Will President Trump Face Criminal Charges?

Today on Sekulow, will President Trump face criminal charges in New York? 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. You know, they talk a lot about not wanting, hey, please run Donald Trump. We want to run against Donald Trump. But they're doing a lot of work to make sure and try and keep him off the ballot. For instance, in this situation, they are still, after years in New York, now this is specific to the state of New York, this is outside the special council that continues to investigate Trump over those documents. And there's a special council, you know, for, there's the special council still investigating.

Durham is still out there, Logan. I mean, you've also got the special council for Biden, but this is separate. This is the New York DA, Alvin Bragg, who took this move that usually signals, not always, but usually signals that someone is likely about to be indicted by a grand jury.

So what was the move? The move was an invitation for President Trump to come before and answer questions from the grand jury to testify before this New York grand jury. This is, again, it relates to an NDA. When I go back in time and I think about NDA disputes, those are usually, again, not criminal. Those would be disputes that would be handled in civil courts and economically. They would not be handled in the criminal courts, but again, as we know, there's Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is just some reason, Logan, they really, really, even though they always tell us they think he's so easy to beat, obviously the internals tell them something else.

Well, these tells are probably going to give them a good run for their money, so what can you do if you can have these options to go after them criminally? Yeah, why not? Why not use everything for politics? Yeah, because you think about the mess of the last Presidential election, and even with all the mess, if you believed every single conspiracy theory, he still came pretty close to winning. Yeah, still had more votes than any, was it more votes than any President ever had, or something like that? Any Republican ever had.

Yeah, something crazy, but still got defeated as it was, but right. Any President ever had, except for Joe Biden. Right, that's what I mean.

Any President running for re-election. Yeah, so what I continue, it's this witch hunt has not stopped since the man took the oath of office, it actually started a little bit before that, took the oath of office, left office, and continues to this day. And it is my, I guess, promise to you, the goal is not necessarily to get him convicted, because that's even more difficult. They want him arrested.

They want the visual. If they can get that visual, which I don't know that the Secret Service would allow, but if they could, or if they could just say it on TV that he's been arrested and booked, I mean obviously he'd be released immediately on something like this, and we're not 100% that this is happening, but I do think if you're a Trump supporter, you should be preparing, because there's movement happening in New York. Now it also brings up that interesting issue with Florida, because Florida doesn't necessarily have an agreement to force you to go.

Yeah, I mean it's domestic extradition, but for certain offenses, I don't know if this one reaches that one yet, because we don't know what the actual charges are here. We know the dispute is over in the NDA, but my lord, if you're someone like Donald Trump, you've got a lot of NDAs out there. Sure, yeah, every kind of business. The whole world kind of runs on NDAs, and we're all big on them. And many of them do get thrown out of courts as being overbroad. It's usually specific parts, not like the whole NDA goes. It's this provision of the NDA is to... The person writing it is going to try to be always as protective as possible. Right, and then if it does get challenged in court, and you lose a little bit here and there, you still actually kind of got what you wanted. And so that's the usual NDA challenge. If someone says, you know, this is restricting my ability to do my work too much, or find another job, or you know, there are some exceptions to be able to speak out on NDAs as well. Not necessarily trade secrets.

Right. So the question I have for you at 1-800-684-3110 is, do you think they'll ever get it? I mean, a New York grand jury is probably their best shot. Yeah, I mean, it sounds bad on paper. You would think if you're known as a conservative Republican, that's probably not the best grand jury setup. But we're talking about the indictment phase of this.

Do you think it will ever happen? Put it in the chat, or give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back on Sekulow. Alright, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls, your comments as well. 1-800-684-3110.

Just to reset if you were just joining us. What is important here is to note that major news outlets across the country are reporting that the grand jury in New York, the district attorney in New York, has invited Donald Trump, President Trump, to testify before the grand jury investigating him. This is over a matter involving an NDA. Now, the big issue there is that oftentimes, if someone is about to be indicted by a grand jury, they are given the opportunity to come testify before the grand jury.

An invitation. But if you're using kind of a percentage style, it's a very high percentage that you get this before an indictment comes. Now, an indictment does not mean you've been convicted. But it does mean a trial begins. And it's a criminal trial. I want to make that clear to folks. Usually when you're talking NDAs, you're talking civil disputes. You're talking about a criminal trial that would likely go into what right now we believe the Republican debates start in August.

Oh yeah, I don't even know if it would start. Right. This is, like you said, a moment to potentially try to derail whatever momentum could be happening because a lot of resources have to be moved around.

Yeah, that's right. Not just financials. Time. When you start talking about these kind of cases.

Go ahead. No, and I think what you have to see here, and the dream of the left has been to get him arrested. I don't even think they care about the conviction so much. They want that imagery. The imagery is bad, and then the timing, I think, and do it at the proper time.

Do it at the proper time. When you're heading into now having an earlier debate season than maybe ever before, or right around then, in August of this year. We're talking about, what, six months from now, we'll be into the debate season for the Republican. You'll have a lot of the other Republicans start to run. And like you said, I don't think there's been a poll, and I could be wrong, that doesn't have – love him or hate him – that doesn't have him in the lead for the Republican primary right now.

No, I haven't seen one. There might be some – Maybe a DeSantis one here or there, but certainly of the official people running, when you just whittle it down to that, it's not a big – it's a big jump between him and the next person. Yeah, and I mean, I guess for Trump supporters, my question would be, if he got indicted but he continued on, would you stand with him?

Or would you say, you know, I've got to jump ship because I've got to make sure whoever I'm supporting could definitely be on the ballot and serve? I mean, it's an interesting situation if an indictment actually comes out. I think it's still – I think it's so absurd that this is continuing on to try and take down a political figure, a declared candidate for President of the United States, a former President of the United States, over issues that are 10 and 12 and 15 years old that we all know about that have been discussed. I mean, this one has been discussed – Ad nauseum, yeah.

Ad nauseum. Everybody knows the names here, but it's really not about that. It's about what else can we find, what kernel of some kind of something could we try to convince a grand jury that's criminal, and then we can prosecute Donald Trump and put him on trial. And I think that is, again, a very – it's just – when we talk about the weaponization of law enforcement, this is yet another example of weaponizing law enforcement against leading politicians, which about half the country did support and a good chunk of the country still supports. Like Logan said, it would be likely if the election primaries were held today, Donald Trump would be the nominee for the Republican Party. I don't know if that'll be the case ultimately after everybody's had their time to run and people like DeSantis, can they close a gap? But if it was held today, let's all just be honest, if you're a Republican or a Democrat like Trump or not, he would win the Republican nomination.

Yeah, likely. If it was a national, if you want to say that, if it wasn't broken down to the way we have to do primaries, I think if it was just essentially a pre-election election, I think you'd probably have it at a pretty wide number. Again, whether you like that or not, I think that's just the case, even from just name recognition. That's why these other candidates need to start getting their name out there more and being available. We've seen just a couple. We've seen Nikki Haley and we've seen one other who has – who's announced that I can't even recall – Yeah, well, I couldn't even recall his name, I'm afraid, which tells you that.

He doesn't come from a political background at all. No, but that's what I'm saying is, you know, start hearing these names a lot more in the next six weeks or so. Even the declaration of Joe Biden running officially will need to happen in the next six weeks or so. Yeah, initially that was supposed to happen in February, then all the classified documents stuff started happening, so now we're into March. Put the brakes on that.

And I think it'll have to be right next – I think next month is probably the likelihood, if Joe Biden's running again, which it sounds now like he is, that in April you will get an announcement. Yeah, I don't think they have anyone else who's really ready. I mean, sure, they've always floated out there, the Michelle Obamas and some of that.

I think it's a hard road to convince her of that. And I think for the others, you're also talking about the fact that he took down Donald Trump once, and I believe they probably could potentially do it again. However, looking at this and the way they're acting, it's certainly not so sure. They seem very scared of Donald Trump. There is no reason to politically persecute someone at this level unless you feel like you are going to lose to them. Like they are posing an actual political threat. Put aside all their rhetoric about, oh, he's bad for the country, he's this and that, because honestly, if he loses an election again, he has very little influence over the country. So if you're confident that you could beat him again, wouldn't you want to?

Yeah. That would kind of be the death nail, if you will, in the political career. Especially if you didn't have a bunch of election mess like COVID caused and with all the who gets the ballots and how long do the ballots have to get in and when do I have to get the ballots in. So again, I think that the bigger picture is there has been a response from not just President Trump, but President Trump's team who have called the threat of indictment insane and that the Manhattan District Attorney's threat to indict President Trump is insane and embarrassment to the Democrat prosecutors and embarrassment to New York City. And I just think, again, why we're talking about this imminently today is because we know he was invited, he being President Trump, to testify before the New York grand jury. And usually, Logan, when you get that... Yeah, tell me about that word, because we're seeing that, I think, more of the liberal news is putting us in. Look, we have them all up on TV, so we kind of see how everyone can cover. The more liberal leading news, MSNBCs, are saying the word invite.

They need a little bit more calm. It sounds like a nicer thing, but what you said is all that is is really an indication of where things are going. It's usually just an opportunity to have one chance to address the grand jury face-to-face before they indict you. If they weren't planning on indicting, why bring Trump in?

Just to talk? Yeah, maybe like that one person, I just want to see him, I want to talk to him, I want him to say the oath to me because they're power crazy. He doesn't have to do it, I'm not sure that he will do it, but the signaling of it is very important and I think that's where our legal experience helps you kind of navigate this. Signal-wise, if this was a normal situation, which it is far from normal, but if it was, like every media outlet's reported, this is the kind of final step that you would offer someone you were about to indict. That does not mean you've convicted them, does not mean they've been found guilty, but it's the final step before you bring the criminal charges. My idea the entire time, this goes back now six years, has been they've just wanted an indictment. It was like they knew they couldn't actually get him removed by impeachment, but they just wanted to get him impeached.

So this is the same kind of thing. He's now an indicted impeached President of the United States. Right, even though he was exonerated of the impeachment and likely in this case I think would be victorious as well, but he's up against a New York hostile, very hostile district attorney and hostile likely grand jury just based off New York City. We have a lot more coming up. There's a lot of other topics we're going to hit, not just this as well.

We're going to join in the next segment by Mike Pompeo and later on Jeff Balabon with a couple of different interesting cases and things that are happening right now. We've got some Second Amendment cases to talk about from the ACLJ and your houses of worship. As we know, those have been targeted, specifically synagogues and Jewish houses of worship for decades. For violence, yeah. For extreme violence, but this happens at churches as well. And in most of us, you're likely in a state that has the security it needs at the facilities.

You might not see, you probably know your security guard or they're in uniform, they're off duty, police, things like that. But if you're talking about a smaller synagogue or a smaller church, should you be able to basically decide to deputize someone in that church? Under most laws, most states, you can do that.

It's New York, of course, that says, we're not going to let you decide house of worship, which likely most house of worship would say there's only the exception for the designated person. There's probably no weapons in the facility rule. Right, but that's their rule. And that wouldn't include their security.

That's just people coming in from the outside. Right. And so, the way New York has changed it, and this is after they lost that major case about handguns. They lost that case to the Supreme Court. They don't win these. But what they do is, in the meantime, can create very dangerous situations.

When you know, by all threat assessments, the number one hate crimes are committed against Jews. That's number one in America. Yeah, we're going to keep talking about that. We're going to talk about that in the second half hour of the broadcast as well, because we'll have Jeff Baum on office in Israel and in New York. We'll be on to discuss that. Coming up next, though, Mike Pompeo is going to join us. We're going to talk a bit about the budget. We're going to talk a little bit about the border with him. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110.

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You can support that work at ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Sec Hill. We are taking your phone calls, too, and comments on Rumble, Facebook, YouTube as well. We're joined by Secretary Pompeo, our ACLJ Senior Counsel for Global Affairs and Secretary.

I want to get right into it. A lot of different topics I wanted to hit with you today. First off is that when President Biden took office, we had inflation at 1.4%. It's now at 6.4%. Yesterday, he released what I would consider a disastrous budget that calls for $6.9 trillion in spending. Even his really outrageous tax increases, 25%, and they always say for the wealthiest. You start looking at that and you say, oh, that's a lot of small business owners that would have a 25% mandatory tax. How do you see this all playing out?

Because there was some discussion, Secretary Pompeo, yesterday, that maybe some things in the economy that we were coming out of some moments, that maybe this would hold off on some interest rate hikes by the Fed to let people kind of settle in. And then you get a number like this, and I think with $6.9 trillion spending, it can't even be paid for with extremely high tax rates. Again, I think it scares the American consumer. It certainly scares the American employee and employer.

Well, Jordan, let's just take one step back. We know this is the case. Every family knows it's the case that you can't spend more than you have. And what President Biden is proposing to do is spend an additional $6 or $8 trillion, depending on how you count it, in spite of the fact he's going to try and take more money from every family. And he says it won't impact people under $400,000.

If you're working for a small business that makes a million bucks a year, this is going to impact you because your employer is going to have to make a really hard decision about whether they keep you at the company or to change the nature of what they're doing. And we know this is the wrong direction. When you have inflation, you know, prices gone up for milk and eggs and all the things that the ordinary families just have to have and depend upon. You know, this is bad for the country.

You know this is bad for those families. And the budget that has been proposed, which the good thing is it probably won't get very far, but the budget's been proposed, shares with you his vision for America. A bigger federal government and less money for families all across the country. You know, I think, Secretary Pompeo as well, people, I think, look at all these economics. They say just this is like their only option is let's just increase interest rate, increase interest rate, increase interest rate. And you get to this certain point, you start looking back historically, you go, okay, when is this going to finally stop?

So that people can, one, just have some stability if they are making a large purchase to know and plan. And then two, just to, again, kind of get prices back down to where they are reasonable because the unemployment numbers, while those are, the one sign, so an uptick in the, you know, the unemployment's low, more people getting hired, we still know that those wages, Secretary Pompeo, that people are making, I'm sure you're hearing this from across the country, are not covering the inflation. So while they are taking jobs because they got to pay their bills, at the same time they're not able to pay all of their bills or they're having to make serious cuts in their just basic lifestyle because their salary that would have covered everything a couple years ago now does not.

Jordan, it's so true. When you're just out there meeting with people who are just trying to take care of their family and get their kids into good schools or coach their little league team, all the things we do here in America, they can feel this every day. They can feel it when they fill out the tank of their car. They can feel it when they go to the grocery store. They can feel it when the monthly bill comes for their electricity, for their natural gas into their home.

They can all feel it in these deep ways. And you're right, paychecks just aren't keeping up with inflation. The solution can't possibly be what President Biden is proposing. His theory of the case is take more money from the private sector and take it to Washington, D.C. That won't improve the lives of these families.

I remember this so well, Jordan. Right, mortgage rates when we left two and a half years ago, just under two and a half years ago, were about half of what they are today. So someone who's trying to buy their first home today, their interest is going to cause double what it would have cost. That's not good for people in the great places in America that President Biden doesn't think about very often. That is just thinking about the folks he knows in these big cities and the liberals and the elites on the coasts. We're talking to Secretary Pompeo, also former director of the CIA and a member of Congress, during a hearing this week, which was pretty interesting to say the least, Secretary Pompeo, the Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, we saw Democrats, this was interesting, repeatedly lash out at a New York Times editor, Nicholas Wade, who was one of the first people to say, and I guess at that point probably didn't think it was necessarily brave to say, but just a theory that COVID likely resulted from a lab leak in Wuhan. And yesterday, the ranking member of the subcommittee, a Democrat, California Representative Raul Ruiz, essentially called Wade a racist. I mean, for saying that this originated in a lab in Wuhan, Mr. Secretary, you said time and time again, we've got to be able to hold the Chinese accountable, and that holding them accountable has to be bipartisan.

Why is the radical left using the language of the Chinese to try and scare us away from blaming a nation state and trying to conflate that with blaming all people who happen to be Chinese or of Chinese origin? It's the dangest thing, Jordan, and you and the ACLJ have been all over this from the beginning. We knew in March of 2020, three years ago now, that the dang virus came from the lab. And the fact that the progressive left is trying to give the Chinese Communist Party a free pass on this is absolutely mind boggling to me. It's mind boggling, too, that Dr. Fauci is going after the former CDC director, Dr. Redfield. Dr. Redfield and I both knew in the end of 19, beginning of 20, we knew that this came from the lab. And it's important. It's not just this isn't just a political parlor game about where this came from. To hold the Chinese Communist Party accountable, there has to be a consensus on the science. And the science is clear. This was an accidental release from the lab that the Chinese Communist Party then foisted across the world.

And they have to be held accountable for that. And as long as you have Democrat Congresspeople who are going to come after reporters who are just purporting basic science, we can't protect America from this happening one day again. You know, it happens to the reporter, it happened to Dr. Redfield. And we talked about that a lot yesterday on the broadcast, but you brought it up, Secretary Pompeo, is this idea that when he testified with Congressman Jordan and he said, you know, did you ever get this note from Dr. Fauci that he received from another doctor that was close to Fauci who said, this doesn't look like an evolutionary kind of virus. This looks like something created a lab.

Someone else wrote to him, another colleague, a doctor, said this would be tough to happen in nature, but certainly we could do this easily in a lab. And Redfield both times said it was never shared. I mean, you know, they go after the New York Times editor, they were going, they were silencing the CDC director. They had a vested interest in that, Jordan. They knew that Dr. Fauci knew that there was his money from his organization at NIH, a fellow named Peter Daszak, that you all at ACLJ have been working to solve this mystery for a long time. Peter Daszak and Dr. Fauci both knew that there had been money that came in the form of grants that made its way to that very virology institute. They just wanted to protect themselves.

It was a cover-up operation for sure. So that's why when Dr. Redfield came and said, here's the basic things we've seen. Sick doctors coming from the lab.

Now they've disappeared. Journalists who are reporting on what happened to the lab. A researcher who said, hey, we really need to check out what happened to this lab.

The Chinese Communist Party shut that all down. And when Dr. Fauci saw that, he had the exact opposite response. Dr. Redfield said, let's get to the bottom of this. And Dr. Fauci said, we can't let anybody get to the bottom of this. Let's go, let's go, def come forward.

Let's cover this up. And that's really a threat to America. You know what, Secretary Pompeo, as always, I appreciate you joining us. And through those questions, there's always the information I want to jump right back on. Because I think, again, that silencing of just ideas is so dangerous in the United States of America. We're a country founded on the idea that you can have a theory and someone else can have a theory. And then ultimately, maybe through science and research, you figure out which theory is right.

Or what evidence points to that one theory being more likely than the other. Secretary Pompeo, we always appreciate it. Support our work. You know, we've got Secretary Pompeo on our team.

We have Rick Grenell on our team. We've got a team of attorneys and experts because of you. Donate today at ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged.

Now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. Team, can we pull some of the latest immigration numbers? I want to take Hilton's call from Illinois.

The known got aways and likely the estimates of what are the known got aways plus the estimates of those who we aren't able to track. Because it's an interesting call and I do want to take it, but I want to have those numbers in front of me first. We started off the broadcast just if you're just joining us. You saw that headline, especially if you're joining us on Rumble or Facebook or YouTube and you're watching the broadcast. You saw this headline.

Is Donald Trump about to be indicted? And here's why we said that. There's a lot of reporting today across the aisle. Mainstream media, liberal, conservative media.

And this is why. And the Trump team has responded, so we know that, again, this is accurate information. That the New York DA, who's been investigating Donald Trump on a host of issues, trying to find some way to criminally charge Donald Trump and basically perp walk Donald Trump. And so this current grand jury has been reported to have invited President Trump to come testify. Usually that is one of the final moves made by a district attorney to someone who is likely going to face indictment is that they will get an opportunity to address the grand jury.

It's different than like addressing the jury, but in this one sense in a trial. But in another sense, it's you don't have to do this. It's just an opportunity given. And then very soon after, you could see an indictment. You could have answers happen.

Yeah. And so I think we have to be very vigilant here, watch this very closely as this witch hunt continues. It's all based in New York City. So it's a New York City grand jury with a New York DA who is very liberal. And I think these DA's know on the left, Logan, whichever if any of them got indictment, they would be not even a conviction. An indictment, they would like become heroes immediately of the left.

Everybody would stop. Who cares about the fact that you can't go into a grocery store in New York because everybody's robbing it or you have to shut the store down or they'll get a book deal and they'll get a, you know, made for TV movie. Which is why these DA's don't focus on crime. They focus instead on high profile news stories instead because they'd much rather be talking about partisan issues like Trump because they're they're partisans too.

And we're also going to be talking about, we've talked already about some of the issues involving, we went back to COVID a little bit yesterday because I really wanted to talk to Secretary Pompeo. But that's interesting that he said they knew back in 2019. Yeah, he knew.

In 2019, they knew that it was likely lab leak. But who kept suppressing that? Fauci and the media and social media outlets as well.

You weren't allowed to even utilize that. And then that hearing yesterday, the idea that some New York Times editor, Logan, it's called a racist. I mean, I'm sure he's not a far right conservative.

I don't think they have a lot of those employed. By a Democrat politician because he said that a lab in China was responsible. If the lab was in a country in Africa, are you a racist there? Because it's that country's responsibility. Think about all the different shots and vaccines you have to take to travel to some of these other countries. It's not like that's somehow racist. It's not racist if you have to protect yourself when you make these these trips. Right, because your body has no immunity to all of that.

It doesn't have that built up. So again, 1-800-684-3110 to talk to us on the air. That's 1-800-684-3110. We don't have time to take Hilton yet. Hilton, if you can hold through one more, I will get your call right off the top. So we will do that right away when we come back from the next break. We've got Jeff Balibong coming up in the next segment.

Yeah, but I'll get Hilton in. Yeah, no, I'm saying we're going to talk about some really interesting news coming out of New York as well. Second Amendment. Another New York story.

Another New York story because, of course, New York, which consistently loses when they try to limit your Second Amendment rights. This time around, they're trying to say, OK, we've lost the court, but no Second Amendment rights in the House of Worship. It doesn't leave the decision up to the House of Worship. In this case, we're representing synagogues, but it affects your church, your mosque, any House of Worship from being able to make that decision on your own and deciding if you want to deputize someone there to have a firearm.

That decision would be up to you. Especially when you're the group targeted with the most hate crimes in the country, which the Jewish community is. So we'll talk to Jeff Balibong about that. He also oversees our office in Jerusalem. We have that office in Jerusalem because of your financial support at ACLJ. We've got a matching challenge right now.

You can double the impact of your donation at ACLJ. Welcome back to Second Amendment. I'm going to take Hilton's call right off the bat on immigration and we're getting into the Second Amendment issue. So if you're someone like we do who cares about your Second Amendment rights, your constitutional rights, you definitely want to tune in and share this with your friends and family because it is a unique way New York is trying to get around so many losses at the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to the Second Amendment. They lose and lose and lose and lose and yet they somehow always try to find a way to prevent New Yorkers from being able to protect themselves, in this case at houses of worship, which have come under attack, been under attack, and historically for the Jewish community, they are the number one target of hate crimes in America, which is a number and a fact that does not get told enough to the American people. But let me go to Hilton first in Illinois on Line 1.

Hey Hilton. Hi, the Democratic Party has a long history of using immigrants in the out-of-vote campaign for maybe Irish or different groups of people, Polish and things, and they would bully them to get the ballots out and then use their votes to win elections and things. But my question is, is there a FOIA request for government transparency that when these people are captured and released, whether it be for Mexico or wherever, where does this information go, how is it stored, who has access to these people and the information, who is the government sharing this data to, how are they using that data for get-out-of-vote tactics? Okay, so right now none of those people would be legally able to vote because they're not U.S. citizens. And now there's some localities that have started to allow non-citizens to vote in like municipal elections. Non-citizen residents.

Yeah, but okay, but if you're talking about the bigger elections, statewide or federal, you have to be a citizen. Now, who tracks the numbers? Well, the number is tracked by Department of Homeland Security. So we know, like, for instance, in 2023 so far, 38 people on the terror watch list were arrested at the border, 98 last year, 15 before that.

You go back to 2020, only three in 2019, zero. So those numbers significantly started increasing under who? President Biden. We know that there have been 1.2 million gotaways during the Biden administration. That's people they know that crossed illegally but they couldn't catch. We also know that in the first half of Biden's four-year term, we saw monthly border encounters rise from 100,000 in February of 2021 to 251,000 in December of 2022. That's the Customs and Border Patrol, which falls under Department of Homeland Security. I will tell you, Hilson, we've done FOIA work specifically on the border when it comes to the policy changes the Biden administration tried to make, like Remain in Mexico, like Operation Talon, which focuses on trafficking.

So we are heavily involved in that. But statistic-wise, that's where you get the numbers from. And, you know, I don't think they're budging the numbers here.

They're horrible for Joe Biden. They just think that enough of their voters don't care. So if you've noticed, a lot of the switch from the right has gone from, OK, if people aren't paying attention to the number of people, we're going to focus on the Americans dying because of this, because of what they're bringing over with them. Fentanyl, drugs, drug cartels. We saw the horrible incident in Mexico that happened to Americans. It rarely has to do with the actual humans.

On both sides, sadly. Sometimes we don't humanize them enough, and on the other side, it's about what's coming over that we don't want there. It's not about people seeking refuge.

It's not people trying to even find a better life for themselves in America. What it has to do with a lot of the crime and a lot of the drugs and everything else that's making its way over with it. So let's get into a Second Amendment issue. And what's going on in New York. And in New York.

Let me go to Jeff Balibon, who oversees our office in Jerusalem, who's also a U.S. attorney. Jeff, tell people about, I know you've got a new blog up at ACLJ.org as well, but tell people about this situation. I think it's very unique because New York is always trying to ban its citizens from having any kind of firearm, whether it was rifles, then it was pistols. They lose all of this at the Supreme Court, and yet they come up with more novel ways to try and prevent you from being able to protect yourself. Yeah, well, under the current leadership, they've managed to make New York the opposite of a crime-free zone. It's just dangerous to walk around the streets of New York. And as you discussed before, Jordan, it's become extremely dangerous for Jews, visibly Jews, who walk in the street wearing a yarmulke or other visibly Jewish garb or certainly Jewish institutions.

So there's been all kinds of changes to bail laws here, and they basically made it a very soft on-crime state. And so people who naturally don't like Jews realize that it's open season. So we have a situation here where we have increased street violence and increased attack on Jewish targets like synagogue. And the government has then, in response to that, taken away the right of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves specifically in houses of worship. Jeff, I want people to explain this because in these houses of worship, where most of us live, there's security. Sometimes they work for the church directly. They might be in a suit. Other times they're off-duty police. So there's a mixture. But what I think it comes down to is the decision is often made by the house of worship in most states, not by the government mandating them to – they might have some rules like who is going to be the security person, something like that, but they don't tell you you can't have somebody who is ready to defend if there is an incident.

Look, it's completely perverse, Jordan. You're right. The fact is increasingly houses of worship, and especially synagogues, but houses of worship need to have guards, armed guards, greeters, et cetera. And what they've done here in New York is they've said public places, if you have a right to carry, if you have a permit to carry, you can carry, but we're specifying certain what they're calling sensitive places, and they're listing specifically houses of worship and say you cannot even make your own decision to allow congregants who are armed and trained to protect you. So in the case of synagogues where we have an orthodox synagogue services throughout the day, classes throughout the day, it's open many hours, sometimes 24 hours a day, we want to make sure that they're protected. Instead, they're saying we're protecting you from gun violence by taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves from gun violence. I think that a lot of people would understand that while some of us may go to churches and houses of worship that kind of open and close, there's a lot of, especially churches that have chapels that are 24-7, and there's always somebody there ready to talk to you. I know in the Catholic Church, I know in the Episcopal Church, Yeah, one of the classic churches, the Orthodox Church. There's a place to pray if you feel like you need to go.

Doors are never locked, part of the deal. And when you know that you are somewhat a group that is facing violence, and Jeff, you talked about how people can have concealed carry in New York now, but that's only because they lost at the Supreme Court. I mean, so every time they have to be taken to court, and that is what we have done here. We have joined in a lawsuit here. That's right, and we of course joined in that case in the Supreme Court, which struck down New York's previous ban, and the Supreme Court actually tracked a lot of the arguments that we made in our briefs, and of course what New York did was then respond to the Supreme Court upholding the Constitution by taking another slash of the Constitution against our Second Amendment rights and our First Amendment rights simultaneously. And that's why we've now joined in this amicus brief to stand up for the First Amendment and Second Amendment rights of New Yorkers. You know, people have asked this question, Jeff, and I'm seeing it in our chats, people from New York. Is this specific to New York City, or is this statewide? No, this is statewide. There is separate New York City laws, and there's actually a New York City challenge as well. That has not yet, I think, has not gone up on appeal.

The judge stated, but kept the restriction in place, which is infuriating, especially when you consider what's at stake here. And you know that when we put in this amicus brief in this case, we're working also together with the Synagogue Security Council of North America, which is a national organization, and they point out something critical, which is when there's an active shooter situation, it could be minutes, like 30 minutes, and according to the FBI, there's an average of 12 victims per minute in an active threat attack. That means you could talk about dozens of dead people while you're waiting for law enforcement, and they've taken away the right not of restaurants, not of movie theaters, but of churches and synagogues to defend themselves. It's so targeted. It's so obviously targeted. I mean, Logan, when I see it, I think it's really cool that ACLJ is representing the Synagogue Security Council of North America, because it shows how diverse we are and the work that we do to protect your rights, and again, your Second Amendment rights, and this is kind of a novel way. I feel like this is a nuanced one that even people who are maybe more into gun control and have gun control leanings go, okay, well, this is maybe going a little too far when you're saying a church essentially can't have their own private security. The movie theater can.

The movie theater can, right. It does feel targeted, and it feels intentional, and no one wants this. Yeah, it's targeted at houses of worship, and then specifically, Jeff, as I've been pointing out, which I don't think ever gets enough attention, is that the group that faces the most hate crimes in America is the Jewish community. Jews represent less than 2% of the American population, and according to FBI statistics, and I can tell you they are underreported, more than 60% of hate crimes targeting people for their religion target Jews.

More than 60% is an absolute number. It's so many times our population. It's a disaster, so this is very important, and I'm so glad that ACLJ stepped in here. Because I want people to be able to go to their house to worship, whatever that faith may be, and not have to worry about that. To know that they've got at least security there watching their back. Because we know that these mass shoes, unfortunately, are happening, and they're happening at houses of worship all the time. This to me is no different than your school having a security guard or anything like that. Whenever there are masses of people, you want to make sure that people are kept safe.

This is common sense solutions. It's, again, why we have a second. How it even came up is sort of a crazy thing, the fact that this was even... Because the animosity towards the Second Amendment is so high in New York that any time they think they can get around a Supreme Court decision telling them you can't do that in New York, they try and ban another way of getting around so they can say, as politicians, we stop guns here. We're not going to let that happen. Welcome back to Sec Hill. We're taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

We're getting to the economy, so we've hit a lot of issues. President Trump, this is a potential indictment. I say that because the grand jury invited him in New York, this is a New York state issue, to come testify. Usually, and that's just based off legal practice, someone who is the target would get that opportunity right before an indictment is issued.

Now, right before does not mean today, but imminent, more imminent, and it doesn't mean 100% either. The grand jury decides that, but I will say that's how the DA approached things, so you have this opportunity to address the grand jury, kind of like if it does actually make it to court, you would have an opportunity to address a jury or the courtroom. You don't always do that, but you do get the opportunity, and usually that's in a situation, again, where you have to weigh a lot of different factors. We all watch all these criminal cases now all the time. Now, this is not certainly a multi-murder, wild family story like the one out of South Carolina that was so unfortunate and sad, but people see, I think, understand what we're talking about there. So, we talked about that.

We talked about, again, the COVID origins, the way that the lash-out occurred, but I do want to spend more time on the economy because it affects every single one of us. So, Harry Hutchinson, Director of Policy. Harry, new job numbers came out today. They were released. The Biden team, of course, is touting this as wonderful news, but the truth behind the numbers isn't so great.

Absolutely. So, it's clear beyond question that the unemployment rate rose slightly, so there's not much to cheer about there. Number two, the evidence shows that average wages adjusted for inflation have actually fallen, so there's not good news there. And thirdly, we should keep in mind that the Federal Reserve is preparing to raise interest rates again. That means mortgage costs should likely rise. And lastly, President Biden has issued a new budget proposal, and essentially the budget proposal consists of an increase in income tax rates, federal capital gains tax rates, Obamacare rates, that's the Affordable Care Act, the tax rate on stock sales, property up, corporate tax rates up, taxes on fossil fuel companies up, which should drive up energy costs. So, I think the Biden administration will term or claim that this proposal is simply a tax on the rich, but as people pay those taxes, that means they have less money to purchase goods and services. This affects everyone.

It does affect everyone. We actually have a call coming in right now kind of about this whole situation. Let's go to Mark who's calling on line two. Mark, you're on the air. Hi. Yeah, thank you for taking my call. I'm Mark.

I'm in Michigan. I crunch numbers for a living, specifically financial numbers. And about five years ago, I decided to figure out, okay, how much does the country have to take in and or cut spending just to break even, so the national debt does not go up. I don't remember if it was five or six years ago, but what I found was you had to combine two things, an across the board cut in total spending. And I don't care what budget item it is. I don't care if it's social security. I don't care if it's, you know, military.

I don't care if it's, you know, social programs. You had to combine that with an increase in tax revenue of 25% just to break even. Well, I think, again, I'll go to Harry Hutchison on this because people try to say, okay, how do we get back?

How does it ever even out? Yeah. Because it doesn't feel like that's the way our number works. No, because even when they increase taxes, like on the 25% minimum tax on the richest in America, it still doesn't balance out the budget. I think even there under the best estimate, it's cut 3 billion out of the national debt.

I think that is correct. And one of the things that the Biden administration fails to understand is that with respect to some of these proposed tax increases, those tax revenues associated with those tax rate increases are optional. Why is it optional? Well, you can defer selling property. You can defer selling stocks. So the projected revenue often does not match the actual revenue that comes in. And so at the end of the day, middle income people, working class people are often hurt by tax increases even if these tax increases are allegedly aimed at the rich. But I go back to the reduction, if you will, in tax credits that they are making available for fossil fuel companies. This means they are paying more taxes if they're making money. But of course, one of the ways of adjusting for a tax increase is to raise the prices at the pump. So I think at the end of the day, it's important to keep in mind that the cultural elites, our cultural overlords in Washington, they don't really understand economics, but the Biden proposal is probably dead on arrival in Congress.

That is the good news. You know, when we talk about all these economic issues, Harry, as well, I mean, people really just want to know are we going to see continued interest rate hikes and is there any end in sight? I mean, some people have talked about 10% as maybe the end in sight. That seems pretty catastrophic to a lot of people.

I think you're right. I think my basic guesstimate is between 8 and 9%. Keep in mind that interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve. They don't have that much of an impact on the economy until about a six to nine month lag time.

So the Federal Reserve has announced this week that they intend to remain aggressive with respect to interest rate rises. And so one of the things that Americans should keep in mind is that that means their mortgage rates will rise. And some Americans have adjustable rate mortgages, and so even if they are not buying a new house or even if they're not refinancing, absolutely. Because your mortgage payment could have doubled.

I mean, a lot of times right now, whatever mortgage you're getting, on the same price houses, it could be near double what you're paying monthly. That's wild. A lot of people had a lot of comments and a lot of people came in. I want to thank everyone who's listened and watched today and watched this week. We know we have a lot of new viewers who have come in via Rumble.

We know we have a lot of new viewers that have come in through all of our different platforms and social media platforms. I'm going to ask you one more time, if you don't mind, if you are brand new to this broadcast or you haven't done it yet, if you're watching on Rumble, hit the follow. If you're watching on YouTube, hit subscribe. If you're on Facebook, like. Do all those things. However you want to engage with this show, the better.

Rumble is a great source. They've been great to us and we appreciate all of their support. So if you could, follow us there, follow us on all our other channels. But again, we are really right starting to be in the middle of our matching challenge. A very important time.

That's right. So as we get towards the middle of the month, it becomes that much more critical. Our matching challenge is a way for us to really put together the financial situation that we're in as the ACLJ moving forward so that we know if we can add additional resources. Do we need to can we add if we need more staff, if we need to take on a larger case, it's going to require more staff or issue. All of that is because of your financial support to the ACLJ. And of course, it continues to do all the work that we already do. So we have these matching challenge where a group of our dedicated donors say we will match the donations that come through this month.

It's very simple, Logan. It's like if you made a $10 donation online at ACLJ.org right now, that $10 will be matched by a $10 donation from one of our donors this month. So it's $20 for us. So whether you've had to even cut back some on how much you can give, this is a great time to donate if you're still in a position to donate at all, because you're doubling the impact your donation. So you're making what you can give.

The value value to us is doubling. So I hope that encourages you, even if you're in a tougher situation right now, but still trying to make those contributions to groups you care about, do it online at ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you next week.