Trump 3rd Indictment: Our Expert Analysis

Today on Sekulow, President Trump was just indicted for a third time. We give you our expert analysis of the latest on this absurd political witch hunt. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.

Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. We were talking about yesterday on the broadcast, as expected, the indictment was released yesterday against President Trump. There are unnamed individuals in this indictment, I believe six of those, and again there could be more indictments coming for those individuals. But this indictment specifically focused in on President Trump and the actions leading up to January 6 and on January 6. So what was interesting here is these indictments, and we'll go through, there's four different counts.

But I just literally did an interview on Newsmax before going on the air here. And a lot of this indictment is about criminalizing speech. The idea that someone has a belief, which I mean, can you really say that President Trump still has a, this fraudulently believes that the election was stolen when today or tomorrow when he does a rally, he's going to still talk about how he believes the election was rigged. He has that fundamental belief.

It could be right, it could be wrong, it does not make it criminal to have that belief. We're going to be joined on the next segment of the broadcast with a colleague of mine, a good friend, and I think the leading criminal defense lawyer in the United States, Alan Dershowitz, Professor Dershowitz. And Alan was my colleague and co-counsel in the first impeachment trial. I was thinking about this just as this was breaking.

That's why I sent a note to Alan to see if he would be available. I mean, can you imagine a first brief to the Court of Appeals, because that's where this is going to have gone, probably the Supreme Court, from Alan Dershowitz, Jay Sekulow, First Amendment lawyers on what is taking place here. We're in the middle.

We just started our life and liberty drive. Yesterday we talked about the FBI whistleblower who said the FBI will crush you. They will take and harm you, will hurt your family by doing this. That's what the FBI whistleblower said on Capitol Hill. Then you have an indictment that comes down against the former President of the United States, which criminalizes free speech.

Listen to what Jonathan Turley had to say about this. The most jarring thing about this indictment is that it basically just accuses him of disinformation. This is a disinformation indictment.

It says that you were spreading falsehoods, that you were undermining the integrity of the election. That's all part of the First Amendment. And I think that courts will look skeptically. He might have a fair shot with a D.C. jury and maybe a D.C. judge. He's going to have a harder time with the courts. And this reminds me of sort of the McDonald complaint where he took the Virginia governor, got a conviction, and then was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court. Yeah, by the way, I was one part of the Supreme Court team on that case and representing Bob McDonald. So I could tell you that this – and the same prosecutor, Jack Smith. But when we talk about life and liberty being at stake, folks, this is two really great examples of it. A whistleblower threatened, loses their livelihood. Who knows what else will be taking action against these guys by the government that a former President criminally charged for believing that an election was taken away from him. Like Jordan said, right or wrong, you're allowed to believe it.

It's a First Amendment free speech. We filed legal challenges in Pennsylvania. The Supreme Court agreed with us and set votes aside. Was that criminal for us to file that case? Of course not. Well, Justice Alito granted our stay in that case. And if we had lost, would it have been criminal to file that case? No.

And the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court dissented from that opinion. All right, we're in our life and liberty drive. And, folks, we had a great response yesterday, but we've got more work now, as you can tell today. Here's what we want you to do. The attacks on life and liberty are real, and they are significant. We believe this is your moment to defend the truth, to defend freedom. Join us in this fight for life and liberty, whether it's a President of the United States or an FBI agent. You can be part of this.

Go to ACLJ.org right now, the Life and Liberty Drive. Your gifts will be doubled. Folks, we're at the ultimate fight for freedom and liberty right here. There is no doubt about it.

It makes a big difference. Yeah, you can join us in the fight right now. Be a part of this. Don't just listen.

Take in the content. Join us. Be a part of this fight. All you need to do to join us in the fight for life and liberty is go to ACLJ.org. Make your donation today. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to Secular. We tell you we bring you expert analysis today on the new Trump indictment, and we are certainly doing that. Bringing in now a Professor Alan Dershowitz joining the show live. He is also the author of a new book, Get Trump! The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law.

You can buy that book wherever books are sold. I got to say this also. One of the highlights of my legal career was being able to stand alongside Alan Dershowitz on the floor of the United States Senate for a historic trial of the impeachment of a President and to be able to call Alan Dershowitz a colleague. You know, Alan, I said during the last segment of the broadcast that, you know, you and I should file a brief when this thing goes to the court of appeals because it's going to obviously go all the way up.

On the First Amendment issues, between you and I, we probably handled most of the major First Amendment cases in the country. But the interesting aspect of this, your book, Get Trump! You outlined this when you wrote this book.

We should take this book and make it an amicus brief. Well, I predicted it, and I get my predictions right because I don't predict based on wishful thinking. CNN always gets its predictions wrong because they don't predict, they try to create self-fulfilling prophecies. I predicted, for example, that the judge would not accept the Hunter Biden plea as written, and I predicted this indictment. This is a very, very dangerous indictment.

First, I want to join you, and it was a highlight of my career to stand next to you, a great man, and to consider you both a colleague and a friend over the years. We disagreed about a great many things, particularly separation of church and state, but we agree essentially on most aspects of the First Amendment, especially free speech. As you say, I've litigated many of the most important free speech cases, the Pentagon Papers case, the Deep Throat case, many, many others.

But I've always been on the side of the left on those issues because I don't make a distinction between left and right when it comes to free speech. You know, as Chief Justice Rehnquist put it very well in a case, a terrible case involving Reverend Falwell being horribly defamed by Hustler magazine and other cases like that. There's no such thing under the First Amendment as a false opinion. And the issue in this case is whether or not Trump was expressing an opinion that he honestly believed, you know Trump, I know Trump. And we both know he believes this. I think he was wrong. I think he was dead wrong.

I said so on television. I voted against him twice. I demand my constitutional right to vote against him a third time. And I don't want any, any, any bureaucrat or prosecutor to deny me the right to vote against him.

Will you the right to vote for him? Those decisions should be made by the voters, just like decisions about truth of falsity. As Rehnquist again said, and he was quoting or paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, the answer to false statements made by politicians is to correct them in the marketplace of ideas and to run against them. And, you know, ever since the Alien and Sedition Acts were basically voted down by the 1800 election in which Jefferson beat John Adams, in large part on that issue. It's interesting because I raised the Alien and Sedition Act in a Supreme Court oral argument I had on a free speech case saying that this is, again, this kind of criminalization of free speech. Look, I think Donald Trump would pass a lie detector test thinking the election was stolen. And it's not a question of whether you think it was stolen or not think it was stolen. He's now been accused, Alan, criminally of violating the laws based on his thoughts and beliefs.

To me, this is the most serious challenge to political speech I have seen, certainly in our lifetime. Well, I think what the government is going to try to do, and it's going to be a stretch, they're going to try to argue that he should have known and that any reasonable man would have known. And in the indictment, it includes lots of good people, people we know and respect telling him, look, you're not correct about this. No, it didn't happen that way in Michigan. No, it didn't happen that way in Arizona. No, it didn't happen that way in Pennsylvania. And they're going to try to prove that even if he didn't believe it, he should have.

And whether or not you can make a First Amendment protected speech into a crime based on should have rather than actually did is going to be an interesting question that the courts will obviously have to deal with. And you and I will be on the side of saying no, you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he actually believed it. Now, you know, getting into separation of church and state, we both have religious backgrounds. How many preachers get up there on a Sunday or on a Saturday, a rabbi, and say, look, God is going to and if you make prayers, it's going to be answered. You think every pastor and every minister and every priest and every rabbi at every moment of their life believes in their own theology? Of course, they have doubts. Human beings always have doubts and we would never criminalize that. Do you think every politician who says if you elect me, it'll be better for the country actually believes it?

Most of them probably do, but not all of them do. And you're absolutely right. We're getting into the realm of psychoanalysis, not the realm of law and certainly not the realm of the First Amendment.

So this is a dangerous, dangerous case. But, you know, my former friends on the left are not going to see that because they don't care about the Bill of Rights. They don't care about the First Amendment. Larry David, when he saw me in Martha's Vineyard a couple of years ago and I said to him, can't we talk? And he screamed at me, you're disgusting, you're despicable because you defend the Trump. He thought he was speaking to Heinrich Himmler and that I was defending Adolf Hitler. That's how extreme people on the hard left have become when it comes to Donald Trump.

They're prepared to do anything, sacrifice anything. Take, for example, the Espionage Act, which has been touted by Professor Tribe and others as the way of getting Donald Trump. Every liberal since 1918 has opposed the Espionage Act. It has put in jail Eugene D. Debs, so many, so many people on the left. But now these same people are asking to expand the Espionage Act to make sure it covers everything that Donald Trump did.

The hypocrisy is just rampant. That's why I wrote my book, Get Trump, because as a liberal, as a civil libertarian, as a person who is a Democrat, who's always voted Democrat, I am as appalled as any Republican or conservative can be about this misuse of the law and this weaponization of our criminal justice system. There's another aspect to this that I'm very concerned about.

You and I have talked about this over the past couple of years. We've helped lawyers that have found themselves in harm's way. But here's what I'm concerned about. They also, if you read the unnamed co-conspirators, and we pretty much know who they are, this criminalization of the practice of law because you have an aggressive theory or a novel theory, I mean, that should send chills for the entire defense bar throughout the United States. Hoping that the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers will file an amicus brief. In my case, as you know, Project 65, the 65 Project, said they were going to disbar and discipline any lawyer who defended Trump.

So I wrote an op-ed saying if any lawyer is disciplined or disbarred as a result of Project 65, I will defend them. And immediately they filed a bar charge against me. And I've had to now spend tens and tens of thousands of dollars defending myself against a frivolous bar charge. So they're coming after me. I wouldn't be surprised if they came after you.

They'll come after every lawyer who ever defended Donald Trump. So we're seeing not only the First Amendment endangered, we're seeing the Sixth Amendment endangered. And if you want to talk about the route to tyranny, the two things that tyrants do is first they abolish freedom of speech, and then they abolish freedom of lawyers to represent their clients zealously opposed to government positions. So this indictment puts us on that terrible, terrible, slippery slope to a tyranny. One hundred percent correct.

That's exactly the right analysis. Eliminate free speech. Silence the lawyers.

And that's exactly what the plan is here. Alan Dershowitz, the book is Get Trump. Great book. Great read. We need Alan Dershowitz in this fight, folks. This is a fight for freedom that is very, very important. Alan, thanks for being with us.

Appreciate it so much. He always underscores it was great to spend that time with him during the impeachment. The impeachment was not great because you got to see people who actually believed what they believed to the mat.

They take it to the mat. Even when their friends turned on them, they have that much of a belief in the First Amendment that even if it's fighting for someone's First Amendment rights, that they may politically totally disagree with. They're going to fight for those First Amendment rights. I always say when the ACLJ wins a First Amendment case, we don't just win it on behalf of the Christian kid or the pro-life activist.

You're winning it on behalf of every religious kid or every activist out there. And this is about protecting all of our political speech. They're just targeting Donald Trump. I mean, first of all, two and a half years later, they bring these charges.

It's ridiculous. Right in the middle of the primary, right when he's running for President. Does anyone believe they would have brought these charges if he wasn't running for President right now? But Donald Trump is willing to take this heat. A heat that most of us, like Alan Dershowitz said, would bankrupt people. I didn't know that Project 65 filed against him. How tough it's been on just Trump's campaign. I will say this.

I want to say this. Alan Dershowitz was 100% correct, and we are in our life and liberty drive. And we talked about yesterday standing up for those whistleblowers because they spoke the truth. Now we've got a case involving a former President that they're trying to silence the First Amendment and shut up the lawyers. Remove the lawyers, silence the First Amendment. That is a direct attack on life and liberty.

That's where you come in. Your financial support is crucial in defending life and liberty, and we are in a life and liberty drive, one that we've never done before, Logan. This is the moment of truth. This is the time to defend the truth and defend freedom and fight back.

That's right. And your financial support is crucial right now in defending the brave men and many others that are part of this. And guess what? You can be a part of it as well because your gift will be doubled with the ACLJ Life and Liberty Drive. This is your moment to defend the truth and join us in the fight for life and liberty. This is the start of our life and liberty drive, and we want you to be a part of it. And I think it's important here that we're talking about is, of course, this indictment, third indictment of President Trump, which I think is a total violation of free speech and also criminalizes the practice of law. And as Alan Dershowitz just said, a Democrat liberal, friend of mine, colleague of mine, but a Democrat liberal said, what did tyrannies do? Silence free speech and silence those who defend free speech, which is exactly what this indictment does. When I read this and saw what they were relying on, of course, I've been here and done this. I've defended these cases all the way to the Supreme Court multiple times.

In fact, one of the allegations here about the deprivation of civil rights using the Ku Klux Klan Act, guess who argued the Ku Klux Klan Act case before the Supreme Court when they tried to apply it to pro-lifers? I did. We did.

Not once, not twice, three times, and we were successful in all three. But this is the nature and the scope of the attack on liberty here. It's just ironic or I think the timing of this is so important, Logan, as we launch this campaign. I want to explain this life and liberty drive that we're in because it's very important for you to understand it. And I'm going to play that statement from, let's play that statement from the FBI agent O'Boyle. This testimony, he's now a client of the ACLJ's, but take a listen to what he said.

Mr. O'Boyle, we just heard from your interaction with Mr. Gates and how all of this occurred and all of the hardships you've gone through. One of your really good friends, your former colleagues, came to you and said, I have this thing that is being covered up and I think the American people need to know about it. What advice would you give them?

I would tell them first to pray about it long and hard. And I would tell them I could take it to Congress for them or I could put them in touch with Congress, but I would advise them not to do it. So you would legitimately try to protect one of your colleagues from doing what you have done? Absolutely. And how do you think that solves being able to shine light on corruption, weaponization, any kind of misconduct that exists with the American people? It doesn't solve it. But the FBI will crush you.

This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing that are wrong. And we are all examples of that. I can't think of a more sobering way to end a hearing.

I yield back. That was Monday. That was yesterday's broadcast. Dealing with this very issue of what we had to deal with in these kind of defenses. Then you had – that was Tuesday, excuse me.

Now you've got this issue here on Wednesday. And it's an indictment of a former President of the United States for engaging in speech the government doesn't like. And lawyers defending that speech.

And that's been criminalized. So when you talk about a life and liberty drive that we're in the middle of, I can't think of two better cases to be launching it with. Yeah, absolutely. And it wasn't coincidence. This was no coincidence that this would happen right up here in the beginning. We've been planning this life and liberty drive for months with our team. You've seen graphics and videos we put together. But it didn't just so happen that these big moments happen.

These are all orchestrated, we believe. And if you look at what's going on in the world, this could not be a more important time for you to join us in the fight. This is your moment. Defend the truth. Defend freedom. And you can join us in the fight for life and for freedom. When the life and liberty drive was created, it's because we monitor these comments, thousands of comments that come in each and every day. We know what's important to you. And we wanted to focus the month of August on the issues that are important to you. And we have a lot of other cases we're going to get to. We have a lot of other issues in the media we're going to get to. These are pretty big right now.

They're just big ones that happen to happen on the day one and day two. And again, no coincidences here. We're going to go to John in California online, too, if you want to talk to us on air.

It's 1-800-684-3110. Hey, John. Hey, how are you doing? Great.

Thank you for all you do. Sure. I just got a question that the President said, you know, the same question was raised. Well, how about all the people that, I mean, the Congress members, the FBI, they knew the steel dogs, it was fake. They put it out there all through it. The same thing, they knew Hunter Biden's, you know, laptop was real and they suppressed that and said it was fake news.

Isn't that the same thing? Well, that's why we've gone to court on so many of these issues in our Freedom of Information Act request. You know, I think what he's saying is, wouldn't you file charges against those people with the same standard? I mean, but they actually knew that the laptop was real.

So pretty easy to prove that they knew it was real and yet they told companies it was fake. So why not bring these criminal charges against them? Why is DOJ not prosecuting their own over that? They won't.

They will not do it because there is a two-tier justice system and it's the weaponization of these agencies. And as Alan just said, go after free speech and go after the lawyers. Go after the whistleblowers, even though you have whistleblower protections, so that they suspend them from pay. They don't get paid. They don't fire them. They don't get paid though.

They removed their or suspend their security clearance and they can't get another job while this is all pending to force them to quit. Because they've had the nerve to say, hey, we thought when they were targeting pro-life organizations that that may have been a mistake. When they were targeting parents at school board meetings, maybe that was a mistake.

And for that, they're penalized. And that's why you go to court and that's why we are in court on those cases. And I'm telling you something, the First Amendment issues on this one against Trump are unreal.

I don't care if you like President Trump, you don't like President Trump. Criminalizing the speech and then criminalizing the legal work is exactly what Alan said. The tyranny of that is silence the lawyers, silence the speakers.

And that's what they've done. Yeah. Again, 1-800-6-8-4-31-10 to talk to us. Let's take another call. Mary Ann from New York online one. Hey, Mary Ann. Hi. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. My question is, Donald Trump was President of the United States when this, you know, January 6th took place. How are they going to indict him on these issues when he was the President at the time? He was already impeached for this. Yeah, there is a question of Presidential immunity. So now the double jeopardy standard that you're often talking about, you can't be sorry to the same crime twice if you've been acquitted. It's different because that was a political hearing.

And I don't mean political in a bad way. It's within the Congress's purview. And the others in the Article III is in the court. So it's not a double jeopardy per se. Having said that, though, there is a question of Presidential actions done while you're President. And there's a series of Presidential immunity cases. I argue three of them at the Supreme Court for President Trump. So all of those have to be looked at. The problem is this is in the District of Columbia and that jury is going to be hostile.

Yeah, I would not, again, you've got to set your goals with realistic. So it's going to be a tough battle at the district court because of just the location alone. Ninety-three percent of the residents of the District of Columbia are registered Democrats. So just a jury poll there is going to be tough. The judge is going to be tough.

It's an Obama appointee. Now, in this case, though, this one is not going to end no way at the district court. Prosecutions of a President, this is new ground here, so it's not going to end with whatever happens at a district court. It's going to be appealed, and some of these I think will make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yeah, this one clearly will. The case with Agent O'Boyle also will probably go all the way to the Supreme Court as well because there we file, which we'll be filing our Notice of Appeal this month. That actually goes directly to the Court of Appeals from the administrative law judge, so we're in the Court of Appeals on that one.

The issues here as well. We are in day two. I mean, what a start to our life and liberty drive. And throughout the month of August, our legal teams have been focusing on the cases that matter most to you. I read all the comments from the posts from the radio broadcast yesterday.

I read them last night myself. So we're listening to what you're saying. We want you to be engaged. This is your moment in our view. It's to defend the truth, defend freedom, defend liberty. Join us in this fight for life and liberty.

That's right, the life and liberty drive happening right now. All you have to do is go to ACLJ.org and hit that donate button and be a part of it. Join us in the fight because this is your moment to not only just hear about all of these amazing things that are happening in our world, but to actually get involved.

And we can't do it without your support. Whether that is the whistleblower situation from yesterday or everything that's unraveled today, go to ACLJ.org. If you lose us on your local station, we've got a second half hour coming up. Find us broadcasting live right now on ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow.

We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. I want to remind everybody with all the breaking news. The ACLJ just yesterday launched our new ACLJ Life and Liberty Drive and we announced that with a brand new case. The ACLJ is taking on with the whistleblower from the FBI, Garrett O'Boyle. He was one of the first whistleblowers to come forward in May to testify before Congress about the weaponization of the FBI. He is an FBI special agent. You may remember his personal story. Once he came forward as a whistleblower, he was moved across the country with a two week old child.

Two week old child. And then when he was moved across the country for this promotion that he received to join an FBI SWAT team, he was then suspended from his job and his pay was also suspended. So he had no way to make money. His items, his furniture and clothing and his family's furniture and clothing was stuck in a government facility. But because he was suspended, it took him a long time to even get that.

He then had to, and this is what makes me kind of sick to my stomach, rely on charity. He is not only a special agent in the FBI. He is a U.S. Army veteran of the 101st Airborne who served in Iraq and Afghanistan in battle in combat. And then was a police officer who went to school while he was a police officer to finish his bachelor's degree, join the FBI to protect Americans, to do the right thing, to protect this country. I think what he said too was so important. He said, you know, when I joined the FBI, I don't take an oath to the FBI.

I take an oath to the United States of America. So when the FBI is doing something that violates the principles of the United States of America, that's why we have the whistleblower protections. But what we have found out that through this representation is that those whistleblower protections, specifically with these agencies like the FBI and IRS, are pretty much meaningless because of the way that they're still able to punish these agents who come forward if they happen to be the agents they don't like.

If you're Alexander Vindman, everything is fine for you. Yeah, because in this case, what they do is they suspend your security clearance. And they suspend you without pay, so you can't get outside income at that point. And then when you go to an administrative review before – excuse me – before an administrative law judge, that judge says, I can't really look at your file, so I can't adjudicate this. That's why we're taking it to federal court.

So that was yesterday's announcement, right, with the FBI. Today – How crazy is it that you go to an administrative law judge who just says they can't do anything? Because there's a Supreme Court decision from 1988 called the Egan case that basically says, oh, there's nothing we can do. And I think it's a very different court now, and it's a very different statutory scheme now. So I'm optimistic we're just going to court. That's what we're doing, and that's why we have our life and liberty drive going on. And then today, last night, we get the third indictment of the former President, except this one's involving his free speech, what he thought and believed and what he said, and also named his co-conspirators lawyers, and you pretty much know who the lawyers are, who were defending it. And now we've criminalized speech, and we're criminalizing the lawyers who defended the speech.

And the government thinks they have the authority to do that in a constitutional republic. I want your reactions to this, folks, at 1-800-684-3110. That's 800-684-3110. But it's also time for you to engage with us. And, Logan, I think it's important for everybody to understand what this drive is all about. It's time for our members to join us and not just talking about it, we're doing something about it. That's right.

You can do this right now. We are really excited to be a part of this big announcement for the ACLJ Life and Liberty Drive. This is something we've been working on for months, and throughout the month of August, our legal team and our media team is going to be focusing on the issues that matter to you, our ACLJ members, the most. We were looking at the comments. We've read through all that.

You may have gotten a survey text message that came through to a lot of our members. We said, what's the most important thing to you? We took the top two items, freedom, religious liberty, and protecting the unborn in life. And we decided to put those together and really focus our month on this. And, by the way, these two cases that came through this week and the two things that came through this week, it was obviously not a part of the original plan. We hoped that they would.

But it just so happened to be that it was orchestrated to where we could launch with these two amazing pieces. So it's really an amazing time to be part of the ACLJ's Life and Liberty Drive. Defend the truth. Defend freedom. Join us in the fight for life and liberty. This is your moment.

Go to ACLJ.org. Thank you for an amazing day yesterday, and we're going to keep it going today. Welcome back to SECIO. We'll continue to take your phone calls.

Show at 1-800-684-31. Today as we continue on with our ACLJ Life and Liberty Drive, we are joined now by a senior analyst for the ACLJ for the secular broadcast, Tulsi Gabbard, both in military and political affairs today, a little bit of a mix of the political affairs. Tulsi, I want to go right to you, your reaction to the latest charges, this second indictment filed against Donald Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith, this time involving mostly what Donald Trump said when we talk about his speech and the idea of criminalizing political speech. Yeah, Jordan, this is yet another example of how far President Joe Biden's politicized Department of Justice is willing to go to try to destroy his main political opponent as a Presidential election is going on. This foundational purpose of what the Biden administration is doing is really the thing that should be most concerning to everyone. As we can see, all of these indictments count after count after count being thrown at former President Donald Trump is clearly an effort to divert his focus away from the campaign and towards fighting on multiple fronts in these lawsuits and to completely drain him and his campaign of resources so they can't focus on actually campaigning and trying to win this election.

The founders envisioned that our country would be a country of laws, not of men. And what we're seeing here, most concerning as it relates to the First Amendment, but you take all of these different attacks and indictments in whole, what we're seeing is a politicized Department of Justice that has disqualified itself from being able to fulfill the awesome responsibility that they're entrusted with because they are using it, first of all, to go after their political opponents, namely Donald Trump and his supporters, and also using the Department of Justice to protect the Democrat elite, namely President Joe Biden, by extension, Hunter Biden. So we're seeing how this politicized Department of Justice is being used to achieve both of those purposes, both of which harm the American people's interests, the interests of our country and our democracy.

Things that was interesting to me is a couple of points. One is, you know, one of the allegations in the indictment is that the Department of Justice was attempted to be used as a vehicle to propagate what President Trump was saying. But in reality, that's exactly what the Department of Justice is doing in this case.

And what's so concerning, we just had my friend and colleague Alan Dershowitz on, and we both talked about the two things that are so dangerous in this indictment. I have spent my career defending free speech, and I have defended groups that I totally disagree with. I mean, that's the beauty of liberty.

I have represented groups from the American Civil Liberties Union in cases to a Hare Krishna religious group, to the National Democratic Policy Committee, to evangelical groups, to free speech access, to pro-lifers. That's what free speech is. But they have criminalized free speech, and then they want to criminalize the lawyers defending the free speech, even if it's speech you disagree with. And I just find this indictment to be striking at the heart of a constitutional republic, and that is free discourse. And I know in your military career, you spent your life defending our freedoms. But in your political career, this is dangerous for politicians.

There's no question about that, Jay. You know, as you were playing some of those news articles leading up to our conversation here, they're talking about people accusing Donald Trump of knowingly lying to the American people. If that's their accusation, does this mean they're now going to go and try to criminally prosecute every single person who runs for office, who knowingly doesn't tell the truth? It goes directly to what you talked about, is free speech, this open marketplace of ideas, and has an incredibly powerful chilling effect on that public discourse, and making it so that people are thinking twice before they express their views or their opinions, and putting us in a position where we have the nanny state, big government, big brother, policing that very free speech that our Constitution protects. It seems to me, too, Tulsi, that this should not be just Republicans standing up and saying this is an attack on free speech.

It should be everyone saying, you know what, I should be able to have a view, and it might be a view that's outside the norm, because a lot of times, views that might be outside the norm today become views that are very much the norm years from now, and sometimes even quicker than that. So the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop is false, and now we know it's real, but yet at the time, if you said it was real, you were taken off social media. Your First Amendment rights were violated.

You may not have been criminally prosecuted, but it brings up the question, should those FBI agents have been criminally prosecuted because they knew the laptop was real the day they got it, and yet they told social media companies it was a fake Russian asset? It puts us in a place we shouldn't be in our country. Free speech means free speech.

It doesn't matter who's speaking. That's right, Jordan, and you bring up really an important point there about how this is not something that's limited to partisan politics, because it sets such a dangerous precedent for what happens when the winds of power shift to the other party. The Democrats who are silent today may be happy or pleased with what's going on. They know what happens when the tables are turned and now there's a new norm that's in place where in the United States of America, the Department of Justice is now used to go after political opponents.

If a party that they are not happy with is in power, they should be very concerned about that eventuality right now because the tables could turn very quickly and they could see their speech that they approve of or the politicians that they like being prosecuted in much the same way. We're in the middle of, we just started actually, a life and liberty drive at the ACLJ for the month of August, and I'm thinking, and we're representing the FBI whistleblower who said that the FBI and the federal government are basically crushing him and his family. And they suspended his security clearance and then they suspend him without pay and they can't take another job while they're going through this process. Then the administrative law judge, Tulsi, says, well, I can't review your security clearance so you don't get redress in the courts.

Now we're taking it to the court, it goes right to the federal court of appeals, which we're doing. But, you know, I saw this when you ran for President. As your star was rising in that Democratic debate and you were doing so well in those, all of a sudden it was like this machine just put you in the sights. And I feel like the same things happened to you, it happened to Donald Trump, it happened to anybody that's speaking out maybe outside the norm of the establishment. Yeah, there's no question about it, and it is a tried and true playbook that you've seen, I've seen, we've seen happen over and over again, used against people, regardless of political party, who dare to challenge their, whatever their mainstream narrative is of the moment, who dare to challenge their authority is really what it comes down to.

And you're right, I lived through it, was in the belly of the beast as they were throwing everything possible at me to try to destroy my character, smear me, discredit me, silence and cancel me, the whole thing. They're doing this to Donald Trump, they're doing it now to R.F.K. Jr. We saw in the hearing that he testified at in Congress on the hearing that was specifically speaking about the weaponization of the federal government and its attempts to censor voices, the American people, and the Democrat elite in that committee tried to censor Bobby Kennedy Jr. from speaking. In that very committee about censorship, so the hypocrisy and the irony is glaring. They're not even trying to cloak it in anything, and it's something that we need to be very concerned about and not allow their proclamations that they are doing this in the name of protecting democracy, and this is what's best for the country and the American people.

We can't believe that, because that's not what it is, it's about their power and protecting it at all costs. We appreciate your insight, we appreciate being part of our team on Sekulow. Folks, she's part of our team on Sekulow, we've got Tulsi Gabbard, we have these team members because of your support of the ACLJ. We're able to bring in all these diverse viewpoints and backgrounds, different backgrounds, different views. Tulsi also serves in our military at this time. I currently have been in Congress, run for President, on the other side of the aisle when she ran for President. So they understand, but I think what we all fundamentally understand today, whether it's Alan Dershowitz or Jay Sekulow or Tulsi Gabbard, is this idea that the American people should be the judges of the speech.

100%. Not the Department of Justice, not courts. We the people should decide if we think the speaker's right, and if we believe in what the speaker's saying. That's why we have elections. Do you believe that that person's going to do better? So that to me is the real fundamental problem. You can talk about all the other cases, the other issues President Trump is facing. With this challenge, it's purely about we don't like the speech you had, and we think you knew it was wrong. You couldn't have actually believed this. Well, this is exactly, it's exactly what you said.

You could do that easily to a religious person. Of course. Absolutely.

He didn't want my word. Yeah, I mean, well, I think that's what Alan was talking about, and Tulsi's saying the same thing. I think we're all saying the same thing here.

Here's the problem with one minute left in this segment. You understand the liberty and freedoms that are at stake here, folks. I mean, this is the core of political discourse. An FBI whistleblower silenced because he exercised his right as a whistleblower under statutory protections for whistleblowers. A former President indicted for believing something and then propagating it. And the lawyers listed as co-conspirators because they defended it, which is what lawyers do.

For instance, John Adams defended British soldiers during the Revolutionary War period, who later became a President of the United States. So this is why we're in our Life and Liberty Drive, and this is why we need you to be part of this. That is right, and this is your moment to be a part of it, to defend truth, to defend liberty. Join us in the fight. You can do it right now at ACLJ.org.

It's part of the Life and Liberty Drive, and your donation will be matched as well. So make sure you go to ACLJ.org. We're going to take a bunch of phone calls coming up in the next segment, so if you're on hold, stay on hold. We're going to get to you.

All right, welcome back to Secular. We're taking your phone calls 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Go right to the phones. Yeah, right to the phones.

I'm going to take them in order. Pam first in Georgia on Line 5. Hey, Pam.

Hey, guys. I spend my day primarily driving, and I meet with a lot of homeowners, and I see a lot of bumper stickers. I'm seeing a lot of pro-Trump bumper stickers on the road, especially lately. The more things like they double down on him, the more support I see. A lot of anti-Biden bumper stickers out there, too. I do think people are viewing this, Pam, as a pile-on at this point.

It looks like a pile-on, and this indictment is particularly weak. Yeah, when you look at the poll numbers have absolutely shown that, whether the state polls are starting to show that now or the national polls. I mean, Ron DeSantis, who's been the number two the entire race, was in the 20s, even 30s at one point.

He is now in the teens. Donald Trump is near 50-plus percent. He is tied with President Biden and leading Biden in some polls. So even his Republican challengers in the primary have only seen their numbers drop, and I don't think a lot of that is necessarily anything they've done or not done. It's because people are saying, you know what? Donald Trump went to war for us.

They're still going to war against him, so I'm going to give him a second chance. I think probably in a state like Georgia, you're probably going to see that more and more. Hey, I was driving around yesterday, saw an ACLJ bumper sticker on the back of somebody's car. So look, you may have been behind me or I may have been behind you if you were driving around the Nashville area with your ACLJ bumper sticker. I took a picture, shared it with everybody.

It's very cool to see out in the wild. You want to continue taking some calls? I do, but I want to say one thing first, because it follows up on both of what everybody's been saying, and that is when you're looking at the nature of the scope of this, that's why I had Alan Dershowitz on the broadcast, who I did the first impeachment, Jordan and I did the first impeachment with. I mean, he puts his money where his mouth is. I mean, he supports free speech for every group, and that's what's being challenged here. And then you go back to the FBI whistleblowers, and it's the same problem. They're doing the same thing. They're silencing dissent.

And when you silence dissent, you start looking not like a constitutional republic, but like a totalitarian regime, and that's not the way it's supposed to be. Let's go to Robert in Virginia. Robert, go ahead. You're on the air. Hey, guys. Great program.

Thanks. I've followed politics for a long time. I think we've come to a point in our country where the liberals, maybe not all liberals, but I think as a whole, they feel very comfortable with free speech of the conservatives being muzzled, and they feel very comfortable with Donald Trump at least being permanently removed from the ballot. Robert, it sure does look that way. And it's like free speech for me, but not for thee is what we used to say in law school. And go ahead and finish your comment. Oh, well, Hillary challenged the 2016 election.

Yes. John Kerry challenged the 2008 election, I mean, 2004 election. Al Gore challenged the 2000 election.

It's part of the process is allowing for election challenges. I tweeted out a video the RNC put out, 24 minutes of different Democrats saying that President Trump was illegitimately elected, including President Joe Biden, who said President Trump was an illegitimate President because Russia got him elected. Did anybody think for a moment, even that strongly disagreed, even laughing that off, did you ever think for a moment that they should be criminally prosecuted for saying that? No, it's an absurd statement, but guess what? In America, you can make absurd statements, especially Lord knows in politics, you get a lot of absurd statements. I mean, so you got just every major Democrat on the record saying Donald Trump was an illegitimate President, but no one ever thought at the Department of Justice that that speech was criminal.

Now they do now. Let's take another phone call. Continue on. Let's go to Carla in Texas. You're on the air.

Hello. Well, I believe the election was stolen and I've said it out loud, I've said it online, and I suppose that makes me a criminal. Under this Department of Justice, apparently it does, but go ahead. Well, should I turn myself in to local authorities or to the FBI? No, I don't have to be the FBI. Do we all need to do that? No, election interference is a federal offense.

We're making a joke about it, but it's not really funny. Yes, I know what you're saying. Where they'd be coming after you, Carla, if you were running for office, see, that's the dangerous part, is maybe they're not going to go after every American because that would just be too cumbersome, but if you were running for federal office right now and making those statements, maybe they would. Here's the problem with Jack Smith. That's what this state has done.

That's what this state has done. Jack Smith's entire career in public prosecutions on corruption cases where he's wrong just about every time. He brings indictments but doesn't get convictions. He makes law up that doesn't apply to this.

I mean, let's use the Bob McDonald example. Nine justices of the Supreme Court said the government's theory of honest use and bribery was totally inapplicable and incorrect as a matter of law. From Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Antonin Scalia, they all said he was wrong. Then he tried against John Edwards.

Our friend Abby Lowell defended it. Hung jury, never tried again. Menendez, done, finished, acquitted.

Because he comes up with these theories, but these theories are interfering with fundamental free speech. Elections. Elections and then go to the whistleblowers.

They're trying to point out corruption and issues that they're concerned about. We have a federal whistleblower protection scheme in the United States, a statute, statutory framework, that obviously doesn't work because you will hear a statement, I'm going to play it again, from an FBI agent, our client, before the House committee, talking about being crushed by his employer, the FBI. But the FBI will crush you.

This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing that are wrong. And we are all examples of that. There you have it.

So yesterday it was an FBI agent, today it's a former President of the United States. And that's why, at the ACLJ, we're not just able to break this down for you and give you incredible analysis, we're able to do something about it. So we give you analysis, so you're educated and informed, and then we take action.

And we are really taking action in the month of August. That's what Steve's call is about in Pennsylvania on Line 6. Hey Steve, welcome to Secular, you're on the air.

Gentlemen, good afternoon. Two quick comments, if I may. First, I can actually see a positive coming out of these cases, because now we have a conservative Supreme Court. If the cases make it that far and are won, this could set additional or new precedents for future cases to defend speech, First Amendment rights. The problem is, in both cases, the liberty of the individual, whether it's a former President or an FBI agent, are put in jeopardy. So there's real jeopardy. This is not a declaratory judgment. No, I mean, there's a silver lining, though, is that long-term we might get a good decision.

Yeah, oh no, I think that's possible, but you should not be putting people through this kind of loss of liberty potential through this process. And listen, we're on a call tomorrow with more whistleblowers, our team is. We've got a senior ACLJ team. I mean, I'm talking about seasoned lawyers.

Like I said, lawyers that have represented a President are representing these FBI agents. Not just one, two, or three, more like four. So your voice on this makes a big difference, and this is where you come in. We are launching, and we launched it yesterday to a great start, I have to say, of our life and liberty drive. Now, throughout the month of August, we've been listening to what you said in July. We're now, in the month of August, we're going to focus on the issues that matter the most to you. And I read all the comments from the broadcast yesterday on all of our social media platforms to get a sense of what you're concerned about. And we know what it is, and we're taking action on that.

We're going to address it on air, and we're going to address it in the courtrooms and the halls of Congress, or wherever necessary internationally as well. Your financial support is crucial in defending all of this. We couldn't do any of this without you. So your support's key.

This is your moment. Defend the truth. Defend freedom. Join us in this fight for life and liberty.

That's right. It is the life and liberty drive. And all you have to do, very simply, is go to ACLJ.org because this is your moment to join us in the fight, as we've said. The show isn't about just getting you informed. For you to listen, like every other broadcast, we give you a way to activate. And you can do that right now. Very special time. The life and liberty drive. ACLJ.org.