SHOCKING: FBI Illegally Spied on U.S. Senator

This is Jay Sekulow. Well, it's shocking.

Or is it? The FBI illegally spying on a U.S. Senator, per the FISA court. 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, Jay Sekulow. Well, we're supposed to say it's shocking, and it's unbelievable, and we can't believe it's happened in the United States.

But I'm not so sure it is shocking these days. And that is according to an order that's come down from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Now, that is a court that issues FISA warrants. They approve them. They supervise it. You don't have defense lawyers there.

So it's a bit of a – almost like a star chamber, in a sense, the way this thing works. And you had a situation, and they've issued a 117-page opinion order, saying, you know, you didn't go through government, FBI again here. You didn't go through the proper proceedings in order to conduct a search on sensitive query terms – that's the words they use – on a U.S. public official, which happens to be a United States senator. So the surveillance court is telling the FBI, hey, you didn't even follow your own procedures when you were entering into surveillance against a U.S. senator, a sitting U.S. senator last year. The FBI's response to this is, oh, well, we're better now than we were a year ago. But this just adds fuel to the fire.

Here's the thing. It says, in June of 2022, an analyst conducted four queries of Section 702 information – which I'm going to tell you what that is in a minute – using the last names of a U.S. senator and also a state senator without further limitations. While the two were believed to be targets of, quote, a specific foreign intelligence surveillance, the National Security Division at the Department of Justice determined the FBI did not meet the needed standards for running such an inquiry.

So the entity within the FBI, that is the National Security Division at the Department of Justice – they have a full division for national security – said this did not reach that level where you would be able to get a FISA warrant. Nonetheless, this surveillance information took place. It's under Section 702. And let me tell you what Section 702 is supposed to do. Section 702 – and this is part of the National Defense Act – is a key provision of FISA. That's the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And that was passed in 2008.

And it permits the government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign persons located outside the United States with the compelled assistance of electronic communications service providers to acquire foreign intelligence information. So ask yourself, how in the world did they decide that a sitting U.S. senator would be part of that process? And, Logan, this goes to this unfettered check of what's going on. By the way, the ACLJ is taking action. We'll get to that in a moment.

Yeah, we'll get to how we're doing to help this situation and how you can be involved as well. But I think you're right. We put shocking in the headline if you're watching on social media. And sadly, the problem is, though it is still shocking, it's really not. Because we know that this has been common practice now to see sort of the corruption being rooted out from these three-letter agencies. Whether that is the FBI, the CIA, the IRS, there's always something happening.

It seems like they're getting themselves into the news. We do know that this senator was notified. So I'm very curious to find out who it is. I'm sure a lot of you could speculate who you think it may be or why. But I'd be very curious to see who this is and why they felt this was justified.

It was interesting. Senator Wyden, and I don't think he issued an audio statement, but he said, and he's a Democratic senator from Oregon, that this is coming from the Democrats. And I agree with Wyden here.

And believe me, that's not something I normally say. For years, as government officials have provided misleading, narrow testimony about who was targeted under Section 702, I have pushed to get the government to come clean. The revelation that 702 is used against foreign governments and related entities directly impacts Americans' privacy, including journalists, business people, and students.

Now you've got to add to that, within the sweep of 702, it's a U.S. senator. There needs to be reforms. I've got to tell you, I don't like the FISA court with no lawyers on the other side.

I just think it's wrong. Now, the ACLJ, I'll put it on the screen quickly here as we go to a break. We are in court on this very issue. When we come back from the break, I'm going to explain with Andy Econimo what that means. We are in court on this FISA abuse issue against the FBI and Department of Justice.

So we'll get into that. Folks, this is a reason to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. And also, don't forget, if you want to talk to us on air, what's your reaction to this? 800-684-3110.

1-800-684-3110. Back with more in a moment. Alright, if you're just joining us, we've got some shocking news. The FBI, per the FISA court, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, has said that they violated their own rules when it came to surveilling an American.

This American happened to be, ready for this folks? A United States Senator. A co-equal branch of government. The Article 1 branch of government being monitored by the Article 2 branch of government without even following their own procedures, including not even letting the supervisors know what was going on here.

I mean, this is beyond outrageous. The court said in the order that the Fisk court outlined examples of instances where FBI personnel conducted searches of, quote, sensitive query terms like those of U.S. public officials or candidates. In June, an analyst, this is a quote from the opinion, said, an analyst conducted four queries of Section 702 information using the last names of a U.S.

Senator and a state Senator without further limitation. That Senator has now been notified. We have filed, and let me put it up on the screen for everybody, we have filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia a lawsuit against the FBI based on a demand we sent into the FBI in July of last year. That demand was a FOIA request about the FBI's noncompliance with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2021. Now, this incident apparently happened either then or after it. So we are in court on this to find out for you what in the world is going on. And as I said, I'm not a fan of the FISA court in the sense that you don't have defense lawyers present.

I always think that's very dangerous. We're taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ, former Assistant United States Attorney Andy Akonimo is with us. Andy, your first year reaction to this, I mean, people are calling it outrage. I mean, and they're shocked. I don't know if I'm shocked anymore about what the FBI is doing, frankly. It is outrageous. But shocking?

Why are we shocked? Well, we shouldn't be shocked, Jay, because we've seen this happen so many times over and over and over again. So, you know, I'm appalled and I'm outraged and I'm shocked and I feel all those things, but then it's just like all that stuff is coming back again from previous feelings of appallment, shock and outrage that what the FBI is doing is going on its own and surveilling U.S. citizens. The purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was to surveil exactly what it says, foreign parties, and to gather foreign intelligence, not to spy on our own citizens.

And now we've got a United States senator, a state senator, and a state court judge all caught up in the web of intrigue that has been set out by an analyst by the FBI who's decided that he's going to put a name in and run it and see what he can get. And don't tell me that's not surveillance because you didn't get anything. It is surveillance when you look. The looking itself, the analyst doing what he did himself is surveillance. That's not what the purpose of this court was. That's not what the purpose of having ex parte, that one-sided hearings is. The purpose is to catch foreign intriguers, not Americans.

Their answer, of course, Andy, is, well, two things. Number one is we didn't surveil because we didn't get anything. And as you said, surveillance is not defined by what you didn't get. Surveillance is defined by what you attempted to get here on a U.S. senator. The second aspect of it, of course, is foreign intelligence, foreign persons. Now, their comeback is going to be, well, we used the senator's name, but we were really looking at a foreign adversary that might be trying to influence the senator, which if you do that in context, then every American is now subject to this. Jay, I agree with you. That's just saying, well, I just want to look and see if this senator was dealing with a foreign entity, so I'm going to look at the senator. No, that's not the way you go about doing this analytical work. I'm not an analyst, I'm not a technician, but I was an assistant U.S. attorney long enough to know that's not a way you get around the ball by trying to say that we were just trying to see if he was dealing with a foreign power.

There are other ways to do it and not the way that they did. You know, obviously, as I said, we're in court on that. I'm putting that back on the screen for those watching on our social media platforms. We sent a demand. We did not get the response that is required under law.

We went into federal court. There it is on this very issue. I mentioned Senator Wyden, who I don't agree with on much, but I agree with him on this.

I'm going to play Zoe Lofgren, the congresswoman from California, who I agree with on basically nothing, but listen to what she had to say, number seven. In the Senate hearing in response to Senator Wyden's question of whether the FBI is currently purchasing Americans' location data, you indicated that it was limited to data derived from Internet advertising. It's since been reported that the FBI has admitted it bought U.S. location data. Is the FBI purchasing location data from commercial sources without a warrant? This is an area that requires a little more precision and context for me to be able to answer that fully, so let me have my staff follow back up with you so that I make sure that I don't leave something important out.

That is breathtaking. The director of the FBI could not answer a question as to whether the FBI has admitted that it bought U.S. location data and that the FBI is purchasing this location data from commercial sources without a warrant, and the director of the FBI's response is the area requires a little more precision and context for me to be able to answer that fully, so let me get back to you and let my staff look at it. I feel like with the extreme nature we went through the last few years from the Trump administration to how in-depth they would get and how quickly they'd push back, to have this from Chris Wray now just being like, well, I don't know. I'll get back to you. It's just a point of absurdity, but sadly, there's not a lot of people there holding them accountable.

Hopefully, we can do that here. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, responded on the floor of the House when the director of the FBI, Chris Wray, responded to Congresswoman Loughlin. Take a listen to what he said. The American people need to understand what just happened. My Democrat colleague just asked the director of the FBI whether or not they are buying information about our fellow Americans, and the answer is, well, we'll just have to get back to you on that.

It sounds really complicated. Andy, to me, it's just so outrageous, and then the FBI director has no idea. Well, Jay, you know, I'm increasingly disappointed with Chris Wray, and then the next day I get more disappointed with him, and the next day I get even more disappointed with him because Soy Lofgren, and I agree with you, Jay, I don't agree with her on practically anything whatsoever, but she asked a simple question about the purchase of this data, and he couldn't answer it yes or no. I would have liked to have seen Senator Kennedy get into that with her, because the answer is you either bought the data or you didn't buy the data, and you're the director of the FBI, and you ought to know. You don't need to get back with me on that, that obviously he didn't know what he was talking about.

Another disappointing performance by a dismal director. Yeah, well, meanwhile, meanwhile, on the state judge matter, which we're trying to figure out why in the world would a state judge be involved in this FISA issue, here's what it is. On October 25th, 2022, a staff operations specialist, that's at the FBI, ran a query, that is an investigation through data, using the social security number of a state court judge who had, quote, complained to the FBI about alleged civil rights violation perpetrated by a municipal chief of police. And for that, the FBI, the state court judge, I mean, I'm looking at Andy's face on the monitor here, the state court judge is then queried by the FBI. That is so, I can't begin to tell you, he asks a question with respect to a civil rights violation by a law enforcement officer, and he's thrown in the net of being looked at by a foreign intelligence surveillance operative for doing something potentially with a foreign government. How, Jay, do you make that leap? Except that you have no business doing that. How do you make that leap on a state court judge? I just don't see it.

I'm appalled by it. You can't make that leap. It's not possible. It's incorrect as a matter of fact and incorrect as a matter of law, as the FISA court said. Now, this is the FISA court saying this without defense lawyers present. Could you imagine if there were defense lawyers present? Which they'll never allow.

So let me put it this way. That's why your American Center for Law and Justice is in court against the FBI dealing with abuses of what's called Section 702. That's where the authority under the FISA Act, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 2008, gives the authority to the FBI to do this. But they even have to follow procedures, which they didn't even follow their own procedures because the National Security Division said, hey, you don't have enough info here to do inquiries on these people. But that wasn't enough. And this is line agents, folks.

So someone up at the top is winking and nodding and saying this is okay. I'm taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. You talk about an outrage? You talk about government outrage?

This is a great example of one, Logan. Yeah, absolutely. Give us a call. He said it's 1-800-684-3110. We'll take some of those coming up in the next segments. We're also going to have some bigger discussions about what's going on in Israel because you may have heard there's some breaking news out of Israel. We'll discuss that a little bit later with Jeff Balabon from our office in Jerusalem. Give us a call.

1-800-684-3110. Again, a lot of people had to push back and say, well, when you see this happen to the FBI, you see this happen to the IRS, all these different three-letter agencies, what can they do? Well, look, we beat the IRS back, got an injunction against them so they had to stop targeting people and people got fired. On this particular case, what you got to do is find out what happened. That's what we're doing in court. Get that information over to Congress, Congress does oversight proceedings, and maybe you've changed the law. That's what happens. That's what needs to happen here is the law needs to be changed. This entire law is out of control because the agency itself is out of control.

Yeah. I mean, our ability to go to court is to get this information so that you can then get the change. We can't bring criminal cases, but we can bring civil cases and we can make change and we can make change happen and that's what we're doing at the ACLJ. Yep, we couldn't do it without your support. We are in the turn to the end of the Matching Challenge for this month of July. As July wraps up, go to ACLJ.org to make your donation today and it is matched by another great member.

Welcome back to Secula. We are going to be taking your phone calls coming up. Come give us a call at 1-800-684-3110.

Let's lead with one. Let's go to Ken who's calling in Colorado on Line 3. Ken, you're on the air.

Hey, Ken. Yeah, I just wanted to comment on this FBI and FISA overreach and I want to know who put the Bill of Rights for Americans up for grabs and kind of left it that way and continues along that. That's anti-American and I don't know why more people are not upset about it.

I'm glad you guys are. Well, we're not just upset about it. I mean, we're in court to get to the bottom of this, but here's the problem, Ken, and I didn't mean to cut you off and let you finish, is that, I mean, the state court judge that got picked up in this thing contacts the FBI to report what he thinks is a violation of civil rights of citizens in his community. Instead of the FBI saying, thank you, let us look into it, they look into him. They had started inquiry using Section 702 against him if somehow there's foreign intelligence involvement here. And this goes to like when we had the situation, which we have now with the crisis pregnancy centers, getting the Department of Justice to act was painfully difficult. And then you start wondering if you get them to act, are they going to end up investigating the crisis pregnancy centers, which we know this administration is very hostile to. So, I mean, all of this comes into play, but that's exactly the reason why we're in court to get to the bottom of this. Yeah. And, you know, this seems like some kind of Russian model.

You know, you have no rights, you're in court, there's one side. I mean, at least that's the way it's been represented more or less in our media. And I'm thinking, is that who we want to be as a country? Is that what our Constitution's about? Is that what our people are about? Is that what this process is about? Because if it is, I'd just as soon take my chances in Russia.

Yeah. Well, no, you'd rather be in the United States. Trust me, we've worked in Russia.

You'd rather be in the United States. Having said that, though, the star chamber aspect of the FISA court situation, Andy, and the reference that we were talking about this during the break with our producer, the idea that, you know, you make a report to the FBI and you become the target. And they're using the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to get to you.

I can't even believe those words are coming out of my mouth. Well, what's scary, Jay, is that this deters people from making complaints that they should be making and observations that they should be making. I don't know the merits of this state court judge's complaint. If he supposes that there was a civil rights violation that took place by a law enforcement officer, he should have reported it. But now he's going to be deterred, and we are going to be deterred, and others are, from making what may be a legitimate complaint that merits a legitimate inquiry because the fear that it's going to be turned on you. So instead of making those complaints and those observations, you're going to stand silent and let potential violations of civil rights and humanitarian laws go into effect and be continued. Because you're afraid that you're going to be targeted yourself for something you did that was wholly innocent, trying to further the law.

That's wrong. You know, Andy's right, and Logan, the interesting thing here, as I mentioned the crisis pregnancy center situation, we became very concerned of where those investigations would go. Instead of investigating the violence, do they go and try to investigate our clients?

And the fact that you're thinking that way as a lawyer is very, very dangerous as to what's happening here. And it's because the FBI has lost the confidence of the American people with good reason. The abuse here is unreal, and it continues.

That's what's so amazing here. And their answer is, well, we've stopped it now. I think that's a big concern going into even next year's election is we kind of have to kind of reprogram our brains to think this way is when you feel these sort of hopelessness and that all hope is lost when you have an FBI that would do this.

So you have an IRS that would do what they've done. You get concerned with, well, what's the point? Because are we just in this sort of fatalistic circle drain where it's like, well, we're just kind of riding it out.

And you get those messages a lot. People that are just like, we're just riding this out till it's over. I guess this is the end because how do you come back from a corrupt FBI? How do you come back from a corrupt CIA?

But the truth is that a lot of this can change very rapidly if the right people are in charge. Well, I mean, look, we did this with the IRS. They were totally out of control.

They were targeting conservatives, targeting Christians, targeting people they did not like. We went to federal court. We got an injunction against them. We got damages against them. We forced a change in policy, and we got a result, and people lost their jobs as they should have. The same thing here, and it doesn't happen overnight. I mean, we're in court, and this is important. Andy can address this too. We're in court because the FBI, when we sent the demanded, did not comply with our request.

So you have to understand what goes on there. We sent in the request and put it back on the screen. The request was May 13th of 2021, and then we have a lawsuit that then has to be filed once they do not administratively respond, which they try to just ignore it. That lawsuit was filed December 27th of 2022.

We were trying to work through the process with them during that 18-month period with no results. So then we went to federal court. That is the redress here, Andy, for these things.

Yeah, but you know, Jay, what a sad commentary. I've got to go through the ACLJ to federal court to enforce the law against the FBI. The FBI that should be complying with the law, that is, they call themselves fidelity, bravery, and integrity, they make sure that the laws aren't faithfully observed, and they investigate violations of the laws.

And what ACLJ has to do is file lawsuits in federal court to make sure and to compel the agency that's supposed to make sure the laws are faithfully observed to observe the laws faithfully. I mean, it is breathtaking in scope, and the nature of these proceedings do not give the procedural safeguards that you need in a society like ours. And that is the problem here. It's just outrageous. But again, we're not just talking about outrage.

We'll take your calls at 800-684-3110. We're taking action here. And one of the things I want to stress, Logan, right now as we go into a break, is that when you have a situation like this, which I said the opening was shocking, and then you think about it for a minute, why am I shocked? This was the same FBI that launched Crossfire Hurricane against the Presidential nominee and kept it going during the election, tried to basically eliminate a President once he was duly elected. I mean, this is the FBI you're dealing with. And Chris Wray's answer is, I don't know. When asked about, is the FBI buying from commercial vendors information about private citizens of the United States without a warrant? Well, it's complicated. I don't know the answer to that.

My staff will get back with you. It's not important enough for the FBI head to know whether U.S. citizens are being surveilled with data being purchased by taxpayers. By the way, you're paying for them and you're paying your taxpayer dollars for them to get this data on you. Think about that for a moment. And that is where the distrust of the institutions has reached a level that is unprecedented. And people get frustrated saying, what can we do about it? How do we fight back? The way you fight back is you do what we did.

It's painstaking. You've got to go to court. You've got to negotiate. Then you've got to go in front of a judge and you've got to get the information. Then you take it to Congress and say, look, here you go. You've got this with the whistleblowers going on right now.

They took a huge risk. Those whistleblowers come in public. But the data is getting out there and it's breathtaking.

And this is breathtaking too, except this court operates with no defense lawyers notified or present. It is what we call a star chamber in the sense in Britain. That's what they are.

These star chambers, these operated in the shadows. And that's what's happening here, except American security is at risk. Yeah. Give us a call. Hey, we have another half hour coming up. You may not get it. If you're listening on terrestrial radio, you may not get this second half hour. A lot of them do, but the ones that don't, you can just flip over right now to aclj.org or on Rumble or on YouTube or on Facebook or broadcasting on all those platforms right now. Of course, later on archived on the Sekulow Podcast. And give us a call at 1-800-684-3110.

We do lose you here. This is a great time to support the work of the ACLJ. We are in the middle of the matching challenge, which means all donations are doubled. So if you give $10 or someone else, you're going to match that with $10.

You get $1,000, same thing, $2,000, essentially effectively doubling your impact. You can just do that right now, but with any donation at aclj.org. Joey on Rumble asked, he said, I'm totally against FISA courts, period. They've been used against foreign agents, but now they're used against the citizens that's been weaponized.

You bet. We're taking action at ACLJ. Find out more at aclj.org.

Well, if you're just joining us here for the second half hour of the program, let me tell you what's happened. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Board has said that the FBI improperly used Section 702 surveillance that you're supposed to do on foreign powers, and they use it against a sitting United States Senator as well as a state court judge. The FBI improperly used surveillance powers to conduct searches for information on a US Senator, a state lawmaker, and a state court judge. This is according to the records filed in the court. Now, these are proceedings where defense lawyers are not allowed, so we don't know exactly what was filed.

We just know basically the opinion. The FISA court outlined three examples of instances where FBI personnel conducted searches of, quote, sensitive query terms like those of a US public official or candidates without first seeking approval from the FBI's deputy director. So they didn't even follow their internal procedures. Then the court said, quote, in June of 2022, an analyst conducted four queries of Section 702 information, that's foreign intelligence surveillance information, using the last name of a US Senator, a state Senator, without further limitation.

While the two were believed to be targets of, quote, a specific foreign intelligence service, the National Security Division at the Department of Justice determined that the FBI did not meet the needed standard for running such an inquiry in the first place. And the court, of course, agreed with that. That shows you how outrageous this is against a US Senator, a judge, and a state legislator.

That's outrageous. We're taking your calls on this and other topics. We'll be hearing from our office in Jerusalem in the next segment of the broadcast, so we've got a lot ahead.

There's a lot going on over there, too. 1-800-684-3110, if you want to talk to us, let's go to the phones. Yep, let's go to Kevin, who is calling on Line 2 in California.

Kevin, welcome. Hey, you guys are right on. You know, this situation with the FBI and the Senator is like the IRS with the Tea Party. It's like Crisis Pregnancy Centers. What it is, it's having its desired effect. If I see something, I don't say something, because if I say something, I will be investigated, the IRS will come after me, the FBI will come after me, and my circle of acquaintances.

I'll open it all, I'll be opened up. And you know, another thing is, they didn't follow, quote fingers, they didn't follow their own protocols. Those protocols they shouldn't even have in their pocket anyway, and of course they're not going to follow their own protocols.

They shouldn't even have the protocol to begin with. So this is all meant, if you're conservative, if you are religious, if you disagree, that would be the word, if you disagree, you're going to get investigated, you better shut up and just live your life. Well, that's, you know, for the state court judge, all he did was report to the FBI concerned that in his community where he is a judge, there were violations of federal civil rights.

For that, he gets investigated. You mentioned the Tea Party cases. Well, we were the lawyers that handled that at the American Center for Law and Justice. We won. It took two or three, four years of litigation to get it resolved. We got all the policies changed. We got an injunction and monetary damages for our client, and people were fired. Having said that, as soon as the Biden administration was in power, they tried it again.

It got shut down by friends of ours at First Liberty. They brought in a case. We filed a FOIA on that case to find out what the heck was going on and that they thought they could do this when you got an order out there, but this is how they run. And the FISA Court, as you mentioned, Kevin, operates with no judge, with no lawyer for the defense, not even notified. In other words, the state senator wasn't notified. The judge wasn't notified. The state lawmaker, Logan, wasn't notified.

They had no idea this was going on, and they were subject to it. Yeah, absolutely. Again, we are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, headed to the next segment. We're also going to take it over a little bit and talk about what's happening in Israel right now.

Maybe we could set that up a little bit. Yeah, well, there are protests in the streets over this issue with the judiciary, and that is, unlike the United States, Israel does not have – we have an office in Jerusalem and we've done work there for many decades. They don't have a U.S.A. constitution. There's not a constitution of the state of Israel. So everything is based on civil laws. And the courts there have taken this role almost as a legislature, and the legislature, the Knesset is what it's called, is saying, hey, that's our role. Why are you interfering with it?

And that's where this dilemma has come into place. It's passed. The new law is passed. We're going to get a live report from our office in Jerusalem so you get a better understanding of actually what's at stake. Because there are some conservatives that are raising concerns about curtailing the Israeli Supreme Court as well. Yeah, the people just are seeing the news. They're not really sure who to believe, what side. It doesn't feel like there's a unified front, but we're going to break down what is going on there. You're seeing the protests happening, what you need to know, and what you need to do to interpret this information. We'll be right back with more on secular.

Welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. We've been talking about the domestic spying issue here in the United States, but now we're going to go to our office in Jerusalem. Jeff Balaban, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ, out of our office in Jerusalem. Jeff, there is a lot in the news right now about Israel specifically as it relates to the issue of the power of the Israel Supreme Court. Now, as I said before the break, Israel doesn't have a constitution like we have in the United States, which sets forth under each article what the power of the various branches of government are. But they've become a super legislature in a sense, which was not the intent under civil law in Israel.

Having said that, there are conservatives that are saying this is a mistake to curtail the power of the Supreme Court. So there's a lot of confusion about this because you've got both sides kind of chiming in. You've got unrest in the streets, which is a democracy. You're going to have civil protests and lots of them.

What is happening here with this reform and what does it actually mean? Look, Jay, this is an extremely complicated situation, not only because a lot of people in America but even in Israel don't necessarily understand the details of what's being debated, what's being reformed, but because it's become hyper politicized. It's become hyper politicized around the world. As we've seen in America, the media chimes in.

They have their narratives. But here's what passed today. What passed today was a tiny little tweak among many that need to be done to curb the power that the court has taken for itself over the past few decades. What passed today was a rule that the doctrine of reasonableness, which I'll explain in a second, they can't use that. The court can't use that to go after elected officials' decisions.

Reasonableness exists in other countries, free countries, but here they use the word to mean something unheard of anywhere else. Here, a court, and again, combined with issues of justiciability and standing, which have been obliterated here, the court can on its own decide it wants to get involved in a political matter and can do things as it has by nullifying elections, saying, well, somebody was elected a mayor, for example, and they say, we think it was unreasonable that he was a candidate. So the court has really exceeded its bounds. And because there's no constitution, as you point out, there's been a move to try and reform the court in many ways. What happened today was just one of many, many, many reforms that people are debating, but it's become hyper politicized. And so there's a major concern in terms of what it's doing to Israeli society.

And it's problematic that outside forces like President Biden chime in and jump in on this because there's a political factor here also. You know, what's interesting to me on this is they, and you use the example of an election takes place and the court on its own, we have, because we have a constitution, we have article three standing. You have to have a case and controversy before you can get into court. You've got to have jurisdiction in Israel, the Israel Supreme Court. And we've done a lot of work over there.

The Israel Supreme Court, whose presiding justice is called President. I mean, that's how it's set up. They can on their own say, we're going to involve and get ourselves involved in with. And we think that as Jeff said, this election was unreasonable. Therefore this candidate shouldn't have been up. We're going to nullify it. I know you've got friends when you said during the prep that our concern is pro-Israel that we're concerned about this.

Yeah, I think so. I think it is confusing. When you come from an American way of the way government runs, Israel often just can kind of mess with your mind. Because the way the Knesset works, the way that everything works, there's Presidents over here, Presidents over here, prime minister, but that's not the same person. I think people are flipping out, different people are coming in and out of government. It feels like at a rapid fire pace sometimes in Israel, it's hard to not get fully wrapped up in it. But even I asked you this morning, a lot of the conservative Jewish influencers that I follow, even some of them were questioning this and having concern over it.

And I think some of it is due to, as Jeff said, you said, just sort of having to re-educate, kind of educate people what this all means. So, I mean, you mentioned the presidency. They have a lot of Presidents. Well, there's a President of the state of Israel, Yitzhak Herzog, who we know, who is the current President of Israel. And he was in the United States and spoke at the Congress. He is not the elected President as we would think of, that's the prime minister. That's Benjamin Netanyahu. But you're also right. It's coalition governments in Knesset, so you get all these parties aligning and people trade positions.

It's more like the English system. But Jeff, it's getting a lot of attention here and not good for Israel, I have to say. The press, even the conservative press, has not been that supportive of the position. And I think it's from lack of understanding of what's at stake.

You're 100% right, Jay. Look, by the way, people don't understand this. There were members of Congress, Democrats, who boycotted President Herzog because he was in charge of a government that they don't like. The President of Israel isn't even part of the government.

It's a completely separate office. So people in America don't understand this at all. And by the way, obviously our viewers understand that Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg had very different ideas about principles of constitutionality. But they both agreed that the way Supreme Court justices in Israel are appointed, they use the word untenable because they essentially have the power to appoint themselves. To understand if people can appoint themselves and they can decide based on just their opinion that something is unreasonable, it really does shatter the notion of democracy.

But you're right, Jay, and this is the problem. So Jeff, when you say appoint themselves, people are scratching their head. What do you mean, appoint themselves? How does it work?

Sure. So in America, let's review quickly, obviously the President, he's elected and he gets to choose the nominees. They nonetheless have to then go through a screening by the Senate, right? The Senate has to approve of the nominees. So now both elected branches are involved, okay? In Israel, there's a body of officers, there's a number of people involved, there's nine of them, and three of them are Supreme Court justices and three of them are from the bar and some are from the Knesset, but essentially you need the approval of seven to become a Supreme Court justice. Well, if three of nine have to be Supreme Court justices, that means the Supreme Court has a veto power over anybody coming into the court. I mean, so folks, this is what we're talking about. You're not hearing that on the other news, but by the way, this is also good reason to have a constitution if you're running a government, okay?

Countries having a constitution, but you've got the justices can veto any appointment that they don't like. So Logan, that's what you need to be telling your friends. Sure, I can explain that very easily and simply I'll just send them this interview or this segment with Jeff because I don't know if I can repeat all of that back, but I'd love to hear from you. I know a lot of people probably asking these questions because you're seeing it on the news and usually when you see Israel on the news, there's a bias going on.

We know this. The thing is when you see protesting happening and you see protesting with people with their Israeli flags, you go, okay, well, which side are we supposed to be on here? Give me a call. I'd love to hear from you.

1-800-684-3110. So Jeff, there's also all these protests on the street and there's some sense that these protests may be funded from outside groups. Now, I know that that's just kind of a sense. We've seen that through our litigation where, you know, Mahmoud Abbas's son was getting a million dollars a year for a number of years from the United States State Department for supposedly doing a peace plan, which was literally to upset the existing Israel elections that were going on at the time. What do we know about these protests? Of course, protests are allowed.

It's a free country. They allow protests, even protests against the government, but what are we finding? So what I want to first point out, and there is some concern that it's actually now going to transition potentially into some violence, which we have not seen here.

You know, one of my friends who's involved in this likes to point out we're all about negotiation, but we're not really about extortion. And so the protests, you see people carrying Israeli flags on both sides. This is not an Israeli flag versus an Israeli flag, and there was actually what I thought was a heartwarming video of the escalator at the train station showing pro-reform protesters traveling up and anti-reform traveling down, and they were shaking hands and smiling at each other because they still understand that they all love Israel and they all love the Jewish people. So we haven't transitioned past that.

On the other hand, there has been a lot of political end gaming here. So what we've seen here, we've never seen before in Israel. The Air Force, again, people don't know this, so after mandatory service in the Air Force, it has been the case for decades, maybe since the beginning, that all pilots come back once a week. They're not forced to do this once a week to train every week for well after their duty as reservists. So now they've announced they're not going to do that. They're saying, we're not following orders.

This has been something we want to do, and we're no longer going to do it. Well, that's shocking. It's shocking that the opponents have called for outside people, for other countries to stop investing in Israel, to threaten Israel's reputation around the world. And there are people that's afraid that we will see a little bit of violence here.

All of these are red lines that have never been crossed in Israel. And so there is concern about this. And one of the problems is there is some evidence of outside money coming in to gin up hostility on the streets. Do I think that it's the cause of it? No. Do I think that there is no place outside money coming into Israel trying to gin up hostility?

It's terrible. And the fact is, we've seen, Jay, we've looked into this ourselves, as you know, we have seen some evidence of money coming in from America, including some evidence, at least a little bit of money, coming in directly from the government. The American government. Which is a horrible idea of getting involved in internal relations and internal affairs of a foreign government, and one that is an ally of the United States. Jeff, we appreciate that, live from our offices in Jerusalem. Folks, because we have an office in Jerusalem, and your support makes a huge difference on that, and we cannot do that without you. I mean, you got an analysis just then that you're not getting anywhere else.

So when everybody says, oh, this is a crackdown on democracy, it's exactly the opposite. The Supreme Court shouldn't be able to veto the selection of Supreme Court justices, because they don't like them. Hey, this is the last segment coming up, so we need you to give us a call. This would be a good time to call on any of the topics. You could call about Israel, you could talk about the FBI, any of the topics, any of the ACLJ questions you may have, or whatever you're seeing in the news, if you need our analysis on it, we'd love to hear from you.

This is the moment. You got to call in right now. 1-800-684-3110. We'll take as many calls as possible, and right now we got a couple open lines.

So that's 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ, as always, at ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the broadcast. So this has been an interesting program. We talked about spying on U.S. senators by the FBI without authorization. That was a good one. And we're in court about that. Then we talked about the issue of what's going on in Israel, and what people did not know was that the existing Supreme Court of Israel can veto the appointment of other Supreme Court justices that they don't like.

So we had that going on. But this is the last segment of the broadcast, so we're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, and we're going to go, Logan, right to the phone. Yeah, we still are taking calls, so give us a call, like you said, at 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Mary, who's calling in Florida, on Line 1. Mary, you're online. Hi, Mary. Hi, how are you guys doing? Great.

Okay, so my question is the following. Donald Trump got accused and got charged with the insurrection regarding the January 6th incident that occurred in the Capitol that had nothing to do with him, obviously. But he was exonerated by Senate, and, you know, they found him totally, completely innocent of any kind of wrongdoing. So how can the same party accuse him of the same thing again, having him acquired what is called immunity under Residiscata, which is commonly known as double jeopardy? Yeah, so that's a great question on double jeopardy.

So here's why double jeopardy does not apply, and that is this. The former President had two impeachment trials. He was acquitted in both. So articles of impeachment passed, but when it went to trial in the Senate, and that's where the trial takes place, I did the first one a year before, the President was acquitted on both counts.

As it relates to what you're talking about on January 6th, it's exactly the same thing. Articles of impeachment were issued by the House of Representatives, but when it went to the Senate, he was acquitted. But it is not a judicial proceeding, and because it's not a judicial proceeding, the concept of double jeopardy does not apply. Here's how double jeopardy works. If I'm charged or someone's charged with violating civil rights, criminally violating civil rights, and they're acquitted, they can't be recharged to that once the jury's impaneled and the jury votes. Now, if it's a hung jury, they can, but if he's acquitted or she's acquitted, that's it, over.

Double jeopardy does not apply, but that's because you had courts, court system, you were in a court system where the case had already been adjudicated. As it relates to the Senate proceeding, although it is called a Senate trial, and it is a Senate trial, the highest profile trial you could ever do, the truth of the matter is it's not a judicial proceeding, although the Chief Justice of the United States is the presiding officer. But it's not a judicial proceeding, so the rules of evidence do not apply. Objections don't apply. Federal rules of civil procedure do not apply. It's Senate rules that govern all this.

That's why it's not deemed to be double jeopardy. That indictment that they're talking about January 6th could be coming literally any day now. I think we need to go back a little bit, because there are a lot of people joining us right now, just because one of our push notifications just went out for rumble, so they're seeing the shocking FBI illegally spied on a U.S. Senator. I think we should re-go through that for the people who weren't with us at the first beginning.

Let me put up on the screen right now, first of all, well, let me first say what's going on. So the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issued an order late Friday, and that's the court that does these FISA warrants. There's no defense lawyers there.

It's only the government, so it's kind of a one-sided proceeding to begin with, and that kind of it is. The conclusion of the court was that the FBI improperly used surveillance powers to conduct searches for information on a U.S. Senator, sitting U.S. Senator, a state lawmaker, and a state judge.

This is according to the court records. The FISA court also outlined three examples of instances where the FBI personnel conducted searches of, quote, sensitive query terms, like those of U.S. public officials or candidates, without first seeking approval from the FBI's deputy director, which is required under the regulations within the Department of Justice and the FBI. In June of 2022, just last year, an analyst for the FBI conducted four queries of what they call Section 702, that's foreign intelligence information, using the last names of the senator, U.S.

Senator, state senator, and again, with a state court judge. While the two were believed to be, quote, targets of a, this is from the opinion, a specific foreign intelligence service, the National Security Division of the Department of Justice determined that the FBI, listen to this, folks, did not meet the needed standards for running those inquiries, but they did it anyways. And the FBI's response to that is, hey, we're better at it now than we were a year ago, which is ridiculous, and this is why this whole system has to be totally revamped, including letting private lawyers represent people that are accused.

And that's what we need to discuss here, how the ACLJ and how we can get involved here as we are wrapping up this broadcast, we can start talking about what the work of the ACLJ is and how it's not just us coming on here, reporting the news, telling you the facts, it is so much more. So let me put on the screen first, this is our FISA letter, our FOIA letter. This is a foreign intelligence surveillance letter that we sent in July of 2022, this was right after this happened, by the way, where we alleged FBI's noncompliance with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Act. We then cite authorization under the law and while we're entitled to the information, and we also state what happened. So we wanted all records with the Attorney General, his aides, other staff about this unlawful gathering of information using the Foreign Intelligence Act, using Section 702. The FBI, after negotiations back and forth, did not comply and then, and this is where it's important folks, we go to federal court. Up on the screen right now is our federal lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the American Center for Law and Justice versus the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And this is a complaint for declaratory injunctive relief, an injunctive relief, to get us the information we're entitled to under law to find out what happened. We can then give that information to Congress. And when you do these, you'll end up getting thousands and thousands of pages, but Logan, as we have found time and time again, including most recently with the Department of Homeland Security, you find the nugget in the gold mine, so to speak, and the needle in the haystack. And you find out data that is unreal, you cannot even believe it exists, but there it is on paper, and we then share that with members of the House and Senate for their oversight. These parties are subject to oversight.

So like you said, Logan, we're not just talking about it here. We're not just pointing out, I can't believe they did this. We are taking action to reform the system. On this, the Section 702 change is going to have to be made and our Office of Government Affairs will get involved in that process as well, but getting this data makes a big difference. For sure, and that's sort of one of the new things we started doing at the ACLJ is getting more involved in this way. We're always looking at new paths to victory, whether that is through our legal front, whether that's through the FOIA operations, whether that is through the media. There's all these different paths to making sure that our message is not only getting out there, which is very important. That's obviously what we do here on this broadcast every day, but also that the impact is much larger. If you go to ACLJ.org, obviously you can support the work, and that's great.

We really love you too because we are headed towards the end of this matching challenge. But what I would like you to do is to just look at the breadth of content that's available there for absolutely no extra cost. You're not behind a paywall.

Obviously, again, we appreciate and would love your support, but look at the incredible video content. Look at the blogs. Look at the articles that are there.

Look at all of the resources. And then, of course, if you need legal help, something we don't talk about maybe enough. If you need legal help that's absolutely free and no cost, all you have to do is go to ACLJ.org and hit that big button that says, Get Legal Help or ACLJ.org slash help.

You will see a list of all the different kinds of topics and cases we get into. Obviously, some things are out of scope, but if they're within our scope, all you have to do is fill out that form, and you are immediately attached to a lawyer who will be representing you and will be responding to you very shortly. So, again, just do that on ACLJ.org. And when you do that, your support of the ACLJ does keep this broadcast on the air, keeps us in court in the United States and around the globe, and lets us get, as Logan said, a tremendous amount of content out to you. So, again, support the work of the ACLJ. Just go to ACLJ.org. The last week of the Matching Challenge, any amount you donate, we're getting a matching gift for, and it's doubled, so that's great for us. ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. And we will talk to you on the broadcast tomorrow. .