BREAKING: Hunter Biden Snubs Subpoena Amid Joe’s Impeachment Scandal

Breaking news today on Sekulow as Hunter Biden snubs a subpoena amid Joe's impeachment scandal. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. So Washington is busy today. We'll have updates too from our ACLJ action team on some legislation in the states to protect religious organizations as well.

Your churches and places of worship during these strange times like we lived through for a few years with pandemics. And there have been 22 states that have done the right thing. We'll tell you what's going on right now in the additional states and what needs to happen. But a couple of key votes happening today. First, the House will begin the vote to formalize the Biden impeachment inquiry tonight. Remember, there was not a vote initially taken by the entire House of Representatives. Committees began an investigation.

And where you run into some issues there, and there's legal opinion on both sides of this, but you run into some issues there on impeachment if there hasn't been a vote by the whole House to start the inquiry into whether or not those committees have real subpoena power in relation to the impeachment questions. On top of that, Hunter Biden who was supposed to testify today and was subpoenaed to testify today behind closed doors in the House of Representatives on the House side at 930 this morning. He wanted to testify openly.

That was his offer back. He went to the Capitol, but he stayed on the Senate side where the House doesn't have jurisdiction and delivered remarks, which we'll play some for you later in the broadcast. You'll play right now? Yeah, we'll play Hunter. We've got Hunter right now this morning on the Senate side of the Capitol.

It's key that he's there because the House doesn't have authority to go and, hey, you're over here. You're under subpoena. Come testify. For six years, I have been the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine, shouting, where's Hunter? Well, here's my answer.

I am here. You know, Hunter is there, but he went to a location where he couldn't be forced to testify. He did give them the option to do it in public. They thought, I think that would become a circus. And usually with those kinds of subpoenas, you first do a closed door testimony and then decide if there's worthwhile to do one in public.

So they said no to the public one. He's now going to say, Dad, listen, I got criminal charges against me. I have a good case why.

If anything, I'm just going to take the fifth. If I was representing Hunter Biden, that's exactly what he would do. Take the fifth amendment. There is no way, and this is where the Republicans were a little late to the game here. You wait for an indictment. With an ongoing special counsel who looks like he wasn't going to move forward with anything and then move forward with, what, four new charges? Yeah.

Yeah. So as soon as that happened, it changed the whole ballgame. Your client is not going to testify before the United States Congress if in fact you've been criminally charged. He has been criminally charged with multiple counts of felonies. So the fact is, I mean, I think collectively the technical sentence could be 17 years. It would never be that. But the fact is at that point, if I'm representing Hunter Biden, I'm not letting him testify either. It's that straightforward and that simple. I would not let him do it. So that is not going to happen.

So those of us, we always like to tell you the truth on this broadcast, obviously. For those of you who are thinking about the grand reveal from Hunter Biden, it's not happening on Capitol Hill. No. It seems like that, again, probably won't happen even in court because they'll come to some... It'll get resolved.

Some kind of an agreement. I mean, that's what usually happens these days, especially when he's paid back the back taxes. So an issue is just, he knew that it was wrong.

He knew and waited a certain period of time. But the House too, this is interesting because the vote is going to be very narrow and very partisan tonight. The House Republicans have just been losing votes. Santos is out. So you got to look at who's not there because of... And the Speaker said when he was not the Speaker that impeachment, there's only one side, is not the way to go.

But anyways, we'll talk about that. Now, this isn't a vote to impeach. We want you to support the work of the ACLJ. We're going to get into this more, how we're working on all these issues at ACLJ.org during our Faith and Freedom Drive, double the impact of your donation. You can be a recurring donor, an ACLJ champion, or make a big one-time donation and have it double at ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Secular.

We'll take your calls to this to 1-800-684-3110. The vote the House is taking today is not whether to impeach Joe Biden. They've come to the kind of end of the road with what they could do, dad, with the committees. Because the committees, though there's been argument back and forth for years at the Department of Justice, sometimes it hasn't really gone into court, but it's whether or not the committees investigating whether there should be an impeachment without the full vote by the House authorizing them to do so have then subpoena power on that issue. And a lot of people who get subpoenaed say you don't, and then it ends up being a very long court case.

So I think they came to the end of the road with who would come and testify voluntarily. Now, if you've got to subpoena people and get them there who don't want to come voluntarily, the only way to do that 100% is by getting this vote today, which authorizes a full impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives. It doesn't mean that he's been impeached.

Correct. And, you know, we are not huge fans of impeachments and we have more experience on impeachments than anybody currently that's practicing law in the United States, because it cheapens a process that is supposed to be rare and extraordinary. And it makes it political. It's a political process anyways, but makes it political and whimsical that just throw this out there. Now, fortunately, they haven't gone to the point of actually implementing an impeachment panel.

This is the inquiry. But again, we've cautioned when we were on the floor of the United States Senate, I said, I don't know if we have this in our database, I said that this is a dangerous precedent when you're impeaching a President for Presidential acts. Now in Biden's case, it's an investigation that they've stymied. His lawyers are doing what lawyers do though, by the way. But we are concerned that impeachment as a vehicle of disagreement is dangerous.

Yes. And I think that, again, you're going to see a very partisan vote right on the line. I mean, I guess they've taken, they've whipped the votes to know that they've got the votes. I mean, I can't think of any Democrats voting yes on this, not even one.

Sure, dangerous if they don't. And, you know, some Republican gets sick. You know, it is based off who's there at that moment. So it's not based off the full House has to do it under the 435, but who's there.

So you've got kind of people missing on both sides. You know, I think today gets attention if they get the votes to authorize the inquiry, then it's what do the hearings look like? Is it a bunch of people just going to plead the fifth and fight out the subpoenas through the election cycle, which is only a few months? And they're going to get up and say the same thing I said at the floor of the United States Senate, it's January, there's an election in November.

Why are we doing this? Yeah. Yeah. So I think that, again, there's a lot of pressure on these members of Congress to do this from the Republican base. They think that Joe Biden has committed impeachable offenses. I think you've got to lay out exactly what those are. But are there Republicans that this could be a dangerous vote for?

Sure. There's definitely Republicans, maybe not to authorize. Maybe it's an easier vote to say, listen, we can look into it. We're not saying he's guilty. We're just giving the committees the power to get the answers so that we're not just sitting up here talking about hypotheticals anymore.

So they don't have to keep doing it. TV interviews where they think, well, we might have this, or we got one page of this document, or on this phone call Hunter said this, but his dad said, how's the weather? And then he went to this meeting at Cafe Milano, but they didn't talk about anything.

And no one's really under the gun. Cafe Milano comes up a lot. Is that a big deal in Washington?

It was. It was a very big deal in Georgetown with the foreign world. So the ambassador's world, because it's on that side of DC, not the Capitol Hill side of DC. So you got closer to where vice Presidents, Presidents, all those, that area would be.

So it's, again, and it came up a lot. It's also like one of the more expensive kind of like ritzy European. And where did they try to do it? They tried to do a foreign hit.

It was near Cafe Milano, I think, at one point. Was that the Saudis? Yeah, the Saudis.

It's because the Saudi embassy is right around the edge of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom. Do you think this is the right move to go for the impeachment inquiry? You know, I don't know what they've got to say that makes them feel this confident that we should move forward with this vote as Republicans.

They feel like this is a must do. So you have to hope and think that they've got something very strong that they can't get out without moving, that they're not going to get from testimony without having subpoena power and putting people under that kind of pressure. But certainly we kind of can count the votes here.

And I think that Joe Biden, listen, you know this, folks, because the Senate is a lot more moderate than the House, would likely at this point, based on what we know right now, get more acquittal votes from Republicans than Donald Trump ever got. Yeah. I mean, then Donald Trump forgot from Democrats, but she didn't get any. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens.

I think there's what? The second impeachment of Donald Trump, there were like four or five Republicans switched. But I think you'd get 10 plus Republicans voting not to impeach Joe Biden, along with all the majority of the Senate. And then you don't even carry the impeachment. You're losing if you even get to that point now.

Hopefully they won't do that. Maybe this is the way to say, listen, we're going to see if there's the evidence. And maybe we're going to be the fair party that says, you know what, you don't go forward with this if you don't have the evidence. You know, we had an A plus legal team representing the President during those impeachment proceedings. I mean, look at who was on that list. You had Ken Starr. You had Alan Dershowitz, Pam Bondi, Jane Raskin, me, Pat Cipollone, Pat Philbin, Mike Pappore. I mean, really quality Washington lawyers. But Biden's doing the same thing. They put to it, and Hunter Biden's team is being led by Abby Lowell, who's one of the, I is a good friend of mine and I put him one of the top three criminal defense lawyers in the United States. So this is not going to be, and no one's going to take this lying down.

Right. No, of course not. Let's play this bite from you. This is on the Senate floor during the, the, again, the trial. So remember the house impeaches and the Senate then tries the impeachment, offends you guilty or not guilty or quits you.

Here it is by 33. Is that going to be the new norm for impeachment? You put an impeachment together in a couple of weeks. We don't like what the President did. We get it through in a two day proceeding in front of the judiciary committee.

We wrap it up and we send it up here and say, now go figure it out. Because that's what this is really becoming. That's what this actually is. So I think if we're looking at the institutional interests that are at stake here, this is a very dangerous precedent. Yeah.

And I still listen to the fact that the Democrats in the white house doesn't change what I said. These are dangerous precedents. We're assuming they know what they're doing. We're going to monitor that very, very closely.

I want to take a few minutes here. We've got a lot of activity coming at the end of the year that we're going to have to do. We're going to have a lot of activity coming at the end of the year that we did not anticipate. Of course, the Israel situation, as you know, but a series of Supreme Court cases. It looks like the Colorado Supreme Court in the 14th amendment case, trying to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, that that decision is coming out.

Ben Sisney, I think said by Friday is what it looks like, which is tomorrow or two days from now. And that case will go to the Supreme Court of the United States. We intervened in that case on behalf of the Colorado GOP. So we will be at the Supreme Court in that one. The Supreme Court, we're going to get into this the next segment of the broadcast, just took a January 6th case, one of the January 6th defendants on the issue of what constitutes the obstruction of an official proceeding. That's a big case because you don't want it, the balance is, you know, violence, harm, destruction of property versus first amendment protests, right to petition your government for redress. We'll weigh in on that at the Supreme Court of the United States.

You got that one going on. There was a case we were involved in on a technical basis with friends of ours at Williams and Conley, a big criminal defense firm out of Washington on a government bribery case, where it's basically normal acts. We're constituting a form of bribery. And again, this is the criminalization of these, of doing your position and we're involved in that.

Then you've got the Israel matter and that's going on. The Supreme Court also took, and we'll talk about this in the next coming segment, took the abortion pill mandate case. Now, that's another very interesting case on how that could impact elections, because this was the case involving the abortion pill, really during the COVID crisis, where you could basically have this prescribed without a meeting with a doctor.

Telemedicine, I think is the issue. Still a doctor had to call. I mean, did it ever get to the point where you could just buy it over the counter?

No. But it was, you didn't have to have a doctor. And one of the issues with it is that you can bleed out with this medicine. And that's why usually the procedure is that you take the medicine at a medical facility so they can monitor you and make sure you don't. And under COVID, because medical facilities were so packed, they said, we can't do this anymore.

And then they wanted to extend this throughout the post-pandemic world. Not particularly a great case for the pro-life community at this particular time. Is that what you're concerned about politically? Yeah. I mean, I don't, again, I think the Supreme Court makeup, it's an interesting case because you've got a lot of administrative procedure issue problems here.

I can see them looking at that. We're not in a pandemic right now. So why are we bypassing what the FDA is? It's a very important case.

But it brings up the kind of most basic abortion issue, and it lets them kind of push for that issue of, hey, 50% of abortions are done with these pills, and that's done within first few weeks of pregnancy. So we are nearing the halfway point in our faith and freedom drive. Many of you have reported for duty, which we appreciated, as ACLJ champions, those who are making a vital difference with their monthly recurring gifts. That's how you become a champion, making a monthly gift. But we still have a way to go to reach our goal.

We need 600 new champions by the end of the year. Have your tax deductible gifts doubled at the ACLJ at ACLJ.org? Marie from Illinois told us she supports the ACLJ because you fight for justice for the American people. And we just listed the cases that we're involved in. Whether it's a one-time gift or becoming a monthly champion, your support today is crucial for our fight for liberty, life, faith, and freedom. Please stand with thousands of our supporters who have reported for duty as well.

Very important. Become an ACLJ champion if you can make it a monthly. If you can make it a one-time gift, that's great too. And we got a $5,000 gift yesterday.

We're not expecting that monthly from that person. We appreciate that so much. ACLJ.org.

All right, welcome back to Secular. We are working on something important too in states across the country. It's called the PRAISE Act, the Protecting Religious Assembly and States of Emergency Act. And ACLJ Action is taking a lead, working on this with state legislators. We've used our attorneys, our government affairs team, and Bob Burkett, who is our chief of staff in Washington, DC for ACLJ Action is joining us now.

Bob, walk people through really, of course, the need. Why 22 states? And they've gone about it in different ways. One, we worked with in Oklahoma, went about it one way by saying that churches are...

These are always going to be places that are essential to operate during a pandemic. In Tennessee, they basically said, you've got no power to regulate over churches even during these pandemics or emergencies, including national emergencies. So we've got a model for states, but the majority of states still have not adopted this law. Right.

Yeah, Jordan. So we here at ACLJ, we love federalism. We love the 10th Amendment. We love the Laboratories of Democracy. But it also has made it a little complicated to implement something like this across the country. We are champions of the First Amendment. As you mentioned, 22 states have found the issue of church closures during the pandemic.

We all remember COVID. Unelected public health bureaucrats kind of abused their authorities to rescind basic freedoms because people felt unsafe. So you have places in California and Kansas come to mind where there are secular businesses, including things like strip clubs that were allowed to stay open, while churches and other religious institutions were forced to close. So we just want to make sure that the other 28 states, in the event that there is a future public health state of emergency or some other state of emergency, are able to keep their churches open or maintain access to religious services. And the same loophole used by public health authorities in the last pandemic, in the event of some future pandemic, hopefully it doesn't happen anytime soon.

But if there is one, we want to make sure that churches are treated the same as the kind of least restricted secular institutions or group of secular institutions by the state or local governments. I mean, Bob, we saw... I mean, the facts are there. When you shut down the churches across the country, and people there can tune in, it may be that a lot of churches did that because that was their only option, was to broadcast on YouTube or Facebook or if they didn't have a TV ministry at all. But we saw what happened when people stopped interacting. And you saw the drug crisis that we're still facing in our country now skyrocket. Alcoholism skyrocket. People weren't going to work.

Life stopped in many ways. They were still getting checks, but they were sitting at home and they didn't have the checks and balances that the church provides. And it's why many of these states that have adopted this have said during times of emergency, churches and other religious institutions, we're not just talking about Christian churches here, they provide essential services.

They keep people sane. They let people who are in crisis have a place to go. And of course, none of this, Bob, would force the church to say, you can't have masks or you can't have to...

If we need people to be separated, or maybe we have to do more services so we can accommodate our members. They can go about it the way they want. It doesn't force them to do anything. It prevents the states from saying, you know what? We'll keep that casino open because that's good for taxes.

But churches, they're tax-exempt. We'll keep them close. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Right. Absolutely. You mentioned the importance of community. Community is essential, especially during hard times like during the pandemic.

It would have been nice to have a community to spend time with and directly interact with. And, you know, you also hit on another important point, right? I think the main pushback against legislation like this would be, well, there are instances in which you don't want people to convene because a disease could be highly spreadable and contagious, and you don't want people in small groups then creating some sort of super spreader event. But you hit on the key point of this, which is, it's not preventing that from happening. It's just deferring to the church. It's deferring to civil authority, the church, and kind of the common sense of people to say, hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't meet at this time. But it's not a government bureaucrat stepping in and saying, no, don't meet.

You can't meet. It's the church would take it on themselves to say, no, we don't want to meet because we perceive it's too dangerous. So that's conservatism at a fundamental point. Yeah.

Yeah. Bob, I think one of the biggest issues that everyone had during this period of time was the way the desperate treatment that took place between, you know, Walmart and a church, the casino and a church. There were more regulations placed on the church than any of the other institutions. The churches are smart enough to do the appropriate thing. If you're letting a retail store open with tons of people, it doesn't mean you don't have to, you know, stand back six feet.

I still do that now. I mean, it's a better practice. The idea is to give you really equal footing here. That's what this Praise Act does, correct?

Absolutely, yeah. It's just making sure that a church is treated the same way as any secular institution. And I guess not just any secular institution, but the secular institution that's granted the greatest degree of freedom.

So a church could never be more restricted than any other sort of secular institution. And one other important aspect of this, which kind of ultimately ended up happening, a lot of the churches were suing the state or local officials because they were closed. And something else our legislation does is creates a private right of action so that religious institutions have that mechanism to sue. And some states already have, you know, a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, so that may already exist.

But in the states that don't have a RFRA, we thought it was important that, you know, churches have a private right of action to seek recourse and make sure that they can stay open if public health authorities once again choose to abuse their power. Now, people can take... That's what we do at ACLJ Action, but it's unique on this matter because, Bob, we're targeting, and that's part of what ACLJ Action does, 28 states and their legislatures. So we have the list up for people.

And it's an interesting list. It's not just all blue states. You know, if you're in Alaska, Georgia, you're not protected right now. Michigan is not protected. Mississippi is not protected. Missouri is not protected.

I'm just going through some of them. So then, of course, some of those states that you would think would be on there like New York, but North Carolina not protected. Pennsylvania not protected.

We are asking people who are residents of those states to specifically go. We've got a prepared letter and it'll get sent to their legislators to pass this model legislation. Correct.

Yeah. So if you go on ACLJAction.org, we have, as the most prominently featured article, the white paper on the PRAISE Act, a little more information about it, kind of why we felt this was necessary, as well as our list of 28 targeted states. And also, there's a link to the letter that you can click on to send to your legislators.

And, you know, as Jordan mentioned, it will only be available to send if you are in one of the 28 targeted states. So for those of you in the 22 states where you're protected, there may not be a call to action here. But if you know state legislators that may be interested in championing this cause, you know, we encourage you to put us in touch.

You know, we're looking for lead sponsors and champions in all 28 states. You can do that at ACLJAction.org, too. So if you may be a state legislator listening right now or know one very well, contact us, and we'll get that team with you. Perfect example of why your support of the ACLJ is so critical.

We've gone from Supreme Court cases to discussions about protecting churches and giving them equal footing. All of that work goes on at the ACLJ. We need 600 new ACLJ champions between now and the end of the year to hit our goal.

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Go to ACLJ.org. If you can make a recurring donation, it's a great time to do it. Choose the amount you're comfortable with. Maybe you want to make a big donation into the year that you couldn't make every month. That will still be doubled. And you're still very important to the ACLJ if you do that.

ACLJ.org. Donate today. We'll be right back. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Okay, so we've talked impeachment. We've talked about protecting your churches during a national emergency or anything like we went through with the pandemic, which they weren't. And we saw how that became a mess for people because they lost their place to meet. They lost that interaction because churches were deemed non-essential instead of essential services like they should be, just like the grocery store and other places of worship as well that people just need in their lives to stay on track, especially when everything else was off the tracks. You were staying at home, you were getting paid, but your kids maybe weren't even going to school for a while.

Then they were going virtually for a couple hours and you couldn't go anywhere. And you saw alcoholism go up, drug use go up. We're still dealing with those problems right now of homelessness and the drug crisis that hit the country. And so we're fighting back at ACLJ Action. On the impeachment vote inquiry, and again, you want to call us on it, 1-800-684-3110.

We want your opinion as well. This is not a vote tonight to impeach Joe Biden. It's a vote to give Congress the full authority to subpoena the people they want. Now, they can subpoena the people they want and they can take the fifth. They can also come in and testify. Listen, I've done this. I've said this to you three or four times under oath.

I have no more information on this because it's been a while. It's been a full term of almost of a presidency. And then even if they did have the votes ultimately at the end to impeach, they don't have them in the Senate.

So here's what I'd like to know from our listeners at 1-800-684-3110. Are you in favor of this vote for an impeachment inquiry? Like Jordan says, it's not an impeachment. It's an impeachment inquiry or are you not? And there's arguments both ways. We know that. So there's not a right or wrong answer here.

We're taking your calls, 1-800-684-3110. Let me say this, that there's a January 6th case from one of the protesters that were inside the Capitol that has now been accepted surprisingly by the Supreme Court of the United States for review to determine whether the actions of these particular January 6th protesters equated with obstruction of a congressional act or, as the dissent pointed out, Judge Katzas, who's an excellent judge on the DC Court of Appeals, said this infringes the First Amendment's right to petition the government for redress of agreement, free speech, and the ability to freedom of association. It's a very important case.

And whatever your thoughts are about all of this, let me tell you what my thoughts are. We got to protect the First Amendment and all this. So the ACLJ is going to be filing a brief at the Supreme Court on that. Another matter at the Supreme Court is- And that will affect President Trump.

And that will affect President Trump. That is one of the charges he's facing. And of course, he was not a rioter. He was giving a speech and then tweets.

And we've all seen those messages where he said, go home, stop doing this. And the first messages were, if you're going to protest, protest peacefully, the police are on our side. So I mean, again, there were a lot of First Amendment issues with his case.

These were people who did break it. These were people who have charges of going into the Capitol. And they're still, the Supreme Court said, saying, we need to look at this to see if this is, does this go too far?

In other words, they have other criminal charges they're facing, but does this go too far? So that's a big case of the Supreme Court. We're filing in that. The Colorado case, I mean, we've been saying this for a week, but any day now we're getting the decision from the Colorado Supreme Court in the attempt to keep President Trump off the ballot.

We were successful in that case, as we have been in a half dozen cases. But that one is likely, if it were to go in our favor, they will take it to the Supreme Court of the United States. If we were to lose, we're going to take it to the Supreme Court of the United States. So that's case number two at the Supreme Court of the United States. Case number three at the Supreme Court of the United States involves the abortion pill case and the denial of using the required procedures for authorization.

It's a little bit technical, but very, very important. We're filing in that case as well. And then finally, at the Supreme Court of the United States, this has all just happened, by the way, in the last 48 hours, folks, a case where we filed a brief. We've been very concerned about the federal government's attempt to basically stifle these governors, like Bob McDonald, from doing their job by trying obstruction, tying everything into a form of obstruction. And we won the McDonald case 9 to 0 at the Supreme Court.

Well, there's another one up now. Our friends at Williams & Connolly, big law firm in DC is handling it. They asked us to come in and file an amicus. We did.

The court ran a review. We'll be filing there. Jordan mentioned the Christmas cases we're working on. Of course, our work on Israel, the ECLJ just finished today after a two-week long delegation trip. So folks, this is where you come in.

We want to get 600 more new ACLJ champions. Now, some of you can only do a one-time gift for, you know, $20, $30. That's fine. That's gonna be doubled. It's great. Some of you can make a large gift.

We got a $5,000 gift yesterday. We're not expecting you to do that every month. We're not asking you to become a champ. You are a champion when you do that, obviously.

And then many of you can give monthly. And that's when you become an ACLJ champion. So go to ACLJ.org forward slash faith and freedom. All right, welcome back to Secular.

We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. And one of the big issues now that we've heard today, and again, you're going to all of this, the impeachment issue, the issue involving the Supreme Court taking up a part of these January 6 rioters, people who are inside the Capitol who have lots of other charges against them, but this charge on the obstruction of an official proceeding, which carries up to 20 years in prison alone. And it's been one that the courts have been a little questioning about how far you have to go to really obstruct an official proceeding. It is also something President Trump is being charged by Jack Smith with.

So it's one of the more serious charges. And again, the Supreme Court has decided to review this. Yeah, surprisingly a bit that the Supreme Court did decide to review it.

That's not a good sign for Jack Smith, quite frankly. And that is this idea of obstruction of an official position could really squelch First Amendment rights of speech, protest, and petitioning the government of redress of grievance. It's a very careful balance. And Judge Castas in the DC Court of Appeals, who's a very well-respected judge, I worked with him when he was in the White House Counsel's Office, he pointed out the chilling effect that this could have on legitimate free speech, protests, and discourse. And that's one of the concerns here. I think that's what the administration and all the people that have gone after Trump, the chilling effect of it all is really what they're shooting for.

I believe they are trying to stop free speech by going after all these accounts. All right, that's one case. The second case that's been taken up by the Supreme Court is this abortion pill mandate case.

Cece, what are the facts and what are we dealing with there? So this is the FDA approval of the abortion drug amifopristone. And we have filed four times in this case. We've tracked it from the district court to the appeals court to the Supreme Court and back to the appeals court. So this case, the Supreme Court has taken, and they are going to actually address the changes that the FDA made to amifopristone in 2016 and later, which they allowed before the drug was only to be dispensed by a doctor and only in clinics or medical offices with an in-person visit and an ultrasound. And now, of course, they've changed that. It can be a non-doctor and it can be prescribed over telehealth and mailed out.

It extended the time that amifopristone could be used from seven weeks to 10 weeks. And so these are the issues that the Supreme Court are going to address, whether the FDA made those changes properly or not. And we're going to be filing a course in that case as well. And then we mentioned earlier the case of Shahzad. This is a case in Pakistan at the Pakistan Supreme Court. Just give us a quick update.

Then we're going to grab your questions, folks, coming right up here. Right. So Shahzad Masih is one of our clients in our Pakistani office. He was falsely accused of blasphemy when he was 16 years old, and he's been convicted, although they have not presented any evidence that he was guilty. He's been convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. So we have an appeal pending with the High Court, and we just filed a motion for a suspension of the judgment conviction and sentence while that appeal is pending. We also intervened at the United Nations and Christoph from our office in Strasbourg made the intervention.

Do you want to play that? Yeah, I think we should. I mean, he's with our team right now, too, just finished up a day in Paris. They've been all over Europe with families of the hostages, of Israeli hostages. So they've been doing a lot similar to what we did in Washington, D.C. and Europe. But he also made this intervention on behalf of these clients. I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the European Center for Law and Justice.

Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Pakistan is ranked as the seventh worst country in the world for Christians due to persecution and the blasphemy laws, mob attacks on Christian neighborhoods, assault and murder of innocent Christians, and kidnapping and forced religious conversions of young Christian girls by Muslims. Instead of heeding the international community's calls to repeal its blasphemy laws, Pakistan recently amended one section, increasing punishment from three years to life in prison for defaming the Prophet Muhammad's friends or family. Of course, anyone who says anything that could be taken as defaming the Prophet Muhammad is punished by death. To show the detrimental use of this law, we would like to remind the council about Shahzad Masih, a 16-year-old Christian boy who has been sentenced to death after spending five years in prison over a false blasphemy accusation. Absolutely no evidence was presented during trial that suggested Shahzad had blasphemed, yet he remains in prison, facing death, awaiting his appeal at the High Court. We will also remind the council of two Christian brothers, Kaiser and Amun Ayyub, who have also been sentenced to death over a false blasphemy accusation for simply having their names and address on a website that they did not create. Based on this information alone, the trial court sentenced them to death and the High Court upheld their conviction.

The Ayyub brothers have spent nine years in prison and are now waiting for the Supreme Court to hear their appeal. We request this council to urge Pakistan to stop the abuse of the blasphemy laws and comply with its international commitments under the human rights treaties. Thank you.

I thank you. You know, usually in these situations, what you've got to do in Pakistan is just fight to get to the court. And if you do get to court, ultimately, often, actually, most of the time we win. They do get out of prison, but you've then got to be ready with a strategy because of the mobs, the mobs that threaten the judges. We've seen judges be killed because of these cases. So it's difficult to get judges to even show up. So we are, again, it's important work that we do there. That is life or death work that that office is handling in Pakistan and working with our European team as well, just like they're working on life and death issues with those hostage families in Europe over the weekend.

Back to some domestic issues, too, with the impeachment. Let's go to Cheryl in New York on Line 1. Hey, Cheryl. Hi. How are you today?

Thank you for all you do. So my question is, you're talking about impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden. I think they're supposed to be voting today, the Congress, about his dealings with his son's business partners. But my question is, why are they not talking about impeaching him for what he's done with the border? Because I believe that this is a violation of federal immigration law, what he's doing with the border. So we've had ACLJ actions we've been calling for, and the impeachment of Mayorkas has been much more popular across the board amongst conservatives. That was something that was certainly being considered, but I think that it kind of moved past that point to where the base said, you know, the Hunter Biden took over, the story that took over, the Biden, the money, the raid on Mar-a-Lago, and people kind of felt like, you know, you impeached President Trump twice and lost.

We're not going to treat you any differently. There is some of that. And listen, it's politics. It's hard to do an impeachment based on a policy you disagree with.

That should not be a high crime or misdemeanor. That was like the first impeachment. Which was exactly, it was a Ukraine policy and they didn't like it. Right.

Remember, Vindman didn't like the policies of a Ukrainian American who had wanted us to be much differently involved in Ukraine than President Trump did while he was making deals, trying to make deals with Russia so that they wouldn't invade. And you don't want a situation where they're going to bring all this up, you see, and they don't have the votes. No, absolutely.

And we need to be prepared. And, you know, sometimes that's the Republicans' biggest fault is they're not prepared. They don't know what they're getting into and you don't want that situation here.

No, that would be very negative. Yeah, I think, listen, we have, again, you on the Senate floor talking about how low the bar was set for impeachment. And this is probably why we're having this vote today, because the Democrats set the bar even lower than the vote today. I mean, they knew what they were impeaching over wasn't even impeachable offense. They knew what they were, actually, the core was going to be Russia, then that fell apart. So they had to switch to a Ukraine call, which was a totally legitimate call now that we know about all the Burisma stuff. The question is, is the Burisma stuff an impeachable offense of Joe Biden?

Do they have that evidence or think they're going to find that evidence to the inquiry? And this is what you said, dad, when they tried to do it to President Trump. The bar for impeachment cannot be set this low.

Majority Leader McConnell, Democratic Leader Schumer, House Managers, Members of the Senate. Danger, danger, danger. These articles must be rejected. The Constitution requires it. Justice demands it. Requires it. Justice demands it.

You know, and I feel that same way today, Jordan, and that's why I don't like these. I don't like the cheapening of the impeachment. Trump was impeached twice, now Biden's being impeached. It's going to be every President's going to be subject to an impeachment. Yeah. And that's- We had three in our history until now, and now it's like- And you see how that impedes your ability to get things done when you get the President you like in. And then again, if you do it to the other guy, then, you know, I think actually the Democrats, they're going to, because they're more united as a party, we've seen in the House and inside, it's easier for them.

All right. So we're going to be joined next by the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the State of Israel to give us an update as to exactly what's happening in Israel. So Foreign Minister Ellie Cohen will be joining us. So we encourage you to stay tuned for the last segment of the broadcast. I also encourage you to participate in our Faith and Freedom Drive. We are about the halfway point. Many of you have reported for duty, many as ACLJ champions.

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And by the way, when you're a champion, every time we have one of these challenges, your gift will be doubled. And welcome back to Secular Room. We are pleased to be joined by the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the State of Israel, Elie Cohen. And Mr. Foreign Minister, thank you first for being with us today. Very important. Thanks for taking the time.

It's my pleasure. Let me ask you this. You tweeted just a few days ago talking about the Secretary General of the UN Gudiar's tenure is a danger to world peace. You said his request to activate Article 99 and the call for a ceasefire in Gaza constitutes support for Hamas terrorism and an endorsement of murder of the elderly, abduction of babies, and the rape of women. We know the UN's bias on Israel. We are very active at the United Nations and have backed Israel for four decades. Do you believe the UN is now taking more of an activist type of role in support of Hamas? I don't think that all the UN, but I think it's specifically Antonio Guterres, which actually is clearly seeing this offer, the meaning that the Hamas was living and we give a prize to this entire organization. We need to eliminate and defeat Hamas in order to verify the exact atrocities, to rape women and burn them, to behead people, to murder children, to give them up over 200 people. This is something that the liberal and free world should not accept. So I'm very glad that the suggestion of the Director General did not receive. Also to remind that he decided in regard to Israel to implement Rule 99, which this rule was not used for 25 years, even when Assad in Syria murdered more than 3,000 people. Also what the ISIS they made, what happened in Iran. In all the other cases, it was never thought to enforce the Rule of 99.

It doesn't happen just to say. The 6th of October, it once expired, just two days, that Israel would grow from Gaza in 2005. There was no Israel in Gaza for more than 18 years. No Israel was in Gaza. There was no dispute in regards to the end.

There was no dispute when it got to one millimeter. But they attacked Israel in a very good way. It's important to say clearly, we are not fighting Jaffa Hamad. We are actually fighting Iran, which we are fighting the Islamic Jihad, the Hezbollah in the north, the Houth from Yemen, which is 2,000 kilometers from Israel. So we are the last frontier of the world, and we are fighting in order to verify that the West will not be next.

You know, it's interesting. I've said that exact statement that this is a proxy war for Iran. Mr. Prime Minister, when you look at what you just said about Iran and their involvement in this and their leadership of this, it almost as if the United Nations is ignoring the real facts of what's going on here. The one thing that all of us should ask ourselves, how can Iran still be a member in the UN? How can one member come to a destruction for another member, which Iran is going for destruction of the state of Israel? She is still a member in the UN, just to be aware that Iran is the world number one who financed global terror. She financed the Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houth, the IRGC, and all the others, which is financed them, all of them.

So therefore, we should also continue. Let me switch gears a little bit to Hezbollah in the north. You know, obviously, most of the activity has been focused on Gaza. What's the situation up north right now with Hezbollah? The situation right now in the north of Hezbollah, that if there is two options to solve it, or a diplomatic solution or a military solution. Of course, we prefer diplomatic solution in order to prevent an escalation and another war.

So this is what we are focusing. We say, hey, clearly, the Hezbollah should not be remain on our border. They should be in the north of the litany, according to the rule 1701. And, you know, everyone should ask, why there are two military powers in Lebanon? Why there is the Lebanese and the Hezbollah? And the dominant power is Hezbollah, which finance and receive instruction from Iran.

Iran is biased against them. Last question I want to ask you, and that relates to some of the international tribunals. I know that the chief prosecutor of the ICC was just in Israel. The bias that that office has had is well known and well documented.

I have appeared before there in numerous occasions. I wanted to get your sense on the international tribunals like the ICC. And do you have any sense that they will take a role in actually examining the atrocities and war crimes committed by Hamas? I can't appreciate it, but I want to let you know that we have a film of 46 minutes, which concentrate the part of the atrocities.

And I think that everyone who saw this film is feeling it speak for itself. And the important issue is that the Hamas terrorists, they film the video and they publish it. They glorify of burn people alive, of murdering people, of shooting the head and children, and they film those videos. So I think that anyone who is calling to a peace fire, it's actually a prize to the terrorists. We all should be united against a peace fire. We all should be united to eliminate the terrorist organization, which is not just for the security of Israel.

This is also for the future of our region in all parts. Minister Cohen, this is Jordan Sekulow. And I had a question for the American people and for our audience. They ask us each day, they know the groups like ours, the ACLJ can come together, but what can they be doing talking to their neighbors, their people at their places of worship during this holiday season to help Israel? They want to do what they can. They love the state of Israel and the Jewish people, but they want to know what can I do?

What can they do in their own communities? What we need to do is to fight anti-Semitism, which is what we needed to do. We needed to keep on the human dignity and for the liberalism and the freedom of the people. This is what we are fighting. And actually, right now, in the days of Chanukah and I'm in Egypt, in the days of Lechaweir, which we are lighting a candle with the hostages, the families, also with the Holocaust survivors, we should all say clearly, never again, never again to such atrocities, never again to such attack by the organization.

This we should all be united. We keep saying last question, but this I promise will be the last question. You mentioned the hostages. We represent a number of the hostages family we've filed before the UN. Some hostages have been released. I know this is a two-tier system you're dealing with or two primary objectives, eliminate Hamas and get the hostages back, and those are not mutually exclusive.

Do you see any chance at this point of a renegotiation as we saw back last month with this temporary cease in activities, or do you think that time has passed? For us, the life of each hostage is the entire war. So we will definitely not end this war until we will achieve our two main goals, to eliminate Hamas and bring all our hostages back.

So definitely we will do anything from our side to bring the hostages to the families and relatives. Elie Kohn, Minister of Foreign Affairs for the State of Israel, thank you for being with us today. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Bye-bye. Folks, that was great to have the Foreign Minister of Israel just joining us live on the broadcast. This month is the most important month. Keeps ACLJ Jerusalem working hard with the best information possible about what's happening in Israel and also how you can support Israel. And you know you can do that by donating to the ACLJ with our faith and freedom drive. Donate at ACLJ.org today.