Jack Smith’s Attempt To Silence Trump From “Political” Speech

This is Jay Sekulow, Special Counsel Jack Smith's attempt to silence President Trump from, quote, political speech. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments. Or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jay Sekulow.

Hey everybody, welcome to the broadcast. Well, the hits keep on coming out of Washington, D.C. You can't make this stuff up. So Jack Smith, the Special Counsel, who last week was defeated at the Supreme Court when he attempted to get what's called expedited, not only expedited review, he wanted to skip the Court of Appeals.

So here's how it works. So there's an issue in President Trump's main case and that is this issue of executive privilege or executive immunity. That is, actions taken while you're President cannot be the basis of a lawsuit, civil or criminal.

What you think about it makes a lot of sense. If not, every President is subject to ending litigation. I argued a very similar case at the Supreme Court, three of them, for President Trump in 2020.

So here we are in 2023, almost 2024. They've indicted the former President. He has raised the issue at the trial court, which is where you do it first, of executive privilege.

In other words, I'm immune from this lawsuit because it was official acts while I was President. Then he lost that before Judge Chunkin and she put it on hold pending appeal. She did the right thing on the appeal. So he goes to the D.C. Court of Appeals, which is going to hear argument next month.

Jack Smith said, oh, that's not quick enough. I want to go directly to the Supreme Court and skip the Intermediate Court of Appeals. So he follows a motion for expedited review, which you can do. We're filing one today in the case out of Colorado that we filed at the Supreme Court yesterday.

So there's nothing wrong with filing it, but you just better be prepared both to argue it quickly or have it denied. And in Jack Smith's case, it was denied. And they said no. So the D.C. Court of Appeals is going to hear the case. Then they'll come out with an opinion. Then it goes to the Supreme Court. Let me tell you what doesn't happen.

Logan, you asked me this. Will the trial take place on March 4th? There is no way.

Yeah, I think people need to understand what the true review time is, what that actually looks like. Even if it's expedited at this point, even if they get it moving quickly, there is no way it's tried. I don't think it's tried in 2024.

I think it's tried after the election. That's number one. Number two, he files a motion now. And this one, you're talking about violating free speech. This is what he wrote to U.S. Judge Judkin. Through public statements, filings, and arguments in hearings before the court, the defense has attempted to inject into this case partisan political attacks and irrelevant and prejudicial issues that have no place in a jury trial. This is a case about January 6th. It's part of their indictment.

So guess what? Politics is part of it. But he also has a free speech right. Absolutely. And that is exactly what Jack Smith is attacking. He does not want Trump to be able to speak and defend himself.

He's afraid of that. Absolutely. So here's what we're doing. We're filing, when that one gets mature, which will be in the next couple of weeks, we're going to file in that case as well. So that one will file an amicus brief for friend of the court. Our other case on the Colorado case is now at the Supreme Court. It's been lodged and filed at the Supreme Court. And later today or tomorrow, we're going to file a motion to expedite.

So all that's happening simultaneously, folks. We're going to take your calls on all of these issues. We want your thoughts on this. 1-800-684-3110.

Why do you think they're so afraid of allowing this guy to be on the ballot? We want to hear your comments. 800-684-3110. But we also want to tell you this. We are in the last four days.

And I just asked our team what we're up against. And it's some big numbers, folks. I mean, basically we're raising over $2.5 million, Logan, in the next four days. That's how this comes down. I just added it up.

$2.4 million. Yeah, which I want people to understand is doable. Those numbers sound crazy, but understand that there's so many of you who listen and support. And this operation is so vast that it's really needed.

It is. And as we said, we're in the last four days here. We've got the judicial emergency case at the Supreme Court out of Colorado. We've got the situation going on in the Middle East with Israel. But if we lose our right to vote, folks, for the candidate of your choice, we've lost everything. The Constitutional Republic is gone.

I mean, that's why this case is so dramatic. And because of the ramifications of this case and the faithful support of our donors, we're doing something we've never done before. We announced it yesterday.

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ACLJ.org. Back with more in a moment. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Continuing this conversation right now about what's happening really in the world of what feels like the unending circus of President Trump continues after what?

I think we're in the sixth year, seventh year, I feel like. They can't stop. I'm looking at this government's motion in lemonade, which is a motion to keep stuff out of court.

That's what an in lemonade motion is. And this is what they put in the second sentence. The court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a forum in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation.

So I guess they're going to bring Czenkiewicz back. Maybe she's going to be the assistant to the special counsel and she'll be the disinformation czar so during the trial, she can get up and say, I'm sorry, your honor, that's disinformation. They are trying to put the guy in jail, okay, for exercising constitutional rights. They didn't charge him with insurrection, okay? So then it says, to ensure the jury remains focused on its fact-finding duty and applies the laws instructed by the court, the defendants… Slow it down a little.

Okay. To ensure the jury remains focused on its fact-finding duty and applies the laws instructed by the court, the defendant's improper evidence and argument should be excluded. So they don't want the President of the United States, the former President of the United States, to put up a, quote, political argument, yet they make a political indictment.

Oh, absolutely. This is, you know, what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. It's that they can put up irrelevant disinformation, but they do not want President Trump to be able to defend himself. So they're trying to shut him up and shut his arguments up and even shut up the cross-examination of witnesses.

They want to limit that. They're afraid of what is going to be said. Yeah, they don't want the lawyers to be able to say that.

No, absolutely. I mean, it's not just Trump. They don't want the lawyers to be able to cross-examine. This is exactly what Zissi said, to cross-examine the witness if it looks like it's political. By the way, the whole thing's political. Everybody knows it's political.

Why do you think they wanted to try March 4th? Which, by the way, there is no way that's happening now. I mean, I think that's done and over with. But again, this is why you fight back. But all, you know what, whether you're for Trump or against Trump, it doesn't matter. This is not the way it was supposed to work in a constitutional republic. It's the same thing in that Colorado case.

That's why we're fighting so hard. The reason we filed our petition for certiorari already in the case, it was due January 4th, we filed it yesterday, and we're filing a motion to expedite today. The reason we did that was because it is your right to vote that could be impacted in all 50 states by all of this. I mean, so when we say this is the most important case we've ever taken in the Supreme Court, if you know a constitutional republic, you're not going to be worrying about a Bible study in a high school, okay? Let me just put it that – I mean, I hate to be that blunt, but that is – you know, Logan, when people ask how important is the case, we've had some really important cases on the life issue, on religious freedom.

They're all important. But if you can't vote, none of it matters. I think what we need to reframe here for people, and you've done a good job at it, is saying that this isn't really about President Trump. No, it's not. This is about a much bigger thing.

Now, the case against President Trump is 100 percent because it's Trump. Right. But the consequences could be absurd. We said in our petition for certiorari of the Supreme Court that it will have consequences for generations, you know, because some of these secretary of states think they could even do this on their own. So, you know, when you put the right to vote up to a vote, up to the discretion of a secretary of state, you've made a very dangerous move.

Absolutely. If one person can decide that a candidate is not qualified to be on the ballot – Whatever reason they think. If one person, the decision-making, to limit your right to vote, then I don't get a chance, you don't get a chance to vote for a candidate of your choice because one person has decided, I don't think this person is qualified to be on the ballot, which is not what the Constitution says, which is not what our constitutional republic stands for.

And it would absolutely devastate and ruin our society. No, it's interesting. On Rumble, which is our preferred platform, of which there are thousands and thousands of you watching right now, one person asked, 2024 will decide whether we are the United States anymore.

That's very true. I mean, I think we'll know that by the first three or four months of the year. Another question on Rumble is, do we have a case number at the Supreme Court yet? So here's how that works. You file it, and the top of it – do we have a cert petition? Put one up. We're going to put a cert petition up.

I'll explain it to our radio audience what this is. This is the actual document you file at the Supreme Court. You see where it says number there on the top?

It's blank. When you file it, there is no number. The court assigns the number. So we filed yesterday both electronically, you e-file it, and you manually file it at the court, and then they will assign the number sometime today. That's why we haven't been able to file our motion to expedite yet. Some people are asking about that is because we have to wait until we have a case number to do that, if that makes sense. I'm explaining the Supreme Court procedures because this is going to move really quickly, I think.

All right. Let's continue. Let's take some more calls because hopefully if you listen to this call, you like it, you want to call in too, do it.

1-800-684-3110. We love hearing from you. Ron's calling in Nevada online too. You're on the air, Ron. Hi, Ron.

Hi, thank you for taking my call. I wanted to respond to your question about what motivations exist to keep Trump off the ballot. And clearly, Joe Biden cannot debate with any comprehensible group of words put together unless he's reading a script, and he even screws that up. So if Trump's on the ballot, he will push for a debate, and Joe Biden can't afford to be seen on national TV performing. So here's my, you know, this is going to be very interesting. I think this could be, Ron, the first Presidential election, at least in our lifetime, where there may not be Presidential debates.

I think that's very possible. You know, there's not a requirement. There's no constitutional requirement for a debate.

We traditionally have them, but there's not a constitutional requirement that they have to take place. And I'm not sure either of them want it to take place. I don't think either of them probably do want it, to be honest. And I don't think it matters at this point. The way the media covers these things, I mean, it is wall to wall already.

Now, of course, I mean, you can't say it's far away now because Iowa's in a few weeks. I think when the delta is so wide between the two candidates, it's like that whole idea of fighting for that 1%, 2%. I don't think it has to be done in the traditional debate.

Now, I'll be sad to see him go. I've been sad to not see President Trump on the debate stage just because- Well, I totally understand why he didn't do it. I totally understand why he didn't, but it does, you know, it's kind of part of the tradition, part of the process. I miss it, but I also understand it. But hopefully, you know, maybe we get the polls back, people start going, and maybe there's an interesting, you know, shift in the next few months where you will see more of that sort of tradition come back. But I don't see it right now.

And I understand. I think the thing that, look, you got to look at what's going on here. They're doing everything they can do to take out the leading candidate in the Republican Party. And this case with Jack Smith, I think, is the perfect example. And the one that they've got to really be worried about, and we know they are, is the one where a January 6th protester filed a constitutional challenge on the interfering with Act of Congress. And Judge Katz's very well-respected Court of Appeals judge in the District of Columbia dissented from the two-judge majority. Majority of the judges said, no, the case could go forward. Katz said, no, you know what, the problem with the statute is the way it's interpreted, it scoops into its umbrella, so to speak, constitutionally protected speech, like petitioning the government for redress of agreements, freedom of association, freedom of speech.

So he said, you know, the way it's interpreted, no, I don't think it goes. And then shockingly, and I'm sure this is what Jack Smith's office is reeling about, they had two blows. One, the Supreme Court takes that case. And it's not Donald Trump, but it obviously has a huge impact on his case. And then the decision not to expedite the case involving the executive immunity issue, Presidential immunity issue, I think both of those cases together have set a shockwave into that special counsel's office. Absolutely. And you can see, because he's absolutely reacting to it, he is now trying to say, President Trump should not have the right to speak a word to defend himself.

And he is, again, because he's had all these blows, he is reeling and grasping for straws. I think that's why this motion got filed yesterday. We'll talk more about it. We're taking your calls also at 800-684-3110.

Let me tell you, can I just tell you what we were up against today? Last year, we raised $307,000. Well, actually $387,000.

Yeah, no, $307,000. We also have a goal of getting 18,500 ACLJ champions. These are people that donate every month to the ACLJ.

Let me tell you exactly where we are, at least where we were 10 minutes before we went on air. 18,363. So we've got four days left to get to 18,500.

Now, next year when I come to you, I want to be able to tell you, this is our hope and prayer, that we have 30,000 ACLJ champions, people standing with us monthly. It's radically going to change what we can do. But right now, we've got two major issues we're focused on, and that is what's going on in the Middle East for Israel and at the same time as major Supreme Court cases. And they both hit at the same time, and neither one were anticipated. We did not think that the Colorado court, once the district court actually ruled correctly the President wasn't an officer of the United States, so he's not subject to disqualification, that that would have ended the case and the Supreme Court of Colorado would say like every other court has. That's right. But they didn't. So we have to take that to the Supreme Court of the United States. We represent the Colorado GOP.

We did. That was filed yesterday. Logan, you said it was in CNN, New York Times, even Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone. I mean, most major outlets covered it. Covered it very factually.

Yeah, which was great, because most people understand that people that don't even like the former President understand the ramifications of the case. I mean, it's that significant. This is your right to vote, folks.

That's at play here. So here's what I'm asking you to do. We have a triple match going on. We've never done this before, but we were able to free up funds so that any amount you donate, we get three times that. So if you donate $50, we get $150. You donate $1,000, it's $3,000.

$5,000 is $15,000. And that's how we close this gap that we have of about a million dollars for the end of the year. So here's what we're asking you to do. Support the work of the ACLJ today. Have your donations tripled. Go to ACLJ.org or use the QR code right there on the screen for those of you that are watching the broadcast. But go to ACLJ.org or respond to our email that's out today and have your gift tripled. And if you can stand with us monthly, it will be tripled this month. And then every month that we're in a match where it's doubled, yours will be matched again for your monthly gift and become an ACLJ champion reporting for duty, as so many people have said.

So go to ACLJ.org for that. We'll be back with more, including your calls when we come back from the break. Welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. Taking your calls at 800-684-3110. Don't forget, we're in a triple challenge at the ACLJ for these last four days. ACLJ.org, any amount you donate, it's tripled.

That is the first time we've ever done that in our ACLJ history. We're also taking your calls at 800-684-3110. And Logan and I are hosting the Hannity broadcast this afternoon. Radio. Radio, yes. So we've got four hours of radio. Well, three and a half left. Yeah, we've got quite a bit left, so make sure you join us later on today on Hannity, however you get it on your local stations. Let's take some photos.

And online. Okay, let's go ahead. Let's go to Mike, who's calling online too. You're on the air, Mike. Hi, Mike. Yeah, if I remember right, when Mr. Trump ran for President right from the beginning, he said, I can't be paid off.

I have my own money. I'm going to work for you, the people, not the elites, the corporations, and the special interests. I believe that's why they've been at him the whole time. You know, my theory on this is because I did it for four years representing him right from the beginning. I mean, as soon as they started going after him with the appointment of the special counsel, Bob Mueller, which seems like ancient history, it was four years ago, or five years ago.

But here's the fact. He was not a D.C. creature. He was not one that played within the rules of the way it works in Washington, D.C. So he was, in a sense, he was a disruptor. And although the policies, I think, that came out of that administration were fantastic.

You look at economy, look at the Middle East, look at our national security, energy independence, border control. The fact is he was a disruptor. And disruptors in Washington, I've worked out of Washington for 40 years. Disruptors in Washington have to guard their flank because both Republicans and Democrats, it's not just Democrats here, don't like disruptors.

They want the norm. So you've got a disruptive candidate who for the first time in U.S. history, or maybe the second time, I guess, President Tyler, could be the 45th President of the United States and the 47th, with Joe Biden in between. I mean, that is very possible as this election goes forward. I don't know if people have really grasped that yet.

It's not like you threw terms in a row here. It's a comeback after a defeat, for whatever reason, the second time, and now you've got a chance for not only a rematch, it's going to be a rematch, unless they pull Biden out at the end, which I go back and forth on that. I feel like I've seen a lot of my friends who are more liberal actually now kind of starting to rally behind the Biden, like all of a sudden the last week. I think because the economy's gotten a little bit better. Yeah, so they've said, here are the facts.

Yeah, they start laying out some of the facts. The Fed's tightening of interest rates, I think, has worked. And I think we're probably going to avoid a recession. By the way, that will play in a big way.

Yeah, for sure. I think we should play a clip. This is from this morning from MSNBC, just sort of setting up our involvement in what's going on in the Supreme Court.

So take a listen. Jay Succullo, you'll recall, former attorney for President Trump, is the lawyer who is representing the Colorado party. And in this appeal, writes, quote, unless the Colorado Supreme Court's decision is overturned, any voter will have the power to sue to disqualify any political candidate in Colorado or in any other jurisdiction that follows its lead. This will not only distort the 2024 Presidential election, but will also mire courts henceforth in political controversies over nebulous accusations of insurrection. Succullo, the lawyer for the Colorado Republican Party, making the case that not only was Donald Trump not an officer under the Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, an individual that would be eligible to be disqualified under the disqualification clause, but also makes the case as part of the appeal for the party that it is the First Amendment right, the freedom of speech of a political party, to choose which individuals it puts forth as primary candidates as part of the political party's primary process.

And the answer to that, and by the way, that was totally factually correct. So I rarely hand it to MSNBC, but they quoted it exactly and didn't annotate. The fact is, those First Amendment rights are significant for the Colorado GOP.

It's different for a candidate than it is for the party. So we represent the Colorado GOP. The President has another group of lawyers that are handling his portion of this, so I'm sure they're going to be filing in the next few days as well.

Harry Hutchison's back, and I want to get him to weigh in on this because, Harry, while you were out for a few days, there's been a lot going on. We've got the Colorado case. We've got this executive immunity case that they were trying to get expedited at the Supreme Court. It was just a lot of activity, and it seems like the activity is focused really on the political candidate. I don't think there's any question.

Absolutely. So all of these cases are fundamentally political. At the same time, of course, Jack Smith is trying to deflect from the politics involved, and he seeks to deprive President Trump of a defense which might basically cross a line into politics. Jack Smith has brought a number of selective and vindictive cases arguing essentially that President Trump has been and continues to be a threat to democracy. Well, it turns out if you examine these cases carefully, Jack Smith and the Department of Justice are a fundamental threat to our democracy. So they seek to prevent the American people from voting for the candidate of their choice, and in many of these cases, we are talking about very spurious legal theories, and Jack Smith is world famous for bringing basically absurd claims, and now he seeks to prevent President Trump from telling the truth about Jack Smith's, for instance, January 6th election interference case. So the irony of this is, I mean, they put this in their court pleadings. I mean, this is the words they use.

Let me read this to everybody, and Logan, I'll read it slow. The court should not permit the defendant to turn the courtroom into a form in which he propagates irrelevant disinformation and should reject his attempt to inject politics into this proceedings. By the way, that's a legitimate defense for a criminal case.

This isn't some contract dispute, Special Counsel Smith. You're trying to put the man in jail, okay? You're saying he violated criminal laws.

He could say that part of his defense is, wait a minute, selective prosecution. This is political. You're interfering with my First Amendment rights. The order that these courts have issued, you know, the first order that came up that Judge Duncan put in place, the D.C. Court of Appeals modified it to make sure that Trump did have the right to speak. They said you can't tell him not to do this.

Same thing in New York. He has the right to speak. He's running for President. So he has core political speech protected by the First Amendment, pure policy speech protected by the First Amendment, but the idea that they even would use the word disinformation to me is unbelievable. This is absolutely a political attack by Jack Smith, and yet he has the audacity to then ask the court to stop Trump from talking about politics to defend himself. But, you know, Harry, you said something we need to go back over, and that is, here's the reality. Jack Smith, let's face it, he's very good at indicting, not so great at convicting.

And in this context, let me give you the list of the Parade of Horribles. He goes after Bob McDonald in this bizarre claim of basically honest services fraud. He takes the case. He gets a jury verdict. It goes to the Supreme Court of the United States. We helped on this case. We reversed it 9-0. All nine justices said, no, that theory doesn't work.

It would include what governments do all the time, what governors do all the time. John Edwards, he brings this case against John Edwards, a really bizarre stretch of a haircut fee and, you know, money. It was 45 minutes the jury was on to forget it.

Bob Menendez, forget it. So here's what I'm telling you. This is a fight for our right of free speech. It's a fight for our right to vote. And the ACLJ is in a triple match, and we've never done this before at ACLJ.org. If you go there right now, any amount you donate is tripled. It means we get, for every, you donate five, we get 15. You donate 50, it's 150.

And if you do monthly gifts, well, then not only are you an ACLJ champion, but every time we have a matching challenge, your gift is doubled. So it really makes an impact for us, folks. Go to ACLJ.org, have your donations tripled.

Of course, it's tax deductible. We're on our faith and freedom drive. And this is, when you can't, your right to vote is the most important of the rights we have.

Go to ACLJ.org. We appreciate that support. We've got another half hour of the broadcast coming up. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jay Sekulow. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the broadcast.

I think we need to kind of, Logan, reset it. What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people just joined us.

All right. So we've got a couple things going on simultaneously right now at the Supreme Court, and I think it's important to kind of break it down. We took yesterday, the Colorado GOP, we represent the political party that was part of this case in Colorado trying to keep Trump off the ballot. We took that to the Supreme Court yesterday. We filed it yesterday. Today, we're filing a motion to expedite. You have to wait till you get a case number, which we'll get probably in the next hour or so, while we're live here.

We should get it in the next hour or so. We'll get a case number, and then the motion to expedite will be filed, and then President Trump's team will file something as well. All has to be put in by January 4th.

We got ours in early. So that's the first case at the Supreme Court pending. They haven't agreed to take it yet. We've just filed the petition for certiorari. We'll put a copy of it.

There it is on the screen. There's the motion to expedite. That's what's being filed this afternoon. And, of course, the petition for certiorari is right there. There's no case number yet because we wait for the court to assign that. At the same time, there was this attempt for Jack Smith, the prosecutor, to kind of leapfrog over the D.C. Court of Appeals on this claim of executive immunity. That is, when the President on the January 6th issues, he was still the sitting President of the United States. And if you could start bringing civil or criminal cases against Presidents for official acts, which has never been done in U.S. history, Harry, that's another one of these Jack Smith theories that has unbelievable ramifications for the country and for a President.

Absolutely. Jack Smith is an expansive prosecutor. He comes up with innovative ideas that would make law professors happy. However, there is something called the United States Constitution, and the United States Constitution guarantees fundamental rights to President Trump and each and every citizen of the United States. So if Jack Smith really wants to be innovative, he could, if he wishes, bring a case against President Biden for perhaps potential insurrection because President Biden has done what? He's opened the U.S. border to illegals, and that suggests that President Biden is violating a fundamental duty.

But Jack Smith is fundamentally motivated by politics. Curiously enough, he then argues that President Trump should be deprived of any political argument with respect to his defense. So Jack Smith is now asking the trial judge in the January 6 case to block Trump from making certain statements at the trial scheduled for March. Specifically, he seeks to prevent Trump from telling the jury he's being prosecuted by the DOJ in coordination with President Biden, which I think is absolutely self-evident.

Please, the President, the Department of Justice report is part of the executive branch. Of course it is. Precisely. But Jack Smith says, oh, you can't tell the jurors that because that's irrelevant. That's not probative.

And so Jack Smith, I would argue, is basically a rogue prosecutor. All right, folks, all this tells you is we've got a lot of work here at the end of the year at the ACLJ, and we are in our faith and freedom drive, and we're down to four days here. And we've got a gap of a little less than a million dollars. I'm happy to say it was a lot more than that three months ago. So we've really got it down from five million to about 850,000.

We can close that gap between now and the end of the year. Logan, as you said, it sounds like a lot, but we've got a lot of donors that support the work of the ACLJ. Yeah, I think you have to understand the vast nature of the organization running here. There's hundreds of people working here. There's dozens working on just this broadcast alone.

Obviously, then we have all the legal work that has to get done. So the budgets are real, but the supporters are real, too. And a lot of you have become ACLJ champions, have supported us. And we are in the end of this faith and freedom year-end drive where donations are tripled for the first time ever. Be a part of it.

Go to ACLJ.org. Make your donation today. If you've been on hold for a while, we're going to be taking a lot of your phone calls coming up in the next segment. And then later on the broadcast, Mike Pompeo will be joining us as well. Yeah, so this triple donation means if you donate $25, that's $75.

A $5,000 gift, we got about seven or eight of those yesterday, becomes $15,000. So you can report to duty, as a lot of our donors have said. As you send us to the Supreme Court to defend your right to vote, our deadline is just in three days. Go to ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org to support our work and have your donations tripled. Welcome back to Secula. We are going to take a lot of these callers right off the back, because a lot of you have been holding for a long time. Trent's calling in Nevada on Line 1. Trent, you're on the air. Hi, Trent. Hi. What a blessing to be able to talk to you. Thanks, Trent.

I've got two quick questions, Jay. All right. They are, can Jack Smith or anyone else now file or say Trump is an insurrectionist and also have Trump help with the faith and freedom drive? So here's the thing on, they did not charge the President with insurrection. And at this late stage of the prosecution, the indictments have already been issued. The grand jury, my understanding, has been dismissed. So he has never been charged with insurrection.

So the issue of insurrection is not part of this. But you can bet that when they try the case, they're going to try to get all that in. And that's why I'm saying that we don't want the President to talk about this. It's so ridiculous.

Absolutely. They keep saying he can't talk about politics, but this whole case is political. The whole case they brought about him is political. And then for them to say, but he can't put up a defense is absolutely ludicrous. You know, Harry, we talked earlier about the idea that this was this kind of expansive nature of this.

But it's not just the expansive nature of the charges. It's also the processes they're trying to skip, like the Court of Appeals on the big issue of executive immunity, Presidential immunity, trying to skip that. That was an aggressive move. He got rebuffed by the Supreme Court, and Jack Smith did. But the fact that he even tried that says something.

I think it does. And so Jack Smith essentially wants to short circuit the judicial process, which does what? It deprives Donald Trump of his constitutionally protected rights. So Donald Trump deserves a full hearing before the D.C.

Circuit Court of Appeals, before going to the United States Supreme Court. But essentially what we have here by Jack Smith is a rushed judgment. So in other words, he doesn't want to allow the legal process to play out in a normal way. Instead, he wants to rush this trial through, even though there is zero evidence, number one, that there was an insurrection, unless we're going to talk about broom handles being used to take over the United States government. Number two, why would Donald Trump launch an insurrection against his own presidency? Keep in mind, on January the 6th, he was President of the United States. So why is he attacking his own administration?

That question, I think, answers itself, and I think most Americans think this idea by Jack Smith is crazy. All right, let's take some more calls. Let's go to Steve, who's calling in Texas on Line 3.

Steve, welcome. Yes, I have two things. The first one is about what Dan Patrick suggested. If we can remove Trump from the ballot, why can't we remove Biden from the ballot in these different states? Let me answer that and we'll go back to your second question, and then let you ask your second question. I actually put that in our brief.

I said, you know, here's the problem you've got with this whole thing. If Colorado's secretary of state could just say, you know what, we want Trump off the ballot, even though he hasn't been charged with insurrection, and even though the federal government's the one supposed to be signing it, not some state, we're going to take Trump off the ballot. So why in Texas don't they say, oh, you know what, he's not protected our border, or we've got this porous border, it's destroying our cities in Texas, so we think he's also contributed to a dereliction and we're going to take him off the ballot. And the answer to me would be the same. Texas, you can't do that.

Just like in Colorado, you can't do that. Go ahead with your second question, Steve. My second one is, do you think Jack Smith will be removed in the next couple of weeks since he's not illegally appointed? No, I think he's going to ease the, these special counsels don't fade into the sunset quickly. Let me just put it that way. Obviously, if in November of next year there's a different President, Jack Smith's days will be over. I would bet on that.

But no, I don't think that's the case. We're going to keep taking phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. Logan, do you want to take another one?

Yeah, we'll continue on. Let's get some more calls. Let's go to John on Line 2 in Indiana. You're on the air. Hi, this is John.

I'm a truck driver. Hey, the question I have for Mr. Sekulow is, isn't there an ethics issue where Jack Smith and Mayorkas could both be disbarred for their, it's a criminal, it's a prosecution, the criminality is on their part, not on Trump's part. Is there some way, assuming the elections have stolen in 24 and Trump is reelected, is there some way that the process will be able to have these people?

So, John, here's the way it works. I don't, look, a prosecutor, unless they commit a crime, and that would be lying to the court or something like that, you can't bring criminal charges against them. You know, like I said, Smith has this history of these very broad theories that never play out either in the jury, they may get a jury verdict, but then the Court of Appeals, even, like I said, nine justices of the Supreme Court said Jack Smith's theory against Governor Bob McDonald, after they destroyed his entire family, was wrong. All nine justices said you can't do that because it took what governors do every day and criminalized it.

So, you got to win this in the courtroom, ultimately. I think that is correct, and assuming President Trump wins in the courtroom, however, I think it might be possible to lodge an ethics complaint against Jack Smith. I think he's clearly gone beyond his constitutional and legal authority, notwithstanding the fact that he draws full support from the Department of Justice, and I would love to see a local bar committee adjudicate whether or not he's committed any ethical violations. I would also argue going forward, assuming President Trump wins in 2024, that he ought to be removed from the federal government and no longer be allowed to act as a special prosecutor.

And remember, the Department of Justice is part of the executive branch of government, so they work for the President, who's uniquely a branch of government into herself, which is the reason why he's not an officer of the United States. All right, let's take another call, Logan. Line five, you're on the air. We'll put you back on hold. Kevin, we'll go to Kevin in Maryland, line six. Hi, Kevin.

Hi, how are you? Thank you for taking my call. Just a quick question. Since President Trump has not been found guilty of insurrection by any court in the United States, is there any reason why- Kevin, he hasn't even been charged with insurrection, but go ahead. Correct. Is there any reason why he can't now take out defamation of character suits against the Colorado justices, against President Biden, or against anyone else who's calling him an insurrection?

Thank you. So, activities inside the courtroom are not the basis of a defamation claim, but he has the right to defend himself under the First Amendment. What Jack Smith is now trying to do in the criminal trial in Washington is to stop him from having that right.

Absolutely. Everything, every move Jack Smith has made is to take away President Trump's right to defend himself, even when he tried to skip over the Presidential immunity. That's a defense that President Trump has, and he wants to get rid of that. He wanted to get rid of that. The Supreme Court said, no, we're not going to decide that right now. He wanted to skip over the entire court of appeals. Absolutely.

And the same thing now. He doesn't want him to be able to put forth a defense talking about anything political. Well, every cause of action brought against him is political, so the way you defend that is going to be bringing up political speech. He's even trying to limit what questions they can do cross-examination. No, I know.

It's ridiculous. Take the last call. All right.

Mary in Maryland. Back to you. You're on the air. Yes.

Thank you very much. Sure. My greatest concern is that because the civil part of the government, we talked about this a couple of months ago, is arming people that work for them. If the left is so anxious to abuse or to silence Trump, are these agencies being armed so that they can do an actual physical uprising against the President?

Not a physical uprising, but they can do a metaphysical uprising. Harry and I talked about this actually before we went on the air. You know what you have to do? And you didn't do it last time, is you've got to fire these people. Absolutely. At the outset. On January the 20th, at 1201, these individuals should be terminated and don't try to work with them, get rid of the leadership, get rid of the head of the snake.

Basically, you need to get rid of all deep state actors. Will, I'm sorry. Okay, so here we go. Our motion to expedite, let's put it up on the screen, has been filed. So that means we now have a, I guess we'll be able to fill in the case number. So we've got a case number. Our motion to expedite has been filed, folks. This is the reason why it's so important.

Logan, go ahead. We got one minute coming up here, and I think this is important. We'll address this more when we get back from the break, and we'll talk about it more in detail coming up. But that is why here at the end of this Faith and Freedom Year End Drive, we need your support. We are, as you can see, in real time, all of this is happening, Deb.

Yeah, it is. So motion to expedite means if the court grants any form of that, it's going to move even quicker than it's already moving, and it's moving quick. As I said, we work through Christmas, folks. Your support of the ACLJ here is critical at ACLJ.org. We're in a very unusual situation. The first time in our history, we have a triple match.

We've never had this before. It means any amount you donate, it's going to be triple, and we're doing that because we have this tremendous amount of work that's having to be done at the end of the year, both on the Middle East situation with our international offices and domestically with these Supreme Court cases. Your support's critical to that. So if you want to become part of the team here, go to ACLJ.org. Make your year-end gift.

It's tax-deductible. If you can donate monthly, you become an ACLJ champion. We are close to getting to our goal of 18,500. We're not quite there yet, but your support makes a big, big difference.

Go to ACLJ.org for that. Back with more in a moment. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are going to wrap up today's show with some breaking news that just came out. As we were heading into the end of that last segment, you heard us kind of get a little flustered because stuff was happening. This is what happens when you do a live broadcast, but you're more than just a broadcast, and that's really the heart of what happens here on Sekulow, is that this is not just about coming to you, reporting the news.

It's actually about taking action, and we do that here each and every day. So yesterday we filed our cert petition to the Supreme Court of the United States. You have to wait. I said this earlier for a case number. Those that are watching will see there's no case number there on the screen. That was because at the time we filed.

We now have a case number 23-696. We have also just filed, just moments ago, a motion to expedite in the same case. Let me read for you what we've said, because this will summarize why this is so significant and important. We said that for the first time in American history, a former President has been disqualified from the ballot, a political party has been denied the opportunity to put forward the Presidential candidate of its choice, and the voters have denied the ability to choose their chief executive through the electoral process. This unprecedented decision urgently merits this court's review to prevent the, and I quote, the potential chaos wrought by an imprudent, unconstitutional, and standard-less system in which each state gets to adjudicate Section 3 disqualification cases on an ad hoc basis. Surely this enlargement of state power is antithetical to the framer's intent. I'm quoting Justice Samore from the Colorado Supreme Court who dissented, who's also appointed by a Democrat. So it's a Democratic appointee who said this disqualification case is on an ad hoc basis violates the Constitution. And Harriet Bottom, that's why we've moved to expedite this, because it has ramifications for not just Colorado as the vehicle, but for really all 50 states.

Absolutely. So this move has been a long time coming. Law professors have basically been fertilizing the ground to basically deprive the American people of their right to engage in participatory democracy.

Participatory democracy means your ability to vote for the candidate of your choice. And so many law professors who basically hate Trump, they suffer from what might be called the Trump derangement syndrome, they have longed for a vehicle to basically remove Trump from the ballot. They've become progressively enraged.

Why? Because each and every attempt to remove Trump has resulted in a rise in his popularity. He has rising popularity among black voters, Hispanic voters, you name it. And so the elites in our country are saying, Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy.

So what have they crafted? They've crafted a vehicle, which in and of itself is a threat to our democracy. They wish to deprive political parties of their right to select the candidate of their choice and to prevent the American people from voting for the candidate of their choice. And hopefully the United States Supreme Court will slap down this anti-democratic effort by people who claim they're basically protecting democracy. I think the court has to take this case. Can you see a circumstance where they say no here?

Absolutely not. It would be ridiculous. This is critical. It's going to affect all 50 states. You've got all these states going in different directions. The second thing we said was by excluding President Trump from the ballot, the Colorado Supreme Court engaged in an unprecedented usurpation of the rights of the people to choose their elected officials. The drastic effects of the Colorado Supreme Court decision and the mischief it works is what we were just talking about upon the 2024 primary election with national implication necessitates this court's immediate review. The prompt hearing of this case is necessary to prevent the Colorado Supreme Court decision from having irreparable effect on the electoral process.

And that's not just in Colorado because we saw states like in California, in Maine, in other states starting to take actions. And that's the ripple effect of this. And I said this from the beginning.

So that's why we took the unusual step of filing Logan a motion to exploit, which we're hoping will condense the schedule. And I could go through, there's three ways it can go on this. So I don't know if it's worth getting into the details of that. I think it's okay. I think people understand.

You've got a couple minutes left, so just break it down for the next two minutes. So here's what could happen. Of course, they could deny review. I mean, they could just say we're not going to hear it, which would wreak havoc because we'd be litigating it in the 15 other states.

We won in West Virginia. That's now at the Fourth Circuit in case we come up again. So you've got that part. They could grant review and expedite it. And that expediting could be one of two ways.

This is complicated, but I want our listeners, especially our donors who are paying for all this, to understand. Expedited in two ways. The first way could be they say, hey, look, the primary is March 5th. So what we want to do is have this case resolved before the primary. And we suggested that, which means you'd probably have to argue the case in January, which means the briefs will have to be done in January. Maybe you could argue it in February, early February.

They have to specially set it because normally it's in the latter part of the month. Or, since Trump, since we filed, we'll still be on the ballot. You'll still be on the ballot because a decision in Colorado stayed if we filed the petition. They could say, well, we'll hear it still expedited, but expedited meaning we'll argue it in April and get a decision by the end of June. Because if the normal process was filed, Logan, with where we are right now, they would have 30 days to file an answer, which puts it at the end of January. Then we would have two weeks to file our reply.

Then it would go to a conference. So you're in March. Arguments are March and you've got to then brief it.

We get 90 days to write our brief, they get 30 days to file or 45 days to file a reply. You're now into the next term. This is why people hate the legal system. But the next term doesn't start until October and the general election's in November. So this case, at a minimum, has to be disposed of by June at the latest. But the problem with that is, and I'll be blunt here, is it leaves a cloud over the primary process. That's the problem. Absolutely, and all the states where these cases are pending and being brought. So you have all those cases as well, not just Colorado. No, and Harry, that kind of stain on this, it really could affect the election.

People would say, well, you know, I was going to vote for this candidate, but now I'm not sure what I should do because he may not be on the ballot. That is a huge effect. Absolutely. So we've seen cases in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, Wyoming, Florida. Additional pending cases are in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, South Carolina.

This is a very, very central issue, and it is a central issue to our democracy, and certainly I hope the Supreme Court takes up this case and takes it up quickly. All right, folks. Look, we've got really four more days left of our year end, and you see what's going on. We are very busy. And your support of the ACLJ keeps us broadcast on the air, and all the people that are working on this so we can give you this kind of news and information and this breakdown. Logan and I will be hosting Hannity this afternoon, the radio broadcast, but we've got a triple match going on. We've never had this in our history, and the reason we're doing that is so much is going on.

You know, we've even been touched on what our teams in Europe are doing right now on the Israeli situation, and we've been working on that. And now you've got these multiple cases at the Supreme Court of the United States, and today, just now, our motion to expedite has been filed. So it is a judicial emergency in a sense. We've just filed our most important case at the Supreme Court in our history. We've now asked for that case to be expedited.

If we lose our right to vote, we lose the constitutional republic that we love. And because of the historic ramifications of this case, and because of your support, frankly, we're doing something we've never done before, and that is giving you an opportunity for a triple match on our online giving. That means if you donate $25, we get $75.

$75 becomes three times that $5,000 becomes $15. You can report for duty today as we go to the Supreme Court, and we need you to do that. Go to ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org slash faith and freedom.

We're right there on the home page. You can donate, or if you get our emails, donate that way, and it will be tripled. Now, here's something else you can do. If you decide you can support the work of the ACLJ monthly, that gift will be tripled as well. But let me tell you what else happens. When we're in other matching challenges during the course of the year and campaigns, your gifts will be doubled.

So it really has an impact on the ACLJ. We're close to our goal of 18,500 champions. Become a champion for life, liberty, and freedom again at ACLJ.org. We will talk to you tomorrow, and we're on Hannity this afternoon.