MAJOR UPDATE: Trump BALLOT BAN at the Supreme Court

Today on Secular, a major update on the Trump ballot ban heading to the US Supreme Court. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Secular.

We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Secular.

Hey, welcome to Secular. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. If you want to join us on the show, it's 1-800-684-3110. Our brief has been filed. We talked about the deadline today and we've been doing that matching challenge and we continue today throughout the matching challenge. And you'll be able to see that up at ACLJ.org and on the Supreme Court websites for the reply brief has been filed. It's the third brief filed in this case just to the Supreme Court. Remember, this is all out of Colorado where we represent the Colorado Republican Party and the oral argument will be on Thursday before the US Supreme Court.

But remember, we also won in Michigan, West Virginia, Minnesota, and Oklahoma. We were intervening in Virginia and Wyoming and as well as filed amicus in Michigan on behalf of Oklahoma, Colorado, West Virginia, Kansas, Wyoming, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Delaware, Georgia, Nebraska, Maine, Idaho, Rhode Island, and Ohio. But listen, there are states right now, there are states right now, including Hawaii, taking action in case the Supreme Court goes the way it gets President Trump.

Yeah. Although right now, because of the situation, pretty much everything is on hold. But what is going to happen, and you're going to see this happen, I think, until there's a decision, there are states that are going to still percolate along trying to keep Trump off the ballot. There's some 35 states involved.

And like Jordan said, we represent, was it almost 20, many GOPs, state parties. So I think we have to be clear here. This is what we filed as our opening brief in this case. Now, this was after we went through a whole series of briefs first. That's the reply brief. Let's go ahead and put up the brief. This is the red brief. So this is the opening brief that we filed at the Supreme Court. Do we have that in the... Okay.

Well, we'll get that. And then we then file the reply brief today, technically. I say technically because you file it electronically, and then you have to file the printing copies. I don't know if the printing copies have been delivered yet.

I guess they have. So the briefing is done. 84 briefs in this case.

Count that again. 84 briefs in the case. I've done a lot of Supreme Court cases.

I think that is the most I've ever seen in any case we've been involved in. Especially for a case that's gotten this quick. It wasn't like this was a case that was percolating for years, like most are. Most of these Supreme Court cases, if you thought about it, they would be multi-year battles that the legal systems and you'd have law professors and jurists and former jurists being able to look at it over years.

This was over a couple months. So to get 84 people who wanted to weigh in on it. A lot of academics weighed in here. I think they've been waiting for this case because they never... A lot of them have because this is a deeply academic case. But the consequences of the case are sobering and serious.

And so serious that what it means at the end of the day here is whether a candidate can stay on the ballot when the state party has said, that's who we want, or this group of people we want on the ballot. And you've got a secretary of state simply saying, well, no, we're not going to do that. So it can't go that way. That's not the way it's supposed to work. So I am optimistic.

I will tell you this. I reviewed every brief that was filed. We filed our reply brief, which is the one that's up on the screen right now. And that responded to not just the brief on the merits from the other side, but probably a half dozen of these amicus briefs.

Some of the amicus briefs were just, he's an insurrectionist, throw him off the ballot. Others were serious. I mean, Mike Ludigs was serious. Former Department of Justice officials were serious. And Professor Akil Amar's brief was serious.

And we responded to those briefs. So much of this is that the oral argument's fine. It's an hour and it's over. This one's going to be a little bit longer.

It'll be like an hour and 20. But let me tell you, you win and lose these things on the briefing. And that's what's done here. Folks, your right to vote, as we said, is on the line here. Crew filed their brief calling for President Trump's removal. We have responded. The case is at the Supreme Court. The briefs are in. Our Supreme Court deadline was actually today.

Every gift will be double dollar for dollar through our matching moment, but only until midnight tonight. So go to ACLJ.org and donate now. We encourage you to do that at ACLJ.org.

That's right. You've got questions about this case. Call us, 1-800-684-3110, and how it could affect this election cycle and the future as well, and what issues are at play. 1-800-684-3110, we'll be right back on Sekulow. All right, so talk to us on the air, 1-800-684-3110. This is a final day for our matching moment at the ACLJ. And appreciate those of you who participated already as we were working on this reply brief, which was the deadline to file was today. It has been filed. You can go to ACLJ.org and actually see that. It's a response to, if you read through it, it's a response to other briefs that have been filed. So you're going to see references to other briefs that were filed.

A lot of those were not necessarily party briefs. Some are, but were people that were these law professors taking positions. And by the way, not necessarily based off their politics. I would say, like the left, usually they unite, but on the right, because they never could figure out what they agree upon. They love to disagree. So you see that more often on the right than you do the left. The left unites. I didn't see anything on the left supporting Donald Trump. No, there was one brief that was filed by one of the amici that was, I think, left of center that said this idea of unilaterally taking people off the ballot violates your right of association. Kind of the free speech argument.

So let me put it back on the screen for you. This is the opening brief after they granted a review. We already filed briefs on that. So this was the first merit briefs. It's red.

Andy and I were talking about that. We haven't filed a red one in a long time, but there we are. That's a red one. And that's our respondent's brief. Then we filed today with the Supreme Court, the reply brief, which we believe the color, I think on that one is orange, but this is, we haven't gotten it back from the printer yet.

You actually print these briefs and it's been filed. But I think it's fair to say, and I want to get your impression on now that we've gone through all the briefs. Look, take nothing for granted here because there were some good briefs on the other side.

There were. And then there's, there's arguments on the other side. So this is not, this is, this is a case of first impression. Let's define what that means for people.

First impression means this court has never heard anything like it before. It's the first time that the Supreme Court has taken up the issue of a potential Presidential candidate being taken off the ballot by a state through the unilateral action of the Secretary of State of that jurisdiction, deciding that I'm not going to have him on the ballot, because in my opinion, he's an insurrectionist. Now you have represented secretaries of state for many, many years.

Many. And the idea that that person could do this themselves to me seems to be, that seems to be to me the crux of this. It cannot be that way or else a secretary of state in the South could have said to Ulysses S. Grant, you know, he's, he was the big general for the union. Let's not recognize him on the ballot because we think he was an insurrectionist.

Well, that's exactly right Jay. I mean, you cannot allow 50 jurisdictions in the District of Columbia, secretaries of state or administrative officials in the elections department to make a decision who's going to be on the ballot or not. You would have absolute national chaos. Imagine there's a person in Maine who's the secretary of state. She says that President Trump shouldn't be on the ballot. She was an elector for Biden. That's a political move. Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state in Georgia says, I am not in a position and I'm not allowed in the constitution, doesn't give me the right to ban anybody from the ballot. Other states would take different positions.

So you could have a plethora of different positions all over the United States. And you imagine the election chaos that would ensue and who would be the legitimate President at that point? So what I was going to ask you this, how is this, do you think playing at the electoral base for the voters right now?

Is it more confusion? I think as well, Donald Trump so far has just been rolling along in the first two primaries. It basically has had every candidate drop out but Nikki Haley, who's able to raise some money. The latest poll out of South Carolina, that was since it was down to the two of them, still showed with almost a 30 point lead over her in her home state. So that means that voters aren't paying a ton of attention to this as a possible, they don't see this as, they don't think the Supreme Court is going to disqualify President Trump because they don't think that their vote is being wasted in Iowa. They don't think their vote is being wasted in New Hampshire or in South Carolina.

I think those states will be in. The question will be, do we get Super Tuesday before this? Now, some people have already voted Super Tuesday because of early voting. But the question is, March 5th is less than a month from February 8th. I mean, they're going to get a decision out before people had to vote on Super Tuesday. Let me go through some timelines, why I think it's realistic here. Because that I think is where we'd really be able to figure out if it affected people.

Yeah, people understand. So look, as of today, the briefing will have been done for all sides. So all briefs are in, all amicus briefs are in. They will not allow additional briefing unless there was a supplemental decision in another case that was relevant. There's not here.

So you don't have that. So I think realistically, what you have is a scenario, and this is what I think is going to happen, where on the 8th, it's argued. That's the last you're going to hear of this case for probably 10 days. Now, they will vote on it the next, that very Friday, or they may even vote on it that Thursday in conference. And what that means is they go through in reverse order of seniority and the chief justice host is the conference chair for that and says, how do you vote? How do you plan on voting?

What is your sense of where you want to vote? And in that voting, what they decide is where they're coming out. If there was a way to get a unanimous decision in a case like this, I think John Roberts would really work on that because it would show institutional credibility with the court. I think there's a lot of concern about that because you remember during Bush versus Gore, which was not, was very close case, boy, it hurt the court's institutional view in the public.

All they were doing in my view was doing their job. But here there is a number of ways they could go, which could keep Trump on the ballot without making a huge decision, but still an important one. You start looking for an opinion from February 18th, when is Super Tuesday, March 5th, between February 18th and the end of the month. Because I think that's where a lot of people would, you're going to have this mass of voters that are not going to have the interplay that the other voters have had with the candidates. What I mean is in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, these people have seen President Trump.

He's been a lot of events or Nikki Haley has been a lot of events, and there has not been much going on the Democrat side. So the Republican side has been the place for any political action and it's down to the two candidates. But when you get to March 5th and Super Tuesday, it's not about that. Those states are not states.

Yeah, you might be in a big enough city that had a rally or one of the big enough Republican strongholds that had a rally, but likely you didn't have like a personal interaction with the person running for President. So what the Supreme Court says is going to be important. People don't want to waste their vote on a candidate if it's not going to be counted.

Well, that's the thing. And that's why I think the way they come out with the decision is going to be important because we have this argument, which I think is textually correct, that it only applies to the disqualification clause holding office because that disqualification disability can be removed by two thirds of the Congress. They can vote two thirds and say, no, even though he's founded that, we're going to let him serve or her serve. So they could say, and I mean, they could say, hey, this only applies to holding office. This is running for office. It doesn't apply. That's right.

Maybe you get nine on that. That would be an easy way to do it. Because he would simply say, he can run for office, he can seek office, but holding office is another matter. That of course just pushes the can down the road. And it could make it worse. And it could make it worse.

It could look like another election interference thing. Right. Mary Ellen's calling from Illinois. I lied too. Hey, Mary Ellen. Hi, just listening to you all.

I have a quick question. I wondered if you looked at, from all those states that have filed the cases, which way they're, they're red, blue states or leaning one way or another, because here in Illinois, there was a request to take him off the ballot and they ruled to keep them on, which I was very surprised. There've been plenty of blue state courts that said no to this case. I mean, that would, that Massachusetts and Illinois both said, no. Colorado was a blue state that said, yes, you could take him off. Maine is a blue state.

They said you could take him off. That was a weird one because it had not even really got to court yet. And a lot of these, it's pending right now in New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas. Some of these get brought by people.

Yes. Against the secretary of state. So you can't really go and say, oh, well, Georgia's leads, you know, statewide is Republican, but if a person can bring an action to force the state secretary of state to do something or not do something, the person's brought it that way. I think the court has to rule before Super Tuesday.

And that's the weekend that gets weird. Because there does need to be some certainty that is because when you get to Super Tuesday, that's the outcome determinative. That will be it for the Republican primary likely. I mean, a lot of people think this is over already.

And if South Carolina goes to Donald Trump, which is dinky hands, he'll stay almost by 30 points. Yeah. That's over there. She says she's going to stick in and she, and you said she's got the money for now. But I mean, you know, the money has to get actually into the account.

We'll see how much they have to spend just to survive South Carolina. So I think what I'm saying is I think the court has no choice Andy here, but to move very expeditions. Got to move quickly on this because the nation is waiting and the Supreme Court's credibility as an institution, as you pointed out earlier. And I really want to emphasize that is really very much on the line and chief justice Roberts is really going to have to take some leadership role here to try to unify his court. I think that's why some of us thought that they might not even take oral argument because of how these issues and that they would.

Has a little drama to it when we know it's not really, it's not an outcome determinative. Right. But that, that this, again, this, that brings a lot of attention to it. And a lot of people say, oh, what does this one say?

What did this one say? This was appointed by Trump. So if they were appointed by Trump, of course they're going to, you know, all this back and forth. When in reality, I'd say that most folks, if you went through these briefing, especially the reply briefs that came through, I mean, these were lost. This was like law school hypothetical world.

Oh yeah. And that's why you've got so many professors weighing in on all sides and some of the professors don't agree on one sentence, but they don't agree on the other sentence. Very academic, but let me tell you what it is. It's your right to vote. And that's why it's a critically important case.

We're in the last day of the matching moment for the briefing. We want to encourage you to go to ACLJ.org, have your gift doubled. It means any amount you donate is doubled. And if you can donate monthly and become an ACLJ champion, we're over 19,100 of those, uh, more moving towards next goal is 20,000. So ACLJ.org, any amount you donate is doubled.

And if you can just donate monthly, which is a great thing for us, now you participate in all those matches because it'll be automatic. ACLJ.org slash vote. Back with more in a moment. All right, welcome back to the second year. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We'll still pay close attention to what's happening to the US Supreme Court as we get closer and closer there to that oral argument. And if you've got calls and questions about that, as you see the briefing come in, which by the way, you'll see pieces of it discussed in the news.

This person said this, this person said this. And again, the oral argument will be on Thursday. So again, no bad questions about this if you've got any at 1-800-684-3110. And a thank you for all those of you who participated in the matching moment, which you have until midnight tonight because our team again depleted a lot of funds at the ACLJ to do all these cases. But as we always say, because it's great that we've got our donors and the support we have because we're able to do those cases without even thinking about the funding side of it. Can we afford to do the cases? But that's because our donors step up.

Know that this costs money. Know that this takes a lot of time of attorneys. And we have to be prepared for the next case that comes about too. And of course, we're working on other cases ongoing. This is not the only issue that we've been working on.

This would just happen to have a very quick timeline compared to other Supreme Court cases. Well, let's talk about some of the other issues we're talking about and that we're heavily involved. We have an office in Jerusalem and our office in Strasbourg, France, as well as our offices here have been heavily involved in the situation in Israel. And there was a troubling report that has developed.

And that was after weeks of private administration requests to produce fewer results than the White House wants. The sources have said that the U.S. is considering slowing or pausing the delivery of weaponry to force Israel into an extended ceasefire and also to get the hostages out. So this is being proposed. At the same time, there has been statements by Secretary Cameron of Great Britain and Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, saying that we need to be prepared and Israel needs to just buckle up and prepare for a compelled two-state solution. Now, we've got a video up at aclj.org on Israel and Palestine, and it's called The Myth of Palestine. And thousands and thousands of people have watched it. And we may play it later in the broadcast. But let me tell you right now, we have taken direct action on this already ridiculous proposals coming from the United States and unfortunately Great Britain.

Cece? Yeah, so we last week, at the end of last week, we started drafting letters that we are sending out today to Secretary Blinken and Secretary Cameron, literally explaining how it would be so horrific if the United States and the UK just decide that they're going to acknowledge a Palestinian state outside of negotiations, that the only solution, the only way to a two-state solution is through negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, not for outside third countries just unilaterally recognizing Palestine, that it violates international law. And there have to be negotiations between these two parties.

And we cannot reward Hamas for their illegal criminal actions against Israel. So I'm holding my hands. We have these in the camera. These are the letters that we sent to both David Cameron.

And do we have those, Will, or no? Yes, there it is, for our audience that's watching. And these are legal letter briefs and also one to Anthony Blinken.

So there you have it. So these are detailed work on the legal policies and political policies on this. Why is it important? Because as this conflict continues and as the pressure is being put on the administration, and it is, I want to defend Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, folks, and it's under attack in a way we have never seen in our lifetime.

So moves like this become very important. There's another issue that's up right now at the International Court of Justice. And we filed in that over a year ago with an advisory request. We're looking at maybe even updating that. And we're putting together a global legal task force with our colleagues in Israel.

That work starts on Wednesday, the day before the Supreme Court argument there. And we're trying to get a global approach to how to handle this. Right, which has always been our cause of action. I mean, we have been the almost the sole defenders of Israel at the United Nations on the international stage, but we will never stop promoting that Israel has a right to exist.

They have a right to self-defense and they are not the ones that are causing the problem here. It is Hamas and they cannot be rewarded for that. And in a little bit, you want to talk about what's going on in this hostage negotiation deal too, because that's a big deal. Yeah, of course, we still have not seen the funding come through from Congress.

So you've got it's happening there. I mean, you've got the funding bill was announced yesterday through the U.S. Senate that was an immigration bill. It's got Ukrainian funding, which is much more, I think four times the amount that goes to Israel. So you think about how much we're spending in Ukraine on an issue we're barely even hear about anymore now. And it's, I think like $70 billion.

I think Israel was about 17 billion. And so Ukraine was in the 70 billion, but it also had some border security measures. There's agreement in the Senate on some of this between Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats, but then House Republicans said no. Because remember they said, why can't we just get the Israeli funding done? You created funding we want accounting of and border needs to be border. Why is this all tied together? These issues don't work yet. But yeah, there's a lot of politics behind it, especially with Democrats, because they're getting a lot more pressure inside their own party not to support Israel.

Exactly right. Let me play for you what David Cameron said about this issue of governance once this war is over. Fundamentally, there are four things have got to happen. Once this conflict is over, we've got to see a Palestinian led government in Gaza and the West Bank, we need a concrete plan of support for that government and a plan to help reform and support the Palestinian Authority. We've got to see a massive reconstruction plan for for Gaza after this conflict is over.

And crucially, we've got to see a political horizon towards a two state solution. If you play our video, how long is the video that we have? It's too long? Yeah, it's too long for this segment.

We maybe played at the end of the broadcast today. This two state solution idea folks has got, let me tell you the likelihood of that zero. There have been attempts in the last 50 years, 60 years to do it. There's been all kind of agreements signed Oslo, Y River Plantation agreements. I mean, there's been all these agreements, even the Abraham Accords. But when something as horrific as what happened happened, the likelihood of that is ridiculous. And when you understand the history of this, you would never support a two state solution.

That's right. And Israel has agreed every single time. And the Palestinian Authority, the Arabs that live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they never hold up their end to the bargain. They never want to agree. They don't even acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist.

How can you negotiate with someone who doesn't even think you have a right to exist? You know, there's a proposal right now is to give a lot of the territory over to the Egyptians. The problem is the Egyptians don't want it. The people living in there, the Arab Palestinians, if you want to call them that, Arabs living in that area, Gaza and the West Bank, have caused a lot of havoc to governments, including the assassination of President Sadat in the Muslim Brotherhood. I think, again, that you've got these very complicated issues. But the fact that the US, as we talked about last week on the broadcast, and the UK have thrown out there publicly, these reports first came from behind the scenes, but they've all been, you know, confirmed now by David Cameron, confirmed by the spokespeople at the State Department, and the White House, and National Security Council, that if they are working on trying to get a plan to recognize the Palestinian state as we speak, and they've all recognized that.

Will not work. They would like to have one announced by the end of this conflict. When is the end of this conflict? Well, if you talk to Israel, and there's no interference, they say it's going to take the entire, at least all of 2024. It's a real war. Yeah, there's a real conflict.

Right. Just like any other major conflicts would not be done in, you know, a month or two. But if inside the United States, there's a move to put pauses on this, that would be hard to see that ever restarting. That's the problem. We've put a four-month pause on this for humanitarian reasons.

You're not going back to full-scale war after four months. Stand with us at the ACLJ. We're filing our brief. It's been filed this morning.

And so any amount you donate is matched. Go to ACLJ.org forward slash vote, or you go right to the home page. It's there too. And there's emails going out on it.

ACLJ.org slash vote. More to discuss when we come back from the break. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. So briefing, we've got our matching moment and we've had that launched this Thursday. We appreciate those of you who have donated that. We had a group of donors understanding the significance of all this briefing we have been filing in the case involving President Trump in the 14th Amendment.

The reply briefs are due today. We've got ours in. The matching moment goes until midnight tonight, which means you could double the impact of your donation to ACLJ.

And again, a lot of you took part in that. So now we... Again, there's not going to be... See how things filed today. Then after that, it hurts the oral argument on Thursday. And then we wait. Likely, we aren't going to be waiting like we usually would for the US Supreme Court months away from now. Too many people are voting already. And people have already voted on this. Not just, by the way, in Iowa, New Hampshire, but early voting going on for some of the Super Tuesday states. Definitely in South Carolina, that probably starts soon. And that is, like we talked about, determinative, yes.

A Super Tuesday will likely be the end of the Republican primary. Okay. So here's what you got. The briefs are submitted as of today. That means all 84 briefs... Let me give you that number again.

84 briefs have been filed in this case. We went through every single one of them when we crafted our reply brief. Put that on the screen so people see what that is. This is the reply brief.

So that's up there. And right there, there's the reply brief. And then the first brief we filed, of course, was our opening brief. And it's a red brief, and there it is. And so a lot of paperwork. Because a lot of the briefing here is the absolutely most important part. On the 8th, there's going to be an oral argument.

It's going to be 80 minutes. So you're going to have the Secretary of State is given a few minutes to argue. The lawyers representing the electors will have their time to argue. And then, Jordan, the lawyer that's representing President Trump will make an argument as well.

But let me tell you this. The briefing is where it's at in these cases. Yeah, because this is about President Trump in this election, certainly. But the reason why we're involved too with these Republican parties is this is about their future. Because they don't have to go through a primary process. Interestingly enough, in most of these states, if this kind of interference occurs for the state, the Republican Party can switch to a caucus system. Now, would the Secretary of State honor the caucus system and put that person on the ballot? I mean, it brings up all these issues.

But what you have is legal uncertainty. I don't think it's boiled over much to the campaign. I think most people think Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and he's going to be on the ballot. They're assuming the Supreme Court here is... Are you surprised that Nikki Haley's raised the kind of money she has?

She's raised a lot of money in the last couple of years. No, not because the others got out while there was still time left to do something. For instance, on Thursday, we come out of that, and we're hearing the Supreme Court oral argument, and the thinking shifts that the court is unlikely to issue anything that would take Donald Trump off the ballot, even if they do something narrow or short-term, then it won't affect Donald Trump. But if everyone comes away on Thursday thinking, hey, this could affect Donald Trump, well, then Nikki is not just in this as a potential spoiler to Donald Trump.

She's in it as the only remaining candidate left. Now, I think it tells a lot that all these other candidates thought that was not worth it. None of them thought, like, stay in it through this court case because we think the Supreme Court is going to beat Donald Trump for us. Well, I'm curious to see what our listeners think.

We'll open their phone lines at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. Do these court cases impact the way you're thinking about which candidate you're going to support, or are you kind of immune to it right now? I think, listen, I think if the U.S. Supreme Court comes out and says your vote for Donald Trump doesn't count, people are not going to vote for Donald Trump in some of these states. Now, could he still win the nomination in these states?

Yes. Then you get the issue of does it matter in the general election? We'll talk a little bit about the likelihood of that. Does the Supreme Court look at it from the primary perspective only, the nominating process, or are they also going to just kind of end this once and for all so that you would know that if you vote for this person in the primary, you ultimately can actually vote for them in the general?

By nature, the court is incremental. Yeah. So they may not give a sweeping opinion here. We'll know soon enough. But it puts a lot of deadlines on them. Not deadlines that they set, that's set by our election.

Yeah, no question about it. Support the work of the ACLJ. You're given to be doubled for our matching moment here. ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org slash vote.

All right, welcome back to CECIO. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-683-1110. That's we've got news too on our FOIA side as well. The FBI specifically on your social media. This goes back to 2020 before the election, the laptop. We actually filed this FOIA. Do you have the title of what we filed? It was in 2020.

2022. Yeah. The Freedom of Information Act request for records of FBI requests to Facebook and other social media or news platforms to censor election related information including the Hunter Biden related information. So we sent a letter on that one. We followed it up with a lawsuit. Let's put that lawsuit up on the screen here.

This was the lawsuit we filed when we didn't get an adequate response. Can we get that up? Okay. And do we have it up? We do not have it. Okay.

All right. There we go. There it is.

Let's make sure everybody sees it. There's the complaint that we filed. So we're in federal court.

You have to understand when they don't respond, we go to federal court on your behalf to get the answer. Now here's the interesting part of this answer. This is what they're saying. And I think this is the concern that really points to it. This is what they think. I think this is an internal email that we got through this litigation from the FBI, two FBI officials. It says, quote, I think private industry is our most valuable asset, but we just don't have the manpower to provide much feedback at the moment.

But I think private industry is our most valuable asset. To spy on American people. That's what they're talking about here. It's about Facebook in the next email. So they're talking about, again, to utilize social media accounts. This is going to be what's most valuable to us when it comes to elections. And we know that there was a lot of misinformation put out by the FBI, including the fact that social media accounts were shut down over, including the New York Post, which is, I think, the second biggest newspaper in the United States. The New York Post was shut down, not allowed access to their Twitter account, because they published about the Hunter Madden laptop. Which we all know now was real. Yeah.

October 26, 2020. This we got in the litigation, folks. That's why when we go to court, we get these things. It says, Facebook would like to circle up with you, to the other FBI agent, to discuss the recent referrals provided regarding the threat you work. And the threat you work is their threat of whatever they view as somebody's domestic terrorist, or information they want, or political information they want.

Please let me know your availability. Harry Hutchinson, Director of Policies here. We've been very engaged in this. We have a lawyer, Craig Parshall, on our team who does nothing but social media litigation. I mean, that's what he does, not just for us, but for organizations all over the country.

But this, Harry, this is chilling. Absolutely. So essentially what we have is a conspiracy between the federal government and private parties. And this conspiracy is very, very important because it enables the federal government to escape the barriers set up by the First Amendment. Each of us has the First Amendment right to disseminate information, but the federal government through the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have set up a curious network. They believe you can divide information into misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information. So with respect to misinformation, allegedly, it's false information without intent to create harm. With disinformation, we're talking about false information with intent to mislead. And this third category, mal-information, is true information, which is used to mislead.

Under the First Amendment of the Constitution, we have the right as American citizens to disseminate mal-information, which is true information, which may indeed be used to mislead. It's called the political parties. The political parties engage in misinformation, mal-information, disinformation. So if the FBI is going to be rigorous, they would need to shut down the political speech of political parties. Of course, they're not doing that.

They are putting their thumb on the scale. And essentially, they are colluding with preferred political parties to affect the election. The scary part about this, or I think the shocking part, I guess, Harry, to say here is that the government is so brazen about this. I think private industry is our most valuable asset. When they say asset, they mean an asset to spy on the American people. And this disinformation, misinformation, as Harry has just discussed, raises a whole host of very serious First Amendment issues.

Now, I wish I could tell you this was the only one, but it's not. So we also requested records from Twitter. Request for records regarding Secretary of State Katie Hobbs' communication with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram on January 7th, 2019 through January 1st, 2023. And this was all information there. Here's what we get back. This is Murphy Herbert, the comms director for the Arizona Secretary of State. We are putting together our materials for the volunteers monitoring Twitter on election day.

I mean, think about this, folks. I have these reporting protocols from the last cycle. If you see, Harry, just talking what you said, this or misinformation on Google or YouTube, please get a screenshot and then send it to a link to the issue and a description of what is inaccurate to the following. And then it gives Google people to send it to.

Yeah. And this was from the last election cycle. So that means they were doing it back in 2020. And then in 2022, they had this for Google and YouTube. And they also say that we're going to put together our protocol for Twitter as well, which remember would have been different.

Obviously the use of that every election cycle has been a little bit different. So the bizarre thing here, I think, that we're finding out is that going all the way back to the previous election cycle, so going back to 2020 and the Presidential election, they had volunteers sending direct info at a state level to actual staff at Google who could then literally take down people's posts on social media, their private posts from their private accounts. So when the FBI kept saying what their best asset is the social media, how to use it.

Well, there's how they start. So we're bringing them to put all this together through these two pieces of FOIA that we're working on. This is election interference right there. One we got through litigation, the other we got through voluntary compliance, but they were using then volunteers to notify those tech companies who the FBI is already determined to be their greatest asset.

Absolutely. So it's also important to take that analysis one step further. Keep in mind at Twitter, at Google, and at most other social media companies, they have a significant staff of former FBI and CIA officers who are aligned with the federal government to stop the dissemination of information that the federal government believes is harmful. So again, the federal government directly or indirectly is putting its thumb on the scale.

And so one of the things I think that Congress needs to think about is placing a limitation on the ability of former FBI and CIA officers to go to work for these social media companies because these social media companies, they are curating information and preventing the dissemination of free and fair information to the American people. They've almost become an arm of the federal government. We saw those hearings last week. So because the Republican side, you had senators asking like, you know, why is there no one ever held accountable?

Now we know why. In the Communications Decency Act and all of those laws, they are exempt. You can't sue them, correct? So the federal government, though, then has this power over them. So they get full exemption from whatever gets posted there, including criminal activity. And again, nobody's saying that at Facebook, they're like, well, let's encourage criminal activity. They don't get held liable. So even if they know that there's a problem and they do try to fix it, but they don't fix it because the criminals are always a step ahead of the private companies and the government. And so again, they were pushed at this in the hearing.

And it's not that they're, I don't think that all of them are intentionally doing it, but here's what I think. As long as they've got that protection from the federal government, the federal government can ask them for information that they are not in a position financially to say no. Because if they become liable, they're not worth the billions of dollars because they actually would be sued all the time. I think they would lose a lot of these cases in court.

And so they'd be a kind of legal, a whole new legal practice. I mean, imagine if you could put together these families of these kids who have been impacted by social media, who have taken their own lives, a lot of them were at the hearing and they came together in some kind of, I don't know, a class action or something like that. Because if they didn't have that clear protection, there would certainly be cases like that. Have your family been affected by these accounts and the information that put out about you, even if it's not true, but they get immunity. Now there's usually the government, we're told that you got that immunity so that the internet could flourish. And so we're past that point now. So now I think the government holds this immunity over the heads of these billionaires and multi-billion dollar companies that still actually aren't worth any, don't make any profit. But they're able to say, you know what, you either do what we say or else.

And we've seen that problem Facebook's had operating in countries like China and where they were operating until recently in places like Russia. That's why we've got on our team at the ACLJ, our lawyer, the heads up, his name is Craig Parshall and he's an expert on all these media companies and how to engage with them. Your support of the ACLJ makes all of that happen, including briefs at the Supreme Court in the United States on emergency cases, which we're dealing with literally today. 84 briefs filed today, 84 briefs filed in that case. We want your support. ACLJ.org. We're in a matching moment.

Your gifts are doubled. Just go to ACLJ.org slash vote. That's ACLJ.org slash vote. All right, welcome back to the SEC. You know, we are taking focus to as always at 1-800-684-3112.

That's 1-800-684-3110, something we have been working on since, of course, well before October 7th, but the issue has gotten a lot of attention. Of course, we've seen protests even over the weekend in cities across the country, so it's not going away on either side of the issue. It's actually affecting significantly the left. There's a lot of young voters saying they're not going to vote for the Democrat party because it's too supportive of Israel. So you're getting statements out like, well, we're going to try to recognize a Palestinian state when this conflict's over.

You have to wonder how much of that is playing politics with the American people. They are trying to lock them in as young voters and say, well, we're still the party you want to support if you're pro-Palestinian. And you'd think that after October 7th, this would not be a time when people said, you know what, this is what I'm going to join the Palestinian cause.

But yet we've seen the U.S. and now the U.K. simultaneously say they would like to recognize a Palestinian state within the next year, both unilaterally and multinationally at the United Nations, even with all the issues that they lay out. What we have put together at the ACLJ, something we put together, we want you to share with your friends and family. You go to ACLJ.org slash Defend Israel is a documentary. We're going to show it now. It's quick about Israel, but specifically the myth of Palestine.

It's about seven minutes. We have encouraged our radio audience, our TV audience, those of you on our social media pages. You can easily post this by going to ACLJ.org slash Defend Israel, because this has all the information your friends and family need before they go joining a protest on behalf of the Palestinians or Hamas. Let's take a listen.

And of course, we're watching if you're on social media. The myth of Palestine is a dangerous and false narrative being perpetuated by those who seek to harm the Jewish people. This narrative intentionally overlooks the thousands of years of history and the rightful ownership of the land by the Jewish people. It ignores the repeated attempts by Israel to make peace and the ongoing attacks and aggression from terrorist organizations like Hamas.

We must not be deceived by this attempt to erase the Jewish people from their homeland. Following is the true history of Israel and the so-called Palestine. We begin with Israel beginning in 1800 BC.

Abraham heard the call of God and followed it to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the promised land. Shortly after, the Egyptians enslaved nearly all of the Israelites, and it wasn't until 500 years later that their descendants were able to return to the promised land. From then on, this region had a long history of conquest and power struggles with Jerusalem at the center. From the time of King David's rule in 1004 BC to the Roman conquest in 63 BC, the city endured numerous shifts in power and the destruction and rebuilding of temples.

70 years later, the Romans drove nearly all Jews out of Israel, forcing them to scatter across the world. It wasn't until circa AD 136 the name Palestine first appeared after the Romans named part of Judea Syria Palestina to erase the Jewish presence in the land. Throughout the ensuing centuries, the region of Jerusalem continued to be subject to numerous conquests. In AD 638, Arab Muslims took control.

Centuries later, Christian crusaders claimed the city only to be defeated by Saladin, the Muslim Sultan of Egypt and Syria in AD 1187. The region then fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Turks, in AD 1517 until 400 years later when during the Great War in 1917, the British Empire conquered the region. The British made a public pledge, the Balfour Declaration, which aimed to establish a national home for the Jewish people in the area still known by the Roman name Palestine. Then in 1922, four years after the war ended, the League of Nations created the Mandate for Palestine to reconstitute a national home for the Jewish people.

The region was redrawn into what is now modern-day Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Only 22% was left to create the Jewish state. Then just over a decade later, from 1933 to 1945, the Nazi Party took power in Germany and massacred almost two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. 6 million Jews.

After World War II in 1947, the United Nations adopted the partition resolution. A two-state solution to create another Arab state and a Jewish state in the remaining Mandate territory reserved for the Jews. In order to have peace with their Arab neighbors, the Jews accepted, but the Arabs rejected it and invaded Israel, which began the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

No state of Palestine was created. The State of Israel was. Over the following decades, the Middle East was marked by ongoing conflicts between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In 1964, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, also known as the PLO, was founded, whose ultimate goal was the destruction of Israel. In 1967, the Six-Day War was waged by surrounding Arab countries. That's when the West Bank and the Gaza Strip became a part of Israel.

Then the 1973 attack on Yom Kippur began. In 1987, the terrorist organization Hamas was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood. That same year, Hamas began waging jihad, holy war, during the First Intifada against Israel in order to wipe out all Jews. Between 1993 and 1995, Israel and the PLO made agreements for a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. These agreements granted self-governance to the Arab populations of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in exchange for peace with Israel. Instead of peace, militants from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank continued their attacks against Israel. From 2000 to 2005, the Palestinians began a wave of terrorist attacks called the Second Intifada.

Remember what this means — the eradication of Jews. So in 2005, yet another attempt to achieve peace was made, and Israel left Gaza even though Gaza is a rightful part of Israel. In 2012, the UN General Assembly agreed to change the PLO's membership status at the UN from an observer organization to that of a non-member state with observer status.

Observers generally have a limited ability to participate in the IGO, lacking the ability to vote or propose resolutions. Then on October 7, 2023, the world was shaken by the horrific actions of Hamas as they launched a vicious attack on Israel. The death toll rose to over 1,300 innocent lives, including men, women, children, the elderly, and even infants. The atrocities committed by the attackers were unspeakable.

Women were raped, dead bodies were desecrated, and over 240 people were taken hostage. What history clearly illustrates is that Israel did not steal any land from the Palestinians. In fact, there has never been a state of Palestine. The Romans gave the name to the area that includes modern-day Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

This land was stolen from the Jewish people just as it had been for millennia before. Learn more at aclj.org forward slash defendisrael. Our team did a really great job putting this together, and I want to thank them for doing this because it's very, very important for you to understand the history of this region. Support the work of the ACLJ in this Matching Moment at aclj.org. Your gifts are doubled. We'll talk to you tomorrow.