The Bombshell News We All Saw Coming

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.

All right, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your calls, comments, 1-800-684-3110. You can go online, of course, and get your comments in as well. There's a lot to talk about today on the broadcast.

And kind of look back to some of the interviews that you may have missed. We're daily, five days a week. We have great content, great guests on.

So coming up today, first off is Mike Pompeo reacting to Attorney General Garland's comment at a hearing on the lab leak theory. So we'll talk about that. But Logan, also a friend of yours, John Rich, who joined us about a week and a half ago on the broadcast. But I'm sure people don't get to listen every day and see it every day.

Really cool idea. Yeah, that's right. John Rich has started. He came on because this was in the moment just about a week ago where Donald Trump Jr.'s business banks were closed by PNC Bank. And we know this is happening kind of over and over, this whole trend of de-banking people because of their speech. They didn't say it was for that. They didn't give a reason.

They just pretty much said, we don't like you. It is what it is. So John Rich has come in. You may know him from Big and Rich. You know him as a country music superstar.

He's also a businessman. He, Ben Carson, Larry Elder have come together to start Old Glory Bank. And man, I've never seen so much response from our viewers. You have to hear this about what they're doing in their bank. I know hundreds of you, maybe more, signed up for accounts.

We had, I think, just on the Instagram real loan, about 400,000 views on just people hearing about Old Glory Bank. Yeah, I think this is, again, really important. It's a cool show because, again, if you missed that, you're going to hear it today on the broadcast.

And again, it's a very cool idea that they're doing as well. And then we're going to talk about a Wall Street Post article detailing the conflict between the FBI and the DOJ. This slogan always makes me concerned because when the FBI, which is part of the DOJ, is in conflict, you know that the bad guys are not getting caught and the wrong people are being targeted. Yeah, I think we've talked about the issues that have gone on with the FBI.

It feels like I had nausea, but just they keep coming up. New stuff keeps arising. Feels like everything has become politicized, and we talked about that on shows last week as well.

Each topic seems to become more and more political and less and less about getting the job done. Yeah, and then finally, Congresswoman Tinney will join us as well about the northern border, which is something we've only talked about once with her, but it's getting more and more attention as we speak. Yeah, we don't talk about the northern border too much because it just doesn't seem to be where the crisis is happening, but we know more and more that's starting to not be the case. Yeah, in fact, border patrol agents have been offered the opportunity to go to the northern border and ICE officials because they're seeing an increase in people from Latin America flying to Canada.

Flying to Canada to go through our northern border because it's more porous. Hey, we should talk also for a minute before we get to our first guest coming up in just the next segment about the matching challenge that we're in the middle of right now, so we've got a couple minutes. Right now, we are in the middle of our March matching challenge. That means any donation made to the ACLJ is effectively doubled.

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Go to ACLJ.org. While you're there, not only make a donation, check out all the incredible content we have there. They, some of the best writers have written just incredible content. Our incredible video team has put together awesome clips, awesome shorts. There's so much happening right now at ACLJ.org.

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Go to ACLJ.org. Donate today. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secula. We are joined by our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, talking about these hearings that took place with Attorney General Garland. We also had Christopher Wray sit down with an interview with Bret Baier and talk about some of these decisions by the FBI, the politicization and weaponization of these two departments at the highest levels.

And I'll play the sound and then we'll go right to Secretary Pompeo. But this is Senator Mike Lee questioning Merrick Garland about the, all of the protest and vandalizing that went on at pro-life pregnancy centers. And ultimately they gave up, they put up a $25,000 reward. Like they couldn't find these people on their own.

Take a listen to the question and the response. In 2022 and for the first couple of months of 2023, DOJ has announced charges against 34 individuals for blocking access to or vandalizing abortion clinics. And there have been over 81 reported attacks on pregnancy centers, 130 attacks on Catholic churches since the leak of the Dobbs decision, and only two individuals have been charged. So how do you explain this disparity by reference to anything other than politicization of what's happening there? The FACE Act applies equally to efforts to damage blockade clinics, whether a pregnant resource, whether they are a pregnancy resource center or whether they are an abortion center. It applies equally in both cases and we apply the law equally. I will say you're quite right. There are many more prosecutions with respect to the blocking of the abortion centers.

But that is generally because they are, those actions are taken with photography at the time during the daylight and seeing the person who did it is quite easy. Okay. Mr. Secretary, you ran the CIA. This is the attorney general in the United States saying basically we can't find the people that are violating and blowing up abortion crisis pregnancy centers around the country because it happens at night as if there's no cameras or surveillance material. I mean, this was a pathetic performance.

All he kept saying was, Mr. Secretary, all I know is, which I've concluded all he knows is, is not much. Yeah. I saw a good deal of that testimony yesterday. It was, it was really weak and doesn't begin to account for the discrepancy in how they're doing this enforcement. Okay. This is almost certainly the data support that these are political decisions being made by senior leaders on how to prosecute, who to prosecute.

It is not the absence of camera. It's not the time of day that these, these things are taking place. This is a decision being built and filtered through the bureaucracy in the department of justice and perhaps at the FBI as well about which cases are more important to them. And yeah, this is, this is the, these are, these are, these are not pro-life people.

These are folks who have supported the abortion movement for an awfully long time in their political lives and in the rest of lives. And this is now emanating in our most sacred space, this important space where we're supposed to do equal justice under the law. I thought his, his performance yesterday both reflected the politicization of the attorney general's office and was not representative of the best things that America knows need to happen. It's indecent, what he said yesterday. You know, secretary Pompeo, when you, when you hear this kind of just a, you know, we can't do it, it's late at night. The other response was, well, you know, I don't really have anything to do with those FBI agents that showed up at that pro-life activist door and I think that was the safest practice, you know, FBI with 20 guns drawn. It seems like whoever is the next President has got a mess to clean up at the DOJ and FBI.

How serious is that mess? And, you know, I think people want to see it cleaned up, they want an effective FBI and an effective DOJ to be doing the right thing, but they know it's not doing that right now and we know how hard the bureaucracy fights back against anyone who tries to make changes. Jordan, it'll be a death struggle because this is at, this is at the core of their capacity to wield power in ways that reflect their point of view, their political preferences. The next President's got to get after this in a serious way, not just with a seat in the most senior leadership, but rooting this out, root and branch throughout the bureaucracies inside both the FBI and the Department of Justice. Look, we know Jordan, there's good FBI agents out there working the streets, doing good work. We know there's folks at DOJ that are just trying to prosecute even-handedly, but the folks making the decisions and to say, gosh, I didn't know, or I couldn't know. You're the Attorney General of the United States of America that is an inadequate response to a question from a serious defender who was simply trying to get the facts and to have people treated equally under the law. Yeah, especially coming in a case where when they went to trial and brought in their lead DOJ lawyer on free acts to clinics entrances, so handles all the abortion prosecutions, the jury found the gentleman that was charged not guilty after he had 27 FBI agents surrounding his house the year and a half of 18 months before. It's absurd, quite frankly, and I appreciate your view on this.

Let me ask you this. Chris Ray has been in the news a lot. He made a statement yesterday in his interview with Bret Baier that it's the FBI's position that the origin of COVID likely came from the lab in Wuhan. We've seen that also now from the Department of Energy and some other agencies as well. The White House, on the other hand, is still resisting, and I understand it could be up for obviously it's a big issue and it's got geopolitical ramifications.

That's what I want to focus on. What is the geopolitical play on this? Because the White House, obviously it's clear they do not want to tag this as a leak out of a lab. Yeah, the facts are clear. Since March of 2020, three years ago now, when I said this almost certainly came from a lab, now everyone can see it. Every intelligence agency is going to make the same conclusion that that is the near certain probability. The reason they're walking away from that is because once you say that this came from the Chinese lab, you know that Xi Jinping would have known about this. We know that then the cover-up was connected to that, and that requires holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable, actually imposing real costs on them for the millions of lives lost, the billions of dollars in wealth that was destroyed.

So it's a political statement for not-screw advisor Sullivan to say, hey, there's no consensus on this, is a statement that is trying to kick this can down the road, probably trying to figure out how to get through the next two years without having to deal with this. It's a very serious matter that we now know to be near certain. Xi Jinping knew that there was a lab leak. He covered it up and sent this virus around the world, and we all know the results of that.

So what does accountability look like? We hear that often with even the war in Ukraine, if China arms Russia with any weapons that can be used for deadly force. They're already sending over some non-deadly tactical items, but if they do that, there will be consequences. In the case of the COVID situation, what would consequences look like?

Well, goodness, there's multiple things, Jordan, and it's the right question. First, there's certainly government action that can be taken. Don't forget this lab, this Wuhan Institute of Virology is still open, still doing science and research. I pray no longer American money in there doing it, but getting that thing shut down is a governmental task. Second, there should be financial consequences for the decision makers and for the Chinese Communist Party. I know you folks at the ACLJ, you guys have done great work on cases just like this before. I hope everyone listening understands that I'm sure you all are thinking about a strategy to go hold accountable financially those who imposed real financial costs on Americans. This wasn't some far off problem for us.

We all lived it. We all experienced that people lost jobs, families were hurt, and there are remedies for that in the US court systems and frankly in international systems as well. And then finally, I think it tells us a lot about what we've already known about international organizations. The World Health Organization failed and it's a single mission.

Xi Jinping was able to manipulate the United Nations in a way and we should make sure that the Chinese Communist Party pays in those places as well by kicking them out of those institutions that cause so much death and destruction about an intentional decision from Xi Jinping. You're speaking today at CPAC. What are you going to tell the conservatives in attendance?

What's going to be the theme? Remember, America's counting on conservatives to take this nation forward. The core idea is that we have known, Jay, that you've worked on, the ACLJ has worked on for decades. These are the right principles to build America back to the right place, whether it's the Wuhan virus, whether it's an attorney general that is prosecuting ways that are deeply unfair. The way you get this back is by hard-nosed conservatism that understands American greatness, never apologizes, and always works to put the American people in the front of everything they do, whether it's abroad or here at home. Very good.

Mike Pompeo, of course, Senior Counsel for Global Affairs for the ACLJ, former Secretary of State, Director of the CIA. Mike, thanks as always. I want to reiterate what Secretary Pompeo just said, and that is your support of the ACLJ and all these issues that we just discussed in this segment are really critical. This is how we engage on these issues, and that's where your support comes in. I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org and stand with us in our matching challenge campaign. Jordan's going to lay out how that works for you, but it's really important that we hear from you.

So it's simple. What we do is we have a group of donors that are loyal to the ACLJ that come together and say, we will match the donations that come through in the month of March to ACLJ. So if you make a $50 donation right now at ACLJ.org, that group of donors will match that donation.

So you have to take the initial action for them to, of course, for the match to occur. So it takes those of you who are listening right now to make that donation. And by the way, don't get scared away by amounts. It could be a $5 donation. And when that's matched, it's matched by another $5 donation. So it's like $10. If you were able to donate $15, that's matched by another $15 donation. So it brings in $30 to the ACLJ. Without your initial action and your donation, we don't get that matching promise. That only occurs through you taking action and donating what you do online at ACLJ.org. Right on the homepage, you'll see matching challenge. Can't miss it. Takes a couple of minutes to donate at ACLJ.org.

Be a part of that match. PNC Financial Service Group, PNC Bank cancels its business relationship with Donald Trump Jr. because they don't like him. I mean, if they're not saying there was anything done in appropriating the account, they just don't like him. Now our friend, our good friend John Rich is with us. Of course, a tremendous entertainer, musician, songwriter, businessman. And John, talking about businessman, you decided to take on the cancel culture with our friend Ben Carson and Larry Elder head on, really. Tell us what you did with Old Glory Bank.

Well, thanks for having me on. Yes. So I think this this Don Jr. story just it reinforces why it's so important to have a new alternative platform for banking. So Dr. Ben Carson, Larry Elder and a bunch of other patriotic banking institution, long term guys, all of us got together when we saw Justin Trudeau break the backs of those truckers when they were protesting by freezing their bank accounts. Not only theirs, but tow truck companies that refused to pull the trucks away. They also froze their bank accounts. Now you look down in Brazil and the protesters against the Bolsonaro election, they're having their bank accounts frozen. So now you see in America this starting to happen to businesses and individuals.

Don Jr. is just one example of many. So we put it put together a new bank. We bought a physical bank in the great state of Oklahoma. It's FDIC insured.

We went through all the steps. It's like any other bank you would ever work with. However, our credo is you will never be canceled for exercising your constitutional rights. Now, the fact that you have to say something like that is quite a comment on modern day America. But it's what but it's where we're at, Jay. And I can tell you that there's a lot of people fantasize about mass canceling or mass freezing our bank accounts when they don't like what we have to say.

There's no question. It goes in the business arena. It goes in the banking arena. It's the weaponization of these federal agency. Harry Hutchinson, our director of policy.

John is with us on the studio here. John mentioned Canada is kind of where all this started. You've been following that very closely.

I have. And Canada is a fantastic example of one thing. And that is it's clear beyond question that the potential for tyranny lies not at the periphery, but at the very heart of modern and postmodern experience, particularly in the West. And so individuals who challenge the bureaucracy, they face the loss of access to their bank account. And just to add to what John suggested in Canada, if you gave as little as fifty dollars to the truckers, they would block your access to your bank account. And so it's very, very important that there are alternative institutions out there. Logan, and I just wanted to say, one, thank you for coming on here and talking about this, because I think a lot of us, even if you're not a person who's a known entity of Don Junior, someone with something like that, if you just gave a donation or you purchased something at a gun store, I mean, that you're worried that this kind of thing could happen.

You brought up alternatives. So I guess for the listener who's interested in this isn't an ad for your bank, but in somewhat it is a people are nervous and they're looking for options. What's that process look like? So if you go to OldGloryBank.com, you can reserve an account, you can read all about the bank, what we stand for, who's involved in it. Personal checking goes live later this month.

Small business will kick in in the summer and July. And then moving on from there, listen, we've had tens of thousands of accounts already reserved on OldGloryBank.com. We have to build new hills to run to, guys. The enemy owns all the hills. A lot of times we're thinking, man, I just want to run for the hills.

Well, which one are you going to run to? Because the enemy owns them all. And so I want to make something clear, though. A lot of people have asked me, hey, if you guys are FDIC insured, what's to keep Old Glory Bank from not canceling my bank account when Joe Biden or whoever else tells you you have to? And what people don't understand is the bank has a choice to make. The bank can do what the government tells them to do or the bank can tell the government to go jump in the river and I'll see you in court. And that's what Old Glory Bank is going to do. We are not going to cancel or weaponize people's accounts against them for exercising their constitutional rights. And I would say this, John, if you ever have a situation, ever have a situation where your bank is being threatened because of your political beliefs or your speech or your religious speech or your political speech or your First Amendment activities, you know in a heartbeat we will be there to defend the bank, to defend you, to defend the ability of Americans to have alternatives. What the left does want to do is shut down the alternatives. Yeah, throttle everyone.

I mean we're saying that. They can throttle you back, whether it's big tech, whether it's in banking, whether it's in the government agencies, this is how you have to fight back. You've got to, it's like we built alternative universities, Regent University, others, because you had to offer high academic excellence, but you also at the same time wanted to be very clear that you had a mission. Yeah, that's why we're on Rumble now and Rumble has tripled our numbers on every other platform that we've been on because we're being throttled on YouTube, throttled on Facebook.

We know this, we can see it, it's kind of at this point, it's undeniable that it happened because once we started moving everyone to Rumble, everyone plus decided to come back. John, let me ask you this, the idea that you would be in the banking business I'm sure was not in your thought process as a country music artist legend, music artist, an entertainer, you're a businessman? Yeah, not in the plan 20 years ago. Probably wasn't the plan 20 years ago to be in the banking business.

No, it wasn't my plan, but I'll tell you this, here is my plan, I'm going to live as a free American man and I want my children to be free American men and I want our generations long after we're gone to be free. And the only way we're going to ensure our freedom and even then it's going to be a battle is we have got to create new alternatives and parallel economy moves like an old glory bank where people have an alternative to put their money somewhere else. Listen, if they can choke you out, if they can take away your access to the money you earned and paid taxes on because they don't like what you had to say or they don't like what protest you went to, but they don't like what rifle you own or whatever the hell they want to come up with for a reason to cancel your bank account. If we don't come up with alternatives, guys, we're hanging ourselves and so we have to be forward thinkers. We have to put things together that are legitimate and that operate at a high level, just like you were talking about universities, but also have a mission of freedom. We respect your constitutional rights.

We will never punish you for exercising your constitutional rights. That's right. And that is that old glory bank.

We were seeing a lot of people in our comments right now because the thousands of you are just watching just on rumble or on other platforms. So hopefully, John, this helps out old glory bank a little bit. I know all of us here are now very interested because, I mean, these news stories somewhat only help sell this point that these situations are needed. So again, you can tell people that oldglorybank.com, right? Simple as that. Go on there, read about it, look into it. If you want to reserve an account, it's very simple. And we go live here in just a couple of weeks. So we're excited about this launch. And I think it's a really important thing to have, guys. I mean, if we don't have that, if you can't have autonomy with your own money, that's the ultimate back breaker that the government can put on us.

Just like what Justin Trudeau did, they can do it to us here. I appreciate it, old glory bank. Founder, there you go.

That you never thought and there you are. We appreciate it, John. Folks, again, you have to build up alternatives. And we're going to be talking about it in the next segment of the broadcast, so stay with us on that. We're going to be here for another 30 minutes if you're not getting the full hour of the broadcast. But now I don't have to say that as much because you can get the full hour of the broadcast on all these social media apps, especially our friends at Rumble.

That's right. We are available at ACLJ.org, Rumble, Facebook, YouTube. We all are there. You can find us even if they don't serve it. You can find us there.

But you can go to Rumble and guess what? We're probably like number one on their front page because that is what they do there. We appreciate all their support. We appreciate your support as well. It's worth the work of the ACLJ and everything that we do here.

Go to ACLJ.org. Make your donation today and it's effectively doubled. Again, with the matching challenge for the month of March, we'll be back with another half hour of Sekulow.

All right. Welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your calls, comments, 1-800-6430-110. You can go online, of course, and get your comments in as well. There's a lot to talk about today on the broadcast and kind of look back to at some of the interviews that you may have missed.

We're daily five days a week. We have great content, great guests on. So coming up today, we're going to talk about a Wall Street Post article detailing the conflict between the FBI and the DOJ. This slogan always makes me concerned because when the FBI, which is part of the DOJ, is in conflict, you know that the bad guys are not getting caught and the wrong people are being targeted. Yeah, I think we've talked about the issues that have gone on with the FBI.

It feels like I had nausea, but just they keep coming up. New stuff keeps arising. It feels like everything has become politicized and we talked about that on shows last week as well.

Each topic seems to become more and more political and less and less about getting the job done. Yeah, and then finally, Congresswoman Tenney will join us as well about the northern border, which is something we've only talked about once with her, but it's getting more and more attention. Yeah, we don't talk about the northern border too much because it just doesn't seem to be where the crisis is happening, but we know more and more that's starting to not be the case. Yeah, in fact, you've got border patrol agents have been offered the opportunity to go to the northern border and ICE officials because they're seeing an increase in people from Latin America flying to Canada.

Flying to Canada to go through our northern border because it's more porous. We encourage you, as always, to support the work of the ACLJ logo. We're in this matching challenge right now and we don't do this often on our shows, a few times a year, and even during the matching challenge, some shows we don't talk about as much, but we really want to let people know today. It's very important for us financially. It's so we can plan in the future and also we're able to go back and replenish the funds that have been spent on cases and the work that we're doing. Yeah, absolutely, and during the month of March is one of those pivotal moments for our year.

It's kind of wrapping up our first quarter. We're able to project what we're going to be doing for the rest of the year, how we're going to be able to allocate funds, whether that is to special projects, whether it has a lot of stuff you know about, a lot of stuff you don't know about, and we can't do it without your support. So all you need to do is visit ACLJ.org. You can make that tax deductible donation today. ACLJ.org, if you want to go directly, just slash donate, and any gift you give today will be matched. So what that means, and I've said it a bunch of times, but for people who don't understand, if you give $10 doesn't mean you're charged $20.

It means there's another group of donors who've already pledged to match any donation that comes in, and I know we push this hard during these months and you go, Logan, I've heard it and I understand it, but for a lot of people who are new, I want you to check out the work. And not only go to the website to support the work and to donate, but also go to the website and see the incredible content that's there. Great videos, great blogs, great news pieces that are put up each and every day by our team, our legal team, our media experts.

It's all available there on ACLJ.org and you can do that right now. You can also download the app. You can also make sure you're engaged by subscribing. There's thousands of you watching right now on all our different platforms and thousands of you listening.

But the thousands of watching right now, if you're not subscribed or following our channels, whether you're on rumble or YouTube, I encourage you to do that right now. It's simple. One click.

Just do that. Hit that thumbs up also. It helps get this word out there. When you have shows like ours, it's important for people to see it and without your support and without your engagement, that's a word you hear a lot now, it won't be seen.

It won't be featured. Let me take a call to Warren in Idaho quickly. Hey Warren. Hey guys, thanks for taking my call.

You know, my comment is as a regular listener and I call in and I'm donated when I can. I've had friends that have been like, I can't call in cause I don't want to be a target of the FBI. I don't want to be a target and have the IRF. It's the new world we live in, right? I mean, listen, it's why we don't give out your last name.

We're not trying to identify you publicly to the, to the, to the, to the world. But it's a real concern. People don't have that when they sign petitions, they get involved.

Yes. I mean, we've, we've seen that with petitions too, is that we'll get that question often. And, and, and listen, we handle those petitions carefully because we want to make sure that right we have to petition our government in the first amendment is, is utilized because when you don't utilize your rights, they suddenly start, even when the text is there, they suddenly start going away.

And they tried to do that even during COVID. You can't deliver petitions anymore, but we said, we'll develop a way we can know that we're going to be there to protect your constitutional rights at the ACLJ. That fundamentally, that is what we are dedicated to support the work of the ACLJ online at ACLJ.org. You can double the impact your donations.

We said matching challenge month, ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Welcome back to secular. Hey, I want to first start this segment by asking if you're watching right now on rumble, which there are thousands of you, because I want to thank our friends at rumble for putting us on the front page today, putting us featured, which they do most days. But today has been one of the ones that really highlighting there are thousands of you watching right now. I have a feeling not all of you are following this channel. Click that follow button. If you don't have the rumble app, you should get the app because then it'll notify you when we are live, which by the way is each and every weekday from whatever time you are in your time zones, we're usually right now.

So if it's noon Eastern, we're from noon Eastern to 1 PM if you follow it back, however you will. So I want you to do that for me. So again, if you could hit that, there's a thumbs up and then there's a button that says, follow, do that. It's my last pitch for that right now.

But when there's so many new people watching, I just want to encourage people to do that. Well, we're going to move a little bit off of Lori Lightfoot for those who are on hold. We are going to take those calls a little bit later.

I know some of you called in from Chicago. I do want to get to you, but we have to move on a little bit to some hypocrisy that's happening and some kind of breaking news that's happening. Right. So this just came out of the Washington Post this morning. It's an exclusive report, they say, and they've talked to people familiar with the matter. And this goes back to the raid of Mar-a-Lago back on August 8th of last year. So what happened is that we all thought that this was the government going in in lockstep, but it turns out the FBI that was conducting a lot of the on the groundwork were at odds with the prosecutors at the Department of Justice.

Yeah. So to clarify, this was about the raid of Mar-a-Lago and there were people within our government, as much as we give them grief sometimes, who were pushing back. So the prosecutors were urging the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property, but two senior FBI officials who were in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump's permission to search his property.

The prosecutors, as we know, ultimately prevailed. But starting as early as May, agents in the Washington Field Office were trying to slow the probe. Some even wanted to drop the criminal investigation side of the classified documents issue. And it shows that there was conflict within the broader Department of Justice to me that the agents that were going to have to conduct a lot of this work understood the scrutiny that was going to come under it. And they wanted to negotiate to go in, much like the FBI did with our current President, President Biden, when they went into his home.

They wanted to negotiate this search, something they had already done prior instead of a surprise raid, kick in the door and spend 12 hours there working. Yeah, Andy, what's your reaction to this? Andy O'Connell joining us, senior counsel here at the ACLJ. You've been through a lot of these kind of events and these kind of prosecutions.

Is this common to have this kind of debate back and forth? And I just want to get your initial thoughts. Well, you know, in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta, where I served as chief of the criminal division for five years, we never had a dispute between the FBI and the Department of Justice. That was me, the U.S. Attorney, with regard to how we were going to proceed because the FBI did what the Assistant U.S. Attorney said. The FBI would come. They would propose a search warrant.

We would say no, see if you can voluntarily get the documents, try to work something out. But this shows that there was really a struggle going on in the Department of Justice with the Washington Field Office and main justice as to how they were going to proceed against President Trump, whether they were going to get a search warrant, which they ultimately did, or they were going to work this out amicably, as they apparently did without a problem with President Biden. And so the ultimate authority is the attorney general of the United States.

Merrick Garland makes a decision. We're going to go in. We're going to go to the magistrate. We're going to get a warrant. We're going to knock the doors down.

We're going to do a 12-hour search of this place. No reason to do that. This was the former President of the United States. The documents had been in discussion with the archives about what they were going to keep and what they were going to give.

So there was no reason to do this. And we would, as a prosecutor, I would never have authorized the FBI to take such ridiculously extreme and aggressive action. And with President Biden, of course, he found documents in his Corvette's garage. He found them here. He found them there. No one went in with a search warrant. Everyone said, let's work it out.

We'll come in voluntarily. He had people who did not have clearance looking at documents. So yes, the Justice Department treated Biden and Trump in a grotesquely, in my view, different fashion. Well, and Andy, that's part of the concern we've had here for quite some time is the politicization of the Department of Justice. And that carries over into the FBI as well. It does seem, as we've said many times around here, that the line agents, people that have to go do the work, you can't always blame them for the leaders' choices when it comes to how politics shakes out. Does it look like here that almost has some confirmation of what we've been concerned about, that when the field agents want to do the right thing and do things properly as to not draw undue scrutiny over their agency, they're being overruled by a politicized bureau up in D.C.?

Yes. Look, there's no question in my mind that the Department of Justice is now a political arm of the Democratic Biden administration. And since Merrick Garland has been attorney general is very much so, I find that repugnant and disgusting. We pro-domina justitia sequitur, that's Latin for they who pursue, and that's the motto of the Justice Department, to pursue justice for the homeland. Griffin Bell was attorney general when I was in the U.S. Attorney's Office, okay?

A distinguished jurist, he ran the Department of Justice in an even-handed manner. We were never politicized. We were never told to pursue things for political purposes. We never felt that.

That's not the same today, Will. It does feel like that has changed, and maybe it is. I always thought maybe it's just our perception of the way media is being run, but it does feel that these departments that were kind of above reproach when it comes to even the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Justice, even though they were controlled somewhat by the presidency, they didn't have this sort of stink or this stigma about them that felt like political operatives.

No, and stink is a good word because that's exactly what it is. When we went to the Justice Department, we went there knowing that this was a pristine agency that did not have any political motive, did not have a political agenda, did not operate on politics, operated on what are the facts and what should we do in a proper fashion for justice to be done. That cannot be said to be the case under Merrick Garland and the current FBI. I see that every day when I look at what goes on at the Department of Justice, and it's an embarrassment. And then I guess the next step is trying to figure out what we can do and what can be done with this information, and if anything can be done, but at least we're bringing it to light.

People are finding out really what's going on in these situations, and somewhat it actually gives me a little bit of hope that there are people inside these departments going, we have gone too far. Well, and what we do know is, as we like to do here at the ACLJ, is take action. We had FOIA requests that went out immediately when they found the classified documents at President Biden's home and at his office, and we were very early in that.

We're already starting to get document production on that, and that's one of the key ways we can hold an administration accountable when the Congress isn't fully controlled by the conservatives. So we here at ACLJ take action. Our lawyers send FOIA requests.

We got expedited review of that FOIA request, and we're already getting document production to find out the differences, not just from the Department of Justice, but how these administrations between the archives and other branches were talking about how to pursue this. And we encourage you, as always, to support the work of the ACLJ logo. We're in this matching challenge right now, and we don't do this often on our shows, a few times a year, and even during the matching challenge, some shows we don't talk about it as much, but we really want to let people know today. It's very important for us financially. It's so we can plan in the future, and also we're able to go back and replenish the funds that have been spent on cases and the work that we're doing. Yeah, absolutely, and during the month of March is one of those pivotal moments for our year.

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Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. You know, my comment is, as a regular listener, and I call in and have donated when I can.

Thank you. I've had friends that have been like, I can't call in because I don't want to be a target of the FBI. I don't want to be a target and have the IRS. It's the new world we live in, right? I mean, listen, it's why we don't give out your last name.

We're not trying to identify you publicly to the world. But it's a real concern. People don't have that when they sign petitions and get involved.

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You can double the impactor donations. We said matching challenge month ACLJ.org. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We're joined now by a great friend of the broadcast, a good friend of the American Center for Law and Justice as well, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, who represents New York's 24th congressional district. And that's key to the first part of our discussion with Congresswoman Tenney because, Congresswoman, we have heard about a surge of illegal immigration at the northern border.

I just want to make sure it's clear for everybody. And you, along with your colleagues, because you represent Americans who live on and near that border, you've launched a northern border security caucus. It's almost shocking to me that this is necessary, but tell people about what's going on.

Well, thank you for having me on and thank you for highlighting this. And while everybody's focused on the southern border, you can go back to my interviews even years ago where I say, don't forget there's a northern border and we have issues on this border. And what's happened is the overstressed situation on our border agents in the southern border because of the failure of the Biden administration and Secretary Mayorkas to enforce the law to do the common sense things that we did under the Trump administration continues to cause this cartel control of the border, whether it's trafficking drugs, human trafficking, the disasters we're seeing throughout our country. And we've diverted so many of our northern border agents who control a huge swath of land across all the way across, including a big part of New York, have been diverted to the southern border to try to help deal with the mass immigration there. We now see in the northern border of New York, and I'm just referring to the Swanton sector, is actually over 800% increased since Biden took office. So this is a major problem up in the New York region, and we don't have the border agents to handle it. We also have a state reservation, a Native American reservation on that border with Canada that sort of crosses the border. And that's controlled by our New York governor, mostly.

There's some arrangements that have been in place, but for decades, it's been a problem. So people in New York see this porous border upstate. We've heard from our sheriffs around the northern New York region and down into my district that they have seized all kinds of cars with fentanyl that have come from the northern border. These people are able to get to New York City and other areas where they meet up with their cartel friends and distribute this dangerous fentanyl and other illicit drugs all around our country, the human traffic. We've heard about gun running.

It used to be illegal cigarettes until the Democrats made them legal and really hurt our other cigarette manufacturers against them. So this has just been an area that has plagued New York and is even worse now because we don't have border agents who can focus their time on this really important issue. You know, the border issues are significant around the country. And you're right, the northern border has not gotten the attention. We've talked about it here. We've talked about it with you before.

It's not gotten the attention that it needs. I want to turn, though, attention for a moment, if I can, Congresswoman, and that is you are very concerned. You led a group of members of Congress very concerned about what's going on with the Iranian Magils, the parliament there, who have signed in late last year an open statement calling for the Islamic Republic of Iran's government and judiciary to, quote, show no mercy towards protesters and compared them to ISIS terrorists.

Yeah, this is something that's devastating. I'm actually bipartisan. Can you believe it? I teamed up Marco Rubio and of all people, Katie Porter, Senator Cardin and numerous others.

We teamed up. I led the letter with Marco Rubio and called for our our director of national intelligence to look into this. How many of these members of the Iranian parliament who, by the way, showed no mercy to peaceful protesters all across Iran getting getting executed, tortured, imprisoned for peaceful protests, were standing up to a brutal regime that is tyrannical. And yet their family members is the parliamentary family members are able to come to the United States.

They're able to get jobs, earn American dollars, go to school, learn at American universities and buy land in America. And there's nothing being done by the Biden administration. The specless administration continues to ignore this unique opportunity, this once in a lifetime opportunity where we have a regime that is weakened, where we if we could exhibit strength and keep on the the the pressure campaign that was put in place by President Trump, enforced by Secretary Pompeo with what we were doing with Iran. But we have these people pleading for help. This is not 2011 when people are seeking reforms. These people are seeking democracy. They're seeking peace. This is not 2011 when people are seeking peace. They're seeking freedom and they're seeking a chance to turn this regime by the people against the regime that's been in place since 1977 79 when the Shah was overturned.

You know, I want to go back to this, too. It's nice to hear there's some bipartisan work on Iran, because the human rights abuses are so egregious. The their their military actions, the attempt to get nuclear weapons, the rhetoric that they use against the United States and our ally Israel, the calling for the destruction of of our country, of the state of Israel as well as our country. And that it shouldn't be a partisan issue to oppose this Iranian regime. And it seems like, well, there may be some of that pushback that goes on from the executive branch that Congress and the legislative branch is waking up to the fact that we we need to unite around this issue.

Oh, absolutely. And it's amazing that the Biden administration remains very quiet on this whole issue. It's like, oh, great, there's Iranian protesters.

That's nice. You know, much the way the Biden minister or the Obama administration looked at it. And I don't know, you know, Joe's memory is not that great.

And I wonder if he thinks this is just a replay of 2011. I think a lot of Iranian experts and people will tell you that watch the Middle East. This is the unique opportunity. This is different. These are people seeking a new opportunity. They're seeking a new government on their own through protests, dangerously putting themselves in harm's way, whether they're on an execution list. I mean, this regime is executing people.

This government is supporting the ultimate, as you said, the ultimate penalty of killing and executing human beings who are simply asking for freedom for a chance to have a voice in their government. And where's Joe Biden? Joe Biden is busy wandering around, you know, not really dealing with this issue.

Who knows what he is criticizing poor women who have lost their children to fentanyl overdoses and mocking them and laughing at them. I mean, this is really incredible that we're seeing this. And the other interesting thing is look at the bipartisan support, because guess what? The Iranians around the world, the diaspora who have gone other places have done exceedingly well, because this is a country that is known for its historic achievements and contributions to humankind for centuries. The Persian culture, a very educated part of the world that has been ravaged and destroyed by this regime, by this, you know, religious tyranny that we have there, and they're causing disruption and violence in the Middle East, the biggest sponsor of terrorism. You know, the biggest problem that Israel faces, our partner in the Middle East.

Imagine a free and democratic Iran could change actually the world, because peace in the Middle East would really change the balance of power. You're right, Congressman, we appreciate you being on. Thank you so much for all you're doing for your constituents, but also for all of us around the country.

We appreciate it so much. Folks, again, your support for the ACLJ makes such a significant difference, and we're in a matching challenge campaign. It means this, any amount you donate, we get a matching gift for. It's that straightforward. If you donate $250 today via Facebook, great, that's matched. That means we got $500. Many of you have done it by also on Rumble and our other social media apps and also by radio.

ACLJ.org for that, ACLJ.org for the matching challenge campaign. We've got a lot more to talk about on tomorrow's broadcast. We couldn't get to a lot of it today because there's so much going on. We'll talk to you then.