinating part of this, in both instances, if you were wearing a pro-life hat or a t-shirt or a sweatshirt that said pro-life or I'm for life or the pro-life generation, security personnel, which is office of protective services or federal protective services, both government agencies, told these individuals to take their, take their particular items off, whether it was the hat or the, or the shirt with the statement on it.

Now that violates the constitution. And of course there were other people in there, of course, that had all kinds of insignia on and were making all kinds of messages. But what's interesting here, and I think what's important for everybody to understand is that at the end of this, the result was we, we filed letters last week saying, preserve your doc documents because we're going to get to the bottom of this. And then our team got together and we decided that the way to get to the bottom of this was to file federal litigation. And we did that.

Yeah, that's right. Because in the Smithsonian's case, they started backtracking immediately and say, we've retrained these officers. They finally, they actually said they were an apology.

They didn't do that initially, but we don't know how they retrained those officers. We want a court to review that to make sure that was done in a way that protects the constitutional rights of all visitors to the Smithsonian. And then when you go to the National Archives, they tried to throw it back on the Smithsonian. They said, no, no, no, it didn't happen here.

You're mistaken. And then they leaked a Fox News article and a Catholic news agency article about our lawsuit against the Smithsonian. And we were alleging, no, no, National Archives, you did it too. We made the joke and you've made it too, that the National Archives can't keep up with top secret documents of former Presidents, Presidents, and vice Presidents, but they could sure target these pro-life students.

The net result of this is we went to federal court. Now we're going to give you, this is a little bit of a look back here, so you could hear from students that were involved in this and get an analysis in real time while this was going on. Also, as you know, we've been mentioning this during the broadcast, Jordan and I and Logan too are going to be hosting Sean Hannity's radio broadcast right after we're done with this this afternoon. So you want to stay tuned for that wherever you get, you just go to hannity.com. You could download the information there and of course we're on your local radio stations as well.

Yeah. And I encourage you again to support the work of the ACLJ. I think what you're going to hear in these next couple of segments is a clear reason why your financial contributions to the ACLJ are just so important. In fact, it's why we're able to go to all these different students, various parts, parents, different states, different situations, and offer our services at absolutely no cost to them. And they're able to fight for all of our constitutional rights because of your financial support of the ACLJ.

They don't have to pay a thing to have excellent legal services and attorneys working on their behalf. It's critical. And again, ACLJ.org for that, ACLJ.org. Again, we're going to be on Hannity hosting his radio broadcast. We're going to be hosting for Sean today. But again, support the work of the ACLJ.

What a week to do it with all the activity we've had, ACLJ.org, that's ACLJ.org. Updates coming next. And again, tune in this afternoon as we host the Hannity radio broadcast. We're going to be back with more in just a moment. Good question came in from Rubble.

I like our audience. So they asked specifically, are the security guards directly hired by the museum? So they are federal. This is the Federal Protective Services is the Smithsonian.

When it comes to national archives, it is the Office of Protective Services, which is run directly by the archives. So federal employees, large trading. So the Smithsonian, that's why we want to get to the trading here because these officers, it wasn't just like the National Air and Space Museum decided they were going to target pro-life that day.

We know that. We know now because we have other clients from other museums that this was a theme going through the trading of the Federal Protective Services and Office of Protective Services. So great question there. But just to update you, we have filed a lawsuit, the ACLJ, directly against the Smithsonian. More lawsuits are coming against other museums in Washington, D.C., all related to that day, January 20th, March for Life. We stand up for free speech in our country. We stand up for the First Amendment rights of our clients. And this is an interesting situation because they pick on young people, students, who are just going about their day, want to visit the Air and Space Museum, check out some exhibits, see some cool stuff, and go home.

And yet they make them out to be like they're engaged in some kind of illegal activity. So if you read through our complaint, it's not just about declaring that this was unconstitutional, the First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. We wanted injunction, damages, because as I told you, they threaten these students, Logan, with follow-up action. That's pretty scary.

Yeah, exactly. If you're these kids who are just coming to this, you're doing the March for Life, yeah, it's brave to be out there and do the March for Life, but also you're coming from a Catholic school and these kind of things are sort of normal in that culture. You get there, you do your marching, well, we're here in Washington, D.C., we might as well see some of the sites.

You go over to the Air and Space Museum, like I said, see some planes, see some cool stuff, and you're getting harassed. And then all of a sudden, you're right. Start flashing in your eyes, I'm sure, when this starts happening, is like you said, these kids know that this stuff can last on the internet forever. You saw the situation before with kids who are out there who got kind of false identified as protesters who were getting in the face. Yeah, you've seen these things before and I'm sure that's going through their head going, well, this could be a beginning of an end situation here, and that's not a good thing. But that's why we're here to make sure that this gets taken care of. And it also is clear, as you said, that Smithsonian had completely messed up in their training because they, for some reason, had this, maybe not just the Smithsonian, they had taught whoever the security guards are that this is something that was brutal enough that they should not just ask people to leave in a polite way or ask them to change.

It got aggressive, it got profanity laced, and like you said, one of the security guards saying, yeah, this is going to make my day. This is not a good thing, especially not in Washington, D.C. The tone has been set by our federal government. They've set the tone that being pro-life is the enemy. Even though the Supreme Court agrees with these students, now the Supreme Court's illegitimate. The Supreme Court's illegitimate, pro-life speech is illegitimate, pro-life pregnancy sitters. The fact that they had to put up a $25,000 reward at the FBI to find the people who firebombed, why can't they find the people who firebombed?

It's wonderful to have those rewards, but they have no lead? Why are we having to do all the work for the FBI to find anybody? Because they really don't want to. They don't want to use their resources to find the people who are attacking pro-life pregnancy sitters, because those are places of mis and disinformation, if you believe the Biden administration and the left. So this attack on pro-life speech, though, we've seen it before, I'd say it's a 2.0 situation. And in this case, I want you to listen to the student.

This is Patrick Murphy. So this is the third time they are approached by security. They are literally leaving, okay? They're going out to try to go out the door, and that's not enough. The Smithsonian security had to step in yet again.

Take a listen. A large man, as we were walking out, because we had to catch our bus, and he comes up to us rubbing his hands together saying, y'all are about to make my day. And he tells us he's got reports saying, we said no to taking our hats off and we're in trouble for some odd reason. And one of the students repeats the talking point saying, it's used for identification. And he wasn't having it. I then said, this is a violation of our First Amendment right. This is a government-funded building. Wow.

He said it's a neutral zone, and that doesn't apply here. Okay. One, they pick on the wrong students, I like to say that. They pick on these students who actually, they come from a classical school, they know about the Constitution, they know about the First Amendment, and their response back is not, again, they don't just, they're respectful, they're nice, but they're like, this doesn't seem right. They're going to question.

Oh, no. They said, I couldn't believe this was happening to us. It was like a story on TV, and here it is happening to us.

And it was like, not just once, twice, three times in about a half hour. They're being followed around the museum, changed around the museum, and we knew, after representing the Tea Party groups, the IRA, this doesn't happen randomly. I can already tell people, we have clients from other museums, we're likely about to sue the National Archives next.

So that's coming. They have their own security service, but it's all under this Federal Protective Services. And again, National Archives, can't keep track of classified documents, but they can't go after your pro-life t-shirt. This one said, pro-life generation.

Really controversial there. Yeah, a lot of people are watching right now, and probably they may have had this situation happen too. We have a lot of people who go do the March for Life, who listen to this broadcast.

So if this happened to you, or there's something like this, or you know someone that this kind of harassment happened to, go to our website and go to ACLJ.org slash help, and make sure you put in information. You never know what we can do. Obviously, we provide our legal services. There's also a way for you to get involved right now. We have launched a new petition. You can go to ACLJ.org, you'll see it right now. There's a petition.

I think over 70,000 people have signed it just since we launched it, and we'd love for you to get involved that way. You can stay up to date on the case. Yeah, so go to ACLJ.org, you can sign that petition.

That doesn't cost a thing, and we want you to stay up to speed on this. As I told you, this is just lawsuit one. We filed the initial documents with the National Archives to preserve their information. So we've already taken some action there, haven't actually filed the legal complaint.

If you want to read the legal complaint, it's online at ACLJ.org as well. If you have questions about this, 1-800-684-3110, we're going to talk about State of the Union. We're going to get into that. Rick Rinnell's going to be joining us the second half hour of the broadcast today, so we're going to spend a full half hour on the broadcast on politics, State of the Union. So if you've got calls and questions about that, I'd say you can start putting them in the next 10 minutes or so, and we'll take those calls as well.

Of course, I'll ask the question that we would usually ask at State of the Union day, which is what would you like to hear, but what do you think we're going to hear? And of course, give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. Another rumble comment, you know, because it amazes me that someone can wear something that's vile and profane. Of course, nothing is said to them, but you wear something that says pro-life and it's a crisis. Yeah.

And it is... Change that to a bunch of people. I mean, telling these students something is going to be written up about them, I think that's the final kicker in this situation. It's one thing to even say, take it off, and then you put it back on and to kind of curse at you, which they did curse at them.

It's a whole other thing to say that there's going to be some follow-up action by that officer, like the federal government may come knocking on your door because you put your hat on. Yeah. Which is what he implied as they were on their way out. And again, these are kids who will tell you, they were tired, they were just going to the museum... With words that we cannot say on the radio. No.

No. I mean... Words that your federal security guards shouldn't be saying on the job anyway. Especially the minors.

Especially groups of kids. You probably read about it on our website, by the way, if you want to know. If you're trying to figure it out, just go to ACLJ.org, we'll figure it out for you. And as well, we want you to take action here. You can sign the petition. So there's a way to get involved through our petition to defend pro-life speech. The second way you could of course get involved is we're able to represent all these clients and put all these resources forward. It just the past really week that this has been building up, getting all the info, getting all prepared because of your financial support at ACLJ.

We can't do that without you. So we're able to represent the students at no cost to them. What I will tell you is still something very important here, is that this initial group is always the key group that speaks up, that comes to us and we contact and is willing to go out and do to Hannity, willing to come on our broadcast, willing to put themselves forward.

Put their face forward. Because then we hear from other people. Because people think, oh, maybe this was just a security guard having a bad day or a one-off incident. And then you realize because they spoke up, these brave students speak up. And we've seen this so many times at ACLJ history, 16 and 17-year-olds speaking up for rights that become, again, major cases to define your First Amendment rights and our freedoms. Yeah, so we have brave kids and also brave parents that are willing to let their kids go out there and make these statements and be part of this. Because we know that it's tough. We know that it's a lot different even now than it was in the 90s or the 2000s in the social media generation. As you know, these pictures don't go away.

These faces don't go away. So there's a lot of brave people out there, a lot of brave families who are willing to take these stands, make a vocal statement about it. And we are thrilled to represent them and hopefully get some justice for them. And then that's the whole point here is to provide justice for these kids who are unjustly targeted for doing nothing. So you can be a part of it, by the way, too.

Go to ACLJ.org. We are going to take some phone calls, Jordan said. Also on the State of the Union tonight, give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. Jordan posed a good question, which is, what do you wish President Biden would say in that State of the Union? And what do you think he's going to say? What would be your top priority and what do you know will be outspoken? Give us a call.

We'd love to hear your thoughts. 1-800-684-3110. Lines are open. But again, visit ACLJ.org right now to not only support the work, but to sign that petition supporting these pro-life kids. You can also find all the great content we put up there. That's video content.

That's blogs. That is the petition content, news articles, videos, films, so much free content available right now at ACLJ.org from some of the top leading minds in the entire movement. So go to ACLJ.org and we'll be right back, 1-800-684-3110. Call us now.

We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. As we were talking about, it does show the breadth of the work that we do at the ACLJ. On the one hand, we filed a FOIA with National Archives in the matter of the classified documents, the rating of Mar-a-Lago, the President Biden. Why this dis-treatment? Why now did you go to the Biden pin center? Why then did you go to the home in Delaware, the Beach House, then of course to the Vice President's home as well?

And what started all of this? What was the purpose behind the Biden move? Was it because of the Trump move?

Was it because of something else? So again, we've got that filed and they have until Monday to respond. They put it on expedited FOIA response because they did that on the Trump documents. So they kind of had to do that for the Biden documents. We'll see if that meets our criteria as a good faith response. If not, we'll have to file a lawsuit there.

But we have already filed a lawsuit, so we're involved in two legal actions with National Archives because of course they can't handle classified documents, but you know what they can do? Harass you if you've got a pro-life t-shirt on. And you're quiet, you just want to go see the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. You're following the rules, no flash, no photography because that could damage the little document. And they tell you, take your shirt off or turn it around. Where are you supposed to...

I mean, all of that. Again, there were people in the museum at the same time one of our clients saw and testified to that they were wearing pro-abortion shirts and hats while they were there, no one was harassing them. So we are now in federal court. So to be clear, we're in federal court in two separate cases, one involving the Smithsonian and then three separate incidents at the National Archives. Yeah, and it is ridiculous because like Jordan said, they were literally asked to remove their shirts and I know that they, you know, the National Archives is saying, oh, we really don't know about this or, but it sure seemed like a concerted effort because not only did you have all of the security guards participating in it, you even had people in the gift store participating saying you can't have that in here. So it sounds like somebody certainly told them if anybody comes in today with any kind of pro-life t-shirt on, they're to be targeted and it is ironic that these people literally were standing next to the Declaration of Independence and all these documents that, you know, protect and declare our God-given rights to free speech and yet they're told they have to take these shirts off. The Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, you got the First Amendment, the United States Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech and the National Archives, which is the trust that's holding the documents, you know, it says let's target pro-lifers. But this is systematic, folks, that's what we're going to find out. This is a systematic attack that was done on these students and there's not all students, by the way, there are adults in this as well. So we're in federal court in two separate cases.

We're going to see what the government responds and we are prepared to move for a preliminary injunction as well and then at the same time as we talk about the National Archives, we're also going after them as it relates to the classified documents issue. But as it relates to the pro-life issue, here's the issue, as I see it, Jordan, right now, the pro-life fight is taking on a multidimensional approach right now. It's in the states as far as the right to abortion. It's in regulations in the federal government and in the free speech arena, it's the targeting of the pro-life message. Yeah, we've also taken action because of the ability to now just prescribe through telemedicine the abortion pill, RU-46, and we discussed it, if you add CVS, Walgreens, and Rite Aid together, that's 20,000 and they're all distributing it, 20,000 new abortion clinics in the United States.

That was a Biden policy. We're fighting back on that again because of the procedures that they did not follow to institute that new rule. So I mean on every matter, whether it's the actual abortion procedure itself, RU-46, ACLJ taking action, whether it is the pro-life speech, ACLJ taking action, whether it's the pro-life pregnancy centers, ACLJ taking action. Yeah and on the crisis pregnancy centers or pro-life resource centers as they're now called, the fact is there we've got both regulatory issues, states trying to regulate them out of existence and they are on the front lines of this fight, but we also have vandalism and now the Department of Justice is starting to look at it finally, sort of, but that's again it didn't happen without the ACLJ involvement in this. Right, and pregnancy resource centers, we've been representing them and defending them for decades and we will continue to do so, Beth, because as you said, they're the ones on the front line, they're the ones where the ladies are coming and getting the full information on the decision that they're making to end a life of their child and so they absolutely are targeted all the time by the government and by individuals as we've seen with Jane's Revenge and so we have been defending them both from the government and the vandalism attacks.

Yeah, I think, let's go to the phones, 1-800-684-3110. Call this, by the way, online at ACLJ.org, Jerry in Rhode Island, online too, hey, Jerry. Hello, team, question on what are we seeking in the lawsuits, are we exceeding monetary things, are we exceeding attempting injunctive relief and are these entities, are they privately entities or are these federally funded entities, the federal employees and in fact are we suing ourselves taxpayer-wise? All right, here's what you got, so it's a good question, let's put the complaint up on the screen so our audience that's watching us on any of our social media apps can see it, it's in the US District Court and I'm using right now the one that we filed today because they're basically very similar, this is the one against the National Archives.

So as far as the Smithsonian is a federal entity but not a federal agency, the National Archives is a federal agency but they're both under federal control, one has the Office of Protective Services, the other has Federal Protective Services, I think most of those report to either the Department of Interior or Homeland Security, so it's government. Our prayer for relief asks for a declaration that the actions violated the plaintiff's rights under the First Amendment and also under the Fifth Amendment and declare that the actions violated the plaintiff's rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, so that is what's called a declaratory judgment. Then we ask for an injunction which is like a permanent injunction, we'll probably be moving for a preliminary injunction as well and joining all the defendants and those acting in concert with them from unlawfully targeting the plaintiffs for disparate treatment and particularly scrutiny based on content and viewpoint. I argued a case in 1990 and also in 1987, the Jews for Jesus in 1987, 1990 Lamps Chapel, viewpoint discrimination never constitutional regardless of the nature of the forum. Then we want damages, so we've asked for damages against the defendants as well and then we also have asked for training, so mandatory mandated training by the court, so there's a lot asked for in this complaint. Yeah, and I think the training part is particularly a good request because although we have seen, hey, we are going to make sure that we train them correctly, well, you didn't in the first place clearly because this happened, why didn't you have training before this? Now you're implementing training, but we can't trust that the training now you're implementing on your own is good, so our request is that the court approves this training to make sure that they're actually training people that they cannot violate their first amendment rights, their fifth amendment rights, and their rights under the Religious Freedom of Restoration Act, so hopefully the court will come along and make sure that the training is adequate because these people were targeted, harassed, and ultimately kicked out.

You know, in a kind of a moment of levity, the National Archives was hoping we got it wrong because they wrote back and said, no, no, this happened at the Smithsonian, and they linked to the Fox News article with our quotes in our interview with Sean Hannity. Jordan, there are now, when we started this broadcast, you had 5,000, a little over 5,000. As of right now, as we're closing it off for our live audience, 6,209 letters have gone into the United States Congress to the House and the Senate, and we just are in day- They go direct.

Once you hit submit, they're there. This is incredible, folks, and what a tool this is and what a growth aspect for the ACLJ as well as ACLJ Action. Tomorrow, you'll be getting an email from the ACLJ that's going to let you know exactly what our Office of Government Affairs is doing on the same issue, and that's why you should be supporting the work of the ACLJ or ACLJ Action. Join ACLJ Action for $25, ACLJAction.org, and support the work of the ACLJ by simply going to ACLJ.org. That does it for the broadcast today. A lot of information today, jam-packed, but we love giving it to you, and that's why we want you to support us at ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow.