IRS Removed ‘Entire Investigative Team’ from Hunter Biden Case

This is Logan Sekulow. We've got some news.

The IRS has removed the entire investigative team from the Hunter Biden case, 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, Logan Sekulow.

Welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. I've got Will Haynes in the studio, executive producer, and I'm here to take you through the next hour. We've got a lot to cover later in the show. We've got Rick Grenell joining us, but we're going to start things off with a bit of news that came out about the Hunter Biden investigative team. You may have heard about all of this.

He's got a lot of things going on, Will. The IRS all of a sudden seems to have dismissed the entire team representing the Hunter Biden case. The SEC has sent up some red flags amongst the media going, well, what could this be? Could it be that they don't trust this team?

Could it be maybe more nefarious in the sense of there's not even a clear case that this team will return? It's just all of a sudden that there is a dismissed team carrying out their banker's boxes at the IRS. So if we remember last month, there was an attorney for this whistleblower approached Senator Grassley and Representative Comer, Chairman Comer of the Oversight Committee, saying that he had a whistleblower that wants to come forward to make declarations to Congress. They have statutes in place which protect whistleblowers from retaliation and allow them to go to Congress in their oversight role and make disclosures without fear of breaking the law or retribution from the agency that they're trying to blow the whistle on.

So that happened last month. We get a letter from the attorney representing this whistleblower that goes to chairman of both Senate and House committees and both Democrats and Republicans. And it says, Dear chairs and ranking members today, the IRS Internal Revenue Service Criminal Supervisory Special Agent we represent was informed that he and his entire team are being removed from the ongoing and sensitive investigation of the high profile controversial subject about which our client sought to make whistleblower disclosures to Congress.

He was informed the change was at the request of the Department of Justice. All right, that's all we need to stop and talk about for a minute here because we know the title and everything we said IRS but is also is not necessarily just from the IRS. It is coming from higher up than the IRS coming from the Department of Justice already showing their true colors here and again we have this letter from this, this group and the whistleblower. That's why it's important to have these whistleblower laws important to have situations where people can come forward when they see sort of unclear nefarious acts potentially happen. One of the other concerns here is that this team had been working on this case for years when there's been all these news reports that an indictment may be imminent against Hunter Biden and all of this chatter in the media. Then all of a sudden this team is just removed at the request of the DOJ without explanation. There's a lot of smoke here seems odd. I'd like to hear from you.

Maybe you got some of those theories. Give the phone screener a bit of a hard time today. So give us a call 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. I would love to hear from you about this. Your thoughts on this. Do you think they're maybe removing it because I don't know they don't trust this team.

We need to get a better more straight and narrow team. Are they going to really judge things correctly or do you think they're doing it to try to wrap up any of these allegations heading into an election cycle that has just kicked off over the last couple weeks. It's time for you to call in 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Also check out all the amazing work at the ACLJ. We're going to go through a lot of that coming up here including that Las Vegas case about the student being forced to read that monologue. What we're calling a pornographic monologue but really just incredibly vulgar monologue by their teachers and the parent who was silenced by the school board for even trying to repeat it because it was deemed too offensive to be read in public. That's going on in your kids classrooms. We're talking about that as well as more.

We got Rick Rinnell joining us a little bit later in the show. Alright again I encourage you go to ACLJ.org support the work of the ACLJ. You can make a donation today.

We really would appreciate it but also check out all the incredible free content we provide at ACLJ.org. Coming up phone lines are jammed right now. I feel for the phone screener. I do.

See what he has to say. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. We're going to try to get to as many of your calls as we absolutely can. As you can imagine they're jammed right now so keep trying.

Some of these won't make it on. Just trust me. I know how this works. So there'll be some open lines here soon but I appreciate everyone who's calling in. Again continuing this conversation about the Hunter Biden investigative team being removed from the IRS by the direction or the suggestion of the Department of Justice. We do have a bite well we want to play so you can give a little bit more context not just us saying this.

Why don't you set this up for us. Right so this bite comes about a week after the first disclosure that this whistleblower was wanting to come forward and talk to Congress and remember back then the attorney said some of the things that the whistleblower wants to talk about he can't even talk to me his attorney about. He can talk to Congress through the appropriate whistleblower channels but he's wanting to do this by the book on the up and up. He doesn't want to violate any of the strict laws that the IRS has in place over taxpayer privacy even though we've seen all those kind of go out the window when they leaked to ProPublica people's private tax returns.

That's a different story but here this employee of the IRS is trying to do the right thing and do it appropriately. About a week later Daniel Warfel who is the new commissioner of the IRS he's the same one that told us that you know the auditors are only going to be armed with calculators. He's before the Ways and Means Committee. This is the congressional committee which has oversight of our tax laws. So this is the appropriate place for him to be questioned and Representative Jason Smith from Missouri asked specifically about if this whistleblower will feel okay and be able to make these disclosures without fear of retaliation which is the law by the way and you'll hear how the commissioner response.

Let's go ahead and play bite one. Just this last week we were we received outreach from an IRS whistleblower requesting the committee look into concerns the individual has about allegations of misconduct. So can you commit that there will be no retaliation against that whistleblower? Mr. Chairman while I can't comment on a specific case I can say without any hesitation there will be no retaliation for anyone making an allegation or a call to a whistleblower hotline. The attorney for the whistleblower has a different view. He says this move is clearly retaliatory and may also constitute obstruction of a congressional inquiry. The attorney for this whistleblower is very upset and rightly so about this team being replaced without notice at the request of the DOJ. So Merrick Garland or one of his probably near the top people had to make this call. They're like well instead of the whistleblower getting removed let's just pull everybody. They know which of the team members it specifically was so let's just get rid of everyone.

Someone within that whole division. Alright hey I want to go to the phones already. Let's go to Jerry who's calling in Arizona. On line one Jerry I'll wait for you I'll tell you.

You're on the air. About what you had last week about nobody can get Biden out of office because he has so much power. Well I'm 90 miles from the southern border over here and didn't he take an oath to protect this country? Yeah I mean that's interesting comment Jerry and hey phone lines have opened up because Jerry was on 1-800-684-3110. I think a lot of people have concern about that. You're seeing there the polls that are coming out that you have a Trump versus Biden matchup and a lot of times Trump is winning. That doesn't usually happen this early out so it's pretty interesting to see that and I think when people have these moments where the corruption is kind of in your face it's hard to turn a blind eye to it. Well and what this whistleblower wanted to bring forward to Congress and is still attempting to is still going through the proper channels to get whistleblower protection to get this designation so that he can bring these materials over to Congress. His client has detailed examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected. This whistleblower also doesn't just want to go to Republicans.

The outreach is to both Democrats and Republicans. This is a career person who is doing their job as a enforcer of tax law because this is within the IRS from a non-political, non-partisan standpoint. And what's making career politicians irate and you see this even with former FBI agents that start going to the media and like here's why I left. You start to force the good actors that still remain at some of these bureaucracies like the IRS, like the FBI.

Instead of them saying I'm going to keep doing my job appropriately, the political pressure from the Biden administration, from the liberal elites that are now politically appointed and controlling these agencies, the pressure is so great to not do things by the book, to follow law and order that they end up just giving up. Yeah, they bail or they get removed. That's what's happened to this situation. They get removed. Now we will see how this all shakes out. What will happen? Will people be held accountable?

Sadly right now does it feel that way? It doesn't. You talk about sort of the double speak and I know that was some of the comments from the caller as well. It's not unlike the Democrats to spew some of the same words that Republicans use if they're not the ones in power. And it feels like that's what happens is the rules only apply to those in power.

And as soon as it switches then it's oh I can't believe it. I don't know if you saw there was a clip from Russell Brand that was posted. Tulsi Gabbard, one of our commentators, she posted a bit that they kind of laid out every election integrity claim that the Democrats made in 2016. And then how egregious they were at just the idea of questioning, particularly on the voting machines. And how egregious they were and how upset they were that this happened again in 2020.

How easily those machines can be manipulated or hacked. Yeah, from Kamala Harris, from big names, the top man, Taylor Clinton, Amy Klobuchar. Big name senators as well like Klobuchar.

A lot of people. And it was interesting because it is that whole concept of it only applies to you when you're in power. It doesn't apply when you're out of power. Now all of a sudden things can be manipulated this way. And it feels that way in these situations where they talk a lot about Trump and the way he handled pardons or the way he handled any kind of situations. Well, this is the President's son and we're seeing what's happening right in front of our eyes.

And really there's not a whole lot being done about it. But we will keep you updated on it. We're going to continue the conversation about it as well.

Later on in the show we're going to be joined by Rick Grenell. In the next segment we're going to be talking about, we're going to talk a lot about what's going on in Turkey with Erdogan. And I know you maybe have heard about the election shakeup happening there.

And speaking of shakeups, something we'll tease for a little bit later in the show as this is developing as we're live. If you're a consumer of conservative media, which I assume if you're listening and watching this you probably are, there's some big news coming out of Fox News. You know they've had some shakeups there with Tucker Carlson. You've seen shakeups over at CNN. As everyone starts to really prepare, just like the IRS and the DOJ are, for the upcoming 2024 election. What's that going to look like from a media landscape point of view?

We've got some experts on that. We're going to talk about that coming up a little bit later because you may have heard the rumblings of a big primetime shakeup at Fox News. All of that is coming out right now.

We'll get to that a little bit later. And what that looks like is some familiar faces being moved in some interesting time. You did bring up that statement about the doublespeak that comes out of the left and how what they say is protected speech and when conservatives say it, it's misinformation or it's inciting something. So this was an interesting quote that came up today because currently, today, James Clapper is being interviewed by members of Congress in a closed-door session much like Mike Morell was. And these same interviews and depositions is where we found out that Mike Morell was prompted by now Secretary of State Antony Blinken to write this letter about how the Hunter Biden laptop had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. And then Biden was able to use that in a debate and gotcha moment and therefore no one can believe it because it's disinformation from Russia. So James Clapper is being interviewed today and an attorney for seven other signers of that letter who will be questioned by Congress at some point had this quote in the New York Times. And it says, the Congress is wasting its time and our money by investigating the First Amendment rights of private citizens. One, these were all former intelligence officers, many of whom still had high-level security clearances at this time. It's a little rich to say that they are just private citizens.

However, technically, yes, they weren't in the government at the time. But when they push a letter to try to affect an election and try to use the gravitas of their credentials to push a narrative that wasn't true, that was a lie to get someone elected, that is considered by the left First Amendment rights that should not be questioned or looked at. If conservatives raise irregularities in an election, including this letter itself, an irregularity, or the validity of lockdowns or keeping kids out of school, anything, if we question it, disinformation, you're against democracy, you're a threat to democracy. Just the double speak is so rich. I feel like you're saying that to me when you say it.

It kind of freaks me out. You're like, Logan, you're a threat to democracy. Well, you've told me that I'm a threat to democracy several times and I take offense to it. We say that to each other at the end of every work day. Always. Yeah, so hey, guess what? Some of these calls didn't make it through the phone screen process. Maybe a lot of them. Or we dropped all of them. I'm not sure what happened here.

We lost some calls. So you know what? This is the time. I'm going to ask you one more time. How do you feel about this?

And how do you feel about that Las Vegas case? We're going to talk about the teacher forcing a student to read a graphic sexual monologue to 15-year-olds reading this to each other. I mean, you can't even imagine what's in it.

And then when the teacher or when the parent goes up to read it to the school board, she gets censored because it's too dirty. You can't make this stuff up. Give us a call right now.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on what's going on worldwide. 1-800-684-3110. Welcome back to Sekulow. If you were watching on our social media platforms on Rumble or YouTube, you just saw a video piece that was just put up about, we're going to play it again for those who are just listening right now, about what's going on in the state of Nevada.

Clark County, Las Vegas area. Student comes in, part of a drama team, drama department school. Pull random monologues out of a hat. Her monologue comes back to be a very vulgar and obscene monologue. One that makes her uncomfortable, but is still forced to perform it.

One that we can't even say on the air and you can find it at ACLJ.org. We put it there. So you have a place, a point of reference and look, it's pretty intense. I encourage you to read it. We've edited some of it to be able to hear it. However, parent goes up to the school board meeting, brings it up and says, Hey, my kid was forced to read this and I'm going to read it to you. She starts, she gets about 20 seconds in, really into like the first sentence or two. There's chaos in the school board meeting and they tell her, Hey, we don't use obscenities and vulgarities essentially here.

And she rightfully responds, well, how would you feel if this was your daughter, if I can't even read it here? So that's opened up a whole case and we're now representing that family. And that's the work of the ACLJ.

It goes from the biggest of cases, the biggest of clients that you can imagine. World stage international criminal courts, the Supreme court of the United States, or we go down to your local school board at Clark County in the Las Vegas area of Nevada. And we represent a single student because we know that single student represents so many of you.

She's just brave enough and her family's brave enough to stand up and take a stand. And I'm sure there's other of you out there, maybe in that area that want to get involved in this. So I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. Maybe you have a legal issue like this. If it's within our scope, we take these cases at absolutely no cost, no cost to you. We can only do that with people who support and donate and we appreciate everyone who does that.

So if you have that, go to ACLJ.org slash help, but I'm not play this. This is why it's important. We have our lawyers. We have our, our media team, our PR team who take these, you know, let's say we put this into a press release and we blasted everywhere. And there are stations across the country that decided to pick this up. Their websites across the country decided to pick it up. One of which is an affiliate out of Nevada, NBC affiliate who decided to run this last night. So I think it's important for you to take a look at some of the ACLJ action in work.

Take a look. Las Vegas parents are suing CCSD over an assignment where they say their 15 year old daughter was required to read an expletive lace monologue. Now you may remember in May when the student's mom brought concerns to the board of trustees, that mother was reading the monologue, which included several expletives when her mic went dead.

This will be horrifying for me to read to you, but that will give you perspective on how she must have felt when her teacher required her to memorize this and to act it out in front of her entire class. I don't love you. It's not you. It's just I don't like your dick or any dick in that case.

I cheated, Joe. I ask you simply, this is a public meeting. I asked for decorum. If you don't want me to read it to you, what was that like for my 15 year old daughter to have to memorize pornographic material? To read content that's so bad that the school board cuts her off, it kills the mic and says, we can't read that here.

That's obscene or profane. But it's OK for the 15 year old to have to read that in front of her peers for a grade is absolutely outrageous. This lawsuit continues. The Evans family claims the district did not properly train or supervise the teachers and violated their daughter's freedom of speech after hearing a hearing in federal court. They modified the complaint and a national organization is joining the family's fight and bringing more attention to the issue. What they've endured, what they've gone through for this girl is unbelievable. Now, ACLJ's legal team is helping represent the Evans family, whose story has received national attention.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects your right to speak or to not speak at all. And in this particular context, at the hands of state school officials, that's what they did. They made her read something. Small segment of that piece actually ran on CBS to clarify that to make sure I get that facts straight for you. Thanks to CBS for covering it. Even if they're covering it sort of an unbiased way, at least it's getting national and local coverage.

A lot of people are talking about this, but will it also came up some interesting findings that came up from the from the beginnings of this court case. Right. And so that's sometimes what you get when you get the local affiliate as they go back and they do some of the they report the other side. What they're saying. I want to give you a heads up. You just saw a very small bit of what is in there.

So you know what is said and you can see the full thing at ACLJ.org. Imagine it getting like 20 times worse because that's what happens as it goes on. But you've seen the first minute or so. It's a 15 year old having to say it. 15 year old girl. Well, go ahead.

Yeah. So attorneys representing the school district last year argued in federal court when this was first brought before we were a part of the case. And said that the student was not forced to adopt any beliefs from the monologue. So it's OK that she has to say it. She doesn't have to believe this act. It's just saying words. Words can never hurt you.

I think that's an old adage that children would say. But also in previous documents requesting the dismissal of the case, the district said, in part, it cannot be plausibly stated that a performance of the student drafted monologue could have been reasonably expected to traumatize the performer. So when you have a 15 year old that maybe at the time that she's being told by her teacher, you have to read this.

Here's the assignment. Doesn't immediately stand up and say, I can't read this, but feels pressure from her teacher. We know from the other allegations in the lawsuit that there was a big pressure put on this child after after this entire thing went down.

But then goes home, tells her parents that I'm has the wrestling internally of do I bring this forward and do I not for a 15 year old about something they find offensive? And then the school district almost victim shaming in court this 15 year old student by saying it cannot be plausibly stated that a performance of the student drafted monologue could have been reasonably expected to traumatize the performer. I don't think they get to make that call now.

What a liberal way to say it. Great way to actually say, oh, they don't get to decide whether it could be scarring to a student to have to read explicit material to their classmates. Even if that student decided, I want to do this, I want to do. Do you not think the parent should have an option to say, I don't think so. And this was after the teacher claimed that she had edited it and made it a little cleaner. Go read it yourself. Imagine how much worse it could be.

You can find that at aclj.org. We got a lot of calls coming in on the Hunter Biden situation. Let's take one of those real quick. Let's go to Tyler in Georgia real quick.

Line two. We're going to get to the rest of you guys a little bit later. Hello. Sorry, buddy.

Didn't make it on the air. I hate it for you, but it is what is. We got a minute until we go.

You do love doing the call right when there's about a minute 30 left. It's your favorite go to. Yeah, why not?

I don't know. I like to wait. I like a little bit more buffer.

I like a little bit more buffer personally. He said hello. So don't call back. Hey, I appreciate you guys listening. If you are joining us right now, we have another half hour coming up. Rick Grenell's coming up in just about three or four minutes.

So you want to stay tuned for that. We're going to talk about the Fox News shakeup. It's breaking as we've been on the air and we're going to continue discussion about the Hunter Joe Biden situation and maybe some new life news coming up. We're going to make this half hour real fun. If you don't get us on your local station because you're listening on Terrestrial Radio. Join us right now on aclj.org on Rumble or on YouTube or on Facebook.

We are there live for the full hour. Archive later on on all those outlets, as well as all of your favorite podcast app. Search for Sekulow. You'll find us there again if this is where we lose you.

Support the work of the ACLJ at aclj.org. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow for those of you just joining us.

Me and Will Haynes, executive producer of Sekulow in studio today. We're talking about a multitude of topics. The number one you may have seen from the push notification or however you got it is this situation with the IRS removing the entire investigative team of who?

Hunter Biden, of course. And we're taking calls on that at the end of this show. So the back half, last segment of the show, we're going to take as many calls as we can.

Great time to get line 1-800-684-3110. And we're going to discuss that again a bit more. If you want to know more later on, you can go back and listen to earlier part of this broadcast. But we're going to break that down more.

Who it came from, why the DOJ was involved. We'll discuss that a little bit later. But in the next segment, we're going to be joined by Rick Grenell. And he wants to talk about what's going on internationally. Because that's a lot of times what he does, because that's what his expertise is at. Former ambassador to Germany, former director of national security. Really has a ton of knowledge on all of these topics. But he wants to talk a little about the Turkey election and why it's important.

And maybe, Will, before we get to that segment, you can give us a little bit of a briefing for those who aren't paying attention to what's going on on the global scale. That's right. So President Erdogan of Turkey has been in power there for 20 years. He's elected, however, has a very authoritarian strongman position and role within Turkey.

And like I said, 20 years is not, we don't see that here in the United States. We've got term limits at eight. So he was forced into a runoff. So essentially, the candidates that were running for President just earlier, it was on Sunday of this week. They didn't hit the 50 percent threshold to just win outright.

So the top two candidates are going to a runoff on May 28th. The voter turnout in this election was 88.92 percent. So almost everyone who can vote in Turkey did vote. If we had those numbers here, it'd be a lot different.

It would be, right. So he did have the plurality. He claims he's ahead by about 2.6 million votes over his rival. So the Erdogan camp is clearly hoping they can pull off the victory here. But we're going to talk to Rick because there's implications not just within that region of the world, but they're a NATO ally who has decided to side themselves very closely with Russia.

So kind of against the interest of NATO. They also, as we know personally here at the ACLJ, are cracked down on Christians very harshly. Pastor Brunson was a missionary in Turkey that was in prison for a long time under false pretenses.

And we were able to secure his release under the Trump administration as we fought and advocated for Pastor Brunson. But we know a lot about the Turkish government and the way that they work and sometimes are dysfunctional and some of the corruption that goes on in Turkey as well. So I want to get Rick's thoughts on that as well as what it means if there could be reforms if Erdogan does win or if there's a surprise victory by an outsider and what that could mean and what he knows about this outsider as well.

You actually think of these regimes, you almost put a dictatorship label on them. And if there is a situation, look, it'd be good for the nation, for Turkey, if they can have an election that goes calmly, if you want to say. In my head, it's not even possible for Erdogan to lose.

So if Erdogan loses, leaves amicably, doesn't end up, sad to say, that's dead in the streets, which is what seems to happen in a lot of these countries, that's some interesting movement. We're going to talk about that with Rick Grenell joining us in the next segment. This would be a great time to get in line to call 1-800-684-3110 because we're going to have Rick. And then right after Rick, we're going to be taking all your calls. We're also going to be talking about the Fox News shakeup you may have heard. It's breaking right now. Brand new primetime lineup is coming to Fox News and new primetime hosts over at CNN, if you care.

I don't know if you do. We're going to talk about that coming up in the final segment of the broadcast because I find it pretty interesting. Someone who's been a part of the media for a long time to see these moves, what they mean and what they mean for a 2024 election season. Talk about that.

Two seconds. Next segment, Rick Grenell, we're going to talk Turkey, talk what it means on the international scale, what it means for the media. Then we're going to talk about that media shakeup there at the end of the broadcast. We're going to take your calls at 1-800-684-3110.

Check out all the great work, as always, at ACLJ.org. While you're at it, follow us on social media. You can follow me at Logan Sekulow on all the favorites. You can find me there.

We'll be back in just a minute. Welcome back to Sekulow. We're now joined by Rick Grenell, senior advisor for national security and foreign policy. We just broke down, Rick, all of what's happening in Turkey and maybe a move that was kind of unexpected in some ways for a lot of us that made me think of Turkey differently. Or maybe this is a good move, because in my last 20 years, I didn't really think a President Erdogan could not be a thing.

It just felt like that was a foregone conclusion. But now we're seeing it being pushed to a runoff in Turkey. I was curious, from your point of view, obviously, this is your expertise. One, could he actually be defeated, and what does this mean on a global scale? Well, first of all, I've written a piece on the elections in Turkey for the California Globe. I think it's important that we understand that the U.S. media and much of the Western media is trying, once again, to make everything way too simple. And they're trying to make one villain and one angel out of the election in Turkey. And let's be clear, I understand that Erdogan is not a perfect person and that he's got his flaws and certainly has not been a good, consistent NATO ally. We want him to be better, but this is an extremely complicated election. Erdogan controls the media in Turkey, much like Joe Biden and the Democrats control the media in America. We can't be waving our finger about election interference and fraud when our Secretary of State, literally three weeks before our own election, helped manipulate the election through a phony, fake letter about Hunter Biden's laptop. I'll also say this, is that KK, who is the opposition candidate in Turkey, has been reaching out to the Chinese and making clear that he wants to have an expanded relationship with the Chinese.

This is not all black and white. I can't imagine that after this first round of the election where Erdogan won 49.1% of the vote, that in the runoff, he doesn't win. The opposition candidate KK, as he's called, is running around 45%. It's an uphill battle for the opposition and I think that Erdogan will probably pull it out. Rick, you mentioned that the opposition candidate was looking to strengthen ties with the Chinese. We know that Erdogan has strong ties with Russia and has been on the Russian side as far as the war in Ukraine goes, even though they are a NATO ally. My question here is, does that speak more to the failure of leadership of the Biden administration that we're not talking about one candidate that wants to be closer to the United States and one candidate that wants to be closer to our adversaries. Instead, it's one candidate wants to go with one adversary and the other wants to go with a different adversary. It's as though our NATO ally is picking between two adversaries of who they want to strengthen their ties with. Look, this is a complicated issue and I can't make it black and white. And so, for the sake of today's discussion, I'm sure that there's going to be a whole bunch of people that attack me by saying, he's pro-Erdogan, he's pro-Erdogan, which I'm not.

I'm trying to call balls and strikes, but let's be clear about one thing. Erdogan has stood up to Putin. He is one guy that has been able to say to Putin, no, you're not going to do this or that. He's standing up for Turkey. Look, I don't like every policy that Erdogan puts forward. He's fighting for Turkey. He's moving this tradition of being a secularist away and he's moving it towards really too much of a religious context when it comes to the Turkish government. I think Ataturk would be horrified at some of the things that Erdogan is doing. Erdogan has been highly anti-Israel, so that's problematic.

But it's not black and white. We have to understand that Turkey has been a member of NATO since 1952. If the people of Turkey choose Erdogan, then we have to work with him.

It's not all pretty. And I don't like the fact that the U.S. Ambassador, Jeff Flake, former senator from Arizona, was meeting with the opposition too soon before an election.

I don't like that. I think that we should deal with the government that the people of Turkey or any other country elect. We should not be weighing in and trying to manipulate elections. We have our own problems with our elections. And we're in no position to be moralizing about clean and fair elections anymore.

I mean, Secretary of State Blinken has ruined that for us. It does seem like that. We are very quick, especially in the media standpoint, to pick a hero and a villain, as you said. To go, here's the good guy, here's the bad guy.

Everyone believe it. Until inevitably something comes out and we're like, oh, it's not as clean cut as you'd like it to be. It's not unlike the situation in Ukraine where it's like it's not as clean as it was made out to be in the initial thoughts of this is the good, this is the bad. It gets a little foggy whenever you're dealing with other countries, by the way, that don't exactly hold up your same values or your same morals. And we deal with that even with our own space. You also have a situation in Turkey where Erdogan has a pretty decent amount of control over the media.

And you have to live with that in the same way that's not dissimilar to what happens here. It's not dissimilar to what happens in the world of the United States in the way that the Biden administration has a bit of a stranglehold also on the media. Washington D.C. and the Democrats that control Washington D.C. are the last people that should be wagging their finger or giving lectures to other countries about media. I mean, we just, you just played Christiane Amanpour on CNN. She is a totally bought and paid for Democrat, married to a Democrat activist who absolutely is always for liberal policy. She propped up Merkel and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and everything that Merkel stood for. And in my opinion, really created the conditions for Putin to launch the war in Ukraine. Now she's against Putin and the war in Ukraine after really giving aid and comfort to the whole policies that brought us to this point. And now she's attacking Erdogan. And look, again, I'm very clear eyed about Erdogan's problems, but this is not a black and white issue.

And we could go on and on. I could give you examples of how Erdogan stood up against Putin in Syria, which is his neighbor. It's right there next to Turkey. It's a complicated issue that, you know, we were working with the Russians in Syria.

We were trying to get the Russians to block the Iranians and the Turks were helping us. This is not a black and white issue and shame on the U.S. media for trying to always make one villain and one hero out of every situation. It happened at CNN. We're seeing the ramifications of that right now in terms of our own politics. Obviously, if you saw, I'm sure you did, but people were watching the town hall with President Trump, massive ratings. And then the biggest maybe declined in the history of the network because you not only spent two hours or not even that was like an hour and 15 minutes trying to paint someone as a villain when the crowd clearly didn't get on board with that. And then you saw the sharpest decline in maybe the ratings history and you work with Newsmax. We had Newsmax beating CNN in the ratings the following week. Now we're seeing massive shakeups at CNN and at Fox. Once again, a huge change in the media landscape because the viewership is demanding it.

And hopefully that will continue. The viewers will demand something better. Look, one of the reasons I love being on ACLJ is that we get long conversations. It's not a quick soundbite.

We get these chances to really talk about issues in detail. And I think the audience is hungry for information. And there is a there is a sense that the consumers of media, of information, the consumers of information have a responsibility to you to go and find different sources. You can't just get one source. You shouldn't just get your news from ACLJ, for instance.

You've got to reach out and find a whole bunch of different information so that you understand the complicated and broad truth. Absolutely. Look, your kids are doing that, by the way, and your grandkids are doing that if you're watching your older. My kids just think of the entertainment options.

We were talking about this the other day. It was just a very casual conversation about how you could have these things that were just massive and every kid watched the same television show and every parent grew up watching. That's not the world we live in now. And some of these people on Rumble or on YouTube have millions of people watching their broadcasts or their program or their videos every day. And then you go to the next house over and that kids never heard of them or that parents never heard of them because they have their own silo of content that they are getting.

We don't live in this world. And I think you're right for the viewers who watch. Maybe they've they've been they've just been programmed to say, OK, I put on Fox and I watch the five hour block I put on wherever you need to start looking at other options, not just about Fox. We like Fox. I like what they're doing there. I think they've made some good work. But people are finding well, new ways to to kind of experience the world, if you will, through their content.

That's right. And someone on YouTube actually just said getting good information is our responsibility. As conservatives, we talk about individual responsibility so often. And sometimes we forget that that plays out in every aspect of our life, even of how we inform ourselves. And that's why at A.C.L.J., we try to bring these these stories that sometimes aren't even focused on because we want to provide another outlet for people to be able to reach out.

And it's also a way that people can be involved by supporting the organization to make sure that different views, different media is put out there to combat against a lot of the lies that we're seeing in the mainstream. Rick, thanks so much for joining us, as always. We'll check back with you later this week or next week. Always an interesting conversation. I appreciate it. Hey, this is a great time to give me a call.

1-800-684-3110. The next segment, any of the topics we brought up, fair game. Plus, we're going to be talking about the shakeups at CNN. Finally, somebody gets slotted in to their primetime lineup.

Not sure you're going to love who it is, but we're going to talk about that. And some big rumors, some big thoughts, big shakeups coming from Fox News, what their new primetime lineup will look like as well. We'll talk about that coming up in the next segment.

Welcome back. Last segment of the show, we're going to talk about what's going on with the whole media shakeup. But first, I want to take this call for a while. Heidi's calling on line three. You are on the air, Heidi. Hello. Thank you so much for all you do in this day and age.

It is amazing. We listen every day. And my comment is I do believe the current administration that's in charge is completely destroying themselves with the actual American people. We are America. They are not.

You'd hope so, Heidi. And I think the data shows that you're correct. My concern is that you are still a year and a half from an election. There's a lot that can be said. A lot can be done. A lot of smart people. You may disagree with them.

It's kind of like President Trump said about Chairman Xi and some of these other people across the world. These are not dumb people. And there are some smart people who are running these campaigns. There's a lot of smart people who are able to spin a lot of things. So we have to keep pretty vigilant on making sure that the lies are being exposed and then the truth is being exposed to show you exactly what's actually happening, whether that's at our border. Which, honestly, there are some people—oh, it's Chris Cuomo last night. He did an incredible piece from the border showing really what's happening there. You're showing people in their own—these cartels that are running these cities are burning people alive that are on their own team, that aren't part of the cartel.

So imagine what they're going to do to you. He went down to the border. I thought the People News Nation did a great job on that.

I saw that segment. We have to keep exposing this regardless if it plays into a political narrative. Well, and to your point of there's a lot that can happen in a year and a half until we go to general election polling day. And we've been fighting the deep state— You mean polling month, but yes, that's right.

Sure. Six months, depending on how they decide to run it under this administration. But the fact that we've been fighting the IRS targeting conservatives and trying to silence their voice, the Department of Justice doing similar things, the entire bureaucratic arm that has an agenda to preserve their power, that's what we talk about with the deep state. These are unelected people. These are career people that are entrenched in their jobs. You can't get rid of them.

It's so hard to get rid of them. If you think of Andy McCabe still has his pension and he was at the top of the faux Russia collusion narrative. So the deep state is real. It's not some conspiracy theory that conservatives like to talk about.

It exists. And what they were able to do, the deep state actors, in 2020 with the Hunter Biden laptop letter by these foreign actors that they tried to put in this letter, the former intelligence officials signing this letter that was directed or at least alluded to and suggested by the current Secretary of State. And then we also found out that someone within the CIA was trying to recruit signers to this letter. That's the deep state trying to shield the candidate Joe Biden from negative stories that would affect his potential outcome and gave him a talking point in the debate against the sitting President of the United States. That's the deep state. And it's all fact. Now the deep state has the cover of the President of the United States. The administration is wanting to empower that deep state.

All right. Hey, we want to, that's true, but I want to tell you, because I know we tease it the whole time, what's going on in the world of the media? Because we know we're heading to a 2024 election.

What's that look like? You're not going to hear this many places because it's just now breaking right now. You have over at CNN, the nine o'clock slot, we talked about Chris Cuomo. He abandoned that spot or was removed from that spot almost maybe over two years ago now.

They've never been able to find a replacement. And they finally have. And that is Caitlin Collins, you know, from the morning show. And you also know, as the moderator of that Trump town hall will be moving into that 9 p.m. slot. Even if she took a lot of heat from that, didn't necessarily do an outstanding job.

The ratings show that people enjoyed it and then left and never came back. But we are seeing that Caitlin Collins will move in to that 9 p.m. prime time spot for CNN. I think this is pretty interesting. It's an interesting move coming off sort of a weak performance.

But I think probably they were a little bit too far along to not give this a shot. And again, in a spot that's been a couple hours also, as we said before, kind of playing 3D chess with Don Lemon. You get Don Lemon in prime time. He moves to you in the morning show. You get in a fight with him.

Guess what? You end up prime time. There is some poetic justice to it. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And Caitlin Collins, you know, as someone who pre-Trump was not necessarily the bastion of the left. And people don't know that. A lot of people don't know.

Many people do. Many of our audience probably knows this as well. She was a reporter for The Daily Caller. We're not talking about even like mainstream conservative presses like Fox News. She was, yeah, started by Tucker Carlson. The Daily Caller is where she formed her journalistic career. And then after covering the campaign in 2016 for The Daily Caller, she was hired by CNN to cover the Trump White House. So she made the jump from almost as conservative of an online outlet as you can get to CNN.

And then her trajectory has gone up from there. Yeah. Whoever, I mean, at this point, a lot of this is media. Remember a lot of this is entertainment. Whoever offers you the best contract, that's where you go. Whoever gets the most money, that's where you go. Sad truth, folks, but that's really the case. If you see anyone on any sort of film or television, unless they are an auteur and an artist and something like that, likely they took the biggest paycheck. People are going to call you out for saying auteur with that grandiose. Who are these people?

I'm not sure, but someone will. So let's move over to Fox News. This is still breaking. None of this has been officially announced. The Judge Report has put out that they have the world exclusive moving, drastic moves, but with some familiar players at Fox News. You now have that Tucker Carlson slot. That's 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. Eastern Time slot, which was abandoned by Tucker Carlson.

Again, not abandoned, but it's been no longer there for the last few weeks. You've seen some rotating people in there. Sean Hannity. Hannity will be moving into that 8 p.m. slot. That's what's being reported by The Judge Report and now by Mediaite.

So you think that that's probably legitimate. So you have Hannity, Sean Hannity moving to show up a little earlier. Going to be in that 8 p.m. slot. They've also reported that Jesse Waters and Greg Gutfeld will also be shifted to a primetime lineup.

I'm not sure if that's the direct lineup, but it very well could be a direct back-to-back. So you have Hannity, Waters, Gutfeld. Again, we know that Gutfeld is doing massive ratings in terms of the late night field. It's kind of sad to see him potentially move out of that, but I'm sure it's good for him as well. Being able to move up a little bit. Still, only probably an hour off of where he was.

Probably a difference between 11 and 10 or what it would be. I find this fascinating and interesting move. I think Jesse will be a good spot. I kind of thought Jesse would end up in that Tucker spot. But I think maybe they're like, okay, let's balance out the sort of age gap here. Give sort of the seasoned Sean Hannity. If you want to say sort of the poster boy for Fox News. Put him in at the top spot.

And then get a little younger as sort of it progresses. Get Jesse Waters in there. Followed by someone a little more comedic.

I think that's also a difference too. Greg Gutfeld is never going to be the... Hard news commentary. Nor do I think he wants to or would thrive in that. His best spot is this sort of, you know, either on the five or on Gutfeld. Where he can be a little more comedic, a little more entertaining. Because that's who the guy is.

And I think that's why he's thrived in late night. So to me, this is a big shake up. It's interesting. I'm looking through the comments right now. Some of you are happy. Some people not. People are asking about some of the other hosts. None of it's all official. It's just words coming out of the drug report.

I do think though that there's some validity to it. So we'll see how that goes. We'll continue that media conversation coming up tomorrow as well. And on the Sekulow Brothers podcast.

We do that a couple times a week. So join us at SekulowBrothers.com. We appreciate you all subscribing there. Find us on Rumble. It's the number one source.

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Wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll be back tomorrow with a lot more. Coming up here on Sekulow. Jordan will be back I believe. Possibly my bad.

I'm not sure. We'll be back tomorrow. If you don't care for our brand of entertainment, don't worry. They'll be back. They'll be back.

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