REPORT: U.S. Intelligence Confirms Election Interference Against Trump

We've got a new report, U.S. Intelligence Confirms Foreign Election Interference Against President Trump's Campaign. 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, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to Sekulow.

I did want to first start off by saying thank you. We had an amazing end to our July faith, air, life and liberty drive. And we've got more coming up because we are now shifting to a lot of what's going on in the world, whether it's domestically or internationally, involved in life, involved in human trafficking. And we'll discuss that coming up a lot later. But the breaking news coming out this morning is that it is believed well and confirmed that Iran has been working and spying and infiltrating, really, to get engaged in this Presidential election. Not unlike we knew happened last time with with sort of Russia getting involved in and someone getting involved a lot like Facebook groups to get involved in ad campaigns. This is where you got to be very careful how you are receiving information. And this is happening. This is breaking this morning.

That's right. So this is a report out of The Wall Street Journal, and it says that Iran is seeking to harm Donald Trump's Presidential campaign in covert online influence operations, fearing a return to power by the Republican nominee would inflame relations with Washington, U.S. officials, told The Wall Street Journal. So this is U.S. intelligence officials and spy agencies are observing the work that is happening from Iran. And this foreign influence campaign is against President Trump and his campaign. And they are using, quote, a vast web of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation. So if you're just tuning in and didn't hear that we said Tehran and Iran, then you may think, oh, is this a show from 2016?

Is Bob Mueller coming back? And but what is shocking to me is that this is almost nowhere to be found on the Internet. This is a pretty big report from The Wall Street Journal with sources within U.S. intelligence organizations and and agencies. And yet it's nowhere to be found if this was the opposite, if it was Putin working to undermine Kamala Harris, what you'd be seeing it everywhere. Return of Russia, Russia, Russia, the collusion narrative, all of that fake news that we had to deal with for years. And yet if it's Tehran, the Iranian regime doing this, I haven't seen this hardly anywhere except for this report from The Wall Street Journal.

Yeah, I've seen it nowhere. So we want to make sure you guys saw it. And I do want to make sure you know, we are live, we are monitoring the U.S.-Russia prisoner swap that happened this morning. Again, we'll cover that as needed. And we will have a stacked show today, because if you want to talk about national intelligence, if you want to talk about security of our country or election integrity, we've got Mike Pompeo joining us and Rick Grenell.

Obviously, Mike Pompeo, former secretary of state and Rick Grenell, former director of national intelligence. So former DNI. Did I say that right? Yeah, I did.

I thought I didn't for some reason. Guys, this is the beginning of our August month. I want to again thank you so much for being a part of July's Life and Liberty Drive, as I said before. Obviously, you can still donate. You can be a part of it. And we are rolling into the month of August Life and Liberty Drive. And again, we're going to shift focus on what you're going to hear about.

We're going to talk a lot about that coming up and some really important work. But when you see this moment again, like I said, this happened last time and I would have to call out friends and family and be like, be very careful, especially on Facebook groups. You know, sometimes there would be groups that were like moms for, you know, whatever. And you join those groups. What you didn't realize you were joining is a propaganda arm of what could be this time of Iran or some of these other countries that want to make sure as they don't want to be dealing with a President Trump. They're doing their best to keep that from happening. And of course, this is happening right now, again, as Russia is in the news. I'd love to hear from you.

What are your thoughts on this? How do you make sure you stay safe and keep the elections secure? 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. It's going to be a packed show today. Very interesting. Again, Mike Pompeo is going to be joining us.

And of course, Rick Grenell. And again, as we wanted to thank you today, we are filing our brief at the United States Supreme Court to defend pro-life counselors. And we have some big pro-life news coming up that's going to be either whether it's this week or next week or next few weeks, some amazing things that are happening. And you're going to want to be a part of it right now.

So you can obviously go to aclj.org. Donations are doubled. We appreciate any support that comes in today. We'll be right back.

Mike Pompeo in a little bit and Rick Grenell. Welcome back to Secula. We are going to take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. Will Haynes, executive producer, joining me in studio right now. Will, I want to give people a little reset. If you're just joining us now, I'm watching on YouTube on Rumble. A lot of the numbers are just starting to roll in. So if you're brand new to this broadcast, I encourage you to subscribe.

If you're watching on YouTube, we do this on Rumble each and every day live and noon Eastern. So make sure you join us and be a part of that conversation. But let's reset a little bit as obviously our our headline, if you're watching online, is U.S. Intelligence Confirms Election Interference Against the President Trump Campaign. And this is coming out of Iran.

That's right. So this is a report from The Wall Street Journal, which once again, I think it says something about the journalism in this country. That this isn't front page news everywhere with what we were forced to live through during the Trump presidency of the Russia, Russia, Russia collusion narrative that was forced upon us for years. But the headline is Iran is working to undercut Trump in Presidential election, U.S. spy agencies say. And it goes on to say that the spy agencies have observed Tehran working to influence a Presidential election, probably because the Iranian leaders want to avoid increased tensions with the U.S. It goes on to say that Tehran is using a vast web of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation, but is also engaging in surreptitious online campaigns, reflecting a preference for who wins.

In November, the official said. Also, they point out that in a statement earlier this month, meaning in July, as this came out yesterday, that Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, one of Rick Rinnell's favorite directors of national intelligence, those words will see what happens later. And she said that Iran's activities around the Gaza protest, including posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests and even providing financial support to protesters. So what you're seeing is a pattern here where a foreign government is using online activities, whether it be through propaganda mills or fake bot accounts and things of that nature that are trying to influence the election. They're they have a preferred candidate.

They would prefer it not be President Donald Trump again. As we know, he took a very hard line against Iran. He backed out of the Iranian nuclear deal and enforced heavy sanctions against the regime.

What happened next? President Joe Biden, President Joe Biden immediately tries to work on getting back into the deal, even with some individuals that had maybe a little bit too close for comfort ties with Iran, like Robert Malley, who has now had his security clearance stripped and has been booted from the administration and no longer able to do work on this. But we see that they tried to rebuild this failed policy and enriched the mullahs of Iran. And what do they do with their money? Well, they fund Hamas, Hezbollah.

You're seeing a lot of that play out right now. You're also seeing them be able to finance an operation to try to stop President Trump from getting reelected. This is foreign election interference and the fact that it's not all over the news, especially we know that there are credible threats against the life of people like Mike Pompeo, President Trump. These are things that we know that are coming out of the regime in Iran that has been enriched by the Biden-Harris administration. This is a foreign policy failure by the Biden-Harris administration. And because of that, they are able to pay and activate a campaign to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections. That should be a leading narrative as we are under 100 days from voting for the next President of the United States. But it's almost nowhere to be found. And even in this Wall Street Journal report, they try to go back and push some of the Russian narrative and even say that Russia is probably doing the same thing, trying to prop up, trying to make Trump win. But I question this and we'll get into this with Rick as well. If that were really true at this point, if Russia really wanted Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States.

It would have waited. Why are they doing a prisoner swap which gives Kamala Harris another resume building foreign policy win? Just days away, we know she's going to announce her vice Presidential pick on Tuesday now. She's doing a rally in Pennsylvania before they do their Midwest swing state tour. Does that say anything that's in Pennsylvania? So interestingly, some commentators have pointed out like the last 10 VP picks, where they're from and where they were announced.

They're almost never in the same place they're from. So a lot of people are like, oh, it's a head fake, like it's going to be Shapiro from Pennsylvania. But some of the commentators are like, they always do it somewhere else and almost to give a head fake. But we'll find out nothing.

That's not a rule. It's like no head fakes. What are we living in here? Yeah. Ninety five days out from the election right now. I mean, you're seeing Halloween merchandise start showing up in stores right now.

And that means we're getting close to Election Day. And I think it's important. I think it's important to share these clips. If you watch this show, whether the full length of clips later on to share this with friends who are maybe getting involved in a lot of these social media groups or getting involved in conversations back and forth, sometimes you can kind of tell.

I posted something about the Olympics opening ceremony. And I could just you could just easily, if you spend more than three seconds and don't freak out on somebody, realize when you're talking to a real person or you're talking to a bot. And often those bots have, you know, under 100 followers that are have maybe a weird image or weird name. And they a lot of times they say a lot of the same stuff. They're bot farming. Now, some of this is not just bot farming, right? Some of this is real getting in there and getting involved in these conversations to try to sway public opinion.

I think we saw that a lot in the last election. And I could tell you there are a lot of my friends who fell for it. I encourage you to obviously be vigilant for yourself, but be vigilant for your friends. Come at it with love and support and go, hey, guys, maybe you're getting information from Iran. Maybe it's not actually what you think.

Do some digging. And also, how much do we put on on Facebook? How much do we put on on on Metta in general or any of these social media platforms X even to make sure that there are some safeguards here?

Those safeguards then don't actually impact real people. I think that's a big problem. We have so many people on these platforms spreading this kind of information. When anyone could start a Facebook group and grow it, especially when you have huge groups of of intelligence getting involved in it, you could spread like wildfire. All of a sudden a group could go from zero to a million people quickly.

Well, and here's the other thing. These companies are data companies. It's not like they can't analyze the trends and see what accounts and things are doing. It's easy when you have a bunch of data points to tell who's a real person and who's posting the same message in 36 different accounts about the genocide in Gaza. Right. I mean, if it's a obvious thing and there's a trend and a trend line and a pattern that you can extrapolate out of data, I sometimes feel like these companies fall back on like we're just people.

It's like, yeah, but you're you're very robotic. You're a data company. You this is the world we live in now. You're not living in 1999 afraid of Y2K shutting down your servers. You're living in a world where data farming and understanding trends is the pinnacle of tech right now.

That's what everyone's doing. That's why Amazon knows exactly what you're thinking about. It's because they're listening. So you sit here and you think, why are they going to do this human error issue?

And oh, we accidentally blocked your account when they know what's going on. They know where this is originating. It's not that sophisticated that you can't figure out who are the bad actors and who aren't. But to some degree, I feel like these companies are scared to get involved. And then you also see the opposite where they are getting so much pressure from the federal government. And even that case that was thrown out recently about the censorship issues that went around with the COVID vaccines and the information on social media where Missouri sued the federal government.

The Supreme Court said the state didn't have standing. And so they rejected the case on standing, which sets up an entirely new set of questions as we head into this election with a Federal Bureau of Investigation that is not having the best reputation right now. Other intelligence agencies that don't have the best reputation right now about their competency when it comes to things like this. Are they going to start putting their thumb on the scale with the big tech companies once again? And are they going to use cover this time and not just say Russia, Russia, Russia, but say, oh, we need to be very careful. Are they going to try to use the Iran's trying to hurt President Trump?

So look, we're the good guys now. But once again, it ends up not going to the data of it. It ends up going after the individuals and taking down organizations, American organizations, American people, American citizens, their First Amendment rights being squelched because they try to play it both sides this time.

That's what I'm looking at. And we're absolutely covering this. We also want to make sure we're covering. President Biden is about to speak on the freed Americans and that Russia swap that's happening right now.

There was a ex post that went out. Of course, this is what the tell me. Tell me how this makes you feel as someone who who who supports Israel and supports what's going on over there. This is from, again, President Biden. I will not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family. So that is the statement coming out of President Biden with no hint or irony, no reference to what's going on in Gaza, no reference going on in Israel.

As American hostages are still kept there. Give us a call right now. One eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten. How does that make you feel again?

One eight hundred six eight four three one one zero. Mike Pompeo is going to be joining us in the next segment. We have a very interesting conversation coming up a little bit later as the ACLJ is getting involved and pushing the U.N. to help rescue an abducted Christian woman who has been forced to convert to Islam.

It is a fascinating conversation, one that's horrifying, but you need to be engaged in what's going on around the world. And of course, we're taking your calls at one eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten. Once again, thank you for your support yesterday during the final days of our July drive.

And now we're kicking off August strong. Go to ACLJ.org and be a part of it. Welcome back to secular President Biden is speaking right now about the current situation where the American hostages in Russia and part of that swap have been freed. That will monitor that, see if there's anything worth covering from that speech right now. But we are joined by senior counsel for Global Affairs, Mike Pompeo, Secretary Pompeo. The Wall Street Journal reported this morning or yesterday that Iran and we talked about the last 20 minutes or so has been working to undermine the U.S. elections and particularly President Trump's campaign.

Someone who's been involved in that sort of situation before we kind of know what happened last time. How serious is this threat and what could it mean for our democratic process moving forward? Look, the Iranians will be serious about this effort. They'll be organized. They'll be strategic. Their capacity to actually influence the influence of the election is pretty low. We I separate influence from, you know, making voting machines come with inaccurate outputs.

They I'm confident that we can defend against that. But they're going to try and go online, tell stories, support the Biden administration and oppose President Trump's effort to be reelected. You know, I suppose at the margin in very close races, they could have an impact. They'll do this through underwriting third party groups who go out and protest. They'll support this through think tanks that are consistent with their world view. They will try and do this through what I think of as political interference that is shaping the hearts and minds impacting who decides this.

I'm going to get up and go vote that day. We can't let this happen. I haven't seen the intelligence, so I don't have details, but I'm confident that the Iranians will try and influence this. It won't surprise me at all if the Chinese Communist Party does exactly the same thing. Yeah, well, we sure you have a question, but it is sort of that swaying hearts and minds in a weird way.

That's how they're going to get engaged in this. They're going to be posting things that are going to make people who are maybe a little more susceptible to this conversation and curious where to go, make them question a lot of things. Well, and Secretary Pompeo, this is the Wall Street Journal's reporting, but this story is almost absent from mainstream reporting as of right now. And with the history we have of the way that the media latched on to the Russia narrative and everything that the United States was put through because of that Russia narrative. And is it a glaring spot in the journalistic mind these days that really we're only seeing this out of one newspaper right now, and this isn't the front page story everywhere because it doesn't fit their narrative?

Undoubtedly. Your point's very well taken. I lived that, as did President Trump with the Russia hoax for, goodness, two and a half years. And very serious efforts, underwritten by Secretary Clinton's campaign for President to put this narrative that somehow Donald Trump was a Russian asset, to put that story out there and that the Russians were interfering. Then we remember with the 51 former intelligence officials who all said, don't, don't, nothing to see here with respect to Hunter Biden's laptop and the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, they couldn't report it enough. And here we have a credible reporting from the Wall Street Journal that I'm confident the New York Times and Washington Post could replicate. And yet nothing, because your point's exactly right.

They have a narrative, a storyline. They are all in for the Harris campaign and aren't going to lift a finger to report a story that might in fact help the Trump campaign. And certainly would make clear to the American voters that the Iranians are supporting the Harris campaign as well. I wanted to pivot a little bit, Secretary Pompeo, as we're looking right now at the news and President Biden is speaking as we speak about the deal that happened between Russia and just getting our, many of our prisoners or, or many of the, those kept in captivity in Russia. Americans freed hostages. And of course that evokes a lot of thoughts on what's happening even in Israel, but we're waiting on details about this prisoner exchange with Russia as it freed many of the top names that now we've been hearing for the last few months. What do you hope to see? I mean, obviously it's great news when, when these kinds of moments can happen, but what do you hope to see develop from this exchange?

Look, it's of course an enormous blessing. It sounds like both Paul Whelan, who was in detention during my time in office that we couldn't figure out how to get out. And that the Wall Street Journal reporter, it looks like he's out as well. I haven't seen the details of who else on our side or exactly which Russians were freed from European detention, but here's what I do know.

So that's great. Well, here's what I am confident of at this point. This will be a lopsided trade. The Russians will have prevailed. Second, we will have incentivized every bad actor in the world to hold more Americans, just as when we gave the Iranians access to $6 billion in exchange for five folks being detained, the Iranians now holding, the Iranians and their knuckleheads in Gaza and Hamas are holding more Americans hostage. This is, this is not a good thing to, to create the incentive for bad actors to detain Americans wrongfully and to trade them for criminals. Terrorists, as I suspect is what Biden administration did here.

It is a bad long-term deal for the American people. There will be more hostages taken as a result of this deal, rather than trying to solve what the white President Trump did, was use other elements of American power to give bad guys the fear necessary to return these detainees. Well, and you even, you mentioned Gaza and in the statement that was tweeted out just 30 minutes ago from President Biden's official account, it says, I will not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family.

As of now, we are over 300 days since October 7th, and we're coming very quickly on a year since the beginning of that attack. And yet there are still Americans being held in Gaza. And that is an area that the Biden administration undoubtedly has been focused on for almost a year now on the region, mainly pushing for a ceasefire.

But yet we still don't have American citizens home. What does it tell you about priorities or even just ability when it comes to that situation versus what we saw here today? Look, it's been remarkable how little the Biden administration has been willing to talk about the fact that these Americans are held. They'll talk about the need for a ceasefire. They'll talk about the fact that the Israelis are risking becoming morally equivalent to Hamas, all of the things that embolden this very terrorism and the detention, continued detention of Americans. But they never talk to them. It's the same way that President Biden hasn't met with the Gold Star family from Afghanistan.

They want to underplay this risk. And it is clearly the case that the Iranians believe they have the upper hand and that the continued detention of Americans is something that our nation will find acceptable instead of saying, no, we're going to go figure this out. We're going to get these folks back and we're going to do it in a serious way. Thank you so much for joining us, Secretary Pompeo, as always.

It's great to hear from your perspective and your point of view. And we can't have people like Secretary Pompeo or any of our incredible panel of guests that come in or contributors without your support. And I just want to encourage everyone who watches this broadcast to understand how that all works. And thank you again, Secretary Pompeo. Rick Rinnell is going to be joining us in just a couple of segments.

Of course, he was former directing director of National Intelligence, and we couldn't have better guests on today to discuss when there are these big moments as President Biden, again, is speaking as we speak. And we're monitoring that to see if there's anything worth cutting into about the prisoner swap that's happening in Russia. But I want to take this last minute again to thank you all, because a lot of you lose in a half hour. If you do lose in the half hour live, I encourage you to join us either later on in the day or if you can right now. Log on over to ACLJ.org on YouTube, on Facebook, on Rumble, on X. We are there live, unlike Don Lemon, who is suing Elon Musk.

I saw that this morning. We are live over on those platforms. You can be a part of the conversation that way. We do a full hour video and audio. So if you just listen on the radio, we have this whole show each and every day on video. You can be a part of that as well, as well as it's syndicated throughout the world.

Be a part of it. And thank you again. We have some pretty big ACLJ news to cover coming up in the second half hour. We are going to continue on the conversations and we will take your calls on it.

1-800-684-3110. But I want you to hear about some of the important issues, the important cases that are going on, including the ACLJ right now, as we urge the UN to help rescue an abducted Christian woman who has been forced to convert to Islam in Egypt. Be a part of that conversation right now.

Go to ACLJ.org. You can sign the petition to save Irene. Discuss that coming up in detail in the next few segments. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow. We have another half hour of great content coming up.

C.C. Hiles joining us in studio. Rick Grenell in the next segment as well. And I did want to focus, though, President Biden just stepped off the stage at the White House, discussing the prisoner swap that happened between Russia and America, getting some of those high profile Americans that have been held hostage back home.

But what did it mean? Rick Grenell is going to have a pretty amazing story to tell you about certain hostages from Russia that have now been returned home and freed. And, of course, some of them are pretty monstrous. So you're going to hear about that coming up in the next segment. But C.C., speaking of that, it's an interesting time for the ACLJ. The ACLJ is getting involved at the U.N. right now because people know about the big cases we deal with. They know about that sort of top level topics. But there are moments like this when there's an individual person that we have to stand up for.

Right. So we have an opportunity three times a year at the United Nations to submit reports to the Universal Periodic Review, which is basically reporting on human rights records of certain countries. And so they do three sessions a year. And in each of these sessions, we evaluate the human rights records of 14 countries.

And in a period of five years, then, we've actually evaluated every single country, U.N. member state country, which is 193 of them, their human rights records. And so we just recently submitted a report on Egypt. And, you know, sometimes you can kind of think that Egypt is maybe a little bit more friendly to some religious issues. A little bit more Western, yeah. Right.

But, you know, unfortunately not. And especially when it comes to, right now, when you have Coptic Christians, a lot of Christian girls, and we point this out in our report, are subject to kidnappings. And then they're literally, they're targeted for this. So they're targeted for kidnappings and harassment by Muslim men. And they're taken and they're usually forced to convert to Islam and then marry these men. And so we were able to point that out in our report for a specific 21-year-old girl who was a medical student and was kidnapped.

And it's a horrific story. And, you know, they know where she is, except a lot of times what the police do and the government does is they say, oh, no, you know, she really wanted to go. She eloped on her own. And we know from even phone calls that she did not.

That's not how this runs. That she was asking for help. Please help me from her brother because she was able to get a cell phone from one of her captives and call.

That's right. And you can read about this. There is a blog up on ACLJ.org. ACLJ urges you in to rescue abducted Christian woman forced to convert to Islam. And Irene, who was a second-year medical student in Egypt, suddenly disappeared during her midterm exams, taking exams and is gone. Weeks later, the family heard from her when she stole her captor's phone and pled for her life in a desperate call to her brother. The captor ripped the phone from her hands and told her brother, you've heard her voice. Now, you know, she's OK, right? And that is what we're dealing with here.

This is an abduction, a forced conversion in a family who doesn't have their their daughter with them anymore because she was studying medical student, advancing her life and was kidnapped and forced to convert. And now we're getting involved. I mean, ACLJ is getting involved when there's a situation like this where there is someone who is being essentially held held hostage in these countries. Again, look, this is happening all around the world and all around the country.

I want to make sure you know this as well. When some of your friends, especially remember last year, this happened a lot. Whenever you start talking about trafficking, whenever you start talking about these kind of forced conversion, there would be the liberal narrative, much like people talking about for some reason the the Feast of Dionysus, which all of a sudden everyone was an expert on Greek mythology. You start seeing that talking point happen because that's being influenced by who? Maybe it's happening like what's going on with the elections right now. OK, those conversations start happening, but then even look and the ACLJ is getting involved and you need to be involved in this right now, too. And encourage that before we head to the break. There's a sign a petition right now as we're going to the U.N. in support of Irene.

You can help save Irene. Sign the petition at ACLJ.org slash sign. Send this kind of article. Send this petition to people when they say human trafficking is not really happening. Look what happened at San Diego Comic-Con.

You may have not seen that. They did a sting operation. Fourteen were arrested and 10 victims recovered in San Diego at Comic-Con. This is happening in our country and around the world. We have to stand up for it. This is actually happening.

Get your head out of the sand. Welcome back to Sekulow. You're joined by Rick Ronell. I couldn't think of someone more important to have on this broadcast as we are monitoring and President Biden just spoke about this. I guess you'd say historic hostage swap between Russia and the United States during a very uncertain time with our relationship with Russia. Of course, this has some pretty big ramifications.

And of course, the conversation has come to Rick. Well, what was the swap? Obviously, we're happy the Americans were freed. We always want to see that.

And specifically these two who have been imprisoned for quite some time. But who are we swapping it for? What is the deal end up being?

And I just saw a tweet from you that really your ex-post that really expands upon this. And it's a pretty rough situation. Yeah, look, I think we've got to understand that we've got different issues going on here. The families of individuals who are held against their will, who are hostages or prisoners, they have a keen focus on getting their loved ones back. They shouldn't coordinate with the government. They shouldn't think about the precedent or the slippery slope that it sets. They need to be focused on getting their loved ones back.

We get that. We understand that they have a very sincere desire to get their loved ones back. But public policy officials have to think about something else. They have to think about the slippery slope and the precedent that is set by raising the price on Americans just simply for hostile governments to get terrorists back home. And so that's where my concern here is. I have helped individuals, families from outside the government negotiate to get their loved ones home.

And that's one hat that you wear and you don't think about the precedent. You just literally try to get them home. But when I've been a government official and it's my responsibility to make sure that we don't have a slippery slope, you can't do these exchanges.

They're not a good idea. There's an individual that I just highlighted on X that when I was U.S. ambassador to Germany, this terrorist, this Russian terrorist drove his bike in the Tiergarten, which is a park in Berlin right next to the U.S. embassy in the middle of daylight, shot a Chechnya and kept going through the bike in the bushes. And eventually was caught by the Germans.

It took a while. We had to really push the Germans to to show them that this was a Russian plot. They arrested the guy. They put him in prison. And the White House has been leaning on the Germans the last several weeks to release this individual, this terrorist, this guy who murdered somebody in the middle of Berlin in broad daylight. The Germans have now released him. He's gone back to Putin and back home to Russia. He's one of the people and the top person that was just exchanged for very innocent Americans, a couple of journalists and some others. Now, again, the families, of course, are ecstatic, but I'm very concerned about the precedent that this sends Americans overseas.

Now the price just went up on their head. They need to be very careful about what they're doing because we are all less safe because of this deal. Rick, we look at the pressure that the Biden campaign and well, not campaign anymore, but the Biden administration has said that they have put on the Russians for the war in Ukraine.

And then you look at a deal like this where they get to celebrate that we brought Americans home right at the beginning of the Harris campaign to help build that resume for her as she seeks to be the next President. But also it looks like a sweetheart deal for the Russians, for Putin. How are they going to square this, that they are the toughest on Putin and that he's not going to be able to get away with everything he gets away with when they're letting terrorist hitmen be exchanged and giving a gift to Putin at a time where they're trying to say they're strong on him, but also Putin favors Trump.

So, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia, but we're going to also have a great foreign policy win right here. Why would Russia, if they wanted Trump to win, why would they even agree to this? Well, let's remember that Putin wanted Joe Biden because he was predictable and someone who is more predictable is Kamala Harris. And so this gift from Vladimir Putin to the Biden Harris administration and the Harris campaign is very clear. It is a it is a clear indication that Vladimir Putin wants Kamala Harris because she's weaker and she's an easier opponent. So they're giving this gift in the middle of the campaign because it looks like the weak candidates, Biden and Kamala, are going to just celebrate this and not think about the slippery slope. Putin is laughing all the way. He got the Germans and the Americans to do exactly what he wanted. And do you not think that Vladimir Putin is going to be looking for new Americans to put into the reserve so that he can get others?

Of course he is. This is why we are less safe. And I've heard from journalists for the last eight years that somehow Vladimir Putin was interfering in our elections and they were distraught about it. Well, look what just happened today. Vladimir Putin is interfering in our elections and literally celebrating this gift that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris signed off on and just gave him.

And I think it's I think it's really a signal of weakness. And that's not what we need from America. Yeah, let's hear actually President Biden, who just recently just got off stage discussing this hostage swap. So let's hear from him.

Let's give him a moment so we know what we're talking about here. Again, this is President Biden just moments ago. So for anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do. They matter. And today is a powerful example of why it's vital to have friends in this world, friends you can trust, work with and depend upon, especially on matters of great consequence and sensitivity like this. Yeah. So, again, that was President Biden from just moments ago.

I'll get Rick's thoughts on this. I think our minds all go to certain places when he starts evoking allies and why they matter. And it seems, again, a typical doublespeak.

Yeah, look, what he's really saying is thank I'm thankful for the Germans who do exactly what I ask of them. And they released a terrorist so that we could get some individuals home. Now, look, Joe Biden hasn't spoken to Vladimir Putin in three years. There's a war raging in Europe because the German government and the Biden administration got together and got rid of the Nord Stream to gas pipeline sanctions. The Russian pipeline got rid of the Trump sanctions on that pipeline as soon as the Biden team came in. Dropping those sanctions was another gift to Vladimir Putin from Joe Biden and Chancellor Merkel. They got together and they decided to not put sanctions on Putin's pipeline. Putin was very happy. So Vladimir Putin knows he can really outmaneuver the Germans and the Americans whenever he wants.

This is yet another example. And Rick, the President tweeted, I will not stop working until every American wrongfully detained or held hostage around the world is reunited with their family. When you couple that with the soundbite that we just heard, talking about questioning whether allies matter, they do, they do matter. How do you think the Israelis feel right now when he's making speeches about you have to treat your allies right and they really matter and also that we won't stop working until hostages are home when we know that there are American hostages being held by Hamas right now? I don't want to see any hostage swaps. I don't want to see any hostages taken. And this is the world that we're living in, which is why you need leaders like Donald Trump who actually go in and utilize the other parts of the U.S. government. The other tool sanctions, Syria sanctions, isolation, tariffs, all of those issues are how Donald Trump would get individuals returned home without doing the ridiculous swap. So you take Pastor Brunson, for instance, who was held against his will in Turkey. Donald Trump said to President Erdogan, I'm going to ruin your economy tomorrow if you don't release Pastor Brunson. They released Pastor Brunson because they believe that Donald Trump was going to do something to their economy. And so that's the type of negotiations that we need, somebody who doesn't just look into the prisons and say, who can we swap? It's such a terrible, easy way to do a prisoner swap, but it makes us less safe. Certainly the moments I miss of President Trump were moments where I think he's even been quoted as saying, don't be crazy, but give them the potential to think you may be, that you may do something that could destroy their country to save one person, to save one American. And we saw that happen firsthand.

Rick did and the ACLJ team did as well with Pastor Brunson. And of course they did ask Joe Biden, did he speak to Vladimir Putin? To which he replied, I don't need to speak with Putin. So there you go. I don't need to. It's fine. At this point, I'm a lame dog President.

What does it matter? Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you.

1-800-684-3110 as we head into this next segment. Like I said, we're also in this process right now as we are urging the UN to help save and rescue Irene, a Christian woman who was in the middle of her medical school exams, was captured. And we're a part of it right now to try to get her back. Again, this is in Egypt that's happening right now. And all of this is happening around the world. And I brought it up earlier that this isn't this is not some sort of right wing propaganda.

Look what happened in Rick's neck of the woods in San Diego just this past weekend. We're going to discuss that coming up. Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110.

Welcome back to Secula. We are going to be taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. We haven't discussed this topic yet, but Bill in Wyoming wanted to talk about it. I'd like to hear from him. Bill, you're on the air. Yeah, thanks for taking my call. How about a new campaign slogan for Harris?

How about more of the same? Because let's not forget that the fact that the 9-11 masterminds are getting the sweetheart of a deal. Yeah, I think a lot of people didn't maybe they saw that happen in the news. Maybe they didn't even understand that this guy was still around. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, right?

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was one of the masterminds of 9-11. We've all seen that image for the last 20 plus years at this point. Almost 25 years will be next year. Will, what is the what was the story behind that? Let's give a brief background on it.

So essentially Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other two other terrorists that were awaiting trial in Guantanamo Bay. Since 2001. Right. Actually since 2003.

21 years. But they were they cut a deal with the Justice Department, a plea deal essentially that allows them to get life in prison with no possibility of the death penalty now. So essentially death penalty was taken off the table. They'll get life in prison for their crimes in 9-11. Some of the families were clearly upset with this because many of the families wanted them to have to go through a trial. There to be a public trial. And now that there's a plea deal, there will not be a trial because they're agreeing to plead guilty and accept this sentence. It's concerning for the families because they're feeling like it's getting swept under the rug and they won't get that public justice moment for their family members that were killed in 9-11. This once again, it just is another thing to add to the litany of things that I feel like the Biden administration is trying to do right now to beef up the chops of Kamala Harris as she moves into November. Once again, it's the timing. They finally get a plea deal and it's they can now say that we are the Justice Department that got a not a conviction by a jury, but got a guilty sentence that he pled to on the masterminds of 9-11. What a broken system.

I mean, let's just be honest. The fact that I don't even like that they did this because it just brings attention to the fact that we haven't done anything with these people. Right. For 20 plus years. They were stuck in pretrial litigation. For 20 years. And then look what President Trump went through.

Have you ever looked what any of these people are going through actually in our own country? I could point to so many people that are in prison right now for nothing, for nothing or for like, you know, very white collar. They're in prison for 20 years. They've already been sentences. But these people, the masterminds of 9-11 are just now getting things tied up in a bow.

You're just now getting life in prison. It's really disturbing. And I hate that they brought that to joy. I wasn't even thinking about it. I mean, think about it. Most of the people, if you're under 25 right now, you have no recollection of 9-11. Right. You may not know who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is.

Probably not. I think most people just thought he was either life in prison or was dead at this point. Well, and you also bring up the point of like how one of the big criticisms against the Trump legal team was they're trying to delay this. They're trying to push these charges past the election. And meanwhile, the mastermind of 9-11 pushes his trial 20 years and finally gets a plea deal and doesn't ever have to go to trial. It does show you, unfortunately, some priorities of the Department of Justice when that can linger and fester in pretrial litigation. And meanwhile, the former President of the United States, they are going loaded for bear against nonstop.

J.D. Vance did, in a speech, slam the plea deal and say, we need a President who kills terrorists, not negotiates with them. I mean, you do kind of feel that way. You feel like there needs to be some real authority here. You need this needs to be a wake up call to really what's going on. And speaking of wake up calls, I do think there needs to be some more attention brought to our current situation supporting Irene in Egypt, who was a medical school student, Christian woman who during her exams disappears, disappears. And right now we have a petition because we are going to the U.N. on her behalf.

Sign the petition. Help save Irene at ACLJ.org slash sign. She's forced to convert to Islam. Her family very concerned.

The only calls they've had have been very offensive from the people who still claim that she's alive. This kind of thing is happening. It is happening in our own country. It is, of course, happening in countries like Egypt or happening all over the world and the ACLJ and through our European affiliate, the European Center for Law and Justice, our international affiliate, we're taking direct action to advocate for Irene. Right now, each year we always submit what's called a UPR, Universal Periodic Review, to the United Nations Human Rights Council.

And you may say, Logan, why is it even important? We hate the U.N. We don't want to be involved with them. It's important to be there, to have your voice heard, because these kind of things would never make it to the table without the ACLJ. We're there to protect and promote human rights around the world, specifically religious freedom. And Christians are being persecuted for their faith. And that's why we submit recommendations to the U.N. and they listen. And you can be a part of that as well. You can sign that petition at ACLJ.org slash sign to help save Irene and keep us in the fight.

Again, that's at ACLJ.org. And I did want to bring attention to this because, look, this is what's happening. And I hate this because we talk about disinformation that goes out, whether that is what's happening with sort of the Iranian influence or Russia influence, where they get involved in what's happening in social media.

I've seen it so many times. And the conversation around child trafficking and human trafficking took a real, real weird turn last year. You may remember there was the film Sound of Freedom. It was like a big deal. And then the sort of left decided that movie not only was not true or accurate, which, of course, it was a drama.

It was not a it was based on a true story, but was not a true story in the sense it was a documentary. And then they started kind of pivoting the conversation to this isn't happening, to this isn't something that's real. And what we have right now is this situation with Irene in Egypt.

And then we look at our own country. And this is what happened just over the weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, which I've attended. It's one of the craziest places I've ever been to.

If you're a big comic book fan or you're a big movie fan, pop culture fan, it's like heaven. But what it does, it creates an opportunity for sex traffickers to get in, you know, sort of quietly can get in mass crowds and do what they do. They're horrible business. And there was a sting operation. I got to give it up to the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force that conducted a three day operation ahead of the weekend for this bust where they rescued a 16 year old girl amongst 10 other victims, plus 14 of those that were involved, whether they were buying or selling human beings. And again, this is coming at a large scale, fun pop culture event. But I can tell you that's happening there. We know it's happening at a lot of big sporting events. NASCAR has had to deal with this problem because you have 100,000 people rushed in a small area.

It's easy to move people around for them. This is all happening. You need to find those articles. Maybe we need to get an article up about even what happened at Comic-Con.

Go to ACLJ.org. Like when a situation like what's happening with Irene happens, we need you to spread that message to say, no, this is real. This is happening. It's happening in our own country and it's happening around the world and where we can stand up for it. And specifically, we have a situation with like with Irene's in Egypt where now they're not only being just trafficked and sold. This is someone who's being captured, forced to convert to a religion.

It's a lot different world even there. And unfortunately, as you brought up, it seems that the marching orders of the left now is when there is something egregious in the world and the right points it out. It's the left immediately jumps to this isn't happening. Gaslight. Gaslight.

That is what the rule is. You can look at my comments when I posted about the opening ceremonies. I give a very balanced opinion about how I thought people were searching for Jesus. Now we needed to take this opportunity, not just be spreading hate, not just be spreading division.

And a lot of the comments were, how dare you? You did not know this was not the Last Supper. This was the Feast of Dionysus. Everyone knows this. And guess what happened? The Olympics and the producers had to apologize and say, sorry, of course it was the Last Supper. And look, I don't even care if you're offended or you're not offended. I saw the bots come at it.

And then I saw people who were not bots take the bait. You got to make sure that doesn't happen. Be a part of the ACLJ right now. Go to ACLJ.org. Sign that petition. Help save Irene right now. We will talk to you tomorrow on secular.