GARLAND & HUNTER: Special Counsel Investigating After Failed Sweetheart Deal

Today on Sekulow, Attorney General Garland names Special Counsel and Hunter Biden probe after his failed sweetheart deal. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

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That's 1-800-684-3110. There's some funky news with the Attorney General. Eric Garland, who appointed a Special Counsel to Hunter Biden probe, who is already the U.S. Attorney, David Weiss. I mean, this is the same David Weiss that gave the sweetheart plea deal to Hunter Biden that was slapped down by the judge. The same David Weiss that's team was letting the statute of limitations expire. Suddenly he goes from a U.S. Attorney that we were told by the Department of Justice and President Biden that he was basically had the power of a Special Counsel.

He could bring charges wherever he wanted, whatever he wanted, whatever any information he needed. So there was no need to have him as a Special Counsel. But now, all of a sudden, when the plea deal starts going bad, out of nowhere, and Biden starts getting a lot more criticism for his involvement in these deals, now they're naming the former U.S. Attorney who had brought the plea deal to Hunter Biden as the Special Counsel to continue to investigate, I guess. I mean, that's the only reason why, to continue to investigate Hunter Biden. But there's some bad actions behind this too, Dad, we believe.

I think there's several. One of which is, first of all, if you really read the statute appointing of a Special Counsel, it's not supposed to be someone that's currently in the Department of Justice. Because the Special Counsel's appointed when there's a conflict within the Department of Justice. So if you're taking the lawyer that was involved in the conflict, okay, and now making him the Special Counsel, you haven't done anything.

And Abby Lull, the lawyer for Hunter Biden, who's a friend of mine and is a very, very good lawyer, made an interesting point. If they come up with new charges now, think about this for a minute from a legal standpoint. If David, if Weiss is still the Special Counsel, which he is, and he comes up with charges against Biden that are different than the charges that have already been put out, the three charges.

You have to ask yourself legally, well, what changed in the three months other than political pressure? So that's what they're going to start saying. On the other hand, as conservatives were saying, there shouldn't have been a Special Counsel, but it shouldn't have been David Weiss, who now doesn't have to testify. Right. Now, that's another point you just made, is that because now he's a Special Counsel, and even though they were coming to an end of that investigation with a plea deal, and ultimately people still think that that plea deal is coming for those charges, that now that he's a Special Counsel, he can easily tell Congress, listen, I'm still in an active investigation.

Even more so now, so I can't tell you anything. Oh, I think that's exactly what he's going to say. So all those whistleblowers who accused him of this and that, he's not even going to have to respond to. Look, this is because of the whistleblowers that this has happened, number one. Number two, it's also because of legal pressure, political pressure, number three.

Let me give you a number four here, though. I don't trust this system. So when they appointed him, I think there's something else afoot. This was the U.S. Attorney that was willing to let the statute of limitations expire on the big felony charges.

Think about that for a minute, folks. Now, interestingly, we are in court with the FBI on records relating to pressure that's been put on, election-related pressures that have been put on Facebook, YouTube, and some of these others by the FBI. So all of this is connected, but we are in federal court on that issue right now. Now, also, we're in the middle of our new ACLJ Life and Liberty Drive, and today we're asking you to take action against the Biden administration because we're at the Ninth Circuit defending life. The administration came in, they don't even have standing to do it, and they brought a case. And this was basically a heartbeat bill that we're defending now with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It's a gross overreach by the administration to expand abortion and put mourners and babies in danger.

And they have no, like I said, no legal standing to do it. This is our second brief we're filing in the case to push back against the Biden administration's abortion agenda. We need you to be with us on this, and you've done great this month so far. Thank you. Right now, every gift will be doubled through our Life and Liberty Drive, and we are asking you to participate so your impact can be doubled as well to defend pro-life laws and defend these defenseless children.

They need us, we need you. ACLJ.org for that. That's ACLJ.org for the Life and Liberty Drive as we focus this day on life.

Back with more. Welcome back to Secular. Part of our Life and Liberty Drive, of course, is a defending life. And also looking at what is going on with Merrick Garland.

We've talked about liberty. David Weiss, the special counsel appointment of all things. This was after we were at a point where Hunter Biden had a plea deal, then the plea deal goes bad, and suddenly special counsel is appointed. But it's not someone new from outside of the investigation. It's the U.S. attorney who's been investigating Hunter Biden the entire time, David Weiss.

So Merrick Garland announced at Friday's surprise that he was making David Weiss a special counsel in the Hunter Biden matter. Secretary Pompeo, we had you on last week to talk about on ACLJ.org your piece, not blind justice, but justice with blind spots. Do you think the attorney general's move is actually an attempt to try and correct some blind spots, or is it just further problems we are seeing out of this DOJ?

You know, Jordan, as I know you all do too, we always live in hope, but there's no evidence, there's no facts to suggest this was anything but a political response to a political outcome as a result of the two whistleblowers. And now there's an FBI agent who's corroborating at least some of that. It looks like an effort to say, well, you want a special counsel? Here's your special counsel.

But nothing has changed. It's the same human being who brought the same charges. And there's no explanation why now, why him, what it is he's going to do. There's no scope that's been broadened, that DOJ has been prepared to articulate. This looks like a rehash and a reframing rather than an effort to actually protect the institution, the Department of Justice, and our republic in a way that could have been done with the right special counsel. And by the way, Jordan, it's not too late. They could go look at this and say, you know what, we made a mistake. We picked the wrong person.

We're going to go now pick someone who American people will have confidence in. I'm hopeful they'll see this, not political blowback, but they'll see that they just got it wrong to protect the institution and they'll go fix it. You know, it's interesting to me, Mike, is that I've got some familiarity with a special counsel statute, as you can imagine. And the way that statute works, it's triggered when the attorney general feels like there's a conflict of interest within the Department of Justice. And then they bring in someone traditionally outside the department, they may have been in the department previously, to serve as a special counsel, and then they can recruit DOJ staff and so forth to work on it. So the, for instance, is Bob Mueller. Mueller was with Wilmer Cutler, the law firm. He previously was an FBI director. He was in the Department of Justice years ago, came back in as a special counsel. Now, I'm not a fan of the special counsel statute to begin with, but that's how it's supposed to work. Now, here you've got another conflict of interest because David Weiss was the U.S. attorney that offered the sweetheart deal, at least authorized the sweetheart deal.

And as Hunter Biden's defense lawyer, who was a friend of mine, and he's a very good defense lawyer, he made a good point, and this is why I think this appointment was a mistake. If David Weiss comes up with new charges now, you have to ask yourself, what has changed between now and three weeks ago, legally? Did the law change, did the facts change, or did the politics change?

And they're going to start playing that. You've got it exactly right. Nothing changed. There's no evidence that they either saw, gosh, we had a gap in our investigation. Goodness, we made a mistake. This was just a pure response to the whistleblowers and the political pressure that came alongside. And this was an effort on a Friday afternoon to say, look, we've got a special counsel, that's what you wanted, and try and spin a narrative. And you're right. If you're the counsel for Hunter Biden, you've got to be asking the same question that I wrote in my piece about blind spots.

Like, goodness gracious, how can you do this? Look, this is part of a mess that comes with these special counsels, Jay, I think you'd agree with that. But more broadly, if you pick the right person, and I don't mean someone who agrees with me in the political space, I mean someone who is coming at this with an attempt to get at the facts and the law, conduct a thorough investigation, and with the authority and power to do that, then you can get the American people to accept the outcome. But naming David Weiss to be a special counsel isn't going to deliver confidence from the American people across the bot spectrum. And now you're going to see even some that are on the other side say, well, wait a minute, now he's a special counsel? I thought we were done.

We had a deal. And it's the same human being who built the same team, and they have just now created a mess for the institution and for this particular prosecution. I think Merrick Garland's lack of leadership has created another fiasco.

You could argue Hunter Biner's case now because it looks ridiculous. If he would have said, okay, you know what, we're going to get a special counsel in there that's independent, I think everybody would have said great. But in the interim, David Weiss now is going to say he doesn't have to testify on Capitol Hill, Jordan, politically, because he is now conducting the investigation.

A new investigation. So I guess whatever was in that plea deal was not the final investigation. This Hunter Biden reality show continues legally. And obviously because of political pressures, and I do think David Weiss was ignoring facts, was ignoring people inside the agencies that were doing the investigation of Hunter Biden.

By doing so now, the pressure got high enough, and I think the American people can thank themselves a bit for that. They didn't let this story die when they said, oh, Hunter Biden was going to get this plea deal. In fact, for the first time in a long time, Dad, it's the first time, I did an interview with Barrow Newsmax where they said, you know, is there a chance the judge doesn't take the plea deal because of all the testimony? I said, it's still unlikely, but it could happen. And this was the case, the rare cases where the plea deal gets tossed.

No, I know. It's very rare. It is very rare. And then you have David Weiss, who was the U.S. Attorney, become an actual special counsel.

Also, very rare. So, Mike, how do you rebuild institutional credibility when they've made this, again, David Weiss supposedly asked to be a special counsel months and months and months ago when he was appointed. Garland said no. Yeah, look, this is a fiasco. It's the worst guy in Jordan Jay. It's the worst kind of fiasco. It's a self-inflicted fiasco.

It didn't have to be. And that's the institutional degradation that we're seeing. Who's going to have confidence in Merrick Garland, more broadly, not just on this set of issues, but on anything that touches on the political space after he has botched this so badly and denied the capacity, not just to investigate Hunter Biden, but the connectivity to the then vice President that we can all see plain as day from Devin Archer's testimony. Now, we've cast real doubt on that, and it's going to wind its way through our election cycle over the next six months. And for that, Merrick Garland and his boss, President Biden, should be held accountable and responsible.

It didn't have to be. They made the decision. I hope they'll go fix it. I hope they'll say, you know what, we're going to appoint somebody else special counsel, and we can get someone who's serious about this.

He or she can build their own team and actually get answers the American people would believe. All right, we appreciate it. As always, former secretary of state, former director of the CIA, and our senior counsel for global affairs, Mike Pompeo. Thanks for being with us. We appreciate it so much. All right, folks, we're taking your calls on this.

1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. You're not getting analysis like this anywhere. Like I said, we're litigating on issues very close to this right now against the FBI. So we're in court on this. In fact, there's a status conference in those proceedings today. Let's take a man to the table. Amanda, welcome to secular. You are on the air.

Hi, thank you for taking my call. My question is that he made the plea deal for a hunter. Is it possible for him to, since he's been appointed special counsel, to offer maybe that same type of plea deal to LA or Washington? Well, you bring up a really good point because now we can go to another judge because he's a special counsel and he's going to have that authority. So can he take basically the same bill?

And they'll tweak it a little bit so it doesn't look identical and see if they can get it taken there. Those are all the concerns that happen when you put someone in that already has messed this up, including letting the statute of limitations expire. And the only reason this has come out, folks, is because whistleblowers have come forward. And, you know, we're representing a series of FBI whistleblowers and we may be representing a series of other whistleblowers, the cases we're looking at right now.

We've got two we're representing. And you had the IRS whistleblowers, you've had FBI whistleblowers, and that's what's bringing this to the forefront. And I want your reaction to this, folks.

What's your reaction to this David Weiss move by the Biden Department of Justice? We'll take your calls on that at 1-800-684-3110. That's 800-684-3110. I'm holding in my hand, I don't know if we have a copy of this in our, we do? Good. This is the complaint that we filed against the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I'm holding it in my hand. This case involves the social media companies and what they're doing. I told you on last week's broadcast, Jack Smith's involvement with the IRS, targeting scandal. By the way, a lot of people watch that broadcast.

And if you're on right now, by the way, like this, it's very important for you to like and follow what we're talking about. And that's great. You know, last hour, before we were on the air, there were 14,000 people on our website viewing our updates. This was before we were even on the air. And that's just you two. So everything's starting to grow exponentially here on our carriage.

You're a big part of that. But also, so we're in federal court against the FBI on the crackdown on conservatives on social media. We are in federal court at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on a life brief on the issue of life.

And Jordan, we're also in our midpoint in our matching, our life and liberty drive. Yeah, we are in the middle of our new ACLJ life and liberty drive. And today we're taking action, as you said, against the Biden administration at the Ninth Circuit. The Biden administration fighting a pro-life abortion law in Idaho, despite the Supreme Court returning the decision power to the states.

It's a gross overreach by this administration to expand abortion and put more innocent babies in danger. Today we're filing our second brief in the case to support the law and push back against Biden's abortion agenda. We need you with us right now. Every gift will be doubled through our life and liberty drive, doubling your impact to defend pro-life laws and save defenseless babies. They need us.

We need you. ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org for the life and liberty drive. And make sure you sign up for email alerts there. We have a prayer guide you can download as well. That's very helpful. Twelve thousand of you did yesterday.

We'll be back with more in a moment. Welcome back to Secular. We are taking your phone calls 1-800-684-3110 during our life and liberty drive. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110 to talk to us on Secular.

Marilyn on YouTube. She wrote in, she said, does this add pressure for Congress to impeach Merrick Garland? Now we've seen impeachment moves on Mayorkas. We've seen, I know the Republican Study Committee look at that because of his failure to secure the border, failure to testify to Congress. Now people have started focusing their attention on Garland. Interesting enough, it was early on in this administration that it was the left who wanted Garland out at the DOJ. Yes, they thought he was not doing what they needed him to do. Now that he is, the right is saying, is this guy under too much political pressure to be the lead law enforcement official of the US? And at the same time you have the Republicans saying we maybe want to take a look at the impeachment of Joe Biden for what's going on with Hunter and the business stuff that they were involved in. Here's the problem though with all of this. You're in the last year of a presidency in about... No one has the votes for impeachment. And you don't have a vote for conviction. Well, I don't even know. You'd have to keep every Republican.

It's tough. I don't think that, I think the lawsuits that we're doing and the oversight that's going on right now is the better move. Because we're, look what is happening. I think the special counsel thing is a ruse. I've said it. I'm not worried we've said it. So is our friend Andy McCarthy, former US attorney.

Listen to what he said. On the front end, Weiss makes the case against Hunter disappear by not charging it. So the statute of limitations is eating all of these charges.

This behavior goes from like 2014 through 2018. So almost all of it is gone. And then on the front, on the back end, the special counsel quote unquote designation allows him to write a report. So at some propitious moment next year, during the election season, he'll drop a report saying, you know, I've looked at this and President Biden had nothing to do with it.

See, this is exactly what is... Andy is exactly 100% correct. Usually people hear special counsel say there's going to be more charges. It's mostly reports. And it's mostly ends up, we saw with Mueller? Two volumes, a thousand pages.

Turham? Yes. After how many years was that? Two and a half years. More on the Durham investigation time spent than on the Bob Mueller's. It ended up with a report of mostly things everyone already knew. I mean, it kind of just confirms something. Yeah, like he pulled it off of Google.

Yeah. And then now we've got another, David Weissel, issue one. And it'll issue one that will look at Joe Biden favorably. It might say that Hunter Biden didn't do everything perfect, but that the vice President at the time, now President, did. And so leading up to the election, he'll have a positive report.

I think that's exactly right. It'll be more positive than even the Mueller report, which wishes the whole time throughout the report that they had something on Trump. They sure wanted Russian collusion.

They just couldn't find it nor support it. But yeah, I was watching some of those videos during the impeachment hearings when we were doing the case on the floor of the Senate. And we were reading portions of that.

And it was very telling. All right, we're taking your phone calls on this and we want your reaction. And we'll do comments as well on Facebook, YouTube and rumble. And if you're watching on our social media platforms right now, share it with your friends and make sure you're subscribed.

It's very important. Let's go back to the phone. Yeah, let's go to Joanna in Ohio online too. Hey, Joanna. Hi, guys.

I have a comment and then I have a quick question. Sure. First of all, I'm not a big fan of Mitch McConnell, but thank God Merrick Garland is not on the Supreme Court. And you can thank Mitch McConnell for that. Yeah, absolutely.

Like I said, I don't have a lot of good things to say about the man, but I'll take it. Also, isn't Jack Smith part of the DOJ? How come he's a special counsel? What about Robert Er, who isn't doing anything, but isn't he part of the DOJ? I mean, the whole thing is, all of this is ridiculous.

This is not what it's supposed to be. I mean, Jack was, he was sent off to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where we've been defending Israel and defending the United States before. Not sure he ever got a prosecution there.

No, and then he was a U.S. attorney and then came back in. So, no, Joanna, you're exactly correct. This is not the way the statute's supposed to work. It's supposed to be there's a conflict, we're bringing somebody in outside, they're going to operate with more independence.

By the way, though, they're not independent, so don't kid yourself for a moment. They still report to the DAG, the Deputy Attorney General, and no charging decisions going to be made unless the Attorney General signs off on it. And I know that Merrick Heartland says they didn't sign off or they were not involved in the plea. I don't believe that for us, nanosecond. And are they going to try that plea again?

Yes. And here's why. I say it again, and this is where Hunter Biden's lawyer's right. What changed between three weeks ago and now?

Nothing except politics. And that's how it's going to be looked at. So they'll find a judge, now they can go to these other jurisdictions and do it. All right, we're taking your calls, 800-684-3110. We had another comment, I saw they came in on Rumble and said, I think the impact of the whistleblowers with legal help from the ACLJs and others changed things, we agree. But also, another person said they think the GOJ could well be freaking out. Let me tell you what Garrett O'Boyle, the FBI agent that we are representing as a whistleblower, said about now, their ability to come forward.

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. 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. Not only scratching the surface, we're already getting calls from other whistleblowers as soon as we were to make that announcement, working with our friends at Empower Oversight.

But folks, this is where you come in, too. I mean, you're a big part of this when you support the work of the ACLJ. You know, we've got the whistleblower cases that we filed, by the way, the Notice of Appeal in Agent O'Boyle's case on Friday with the D.C. Court of Appeals, so that has been filed. Today we're filing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a brief defending life.

It was a straightforward law, a heartbeat bill, and, of course, the Department of Justice under the Biden administration decides they've got to come in and basically take charge. We filed a status conference on another matter today, including one dealing with the Department of Justice, actually the FBI, in a lawsuit that we brought against them. The issue there, censorship of conservative viewpoints on social media put forward by — I'm not even blaming the social media companies for this one. I'm blaming the Department of Justice. They're the ones that said, you better not run that stuff. It's Russian interference.

It's disinformation. And, of course, Mark Zuckerberg said, what do we do? You've got the FBI telling us to do this.

How do we respond? So all of this is happening simultaneously, three major things, issues going on for the ACLJ right now, and we are in a very important life and liberty drive. And the cases we've talked about today talk about both life, obviously, at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and then when you talk about censorship and those issues and this government oversight, that goes to the core of liberty. Both of those issues are front and center for us this month. We're two weeks in to this drive.

It has done great. The response has been unbelievable, but you really play a critical role right now. You do, and we're in the middle of that new ACLJ life and liberty drive, and today we are taking action against the Biden administration at the Ninth Circuit. The Biden administration is fighting a pro-life law in Idaho, despite the Supreme Court returning that decision power to the states, but they don't like what Idaho did. It's a gross overreach by the Biden administration to expand abortion and put more innocent babies in danger. Today we're filing our second brief in the case to support the law and push back against Biden's abortion agenda. We need you with us.

I don't really want to explain this right now. Right now, every gift will be doubled through our life and liberty drive, doubling your impact to defend pro-life laws and save fitsless babies. See, all of these clients, whether it's O'Boyle or the unborn child, they need us, but for us to be there for them, we need you to donate.

Yeah, and become part of our team. We're asking you to take direct action. We sent out yesterday, which we rarely do on Sundays, an email that included the prayer guide.

Then we'll put that up on the screen and let people see that. You can download that as well at aclj.org forward slash pray. And that's a great way to, and it talks about a lot of these cases and it focuses your prayer activity.

We had 12,000 people download it yesterday, which is amazing. So thousands and thousands of you are doing it. You can do that every day this month at aclj.org. But as Jordan said, these people need us and we need you.

So I encourage you to go to aclj.org right now and sign on to our Life and Liberty Drive, or if you're getting our emails, respond to that email, the Life and Liberty Drive, aclj.org. We're going to be back with more, another half hour of the broadcast in literally one minute. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Hey, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. If you have questions about this special counsel being appointed, who was already the U.S. Attorney investigating Hunter Biden, now he's a special counsel investigating Hunter Biden. That sounds like you just changed his title.

Really? I mean, he was supposed to basically have the powers of a U.S. Attorney. But remember, Dad, all these whistleblowers came out and said, he came to them and said, no, I don't. I can't bring a case in California. I can't bring a case in this state or that state or D.C. I've got to get approval unless it's in Delaware where I'm U.S. Attorney. Well, he doesn't have to anymore, except for the fact that he also won't have to testify before Congress, and now he'll get to issue his report vindicating Hunter Biden, especially maybe not Hunter Biden as much as it is Joe Biden. But you understand this. They're also talking about, and this is something people need to understand, that the statute of limitations continues to click away as long as there's not an indictment.

That keeps expiring. So this is a cacophony of disaster that has been put in place with this move, and it should have been a special counsel initially, and Merrick Garland blew it as he continued to blow it through this entire time. And I'm telling you, in my honest view of this thing right now is that this is a sham on the American people. We're getting to the bottom of it at the ACLJ. We're fighting back on all of this, whether it's the Department of Justice as it relates to whistleblowers, we're defending the whistleblowers. I mean, as we're in this life and liberty drive, I think about just today the kind of activity we're engaged in, and we could not do without you. Let's go ahead. We're going right back to our phones. We want to hear from you on this at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 800-684-3110. Let's go to Richard in Kentucky online, too. Hey, Richard. Hey, Richard, go ahead.

Hello. Isn't there a crime of deception involved in the Biden administration's appointment of David Wise as special counsel? So there is not a crime under federal law for deception, okay? There is a conspiracy against the United States.

Those are different. Those are not easy to prove, by the way. Now, of course, you know, they've indicted Donald Trump on this all over the country. I mean, you're going to get another indictment tomorrow out of Georgia, it looks like. But having said all of that, the deception here is what they're trying to pull on the American people, and I think it's as much as a legal deception, Jordan, as it is a political deception.

Right. Remember, at the end of this, he'll get to write a report, and the report can vindicate Hunter Biden. It might slap Hunter Biden on the wrist a few times, but it will really not just be vindicating of Hunter Biden, it'll be vindicating of Joe Biden before the next election cycle. So in a sense, it's like a Mueller report that had no teeth, but this will be a Wise report that praises, I guarantee you, how Joe Biden conducted himself. That we've investigated all of this, we've looked at it, and we cannot find the evidence to support a crime other than the two crimes we set forth in the original indictment. He goes to another judge in another jurisdiction, now he's got national jurisdiction, and he gets it done. And that's what's going to happen.

But here's the good news. Congress is on top of this, and we are too, because we're representing the whistleblowers. Congress is having oversight hearings, so they're not going to get away with this. And then what we do at the ACLJ, put that lawsuit on the screen, off we go into federal court.

So we're getting results here, folks. It's just like when we took the IRS down. It's a slower process, but we're in federal court on this, and this is where you come in. We're in the middle of our new ACLJ life and liberty drive two weeks in, and today we're asking you to help us take action against the Biden administration, this time at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. President Biden is fighting pro-life abortion law in Idaho.

It's a heartbeat bill, folks. It was what the Supreme Court said was legal in the case out of Mississippi, in the Dobbs decision. Despite the Supreme Court returning the decision power to the states, that's not good enough for the Biden administration. They want to fight back, even against the state level. It's a gross overreach by the administration to expand abortion.

We're filing our second brief in the case today to support the law and push back against the Biden administration on the abortion agenda. We need you with us, and right now every gift will be doubled through our life and liberty drive, doubling your impact to defend pro-life laws and to stand up for these unborn children that do not have the ability to stand up for themselves in court, and we can do that. But they need us. As Jordan said just a few minutes ago, they need us, but we need you because you are us in that sense.

Your support of us lets that happen. ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org to participate in Life and Liberty Drive or respond to the email that's out today. Also, we're taking your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110. We'll talk about all of this, talk about the Fulton County grand jury indictment that's coming tomorrow.

Welcome back to Secchino. We are taking your calls too. It's a life and liberty drive. We want to focus on life issues as well. We are appealing at the Ninth Circuit regarding Idaho's abortion law. The Biden administration sued after the Dobbs case and wanted an injunction at the district level. We are finally going to meet us today at the appeals court, and again, we will go through that now with CeCe Howe, a senior attorney with the ACLJ. So, CeCe, we've been battling this, watching this with this district court level, which sided with the pro-life activists. This time around, you've got, in Idaho, this time around, you've got the court that did enjoin Idaho for moving its law into place. Yeah, and this is another example of the Biden administration doubling down on their efforts to absolutely support abortion, even though the Supreme Court has said there is no constitutional right to abortion. And in this case in Idaho, actually the Idaho Supreme Court also has stated that there is no right to abortion found in their constitution, yet that doesn't stop the Biden administration.

They come under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which basically just requires hospitals to provide stabilizing Medicare if a patient does not have the ability to pay. Yet they're using this law, this act. That's their basis to get into court.

Absolutely. That is their basis to get in court. That if you can't pay, you have to have stabilizing. And then they're saying that abortion is a stabilizing act. But what is really ridiculous about this is the Idaho law actually has an exception, that if the life of the mother is in danger, that is an exception.

So, this is all just smoke and mirrors, again, for the Biden administration to come against a state law that is constitutional. With the issue of, we call it standing in the law, whether there is Article 3 standing, you have the capability of engaging in this lawsuit. That's the fundamental question that every case starts with. What is the basis for jurisdiction and do you have standing to bring it?

And here, they don't. This was a state decision. This is what the Supreme Court said in Dobbs.

It goes back to the states. But that was not good enough. There's not like congressional legislation on the books right now that conflicts with this state law. That's something that Dobbs did leave to open the door to as potentially Congress legislating. But Congress has not been able to legislate. It's a divided Congress. So, the question is now, why are you there, Biden administration? Because you just don't like that Idaho enacted pro-life legislation.

That's the only reason, Dad, that they happen to be there. So, it's in court right now at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which, you know, you think the Ninth Circuit, you think trouble, but that court actually is more conservative now than it used to be because of the Trump appointees. Yeah, and we have seen some good opinions come out of the Ninth Circuit, so there is hope that they get this right. But like you said, our brief that we are filing absolutely goes after the fact that they do not have statutory authority, they do not have implied authority to bring this lawsuit and to take this case. So, what we did in the brief was come back with the technical legal argument. People can get, you know, they can get all over the abortion law. But we say, hey, wait a minute.

Hold it. What is the basis for the federal government to be engaging this at a state level? What is the basis for the federal government to come in with their agenda and say, we're taking this over now, even though Dobbs said it goes back to the states, which is what happens when you overturn Roe versus Wade. But that's never, never been good enough for this administration, ever. And that's why we're arguing in our brief you don't have the authority to bring the lawsuit. No, so they're going to say they've got this emergency power to bring this. And they're trying to get courts to basically agree that abortion should fall under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. It allows these hospitals to do what they need to do when they need to do it, regardless of if you're insured or not, and use taxpayer dollars, if necessary, to perform the abortion. There's another issue that's coming up, though.

And we talked about this briefly, Jordan. That is the political ramifications of what's happening on these pro-life bills and amendments that are going through the states. And the pro-life side, I mean, let's be honest, getting killed. I mean, getting destroyed legally. In states that we should be winning. Like Ohio. Kentucky. Where else have we lost already? Missouri. Texas. I mean, the list goes, these are pretty red states, which most of the voters would consider themselves pro-life, but the miseducation done by the left. And the amount of money spent.

In each of these, we were outspent four to five to one. But it tells you also, are we not giving it enough time for the law to settle in? That's what I'm wondering here.

Yeah, absolutely. I think people got too anxious to come in and try and change constitutions and pass laws. And especially with the constitutional amendments, we have seen that verbiage, usually on these state issues, is very confusing. You don't know whether a yes vote is for it, a no vote is for it.

You don't know what you're doing. And just like Jordan said, they outspend us, they outmarket it, and they spin it every single time. And then like in Ohio, it was to change it from 50% to change the constitution to 60, which you would think would make sense. It's a constitutional. But it had been there on the books for decades at 50%. Yeah, over a hundred years. Over a hundred years.

It was probably the wrong time. Well, the abortion industry noticed that, hey, we can subvert the legislative process and go the constitutional amendment route here. And it's going to be easier for us because you've got a Republican legislature in Ohio, a Republican governor, they're going to try to veto this.

We think we can get to the amount we need to do a constitutional limit, so all we need is 50% plus one. And in fact, that's what they're doing. And they're not going to just stop on abortion, as we talked about with the Secretary of State, with one or the other. Yeah, no, they're going to amend their constitution to put abortion as a constitutional right under the state constitution, folks. They'll use it to raise taxes. They'll use it to ban guns. The list goes on and on about them starting to utilize this power in states that have too low of a threshold to change the state constitution. Because they have the money right now to go into communities to lie to people about why to vote for these. And the Republicans do not have, and conservative pro-life does not have the money to spend amato amato.

And that's why we're being outspent three and four and five to one. I think it's breather time here a little bit, and let's defend the laws that are on the books, like what's happening in Iowa. Here's the problem with all these cases, if you look at all of them.

The idea that the government's coming in here when they have no standing in the first place shows you how bent they are on getting their agenda through, regardless of the consequences to our federal system of justice. Absolutely. That is the thing you've got to understand in this particular case.

That's right. The abortion distortion continues, even after Dobbs. And we see that the Biden administration is absolutely dedicated to supporting abortion, even when they don't have a leg to stand on. They will throw out any argument they can. They will go to federal court every time they can.

And they are going to fight for this. It's ridiculous. It's just like Jordan pointed out, this Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, it's not a law. It's under the spending, the supremacy clause and the spending right that they have. So it's not a law. And yet they're coming in and saying that this somehow preempts the state law and the state constitution.

We see it. Biden administration is absolutely committed to promoting the abortion agenda. We've got to fight back, folks. And this is part of our Life and Liberty Drive and part of why we want you to join in on our Life and Liberty Drive. As you know, that top issue in the Life and Liberty Drive is life. And when you're talking about protecting life, the initial life you want to protect is the life of the most vulnerable, the unborn of the United States of America. And we have seen, I mean, just with RFK, he came out over the weekend, talked about supporting a three-month abortion ban.

Within a day, his people, because he's running as a Democrat, had him out saying, no, he was misquoted on that and it wasn't actually correct what he said. So we had somebody who went from being one of the most extreme on abortion to start being in support of limits on abortion, and that lasted about 24 hours because the Democrat major machine still was able to shut him down. This is exactly why, folks, that we have launched, and I'm thrilled that we did, our ACLJ new Life and Liberty Drive.

We've never done this before where we've had this focus, but what we did was we read the comments from you. What were the issues that were concerning you? And when we talk about life, that's the abortion issue, obviously, but there's other issues as well. And that includes our work overseas to helping people not be put to death for their faith and defending them.

That's part of life, too. And the liberty issue, and we've been talking about this appointment with special counsels and what does all this mean. You have no heart of liberty if you cannot maintain your constitutional republic.

As Ben Franklin famously said, madam, it's a constitutional republic if we can keep it. And that's part of what we're doing now. So we've launched this Life and Liberty Drive.

It's new, it's exciting, and the response so far has been great. And now we're taking the action against the Biden administration at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is, again, the Biden administration has been talking about fighting pro-life legislation in Idaho. Despite the Supreme Court's ruling saying it goes back to the states, that's not good enough for the Biden administration. They love nothing more than a gross overreach, and that's exactly what they did to expand abortion even in light of Dobbs. And that's what they're doing.

They're putting more innocent children at risk and their mothers. Today we're filing our second brief in the case to support the law and push back directly against the Biden administration on this. We need you with us. Right now, every gift made this month through our Life and Liberty Drive will be doubled.

That's doubling your impact to defend pro-life laws and save these defenseless children from death. Now, here's the thing. These folks really need us. These states need us. But we need you. We need you to be part of the team. We don't get to do this without your help. So when we say they need us, we need you because you, in that sense, are us. Support us at ACLJ.org.

The Life and Liberty Drive, you can just click right on there and you'll see a button. Do it today. Become part of the team. We're taking your calls on all of these topics. We'll be joined by Tulsi Gabbard coming up with a live report from Hawaii on what's happening in Maui, so stay tuned for that. But again, ACLJ.org to support our work.

If you want to talk to us, 1-800-684-3110. We'll be back with more in just a moment. Part of our Life and Liberty Drive is that you never forget what's happening inside your own country. Not just in the contiguous 48 states, but in all 50 states around the country, and there have been horrible wildfires in Hawaii.

At least over 100 have been killed, and that's after a search of only about 2 or 3 percent of the area that came under these wildfires. Tulsi Gabbard, former Congresswoman Presidential candidate, joining us now is a senior member of our team here on Sekulow. Tulsi, I wanted to ask you first… You're in Hawaii now. Yeah, you're in Hawaii now.

You've represented Hawaii and in Congress, and you are Hawaiian. They're calling this the worst natural disaster in history, and it seems like we are only at, unfortunately, the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amount of casualties or people who have maybe been killed because of these fires that spread from a hurricane that was moving through the Pacific. It wasn't actually targeting Hawaii, but that the winds alone that inspired these fires that were so deadly and destructive.

Jordan, first of all, it's been incredible to spend this time out here on Maui with these residents who have gone through so much. It is inspiring to see how in this time of an unprecedented disaster and tragedy, not only for the state but for the country, how resilient people are, how much they are coming together to support and show their aloha for one another. The brush fires here on Maui are not that uncommon. This island often experiences drought, and it often experiences small brush fires that pop up during different parts of the year, especially during the drier months of the summer. The problem here is when you take those small brush fires, add to that these 90, 100 mile an hour winds coming from this hurricane, an undermanned fire department and a whole confluence of other events.

This is how not only one but multiple fires started and how really it was within a matter of just a few hours how a small brush fire turned into a raging out of control wildfire that consumed the entire town, the historic town of Lahaina. I spent yesterday delivering different supplies and radios and other things to these different community pods. They're calling them pods of support where local residents can go from their area to pick up food and water and toiletries and basic supplies that they need that they have not been able to get. There are a lot of communities just north of the town of Lahaina who have essentially been cut off from the outside.

It was only in the last few days that the roads in and out opened up, but they have only opened up in a very limited way. A lot of people don't even have gas in their cars to be able to go and drive out and get supplies, so there's still a lot of need here that is not being met. The county, the state, and the federal government, they have officials on the ground, but I got to be honest, the folks out in these communities, many of them that I talked to yesterday, they had not seen a single person come to their community from the county, state, or federal government. There is a much needed focus continuing on the recovery of remains and identification of those who have been deceased in Lahaina town, and also there has to be a lot more focus on the folks who are still just trying to survive and figure out what today and then what tomorrow looks like. I know that groups like Samaritan's Purse and Operation Blessing from CBN are trying to mobilize right now. Have you had a chance, Tulsi, and maybe they're not letting anyone in, to see the area where the devastation is taking place?

You know, I went very close to it. There's a bypass road that passes just above that community, the front street. Front street is the main area that you're seeing in all of the different videos and footage of the catastrophe.

That area is severely restricted right now, as you can imagine, not only because of the recovery that is ongoing and trying to identify how many people actually died in this disaster, but also it's a highly, highly toxic area given everything that burned in that fire. Tulsi, I want to ask you this because people of the United States, they want to know what they can do to help. I know you're pointing out some places to go for people who want to help the people in Hawaii directly.

We know about Samaritan's Purse, we know about Operation Blessing and other organizations. And taking care of fellow Americans, which I think should be our first priority. Anytime there's a disaster around the world, the first priority is to take care of U.S. citizens, of Americans. And that's what people want to see is that we're taking care of those Hawaiians and those horrific stories of people running into the ocean and having to be saved by the Coast Guard because they were running away from these fires, jumping into the ocean.

I saw that, I mean, we've all seen those. Is there enough state and federal support, local support getting out there? I mean, what's your sense of that right now, Tulsi? We have major military bases and assets resources in this state as the westernmost point really for the military in this country. Those resources, and I've talked to some of the military commanders, they are chomping at the bit to deploy those emergency resources for the island of Maui, just as they recently did for Guam when they came under a natural disaster, just as they do with other countries who need humanitarian aid and disaster relief.

They can only move and deploy all those resources if directed to by the state or FEMA. And this is where, unfortunately, there has not yet been that green light request made. Otherwise, they would already be on the way here. So this is something, you know, I came here to be able to provide my love and aloha and support to the community, but also to try to identify where are the gaps? Where's the communication not reaching to make it so that this can happen and to get the word out so that the people here who are struggling and suffering and in need of that support can actually get what they need? We appreciate you taking that effort for your fellow citizens of your state. We're going to have our government affairs office check with the federal government to see what can happen there. And thanks for this update. And let everybody know we're keeping everybody in prayer. And anything else we can do to help, you let us know. It's a horrific situation, and we appreciate, Tulsi, you coming on and talking to us about that today. Yeah, I mean, we've seen groups like Samaritan's Purse, we've seen Operation Blessing, we've seen Tulsi talk about those groups already being on the ground, knowing that this was, unfortunately, potentially coming. It is a little bit scientifically different for us than we're used to with these natural events because this hurricane was inside the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But it created enough problems. The winds alone created these winds that come in a lot of times for like the Santa Ana, California area, those horrible wildfires that come through.

Same kind of wildfires that we saw and are seeing in Hawaii. Alright, let's go take a last call here. Cliff's calling about the special council. Go ahead, Cliff, quickly, please.

Yes, Jay. There's a lot to talk about special councils. I remember also there being independent councils.

Now, when you're investigating government corruption, which is better, and what's the difference between the two? Well, there's no more independent council. The independent council statute phased out and was not renewed because of the concerns of abuse there. Special council is basically still within the Department of Justice, supposed to have more independence. I don't like special council statutes. I never have. I didn't like it when it was Bob Mueller.

I don't like it when it's David Webster. I don't like the way this is being handled, the whole thing's in abuse. That's why we're getting to the bottom of it. That's why we're in federal court against the FBI on some of their activities. That's where you're going to get real oversight and real action by us taking them to court and make them produce documents justifying their positions. Folks, we are in the middle of our ACLJ life and liberty drive, and today, as you know, we've taken action against the Biden administration on the life issue. We're filing our second brief in a case to support the law in Idaho and a pushback against the Biden administration, and we need you with us right now. And as I said this before, they need us, and we need you. And Jordan, that's how this works.

We only got 20 seconds here. Absolutely. You know, these clients, they need the ACLJ. They need our expertise. They need our teams with them. They can't afford to hire attorneys like us. But for us to provide the services to more, we need you to make that financial contribution as part of our life and liberty drive. Do it today at ACLJ.org.