DISTURBING: Special Counsel Jack Smith Involved in Major IRS Scandal

Today on Sekulow, the troubling record of special counsel, Jack Smith. 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. A search warrant on a former President's home to retrieve documents that were part of the President's records. Now, you could debate whether the documents should have been retained or not, but it was unprecedented in scope. But what I want to do on this broadcast today is tell you why this whole thing is unprecedented in scope.

We've been talking and been focusing about this on the last week or so of the broadcast. And we've talked about these individuals were representing these whistleblowers. And in these are cases I know a lot about folks because I litigated these cases for President Trump as his lawyer during the Mueller probe, during the impeachment probe at the Supreme Court involving, you guessed it, records, financial records.

Three cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. So I wanted to put in perspective this appointment of a special counsel. So if you remember Merrick Gartland decided that he was going to appoint last year a special counsel to review the document possession by President Trump, former President Trump at Mar-a-Lago. That was the appointment of a special counsel. That special counsel is Jack Smith. He also appointed a special counsel to look at documents being handled by President Biden because initially they found some in a house, then they found some in a warehouse, then they found some in an office, then they found some in a garage, a special counsel there. A special counsel, by the way, we have never heard from in almost a year.

Nothing. But we've heard a lot from the special counsel in the other case, and that is Jack Smith. And that's a familiar name to those of us at the American Center for Law and Justice because Jack Smith's name came up in one of our biggest cases in our history. That was when the Internal Revenue Service, the IRS, decided they were going to target conservative organizations by establishing, are you ready for this, a B on the lookout list, and it had certain names, Patriot, Life, Freedom, Liberty, 9-11. There was a list of names, and from that hundreds of organizations were then put under a special audit program by the Internal Revenue Service. But do you know why they wanted to do all of this? Was to shut down what they saw as advocacy based on a Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case.

So they decided to target specifically conservative groups. Lois Lerner, very familiar name. We're going to play some of her sound in the next segment of the broadcast. Familiar name because she was the head of the tax-exempt division. Lois Lerner was trying to piece together, these were her words that we have in emails.

Put them up on the screen. Piece together cases, criminal cases, against these organizations. Who was she talking to about doing this? Guess who? Special counsel, Jack Smith, who was in charge of the public integrity section.

In fact, you can see right there on these emails, you see his deputy, Justin Filger, Richard Filger, his deputy was on these emails. Who is it from? Jack Smith. So let me say this again. There it is. September of 2010, Jack Smith to his deputies and others, 501 nonprofits.

Look what they say in this. Check out an article on the front page in the New York Times regarding misuse of nonprofits for indirectly funding campaigns. This seems egregious to me. Could we even charge, or could we ever charge a 371 conspiracy, by the way it's a conspiracy to violate laws against the United States, for misuse of such nonprofits to get around existing campaign finance law? I know 501c3s are legal, but we should knowingly look at them if they're engaged in this. And the IRS commissioner started getting in on this and so did Lois Lerner. 2010, Jack Smith.

2023, Jack Smith. I'm going to tie all this together, folks. This has been going on for decades, and we're getting to the bottom of it at the American Center for Law and Justice, and that's where you come in. We have our Life and Liberty Drive. We want you to participate in it. Go to ACLJ.org right now. Just make a donation.

Any amount you donate, we're getting a matching gift for. I'm going to get into this at great length. One of the people prosecuted by this individual, Jack Smith, the special counsel, Bob McDonald. He was convicted at trial. And you know what happened to the Supreme Court of the United States? He won.

9-0. We'll be back with more in just a moment. So, I'm putting this all together for you to let you know we've been dealing with this for 13 years. Jack Smith's name came up frequently in the IRS litigation that we had because Jack Smith was the head of the public integrity section. And Lois Lerner was the head of the IRS tax exam section, and they were working together to, quote, piece together—that's what they said in some emails—piece together a case. This way, it would scare these nonprofits if they could bring one criminal case against them. We were representing dozens of cases of clients around the country, dozens of nonprofits. Hundreds were contacted. As I said, they had a be-on-the-lookout list.

So, this was absurd. It was just targeting and trying to silence, through a criminal case, advocacy from nonprofits engaged in free speech activities, which includes petitioning the government for redress of grievances. All that was going on. So, you had this—it was the Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations. Lois Lerner was the IRS chief under Obama in the tax-exempt division, and they got caught. And they got caught because they had people that eventually came forward, but we also were able to put forward information from all of our different clients that started getting contacted. When they got contacted, we found out they had a BOLO list, be-on-the-lookout. And as I said in the last segment, it has specific names of if the name of the organization includes liberty or freedom or equality. Put them on the list. And as I said, hundreds of them on the list. I already gave you the email from Jack Smith, the current special counsel against Donald Trump—there it is—to including his deputy, saying, hey, I saw this article. Can we bring a conspiracy case against these 501c3s?

I know they're allowed to talk, but maybe they're just, you know, knowingly using them to get around limitations. So this was his idea. And I'm tying this together because we got to look past, in the past, to also look forward. Fast forward 13 years, the same guy is the one that Merrick Garland picks to go after Donald Trump, who has these expansive views of criminal law. So expansive, as we're going to hear from Bob McDonald in the probably next segment of the broadcast, former governor of Virginia, who was prosecuted by Jack Smith's office, who won his case at the Supreme Court—and we were part of that—nine to zero because the Supreme Court said the interpretation that the prosecutors were using for the application of the law there against the former governor would have stifled core political speech. So the trend of all of this, and if you look at the court pleadings that are going on now in the Trump-related litigation, is the same thing. Silence the other side. Gag orders, protective orders, silencing, targeting, hear from one special counsel, don't hear from the special counsel on the Biden matter, documents were all over the country.

So the dual standard—we call this dual standard of justice—is unreal. I want to play for you a soundbite from Lois Lerner. When she said, hey, we had a problem here, and what she said—is this the Duke University one first? Yeah, let's play the Duke University one first. She blames the Supreme Court.

Take a listen. And what happened last year was the Supreme Court, out of the law, getting chipped away, chipped away in federal election radar, the Supreme Court dealt with a huge blow, overturning a 100-year-old President that said basically corporations can give to everybody in political campaigns. And everyone is up in arms because they don't like it. Then the election official can't do anything about it. They want the IRS to fix the problem.

The IRS laws are not set up to fix the problem. All right. So there you go. So she talks about this. She later apologizes for this, but she only apologizes to Congress. And she apologizes in a public statement at an ABA meeting where she has put on the spot here, folks. I'm looking back because you got to—and then I'm going to tie an email in here from Lois Lerner that you're going to put this all together.

Take a listen to this. They used names like Tea Party or Patriots, and they selected cases simply because the application had those names in the title. That was wrong. The IRS would like to apologize for that. I said in 2013 the apology was not accepted, and we went to federal court. We won, and we changed the law.

And then the Biden administration tried to do it again, clamped down on that. But I want to read to you an email. This is from Lois Lerner, and it involves Jack Smith's staff, and it's the same guy prosecuting Trump right now.

And the reason this is important is you have to understand the nexus has been part of a theory of law that they've been working on for decades. Here's the email. I got a call today from Richard Polgar. He, by the way, is the director of the election crimes branch at DOJ, Jack Smith's deputy. He wanted to know who at the IRS, the DOJ folks, could talk to about Senator Whitehouse, Democratic senator, with the idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applications, about applicants who lied on their 1024s.

In other words, they may not have been doing anything wrong, but they made a misstatement on their 1024s. That's their applications, saying they weren't planning on doing political activity, and in turn around they actually did some planning activity. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but wanted to talk to the right folks at the IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any, damage this might do to the IRS programs.

I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS. She said this when she knew they were targeting already. And the FBI and the DOJ were notified by her of all of this, and it was Jack Smith. So you have to understand here what is at play and what is at stake and who's making the calls. That is the same guy today that is doing all of this litigation in Florida and in D.C. against the former President. I'm pointing this out because this two-tier system of justice, look at it in the context we talked about this earlier in the week, in the FBI going to the high-tech companies saying, hey, don't put this story out about Hunter Biden's laptop, Russian disinformation.

When they knew it wasn't Russian disinformation, they're putting their hands on one side of the scale to silence other voices, and that's just not the way it's supposed to work, and that's why we've taken such aggressive and direct action. Now, coming up on this broadcast, let me tell you what we're enjoying with a friend of mine who was the governor of Virginia, of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Bob McDonald. He was a superstar governor, did great things for the Commonwealth, but he was getting way too popular.

And what group came after him? Public integrity section. Who was in charge of that?

Take a wild guess. Jack Smith had an exotic, to say the least, expansive view on the corruption laws to the point of absurd. But the trial judge put him in place, he gets convicted. Fourth Circuit sits on it, doesn't do much with it. I get involved and others, goes to the Supreme Court of the United States. Unanimous reversal.

The most conservative members of the court and the most liberal members of the court. And they said the interpretation of the law that the prosecutor was bringing silences core political activity and speech and would criminalize what politicians do every single day in elected office. And that's what's happening right now. It's the same thing. So whether you like Trump or don't like Trump, it's irrelevant.

You want freedom of speech, you want elections that are not interfered with, then don't let them do high-tech interference. And that's what a lot of this is. So I'm putting this all together. It's the same players, folks, the same team. And by the way, as soon as the Biden administration got in, we had a consent order, an injunction, a declaratory judgment against the IRS to not do targeting.

They did targeting again. I'm going to talk about that later in the broadcast. But you just need to understand the nature and scope of what we're dealing with here. And that is an organization and a prosecutor that has always had this expansive meaning. Expansive views of the law can be very dangerous for a constitutional republic because you stifle core political expression. And when you stifle core political expression, you are hurting a republic. And when you come up with novel theories, I mean, I see all these legal experts commenting on the indictment out of the January 6 grand jury and saying, oh, this was a novel interpretation of the law, but one that should have happened.

A novel interpretation of the law against the former President. Who happens to be the leading Republican candidate for President right now? So the whole thing looks very political, but what I'm saying to you folks, we've been at this for 13 years and we've had victories and we're going to get victories again. We're representing now the whistleblowers. They're critical. You heard from one of them on the broadcast last week.

You know we have a second. I will tell you this week alone, we have talked to three more. Those cases are in the beginning stages. These are people that work with governmental agencies that said what's going on is outrageous. Targeting of parents at school board meetings. Stifling pro-life. It's got to the point on the pro-life issue where we had criminal investigations of clinics, pro-life clinics that were violently attacked.

When it firebombed and the FBI came in to investigate, it got so tense and we were so concerned about the direction of where it was going, we stopped participating or sent lawyers there if our clients were questioned. We have a life and liberty drive up right now at the ACLJ. We're closing the second week of that. The first week was great.

So far this week, very good as well. We need to keep this momentum going folks. Because of your support, we're representing these whistleblowers. We stood with the Tea Party groups and the conservatives. We're pointing out on this media broadcast what's been going on here for 13 years and we're getting results on Capitol Hill. None of this happens without you.

Go to ACLJ.org right now. Stand with us in our life and liberty drive. Your gifts will be doubled. It's that important. You're part of the team here. You're allowing us to do this. I said when we started representing the one whistleblower, the floodgates couldn't open up. They have. And we want to be able to stand with these men and women who have served our country.

And you're letting us do that. Go to ACLJ.org right now. Participate in our life and liberty drive. That's at ACLJ.org.

We encourage you to do that right now. So we've had a long history at the ACLJ dealing with Jack Smith in one way or another. One who's head of the public integrity section dealing with the IRS and the targeting case. And then in representation of a very good friend of mine, a great public servant and former governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Bob McDonald, who's joining us on the broadcast right now. And Bob, you experienced the novel, broad, overreaching attack by this special counsel aimed at you and your family while you were governor. And I think it's important for people. I will say at the outset, Bob was vindicated unanimously by the Supreme Court.

We got to play a part in that case and we're glad to be able to help our friend. But there was an interesting comment in the opinion, and that was that the chief justice speaking for the court said, based on the government's interpretation of the law, and this was so important in the statutory language, that the jury instructions at issue were impermissibly broad and did not provide enough guidance to the jury regarding whether the actions in question needed to be formal exercise of governmental power. But he said, adopting the broader reading of the statutory language, which is what the government wanted, would likely chill public officials' interactions with their constituents due to fears of prosecution and therefore make it more difficult for them to do their jobs. And Bob's job was governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Bob, your reaction to this whole situation, and you experienced it in a way nobody else has. First, Jay, thank you for having me on and thank you for helping in formulating the strategy and the legal arguments in our case that ended up with that unanimous opinion. I knew from the beginning, Jay, in my heart of hearts that I didn't do anything wrong, certainly didn't do anything illegal, and we knew it was going to be a long slog in order to be able to demonstrate that. I think that the overreach is due to, first and foremost, a vague federal statute, but the willingness of federal prosecutors that have vast resources, leaked stories to taint the jury pool. They were willing to stretch the law with, as you pointed out, a very novel theory that hadn't been tried before, jury instructions in our case, and they were able to convince a jury.

And of course, it took $28 million, three and a half years, and a lot of agony, and ultimately, they all had a grace and providence to get that unanimous turnaround. I think Jack Smith issued Jay is, you know, look, he's Harvard educated. He's tried a lot of complex cases for the United States and done well. But when it came to those five or six years where he was head of the public integrity section, had broad power of whether to bring cases or not, he was willing to stretch the law to what Justice Roberts called a boundless interpretation in order to win. And as you well know, that's not the job of a government lawyer. They have different ethical rules that are much more constrained, and that is to seek truth and justice, not merely to convict.

I think Jack Smith would rather, you know, win than get it right. And I see a little bit of that play here now with some of the novel theories, especially in the January 6 case that he's bringing against the President. You know, I mentioned the January 6 case earlier in the broadcast because a lot of commentators have said these are not tested theories, these are novel theories. And they're applying these untested novel theories against a former President.

I mean, I think it's very, very dangerous. But, Bob, I remember in your case specifically that we had these novel theories that they were dealing with, these broad interpretations of the law that really would eliminate your ability to govern as the governor of the chief executive of the Commonwealth of Virginia. And that was the way they interpreted things.

But it wasn't just you. You mentioned this five or six years that Jack Smith was in charge of the public integrity section. You had this entire series of cases, the Senator John Edwards case, where the same situation tries to novel theory, he loses in a jury verdict.

Bob Menendez, a senator from New Jersey, Democrat, same idea. Big indictment, can't get the verdict. And your case, of course, the ultimate vindication is the Supreme Court of the United States. But it concerns me, and I tied this earlier into the fact that it was Jack Smith, by the way, Bob, in 2013, that was tied into these targeting cases that the IRS was bringing against conservative organizations.

So it just looks like they've always put their hand on one side of the scale and tried to silence one particular viewpoint. Yeah, and that group of cases, and there were some others as well, Renzi and others where I thought they were over the top, but it shows, I mean, he was the partisan in terms of going after a Republican or Democrat. It was more when it was a high profile case that might bring a claim or attention to him or the Justice Department. He was willing to pull the trigger and put, you know, states and individuals and families in great jeopardy for theories that had never been tried. Jury instructions, Jay, as you well know and advised me, had never been approved by any court in the United States.

And so that's the danger. You know, prosecutors are like judges. They're supposed to call balls and strikes, call the law the way it is. You may remember in the oral argument, Stephen Breyer, who turned out to be the best advocate, liberal Democrat, but he said basically that the powers of a federal prosecutor are virtually uncontrollable. And to give them sort of unsettered discretion when it comes to some of these theories that they build into these cases was, he called it the biggest separation of powers problem I've ever seen. I mean, that's Justice Breyer.

And so that's the caution, you know, weaponizing the criminal justice system to go after people either because they're of an opposing political viewpoint or because they're high profile and you want to win is really dangerous for the country. You know, you mentioned Stephen Breyer on this, and I remember during the oral argument of your case how assertive he was on this point. And the interesting thing with Governor McDonald's cases, this did not cut across ideological, I mean, it completely cut across ideological lines.

There wasn't an ideological perspective to this. All of the justices agreed that this was an abuse. But you said something, Bob, that I think we've got to, I've got to share with my audience again, I want you to elaborate on, and that is this idea of these expansive readings of criminal statutes and what it does to the functioning of government when you have a prosecutor doing that. You know, in Justice Roberts' opinion, which I think 27 pages brilliantly reasoned, you know, he called, he relied in some porgy on some amazing amicus briefs we had in the case with the White House counsel for every President from Reagan to Obama and 83 former attorneys general of the states, all saying what you just read, and that if you uphold this new radical expansive theory of these statutes, that what you do is you endanger every political figure in the ordinary exercise of their everyday job. With these vague federal statutes, remember Justice Roberts actually said that, you know, maybe we should consider whether this is actually a void for vagueness because nobody under this theory, nobody knows where the line is between regular discharge of your duties and criminal behaviors. So I'm so glad the Supreme Court railed it in and put guard posts around the statute so honest elected officials know where the line is. I'm going to read right from the opinion.

Officials might wonder whether they could respond to even the most commonplace request for assistance, and citizens with legitimate concerns might shrink from participating in democratic discourse. This is the majority, this is the unanimous opinion. This concern is substantial.

White House counsel who worked in every administration from that of President Reagan to President Obama warned that the government's, quote, breathtaking expansion of public corruption laws would likely chill federal officials interactions with the people they serve and thus damage their ability to effectively perform their duties. Bob, I am thrilled, and as you know, we've been friends for a very long time, many decades, that you were vindicated at the highest level. We're glad we were able to play a role in that, but more importantly for the country, that we got clarity.

And just going to this overzealous interpretations of laws can be very dangerous for the Republic, and I think your case is Exhibit 1. Thanks for being with us, Bob. I appreciate it. Well, thanks for your role in helping my Commonwealth and my family, Jay, and for getting the rule of law right. I'm very grateful, and I know it'll serve future elected officials well. Nice to be on with you.

You too. And we're going to continue to do that, folks, and that's why we're in our life in Liberty Drive right now, and your support for the ACLJ lets us do that. By the way, the ACLJ filed one of those amicus briefs in that very case, and we want to be there for these people and to be able to defend them aggressively in court. And I've assembled an incredible team of lawyers at the ACLJ to do just that, but that's where you come in. This is a team effort.

You're part of that team. ACLJ.org, your gifts are doubled. We've got 30 more minutes of this broadcast ahead.

Back with more in a moment. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jay Sekulow. You know, I've said often that I'm not a fan of the special counsel statute. I certainly wasn't a fan of it when I was representing former President Trump with Bob Mueller. I don't like these special counsels.

I think they can become an entity unto themselves. And as we just heard from Bob McDonald, the former governor of Virginia, he faced Jack Smith's office, public integrity office, in court, and won unanimously at the Supreme Court of the United States. We played a part in that case.

But it goes to show you the nature and scope of what's going on here. Then I traced it all the way back to the IRS cases where they targeted the IRS. Again, Jack Smith and his office pulled into that one.

So this idea of putting their hands on one side of the scale with the Department of Justice has been going on for decades. Now, we're getting it stopped. We stopped it with the IRS, although they rose their head again as soon as the Biden administration came in and we quickly were able to clamp down on a lot of this.

A lot of it because of this radio broadcast and TV broadcast, by the way. We were able to get the information out when a group was getting their tax exempt status challenged again. And Friends of Ours First Liberty brought a lawsuit to actually negotiate it out and got it resolved. And then we filed up with a federal lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury to get to the bottom of who in the world said they could start going after these conservative groups again. And that's in process now. You've got to stay on top of it.

You've got to be aggressive. But the same interpretation of this law, these novel and broad theories targeting governors and Presidents is very dangerous. And our director of policy, Harry Hutchinson, is in the studio with me right now.

And Harry, I just spent time with Bob McDonald. I've talked about the history we had with this special counsel. But these very broad interpretation of the law, all nine justices of the Supreme Court said very dangerous for our republic because you cannot govern.

Absolutely. And the approach that Jack Smith has taken in each and every case undermines the Constitution and undermines our fundamental liberties. Jay, the First Amendment states clearly that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or press. Second, we are all entitled to the presumption of innocence. Jack Smith has essentially reversed all of those presumptions. And he offers an overzealous interpretation of the law, first by criminalizing speech, but also by being overzealous with respect to the Bob McDonald investigation and conviction. Also with respect to Bob Menendez and other individuals as well.

John Edwards, too. I mean, these expansive views of the law that juries were finding they couldn't even apply in the Menendez and in the Edwards case. And then, as you said, in the McDonald case, unanimous Supreme Court said, no, this is not right.

Unanimous. And some of his biggest advocates at the court were Justice Breyer and others. But the danger in all of this, and I'm tying it as it goes back to our IRS cases, Harry, and now we've got these whistleblowers coming forward on these other matters, is the danger it presents is, is putting their hand on one side of the scale. That viewpoint discrimination in speech or political activity is always very dangerous. You are absolutely correct, but yet the Justice Department has legitimized this approach. Keep in mind, the Justice Department has put its finger on the scale with respect to traditional Catholics. It's gone after pro-life demonstrators when clearly there was no case.

Parents at school board meetings. And so these individuals are consistently exercising their freedom of speech, and yet the Justice Department is saying, no, we don't like that speech. We wish to chill speech. We wish to work with the tech companies, basically to constrain the ability of the American people to engage in fundamental discourse. We're going to tie all this together, including what Harry just mentioned, this tech situation, which is real, folks, and we talked about that earlier in the week. We're going to put this all together in a nice bow for you so you understand exactly what we're dealing with. But because of your support, we're able to stand with these whistleblowers, stand with those groups that were targeted. And again, we've got a drive going on right now, our Life and Liberty Drive here at the ACLJ. I want to encourage you to go to ACLJ.org, support our Life and Liberty Drive. Your gifts are doubled, and you're allowing us to stand with these individuals who would never be able to hire counsel at the capabilities that we've assembled here for them. It's because of you. You're the vital part of this team at ACLJ.org, the Life and Liberty Drive.

More when we come back. Parents at school board meetings targeted as extremists. Catholic Church targeted by the FBI for being extreme. This is all coming out of the FBI, folks. Whistleblowers saying, hey, this isn't right. The FBI going to the tech companies and saying, hey, don't put out that information about the Hunter Biden laptop.

And I'll tell you why. That's Russian disinformation when it wasn't the case at all, as we now know. And they knew then, too. We talked about earlier in the week, one of the FBI agents in counterintelligence in charge of the investigation of Trump is pleading guilty, it appears, to two counts of being an agent for Russian oligarchs during the time he was investigating Trump for Russian interference and collusion.

I mean, you cannot make this stuff up. You're from Governor Bob McDonald, who was a target of the public integrity section of Jack Smith's investigation. Target. One unanimously at the Supreme Court of the United States. It's the same prosecutor going after President Trump now.

But there's something else I want to get to here. And we tied in that this all started back in 2010 and 2013 with our IRS case, where Lois Lerner was working with Jack Smith and his office to try to, quote, piece together cases against conservative pro-life group, conservative political groups to silence them, bring a criminal case that'll silence them up. This is what they were concerned with. Lois Lerner eventually, remember, she apologized. Oh, we shouldn't have done that. We shouldn't have been on the lookout list.

That was wrong. But then months later, after the apology, now we're in court at this point. Here's what Chuck Schumer says at the speech at the Center for American Progress. We have to do something to address the damage done by the Supreme Court's citizen united decision.

Obviously, the Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of undisclosed dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government. And it's clear we're not going to pass anything legislatively as long as the House of Representatives is in Republican control. But there are many things that can be done by the IRS and other government agencies, and we have to redouble those efforts.

We have not worked hard enough on it. So he's calling for the Justice Department and the IRS to work together, which they already were, to try to, quote, piece together. He didn't like the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, so that's his reaction to it. And Jack Smith's office, they're all responding to this political pressure that's being put on them. So, I mean, this has been going on, folks, for 15 years, and now it's in broad daylight. So now you've got whistleblowers coming forward, and they're being threatened.

And fortunately, the ACLJ is there because of your support of our work and our life and liberty drive to stand with them. But this shows you the scope and nature of the focus on this. And, Harry, as I said, it's been going on for over a decade.

I mean, this is not new. The danger is it affects the way a constitutional republic operates. And when you're defending life and liberty, and that's our drive this week, this month, let me tell you something, folks. Defending the republic is the biggest part of that.

Absolutely. So I think it's imperative for listeners to note that there is indeed a conspiracy against the American people. This conspiracy is led by the elites in Washington. That includes, for instance, the DOJ, members of the House and Senate. These elites are intent on doing one thing, distorting the truth or preventing, in the alternative, truthful speech by American citizens. And so the American citizens need to basically wake up and basically make sure that their voices are heard against the voices of the DOJ and the other elites in Washington who are basically intent on cracking down on speech and Americans' constitutional rights.

Here's the scary part of this, though, Harry. If you're the FBI agent, that's the whistleblower. If you're the Department of Homeland Security, whoever you might be, U.S. Marshals, whatever it might be, and you want to tell the American people what's going on is not right and this is a misapplication and we're being told to do things that are not right, is that the power of these bureaucracies come on them like a laser beam.

And that's what we're seeing happen right now. Absolutely, and it's incredibly unfair and it's also very important to note that the ACLJ and other organizations are supporting these individuals who are becoming whistleblowers. We need more and more whistleblowers to come forward, but the American people need to support them in each and every way possible, including in some cases, perhaps financially, because what happens is the bureaucrats do what? They cut off sources of income for these agents who are acting as whistleblowers and in many cases, those whistleblowers face a unique challenge. They must either resign their position or they can keep their position, but they can't earn any outside income.

They're in the proverbial catch-22. So here's what the government does. Instead of firing these agents, which would then open them up to, they could sue and then go after and get outside employment, they don't do that. They suspend them. They don't cancel or revoke their security clearance. They suspend it. So what does that mean? The agent is still, quote, employed by the FBI, but they can't take any income because they're not getting paid by the FBI.

And FBI regulations say outside income is limited to $7,000. And then these agencies turn their focus on the whistleblowers. Now, what's starting to happen? We're just seeing the beginning of this right now, folks, but this again, this is where you come in. I said when we announced the first whistleblower, Agent O'Boyle, I said, we may be opening the floodgates here.

And I've already started seeing that. So it was, first it was Agent O'Boyle, then within a few days, it was FBI staffer Marcus Allen. And we knew this would develop because what's happening is there are the American people and these agents, most of which, by the way, a lot of them had military service. They served the country honorably.

They've gotten awards for being in combat. And this is the thank you they're getting. And this is the target. It's being targeted at them, but it's really being targeted at all of us.

It's just they're in the way. You know, President Trump makes that statement. They're going after all of us and just using him.

In a sense, that's very true. Again, I don't care where you stand on these issues politically, when you shut down discourse or try to interpret a law as was done in the McDonald case in such a way that the governor can't be the governor, which is what they tried to do, you are affecting the operation of our republic. And we should never allow that to go unchallenged. So what are we doing? We're challenging it.

And we're challenging it, I think, in the best way possible. When we take a look at the whistleblower cases and Agent O'Boyle's case, we're going to federal court of appeals. The way the statute is set up, we can go directly to the court of appeals.

We're doing that this month. That notice of that appeal is being filed this month. In other cases, we've got to go through administrative review processes or deal with the Department of Justice or the inspector general to get justice for our clients. You haven't heard from some of these clients because they're still in process and we're not going to put them forward when their case is still in process. But what it does say, and I want you to hear this from Agent O'Boyle, this is the kind of pressure they're under. He says the words, they will crush you. Take a listen.

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. If 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. We had Agent O'Boyle on the broadcast and he talked about it, but he said something very dramatic. And that was he did say he would advise them not to go forward, but he has changed that now. And he has changed that now because we have teamed up with our friends at Empower Oversight and the ACLJ is now in the case.

Take a listen. I even told them that ACLJ is taking me on as a client. And I said the time is now. You guys can all start coming forward. We have the legal capability.

We have the connections to Congress. Like everybody needs to be whistleblowing about the things they're seeing because I'm sure what me and others have done, we're just scratching the surface. Folks, this is exactly why you need to stand with us for our life and liberty drive. I have exposed to you, and we're going to do this on the last segment of the broadcast as well, 13 years of litigating with these groups. And we've gotten great results, but it's taken a lot of time and effort.

But now we've got, you know, before it was a governor on the line and it was nonprofit groups. Now it's FBI agents and FBI special analysts and people from Homeland Security and their livelihoods and their lives are on the line. And we want to be able to defend them. And the way we can defend them is because of you. So you're standing with us and our life and liberty drive makes all the difference. I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org right now and go to our life and liberty drive and support our work.

Your gift will be double. You'll be standing with us, which allows us to stand with these agents. And we cannot do it without you.

This is the conclusion of the second week of our drive. And this is exactly the reason why we want you to stand with us. This is the time for us to stand with these brave men and women who have put their lives and families and livelihoods on the line for our country. We need to be standing with them. You can stand with us. ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org for the life and liberty drive. It is that critical. The time is now.

Your engagement is necessary now. You know, we've seen the power of government go after groups and individuals and governors and nonprofit organizations, and we're there to fight back. And we're going to continue to do that. I'm going to play for you in a moment a portion of a movie we shot about the IRS targeting, which involved Lois Lerner, Jack Smith's office, the same players you're hearing.

There they were. But Harry, I said something in the beginning. I want to reiterate it before we show this clip, and that is when we talk about defending life and liberty, the most important part of liberty, we could talk about individual cases, but is the survival of the constitutional republic. And we are a constitutional republic. We're not just a pure democracy.

So it's a very delicate balance. But when you start utilizing criminal laws in these overly expansive ways, you are directly harming that important balance for a constitutional republic. You are precisely correct. So the government, the federal government under the Biden administration is engaged in an affirmative effort to chill the speech, the freedom of speech of the American people. So to counter that, we need a tsunami of whistleblowers. And we should note that the whistleblowers are being targeted by the DOJ, the FBI, and other entities within government, including Congress, the Democrats in Congress.

Yep, you're precisely correct. So essentially, their approach is to crush whistleblowers, but ultimately their target is not the whistleblower so much. It is to crush the American people. And so the American people are the real target. And so the American people need to respond to what the federal government is doing. And I would argue now more than ever, that is why we need their support.

I want to show a very quick clip. Just a couple of minutes. When we did this IRS challenge, which we were successful in, this will give you a real quick history of what took place there. We had been a Tea Party group for about a year and a half. So in October of 2010, we did apply for tax exempt status. We sent in a complete application. Everything was there.

The IRS sent a letter back saying that within 60 to 90 days, we should have an answer for you. So that sounded reasonable. I received this letter with a bunch of questions. And as the first correspondence we'd had with them at all. And it came out of the blue. We were just shocked.

I mean, it just came in the mail. And then I started to read these questions. And that's when things really got interesting. The letter that I got from the IRS not only was filled with egregious questions, but it gave me a very short timeline and a window to answer those questions. And in these questions were questions about family members of boards. There were questions about donors and activity beyond just the normal list of donors, but what their activities and affiliations were as well. I said they would take thousands of hours to get all the information detailed to what they wanted.

It would probably take thousands of dollars to put it all together. And they gave us two weeks to comply. They were trying to shut groups down that they disagreed with. This was very, very serious. For an average American, I mean, it was just like, oh, could they come after our spouses' jobs? Could they, you know, what's going to happen to us here?

We were frightened. Nothing was simple about this. Nothing.

It was nothing. It was really complicated. We've got to find a way through this. OK, because the IRS is asking questions. You can't just blow them off. You can't just say, oh, we're not answering.

OK, that doesn't work that way. I said I would bet money that they're going to try to drag this out until after the 2012 elections, because as long as they can keep us tied up with this, we're not out holding rallies and being active and doing the things that they don't want us to be doing. By putting it in limbo, what you've done is you've done exactly what they were trying to accomplish, in my opinion, was stifle all of the organizations. On the lookout, BOLO, for organizations that contained any ideas of liberty, sovereignty, family, any kind of dissent against any policies of the Obama administration, those were targeted and put into the separate bin that had to have extra scrutiny by the IRS. I mean, it's just, again, the stunning nature and the egregiousness of our own government reaching in and deciding, based on what you believe, Mr. Kukaji, we're going to actually apply additional scrutiny to you. We accidentally stumbled into the corruption that is going to be and is the largest scandal in American history. You don't expect this kind of intimidation to a banana republic.

You don't expect it. You expect them to be professionals. There was a serious systematic problem within the IRS that allowed this issue to percolate all the way to the top. But ultimately, the way to handle this was court. You had to be in court to get this resolved. You can't say we're going to just let them trample on our rights.

It was time to stand up. We decided we were going to move forward with a lawsuit, that they can't get away with this. We're getting ready to fight the IRS, the Department of Justice. What we were there was to make sure that no other American could ever be targeted again by their government for their political beliefs. The IRS now formally apologizing to Tea Party groups.

So the end result was the IRS did the right thing by resolving the case with an injunction that mandated a complete change of the IRS nonprofit tax-exempt work as it relates to issue advocacy organizations. And you look at Jay Sekulow and how many times he was on TV, you know, representing us and making our case. We only persevered because the ACLJ was there. They stood up for us. They fought for us.

If we hadn't had the ACLJ there to stand by us, help fight back, I don't know where we'd be. We had an organization that believed in our claim. They knew that we were right. And they were going to help navigate that process to help us achieve success.

And they did. It's one of the most significant wins in the ACLJ's history. To take on the IRS and win at that level is a pretty big deal. Two weeks ago, we launched our ACLJ Life and Liberty Drive to focus on two issues that mattered most to you, and those were life and liberty.

And we've spent the last two weeks talking about those issues. For instance, in the life situation, some of these whistleblowers were saying, hey, these pro-life groups are being targeted. They shouldn't be.

It's the pro-abortion groups that should be. And they were called out for that, lost their security clearance. So it all ties in.

But when you look at the life and liberty attack, as I was just saying with Professor Hutchinson, when you attack the core fundamental fabric of a constitutional republic, you are attacking liberty in a way that is unprecedented. And we know how the deep state has infected our entire federal government. It's pulling the strings on the media. We know that. Listen, you're watching us on social media, a lot of you. We know what the pressure they've been under.

And then they have some sympathies that lean that way makes it even more so. But this is where you and I can come in and defend. We know that the FBI and DOJ, as Harry said, is targeting these whistleblowers.

We know that. And just like they targeted the IRS. And we stood with the IRS and we won.

We changed the entire landscape of the law. We're going to do the same thing here, but this is where you come in. I call this the ultimate election interference. That's a big attack on liberty.

Silencing one side of the voice of debate is another huge attack on liberty. But this is where you come in and this is where we need your help. We are in concluding week two. I want to keep this momentum going. I encourage you right now to become part of the team. We filed our briefs in two cases already.

You know that. We've got whistleblower case appeal being filed this month. Your support's critical. Go to our Life and Liberty Drive at ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. The Life and Liberty Drive. Your gifts will be doubled. And this is important, folks.

I'll be blunt. These legal fights are expensive. I brought in an expert team. Outside lawyers that are now affiliated with the ACLJ that represent Presidents. That's how we beefed up the team for this. It's that important.

Go to ACLJ.org. Support our Life and Liberty Drive. We're ending the second week.

We're going into the weekend now. We really need your support on this. Very important. ACLJ.org for the Life and Liberty Drive. You become part of that team. Standing with us so we can stand with them. We'll talk to you next week.