Supreme Court Takes 2024 Election Case: What You Need to Know

Today on Sekulow, the Supreme Court officially takes the 2024 election case. What you need to know. 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. To have you know after the broadcast of Friday, a simple order from the U.S. Supreme Court which will have major ramifications for the next election and certainly potentially for who is on the primary ballot, the Republican primary in states across the country. This will affect all 50 states. They have accepted, granted cert, and Trump versus Anderson. And there's a lot to explain. This case is unique because there was again we represented these state parties.

We were one of the first to file actually we were the first to file at the U.S. Supreme Court. And I think that to walk through people kind of how this procedurally is going to work. It's not happening like it it's rapid speed. It's not like this is all going to be done in a week. But it is all going to be at least before the court by February 8th.

So here's what's happened. There are two cases. I'm holding in my hand our actual petition for certiorari. I don't know if we have this in the the actual certiorari petition. This is what we filed with the Supreme Court and then in addition we filed the appendix to the petition which is about an inch and a half thick.

Trump's lawyer that was for the Colorado Republican State Central Committee. Trump's lawyers filed the same thing for their case. This court granted that the Trump case but had us listed as a party. What that means is we will actually we just got word on this this morning. We will actually be filing an opening brief like what's called a brief on the merits and that brief is going to be due in very short order here so the time frame is really condensed.

Our initial brief will be due on the 18th of January. Then we actually now because the way the court has structured the cases were both parties both Trump and the Colorado State Central Committee the Colorado GOP. We then file our second brief in the case which will be the final word on the case on February 5th. That's the reply brief that we will file with the Supreme Court.

The case will be argued on on February 8th likely that that will be argued by one of President Trump's lawyers. So we will be filing briefs like everybody else does all the other parties which is just us and Trump and the and the electors that brought the lawsuit and of course crew representing them and then there'll be a bunch of amicus briefs filed but this is moving like Jordan said it's not it it's not at record speed in the sense of it's happening in a week but it's very expedited Andy it's a condensed schedule. It is it is a schedule that is very expedited and recognizes the national importance of the issues that have been raised and the national havoc that could ensue depending upon the decision and the justices I think wisely granted certiorari in the case that is to say review Colorado Supreme Court. We're going to review your case and we're going to do it in very rapid time not exceptionally rapid but nonetheless very rapid. I mean when you get a case in which our brief is due today is January the 8th our brief is due in 10 days. Yeah so we're gonna we've got we already had a conference call this morning with our office in Washington a bunch of us will go up there the four days before to get everything ready and and that that is the merits brief and that's the that's the first major when we say a brief on the merits that means this is this is the arguments that we are making to the Supreme Court. Right I mean that's due I mean when you're looking at the calendar right now for people who are listening to us live that's 10 days and then we'll have time to reply.

And it's actually nine days because you have to get it to the printer the day before. Yeah so nine days really and then and then again we get to a reply that reply brief has to be in before five days or five pm on Monday February 5th. So our team again is obviously we've drafted a lot of these arguments but because that we can talk about we come back for the next break this has broadened out past the arguments that we made the three main which we'll focus on but to a much broader question that the Supreme Court has answered which is basically what are all the reasons why? Yeah this could be a very broad question so the Supreme Court is granted review to hear the biggest election case in U.S. history. We're representing the Colorado GOP on the merits in the case.

Council of record for them. Our first Supreme Court due in just really nine days ten days to get it in. Because of our ACLJ champions we're able to do this and fight this historic case in 2024. We also got a Supreme Court brief due in the Idaho life case and we've got a delegation from Israel coming over to the UK. We'll talk about that later in the broadcast.

It's going to be a big year with many challenges 2024. Become an ACLJ champion that means you donate monthly aclj.org forward slash All right welcome back to Seco. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-312. That's 1-800-684-3110 and again we want to take your questions on this because I think when this came out Friday evening and we were kind of sorting through and we were sorting through too kind of how does this all play out structurally. Now we figured out we filed both a merits brief and a responsive brief. A very pretty quick timeline here we're talking about nine days and then a response brief by the fifth oral arguments on the eighth and then the questions presented usually at the Supreme Court you get kind of a one two three and in this case they accepted the Trump question presented and just kind of pulling that up I mean it's basically the it says this the question presented is did the Colorado Supreme Court air in under and ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 Presidential primary ballot question mark.

Yeah. I mean so all those issues we talked about plus more can be included there. So what we're doing is we're structuring a brief we just had a meeting with our team where we're going to cover the three main issues we did which is the President's not an officer. John Robertson opinion he wrote in 2010 said citizens don't elect officers they elect Presidents and vice Presidents senators and congressmen they don't elect officers.

So he's not an officer under the constitution thus it doesn't apply. We also say that the 14th amendment section 3 is not self-executing because section 5 of the 14th amendment says congress shall pass implementing legislation and then we still have our first amendment issue as it relates to Colorado GOP. What is interesting here is because they've accepted this broad question we we're going to take all of the cognizable arguments that could be made here and we're going to address them in the opening sections of our brief so that the court really we're going to try to lay out a and I guess the way I've been describing it is a road map of multiple off-ramps to get a victory here. That's right in other words we're going to give the Supreme Court the opportunity to know what our what our position is on all the multitude of issues that Jay just went over that talked to that was that were addressed in the 213 page opinion of the Colorado Supreme Court not just one or two but all the issues the 14th amendment issue the officer issue the first amendment associational rights issue all the issues we're going to put all those down so that the Supreme Court can have an opportunity to base its decision on any one of all the issues that are before it. Let me just say that I just looked at rumble and our number of people are it's flying I mean there are thousands and thousands of you watching on rumble right now I want to encourage you to to subscribe to rumble to follow us and also to share it with your friends same thing on youtube right now a lot of people watching that which is great but Jordan what has to happen now is and we've had a meeting this morning is we lay out now that the case has been heard and it's our case and the it's both the Colorado Republican state central committee we'll be hearing from the chairman later in the broadcast and also the Trump case we will be each briefing it separately the Trump team will brief it the Colorado GOP will brief it that's us we both get two briefs which will be the opening brief and the reply brief and then the question will become and this is the the fascinating part and we got to find out if we have to do a joint appendix too here's the joint appendix we did in the cert petition and maybe we'll just refer back to this joint appendix but I mean there it is and it's my goodness it's it's the size of a book if you're watching you could see the scope of this thing so it's because the question as you said is so broad we want to give the court as many avenues as possible so that in in deciding the case they can look at you know two justices may be interested in this particular issue another one maybe is you know interested in the 14th amendment some may be interested in the first amendment so we're going to try to make it broad and appealing that regard and the Trump campaign will do theirs and ultimately the decision the decision that the court renders will affect both the Trump case and the Colorado GOP case remember it's the GOPs that are being denied also their right to put on candidates that they they deem appropriate yeah the team that went through their process as well and has a long-term interest here not just this election cycle but making sure and we've heard and we'll talk to our client the next segment the broadcast from the Colorado state Republican party he's the chairman there and you know he said it I remember talking to the main chairman when there was a discussion there and he's and they've said listen we we could go to a caucus system too I mean that's not necessarily our preference this is our priority but we do have the ability to do that so again causing a mess right before the election but now I mean dad I think again this is going to be heard on February 8th there I don't think that they're gonna do the usual wait for months on months on months and months on ends to get an opinion they realize they wouldn't be moving at this speed now we have an opinion by mid-February yeah so it's it's moving at rapid speed it's not as it's not we're gonna finish in a week well some of the parties asked remember some of the parties asked for it to be done by the whole thing to be done by the 15th we didn't do that we said it should be expedited and we said it should be done by super Tuesday we well I don't like setting deadlines for the court and I think the court came up with a deadline that I think makes sense for this it's interesting you want me to play the Adam Schiff bite yeah listen to what Adam Schiff says about the supreme court here well I have to say if you're skeptical about this court there's good reason to be skeptical they've shown they're not a conservative court they're not a court that feels bound by precedent they're a reactionary court they're a partisan court and here one of the justices in particular the one you mentioned Justice Thomas has a very personal you know close family member spouse who had a role in trying to overturn the election so this is the nonsense that you're going to start hearing for the next three weeks and I wanted to play that bite because I want you to be clear on something okay the attacks are coming especially to the justices and and you got to be very careful I caution the Trump team on this too to don't say what the I'm not presumptuous enough to say that I believe the justices are going to rule this way this way and this way here's what I'm presumptuous enough to say go into this case assuming we're losing by three votes that's a good way to view this case Andy assume you're behind by three you figure you got a couple but you know you you're behind by three you need three more votes so that means you got two that's a good way to look at it there's two there for us I gotta get three more I think you're right and I think you need to go in with that attitude don't go in with an attitude that you're gonna do that you're gonna sweep it because that may not necessarily be the case these justices I think are all going to look at this very carefully as Jay said each one is going to have his or her issues that they're going to be particularly interested in that's why we're going to be briefing all the issues that were raised in the Colorado Supreme Court not just some of the issues and the justices are going to be looking at this very carefully some will determine they maybe perhaps that they want to focus on constitutional issues of the 14th amendment the insurrection business some will say well we don't have to get to that we can just talk about whether he was an officer of the United States or not the way we're structured I'm not going to get into the whole insurrection because I think it's a red herring I think the question is and this is what the constitution says that someone that may be deemed disqualified to run is allowed to run because congress by two-thirds vote can remove they have a clause of the constitution under I think it's the 12th amendment that allows them to remove the disqualification so this whole premise that Colorado was operating on was totally wrong yeah so we're going to get into more of those details too in this this part of the brief which we didn't in the initial brief and these were again those were more candidate specific to and President trump attorneys raised that others have raised that as well as you know listen this is someone if you if you got elected congress would then have the decision to make of whether or not to take that vote and remove that disqualification if you truly believed that again the insurrection was at play here of course in this case we don't in any of the cases facing President trump there's been no judicial finding of guilt that he committed insurrection nor has anyone filed a lawsuit including jack smith adding insurrection to the count not only has there been no insurrection charge or finding the only count of insurrection was in the second impeachment and the President was acquitted so that i think that argument is going to fall to the side here let me tell you what i want to do i want to first thank our aclj members especially our aclj champions and hear why we've now got the biggest election case in us history and we got clarified this morning that we are a full participating party to this case we thought so friday got clarified this morning that means we've got to file an opening brief and a reply brief in this so this case is monumental we're representing the colorado gop in this case our first supreme court brief is due in just 10 days our team will be going to washington probably three or four days before then to get it ready they'll be working they're working on it we'll have a draft this week because of you our aclj champions were able to fight this and we also have at the same time supreme court has taken a case out of idaho on the life issue we just got off the phone call with our colleagues in israel about a delegation to london and madrid the week of the 22nd that we're working on right now so 2024 is going to be a very big year with many challenges and we need many more aclj champions to report for duty as our members are saying to keep us in these fights and many more to come and to keep winning we're going to ask you to please become an aclj champion today we're at eighteen thousand nine hundred like 15 or so we're 70 shy from 19 000 i would love to end the next day or two at clearing 19 000 and then by the end of the month i'd like to get as close to 20 000 as we can because i want to stay on track that at the end of this year we have 30 000 or close to it aclj champions here's what it means you go to aclj.org forward slash champions we're right there on the home page to respond to one of the emails and any amount you donate that you donate monthly you become an aclj champion and that's what we're asking people to do this month yeah and folks what we want you to do is pick an amount you're comfortable with that's going to again that you can make each month it's not going to hurt you and then you know that that's going to the aclj and that together gives us that ability to be able to pivot very quickly when these cases pop up go to aclj.org become a champion today with that recurring donation all right welcome back to secular we are taking your calls to if you have questions about any of the procedures here or how this will come down and how it'll affect your state uh listen this is going to affect a lot every state now some of you live in states where you didn't have secretary of states or courts uh trying to do this but about half the states uh did and it was starting to move through many states you've got a brief coming from 27 states saying uh agreeing that this is wrong that this should not be happening but it all started in colorado and it started that with the first brief filed at the u.s supreme court was filed on behalf of the colorado state party and their chairman dave williams is joining us now who has been fighting this fight with us since the very beginning and dave we want to thank you for that it is much because of the colorado republican party that this case is up before the u.s supreme court right now you you bet i i'm just thankful that the aclj and the work of your team uh has been it's been instrumental for us and i encourage anyone watching this please donate to the aclj and help them to continue this fight because without them this wouldn't be possible so dave we found out this morning we've got kind of a clarity on what the schedule is going to look like so the way it works is this although the trump cert petition was granted we are deemed a party respondent the call you are as the colorado republican state party which means we're a full party to the case so we have to do the same we have to do the same set of briefs actually that the trump campaign does we both have to file our first uh set of briefs on february 8th january 18th that's the opening merits brief then the other side responds pretty quickly and then on february 5th we file our last brief which is called the reply brief and that will be the last written words on this case until then they'll have the argument on the eighth and i expect within a couple of weeks we'll get an opinion but i think dave it's very important for our audience to understand because colorado led the charge here and then we ended up representing oh 15 or 18 gops and this litigation started spreading like wildfire but now the supreme court hearing i think it's going to tamper it down but why you knew to jump into this thing immediately uh i could see the writing on the wall this was a desperate attempt by left-wing organizations to engage in election interference at the expense of free and fair elections our right to vote for the candidates we choose this is i've said from the beginning this is bigger than donald trump this is about our ability uh to vote in free and fair elections and if we can't maintain that then we don't have a country and that's why i was so happy to partner with you guys and intervene in this case early on because i always thought this would go to the supreme court and here we are now you know it's interesting any what david said and that is because his rights as the chairman of the gop the colorado gop and their members to nominate the candidate of their choice was really taken away by that colorado supreme court decision that's right those are first amendment what we call associational rights the right of a political party or people to associate together and to have a political point of view conservative traditional as ours is a conservative point of view and what the colorado uh secretary of state did in the supreme court of colorado affirmed well you can't do that we're not going to let you do that we're not going to let you associate freely together to to pick your own candidates to put on the ballot and that's constitutional nonsense dave from a membership standpoint what have you heard from your members they're thrilled they're thrilled that we're able to continue this fight and that we're going all the way to the highest court in the land and there's optimism there's optimism that cooler heads will prevail and that the court will agree with the arguments that we're putting forward again this is an attack on our very uh underpinnings of our country with with respect to voting for people that we want or nominating uh the candidates that we want and we certainly don't want unelected judges appointed by the opposition party telling our our organization who we should support and who should nominate so they're thrilled and they couldn't be happier that you guys are with us along the way yeah and dave too i i think because and i'm sure the the attention there uh from your members it's got to excite people up because they realized uh that again though the courts in colorado you know it was going to be difficult we knew it was going to be difficult even though we got some early victories there uh that ultimately because uh you were and they were willing to go and take that stand as the colorado republican party uh this case now is at the u.s supreme court and will be decided not just for colorado but will be decided for all states not just for 2024 but for going forward in to the future so that states like yours i mean you remember talking about potentially having to go to a caucus system that also was happening we were talking to the gop chair in maine and i again that there won't be that kind of a potential likely shakeup and that the rules will be clear and that there will not be this huge new ability for partisans on either side to start trying to tell you know democrats or republicans who their nominees should be yeah that's correct i think what this case is going to do is right now it's already doing is bringing hope spring hope to folks that cooler heads will prevail they shouldn't be removing donald trump from the ballot and they shouldn't be removing joe biden from the ballot uh what we should be doing is allowing folks the ability to vote who who they want to vote for in parties to nominate who they want to vote for and and i think ultimately the the supreme court is going to side with us and they're going to allow us to continue forward with our primary so that no drastic changes need to be made so that people are clear dave donald trump pending this disposition of the case is now on the ballot that was because when we filed early that secured his right to be on the ballot that's correct however the secretary of state who is certainly very biased against donald trump has indicated that she may not count those votes without an affirmative ruling from the supreme court that's why we got to win we'll see yes but again he's and dave's right so that's why winning is important here but by filing as early as we did that secured the slot but it's like a slot with an asterisk and that asterisk is hey i don't have to count these if the court comes out obviously the other way or or or if the court had rulers you know this is this is that's why this has to move so quickly with 15 other cases dave we appreciate it thanks for partnering with us and we're thrilled representing you this is really good news even better news today we found out this morning we get we get the full briefing schedule that we're allowed to do here that that's really great news so uh dave we appreciate it thanks so much for coming on the broadcast thank you for having me folks i'm going to tell you right now that this is historic this is a major case the biggest election case in u.s history we've got two briefs to do they're going to be great but they're going to take a lot of time we've already had meetings on them this morning we're representing uh dave the colorado gop we represent about 15 where how many jordan 17 gop was about 16 17 on one of the other cases yeah briefs that was going to michigan now some of them are starting to move off to file their own amicus briefs we're going to see we're out of them yeah we can't represent them anymore while we're representing uh the party at the case and we are representing a party at the case so we're asking our aclj champions first of all thank you to those of you that are supporting the work of the aclj already but if you can be an aclj champion for life liberty and freedom let me tell you let me focus on liberty and freedom for this one this is a liberty and freedom fight your right to vote for the candidate of your choice and it's way beyond donald trump i just just put that on the side it's your candidate of your choice that the colorado secretary of state and the main secretary of state thought they could just take your candidate of the choice and move it away that's not what the law says so we're filing these briefs we're working on it and we're working on our schedules now to get this done we want to ask you to support the aclj monthly through this multi-month fight we're in aclj.org forward slash champions you become a champion for life a champion for liberty and a champion for freedom 2024 is going to be a big year with many challenges we already are looking at deploying another aclj eclj team to london the week of the 22nd that's going on too right now in the middle of these briefs so if you can give monthly to the aclj just go over to aclj.org forward slash champions i want to get that up to 20 19,000 and then 20,000 by the end of this month aclj.org yeah again aclj.org we want you to become one of those aclj champions again if it's twenty dollars if it's fifty dollars that you're comfortable with making each month automatically you become an aclj champion and that is huge for this kind of work aclj.org keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever this is secular and now your host jordan secular all right welcome back to secular we are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110 that's 1-800-684-3110 so as you saw in the news alerts over the weekend the supreme court not surprisingly by the way has decided to take up the case involving the 14th amendment and President trump we filed a first actually to the supreme court in the colorado case that was the case that actually made its way through all the way to the u.s supreme court the other situation maine was just getting started and other courts were being dismissed at lower levels but what you're now going to see is a again we have the briefing scheduled dad we actually will be able to tell people and so they will start getting to publicly see the arguments being made now some of these will be the same that they've already seen some but but now you'll have uh the the opposition those who want to use this to bar donald trump having to respond to uh the trump brief to our brief on behalf of the colorado state party and then we will be when they respond we will be able to reply so here how does it work so this is uh january 8th on january 18th we have to have filed lodge with the court the printed version of our brief i'm holding in my hands what we filed at the cert petition stage as you can see it's bound about two inches thick we will be filing our brief on the 18th of january we're working on that brief now we'll be deploying a team at center washington office is the primary office responsible but team lawyers from other offices including this office will all be going up there to uh get this thing done that's on the that's on the 18th the other side then comes back and they file their brief uh at the end of the month i think it's on the 30th or 31st so about two weeks later a little less than two weeks actually then we go back to dc because on february 5th our reply brief is due and that's our reply to whatever is filed by crew the lawyers representing the the electors that have filed the lawsuit but we also will file respond to whatever the secretary of state files so there you have it that is all taking place now let's go ahead and take denise's call from arizona on line one denise welcome the broadcast you're on the air if you want to talk to us it's 1-800-684-3110 dennis i'm sorry 1-800-684-3110 hi dennis hi jay i have a two-part question would these lawsuits be a violation of their oath of office to uphold the constitution and secondly would it be the basis for a recall petition against the secretary of states yeah so they have argued that they would that this would be a violation of their office if they didn't remove the candidate that is not true because under the constitution they don't have that authority you could even put a disqualified candidate on a ballot because that's the difference of running for an office and the i'm being seated that's up to congress and congress has the ability to remove a disqualification if in fact there is one we don't think there is one here obviously but that will be one of many arguments that are made yeah so the secretary of states are way off on this yeah remember just to show you had two different very similar secretaries of state in colorado the secretary of state was technically sued by the laws it was brought against them by these individuals who are backed by the liberal organization crew and and they said basically i will follow along with whatever the courts decide in colorado and then when the supreme court in colorado said take trump off the ballot but big asterisks uh if the supreme court stays this then he will be put on the ballot so he will be put on the ballot colorado as of now uh remember the secretary of state there was the one being sued to be told to do this in maine they just had a different judicial process where you could go to the secretary of state first and they would have like this this non-legal adjudication where she would hear arguments then get to make a decision and then you could appeal that decision there's only two stages of courts there so a little bit different neither one of them had ever claimed i do want to make it clear that they're the final say no and it's clear now the supreme court's decision will affect all the states so all of the state litigation right now should come to a halt yeah because the supreme court's disposition of this is going to be very very quick but that's why we need you supporting the work of the aclj at aclj.org we want you to become an aclj champion an aclj champion is as you pick an amount and it's great that this january the first month of the year you pick an amount that that is you're comfortable with donating each month it'll happen automatically so that we know we have an idea of how much is coming in through our champions amount it gets us ready for these wild times all right welcome back to secio there are other topics obviously to discuss as well as the supreme court you know as the filings get closer we'll talk more about that i think it again is now we kind of have the we know that we know that the time frame we've got to file our brief for the gop for the party and on the 18th of january they have to file on the 31st we have to file again on the 5th so we know the we know the dates now it's going to move really very that sounds like oh you got three weeks trust me the supreme court brief that's like three minutes but we've got a great our team's working on it in great shape we've got rick grinnell joining us rick you know you're a cabinet member and another cabinet member of the biden administration was is the secretary of defense who evidently had a and i'm sympathetic to somebody that's had a heart procedure had a heart procedure was in the hospital for five days did not notify the President of the united states or his staff as to the situation how unusual and how dangerous is that for our country well it's extremely dangerous i'm concerned that jake sullivan who's the national security advisor uh didn't find it odd that he wasn't seeing or speaking with the secretary of defense for five days while two wars were raging on and while americans are being held hostage i don't understand how the national security advisor doesn't speak to the secretary of defense for five days that is so unacceptable and let me just add one other thing jay there are a whole bunch of pentagon reporters who clearly missed this they don't have enough sources they don't have the right sources i i'm sorry but there are plenty of people who knew that the secretary of defense worked was in the hospital his his detail knew the secretaries who were making the schedule knew his assistant knew the chief of staff knew all of these people should be held to account why did they lie to the american people during wartime you know who did know that the secretary of defense was in the hospital china guaranteed you know i mean rick when i when i read this i mean i think people get upset because they find out that again maybe laws were broken we're looking into that now i mean it might have been by the deputy taking over but uh clearly uh it doesn't appear that the white house even knew about this i mean so when you're talking about active conflicts where decisions are having to be made we've got it in of course ukraine with russia and u.s weaponry and u.s armaments going there all the time we've got of course what's going on in the middle east and in israel with hamas but also what's happening in the red sea and as you said uh the issue with china uh is that i mean we're at a point now where a the secretary of defense's team uh thought it would be a good idea to to keep this from the commander in chief but let's also be very clear about one thing america is less safe under joe biden we've seen it with the hoothees we've seen it with two wars we've seen it with the open border and now this this is a very serious situation i i still go back to this we say this a lot but the media in dc are allowing things to get worse because there's no pushback take for instance this morning in politico white house officials and pentagon officials are spinning to politico and politico took it hook line and sinker that the secretary of defense is a private man with a stiff up with a stiff upper lip and he just wanted to suck it up and go into the hospital and and all is fine because he's a strong guy that didn't want to bother people that's his personality he just didn't want to bother people well that would be fine if lloyd austin was a private citizen but he's the secretary of defense in charge of protecting us that is not fine it is unacceptable and for politico to give aid and comfort to this situation just goes to show the regime media and how they won't push back and therefore things will get worse because there are no consequences for jake sullivan or lloyd austin yeah i mean there there's there people are calling for consequences uh but but like as you said rick it doesn't seem like in this administration we see these we see times where there should be consequences and joe biden fails to act i mean so you see mayorkas failure at the border and it's congress forced to act and and uh i think you know and rightfully so as as they've opened up an impeachment inquiry because we've seen the numbers have doubled we see the numbers of deaths from fitnall double we've seen the number of illegal immigrants double we've heard from democrat mayors and governors about how tough this is getting on that issue so if they're unwilling to move mayorkas it seemed like they're going to be totally unwilling unless there's some massive pressure from democrats in the u.s senate on the national security side they're going to be unwilling to punish anyone like lloyd austin would like stepping down so democrats have been largely silent on this the media has been largely silent i mean the new york times reporter helene cooper she couldn't have been more dismissive of oh this is no big deal she she feigned outrage for about six hours but but you know i don't believe that she didn't know i actually think reporters at the pentagon covered for him that they knew and they didn't want to make it a scandal because this is the regime media this is consequences for republicans never for democrats so you know i had something brick so here's my concern with all of this the lack of transparency could you imagine if this happened under your administration and the secretary of defense was you know absent and nobody knew about it i mean the media would be going ballistic but you said something that's very important there's one group of people that knew and that was the chinese government because they tend to know everything and that shows the instability of this administration to formalize lines of communication when you listen people get sick and i i'm sympathetic to the secretary of defense the you know situation he looks like he to get a heart stent i'm familiar with all of that i mean those are serious things and i'm glad he's well and recovered but my goodness our enemies knew it you know that and we have a process when you're sick you hand it over but you know the deputy didn't she didn't even know that austin was sick she was in puerto rico on vacation was told hey you might want to stay near your phone because because we might need you that was the extent of what she was told but this is this is really a scary moment and again there are no consequences jake sullivan why isn't anyone at the white house asking him do you routinely go five days without speaking to the secretary of defense remember this happened with pete budajich too he was gone he was uh on on leave and nobody really knew and he he he didn't tell anybody he didn't hand over uh a transparent document to say you know this is what's happening he tried to hide it and got caught later this is a pattern with this administration and it's a pattern with the regime media that covers but rick here's the thing that is so troubling to me nobody if the if the press office for the secretary of defense would have said secretary austin is having a heart procedure to correct a blood flow in his heart and we'll have a series of heart stents and a catheterization you know what everybody would have been doing praying for success and they would have handed it over to the assistant secretary and nothing would have happened instead they create the hullabaloo yeah we we would have absolutely been praying for our secretary of defense during this wartime he would have received a massive amounts of prayers from from americans but the fact is is now today with politico and others they're scrambling to just dismiss the story they don't think they did anything wrong jay the problem well rick we appreciate your insight on this as always thanks for being part of the team here at the aclj folks you're getting it from rick was a cabinet member he was director of national intelligence ambassador to germany this is the caliber of people we have associated with us we've got a major supreme court case we let me tell you what my morning was like just for a moment at nine o'clock i was on a zoom call secured zoom call with our colleagues in israel because they're trying to get another family group to go to london to meet with the prime minister and others in leadership as well as some church leaders in london which is very important because the church in england has not been so supportive of israel they need to hear from these families so we were working on that from nine to nine thirty central time where we were at 9 40 we got on the phone i got on a phone call with our supreme court team to get that ready all of this is happening simultaneously we are booked the entire month of january through february 5th already jammed slammed and that's where you come in yeah it is and this is where you can have make such a difference by becoming an aclj champion with the supreme court agreeing to hear the biggest election case in u.s history and we are representing the colorado gop in this case we've got to file twice uh both again we we file uh initially the beginning of this case of the u.s supreme court the initial brief we also then will file the reply to our through the brief that will be filed by the organization uh crew and the the people they represent who want trump off the ballot so we'll be filing two briefs within a matter of i what this time period is i think the first brief is doing 10 days about 18th yeah eight days yeah 10 days nine because you got to get it to the print of the day before so nine days for your for a merits brief that will cover more than just the topics we we covered in our initial brief representing the colorado republican party and of course we're ready to do that team's already been working on it and then we'll have until february 5th to reply to uh to the to their briefs so we'll have again that chance to reply because we are a party in this case this is not amicus this is being a party to the case dad and it's why these aclj champions from that day we spoke with dave and the colorado republican party have been so important to this case and we knew this was the one i mean we knew this was the case that was going to the supreme court but you our aclj champions have reported for duty we want to encourage you to do that we didn't have to worry about resources we did not have to worry about resources and getting the resources to get it done and we did have to bring in people like jane raskin and others to get it done and now we've got the situation going on for the israelis we've got to get a an event and situation in london aclj.org forward slash champions become a champion for life liberty and freedom aclj.org back with more in a moment i still did i think i'm going to go through this timeline one more time because i want to make sure people understand how quick our team at aclj with everything else going on that we're about to talk about too and the issues we're talking about with rick and i know aclj actions taking action today on mayorkas so i mean you know we have a team obviously we're not just you know one tracked here uh but our on our supreme court team that's been on this 14th amendment case uh since friday evening trying to figure out because such a different kind of setup and the the wording that was used was different uh we just really figured out over the weekend exactly our timeline i want you to just underscore to people how quick the timeline moves before oral argument here well i mean there's only a month but between or less between now and oral argument it's about a month exactly between now and oral argument but the briefing which is where the bulk of this is folks you win or lose these cases on the briefing our first brief is due the 18th which means we have to have it to the printer on the 17th so that is less than 10 days from now so we're already working on it we'll probably get a draft this weekend it will probably have a team to dispatch to dc to get it finished up then the respondents the other side will have till the 31st so they get about a little less than two weeks then we have to turn around a brief on the 5th which is really means we need to get it to the printer on the 4th in order to get it in on time so it's a very condensed schedule and then the arguments on the 8th i expect we get a a decision you know the middle towards the end of i think before before the super tuesday i think we have a decision in the case so that's what's going on there we also had before that call cc and i were on a secured call with our call a zoom call with our colleagues in israel and we're also getting ready to file a brief that is addressing the international court the international court of justice let's talk about that one first then i'll talk about the delegation to london the ijc because south africa filed a charge against israel claiming genocide immediately impaneled the ijc the international court of justice and israel has dispatched justice barack to be the israel judge judicial representative and then a colleague that we worked with previously a british barrister malcolm shaw to make the arguments which by the way are the 11th so that's happening right away we are drafting a brief right now that technically you're not allowed to file the brief with the court but you know what you can do you file it with every country that's got a judge up there and you file it with the judges and you file it with the other officials and notify all the countries involved in what's happening here cc yeah so we are working on that brief at the icj right now in response to what you said south africa has filed basically an application against israel for genocide which on its face fails i mean clearly this is an anti-semitic anti-israel filing once again at an international tribunal and south africa is leading the cause to falsely pro-hamas south africa and you know and israel didn't have to respond but israel felt compelled to respond jordan because of the what happened on that day of october 7th yeah that's right i mean you know this is again this was not israel deciding okay this is a moment we think hamas is weak we're gonna go launch a war because we think this is the right move in fact if you look back over the last few years israel was hoping that things were settling down yes inside the gaza strip that people were even hamas was concerned more about infrastructure building finances and economics and now we know that was all just a ruse to it was all the israel's into a false sense of security right i mean so they were the they had the exact opposite mindset of building up to go into a massive war so let's talk about the ijc so what are we doing so again we cannot file officially in the case but we are preparing a brief absolutely that would be published everywhere yes showing why this application for genocide fails and the icj cannot even address it and so our brief will be we'll be sending it out again like to all of the interested countries the judges for those you know that are representing those countries they will every party that is indicated or implicated in this brief will get a copy yeah now at the same time we were on a call this morning with our colleagues in london and these are the um colleagues that represent the voice for the it's called the voice of freedom coalition and it's the group that represents the families we had the delegation in the united states that we all hosted back in mid-november then our colleagues in europe our european center for law and justice in december hosted a group and that group was in france and brussels and now uh it looks like london is about to happen yeah so now we'll do another delegation in uk and spain again targeting leaders explaining the situation with the hostages having hostages hostage families there for them to speak with including by the way church leaders so one of the things i suggested actually was that because the church has been so silent in europe yes about this atrocity that took place against the jews when never again happened okay never again happened and there's still more silence i said there needs to be in this structure of events where we invite with other leaders a an event focusing in on the churches and the christian leadership in the country that this is not a moral equivalency situation and the coalition that we're part of said we think that's a great idea and we're working with people that we've worked with for decades uh over in england and then they're going to also go uh possibly to uh madrid for public relations and and media but the england one is really be focused on governmental folks all of this is happening simultaneously with a huge supreme court breach so if you looked at our schedule of the lawyers working on this understand this on the 18th we have to have our briefing at the supreme court of the united states on the 20th or so 21st a delegation will be going to the uk and that is for meetings starting on the 22nd you get in a day or two before that delegation will go through probably the 26th to 27th maybe even the 28th 28th there will then be a brief due to the supreme court on february 5th in the election case and then uh arguments on the 8th and we get a decision so we're booked and this is where you come in and jordan it is critical for our aclj members first of all if you can donate if you can only donate one time that's great to aclj.org but if you can become an aclj champion that will make a huge difference for us and some people you're going to be more comfortable making a larger donation one time or a couple times a year that's great but if you're somebody who says you like to budget monthly and say you know what this is you know i donate this much to my church i can donate this much to the aclj this is what we've created aclj champions and we say it's not just about a recurring donor this is really acknowledging that these recurring donors are making that plan so they know that the aclj is enabled to plan to know that if something new uh arises which lord knows it it does all the time for us in the aclj when times feel at all like they're slow they it doesn't last very long and i'll tell you from israel to these trump cases uh to to the again to the 14th amendment all the way to us supreme court having recurring donors now aclj champions ready to go is so important so whether you're somebody who says you know i like to give once or twice a year bigger amounts that's me that's very important to the aclj and and if you're someone again who likes to get budgeted out over the year and give it each month uh an amount that's really comfortable it's not going to hurt you at all economically that again is our aclj champions program and then we can count on knowing that that amount will be there so that if something like uh this case pops up or the situation in europe yeah or the situation europe and we need to shift a few thousand dollars here ten thousand dollars here that the resources will be there and it won't take away from anything else the aclj i keep trying to say that this is not taking away from anything else the aclj is doing on all we're doing in washington dc and around the world so here's what we want you to do become an aclj champion for life liberty and freedom go to aclj.org forward slash champion and report for duty if you're able aclj.org forward slash champions a lot more information coming out in the days ahead you're gonna want to stay tuned make sure you're following us on all our social media we'll talk to you tomorrow