What You Should Know About Hunter’s Pardon

After last night's breaking news, we're breaking down what you should know about Hunter Biden's pardon. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you.

Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, folks.

Welcome to Sekulow. Well, after the Thanksgiving holiday, it wasn't just the turkey that got pardoned, Logan. It was also Hunter Biden. And let me tell you this right off the bat. The President has pardon power.

Universal. Not Karine Jean-Pierre, not his spokespeople, not people on CNN, not people on MSNBC. And by the way, the President of the United States, President Biden, and whether that's President Trump in the future, who has a lot of pressure on him to issue a lot of pardons like on day one. This is a power the Constitution and the following legal community has given to the President of the United States as commander in chief. He can both pardon or commute sentences. Pardon means your record is cleansed only on federal issues, so it does not involve state crimes. A commutation means you serve your time. You should be released if you're incarcerated.

That crime should no longer – or that crime should kind of no longer be following you around in life. So what I think is so hilarious about this for the left, and there's not a lot of funny things usually about the pardon power, but the funny thing here was that the left put out until last week, I think, Karine Jean-Pierre, right before Thanksgiving. Yeah, I feel for her in some ways, because clearly they gave her that message. What I wonder is, did they even ask Joe Biden? Because we've all talked about how this was a White House that looked like it was being run by someone other than Joe Biden, right? Like it didn't seem like he was actually in charge. So they thought they could go out there and make these big, huge statements about democracy, even after he was pushed out of being President. Let me tell you the moment Joe Biden said, I don't care about any of your stinking protocols. I don't want to talk to Karine Jean-Pierre.

I don't want to listen to you. You are a bunch of turncoat traitors, and I'm going to do whatever I can do legally, by the way, legally with his position. So be very nervous and cautious, folks, about jumping on some train that's, oh, Hunter by this, Hunter by that, when President Trump has got immense pressure to pardon both some of the people involved with January 6th. He put that in his statement last night. It was on there saying, you know, this kind of opens that door to making this a bit more easy to do when it comes to Hunter Biden.

I would say 100% opens that door. The reaction, Will, on the left is meltdown, which is interesting. The right is just kind of poking fun at Karine Jean-Pierre. Yeah, Rick Grenell said, hey, you should flip over to MSNBC.

So I did. And it was them trying so hard, so hard to spin. And then a few of them just being like, you know what, it is what it is. It is what it is, Logan, because they just realized they pushed the guy out of being President. I think so. And I think you do have that situation. If he had not doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on the pardons, on not pardoning, I don't think anyone would care. I think we would understand.

It's your kids. I don't think he thought he was going to lose or not going to be the President. I thought he had another four years. Yeah, he thought he had another four years. He thought he had another four years then when it wasn't.

And then when it was definitely that Kamala didn't. It's like, OK, at this point, like you said, forced out. I don't necessarily blame him for doing this, whether I agree with the decision or not.

I understand the point that you're angry. It is what it is. And we have to move on. But what it does do is lower the bar for pardoning, which I think is interesting. It's kind of like impeachment in that sense, which is if you lower the bar for impeachment for Trump, you'll have to lower the bar for impeachment for any other President. And I feel like it is very similar with the pardon situation here, which is if you lower the bar for your family, you all of a sudden are lowering the bar for pardons overall. Oh, absolutely. I remember there was a lot of talk when President Trump left office about the idea of a self-pardon. He decided not to do that.

But again, this also plays into that. I mean, this gets as close as you can to a self-pardon as pardoning your son for crimes that were completely unrelated to anything involving politics or the White House. We want to take your calls, though. 1-800-684-3110. What do you think about this move now that we've explained how it could actually be beneficial to President Trump as he takes office?

1-800-684-3110. And I think that's why the American left is freaked out. Joe Biden just set a new lower bar for precedent, and that helps President Trump. We'll be right back on Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. Do we have some soundbites on this, too, Will? I mean, just because it wasn't just Karine Jean-Pierre.

I don't want to just beat up on her. It was President Biden, too. And listen, I think it was a President Biden imagining at that moment when he was making those comments, one, he didn't even know how the legal system would come out.

And I just think at this point, because he was going to lose this power very soon, that if this charges, which most people expected to be kind of a slap on the wrist, you've repaid maybe some fines, no jail time kind of situation. Well, now you're looking at your own party pushed you out. Your own party has been going nuts on if Donald Trump comes in, he's going to let out the MAGA warriors who are going to take over the country.

All those crazy conspiracy theories, right? And I think this actually leads to, you know what, some of these Joe Rogan type characters and others have said, which was, and you've said it, Will, I mean, we've all kind of said to each other, it seemed like when Joe Biden was voting that day, he had a big smile on his face. And he knew that with that big smile on his face, Harris was down in every major poll.

And he put on a Make America Great again hat. Yeah, I think he had gone definitely rogue in terms of what they expected. There's a lot of reports, there's lots of reports that him endorsing Harris was sort of a slap in the face moment because he didn't want out. And he thought, well, this is not going to be what they wanted because maybe the Obamas and the Pelosi's wanted, I think, I forgot who said, I think John Morgan said that on Chris Cuomo's show that he had heard that that's what had happened. So a lot of those talks had happened where he was just bitter about everything that went down.

That's right. And I'm going to first I want to read some tweets for you of how some of the left is taking this news today. Here's the Democrat governor of Colorado. While as a father, I certainly understand President Joe Biden's natural desire to help his son by pardoning him. I am disappointed that he put his family ahead of country. This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation. Mark Penn, former Hillary Clinton, longtime adviser, disgraceful pardon. This was not a pardon of just Hunter Biden, but of Joe Biden himself as he as his son ran a scheme with Joe's brother to shakedown adversaries of over 20 million dollars and then didn't even pay taxes on it.

And the loot was distributed even to grandchildren. This is yet another of many issues the American public was shamefully gaslighted over. So a Hillary Clinton adviser now sounding more like a right wing pundit when it comes to that. And then you've got this Congressman Greg Landsman as a father.

I get it. But as someone who wants people to believe in public service again, it's a setback. So the left is having a meltdown over this. And part of the reason is because they were so adamant by believing what the White House was telling them that he would not issue such a pardon. Here's a super cut of folks on MSNBC back through. This is over a span of time when the White House kept telling everyone there will not be a pardon for Hunter Biden. Here's how MSNBC chose to report this by two. A current President of the United States has so much respect for the law that he has said he would not pardon his son. I mean, what?

You know, again, it's all about the contrast. President Biden saying, I will respect whatever this jury decides versus Donald Trump after he was convicted on 34 counts, saying the entire system is rigged against him. Their latest attack has been that Joe Biden has politicized and weaponized the DOJ.

Right. That was the whole argument around Donald Trump's conviction. And this week, of course, Hunter Biden was found guilty. And Joe Biden has very clearly said he would not pardon his son. He would not commute his sentence.

How stark is this difference? I mean, how can Republicans keep making this argument now that that now that Joe Biden has really put it out there? Where's Hunter? And he stood there in the courtroom flanked by his family and he's accepted his sentence. He is not pardoning his son, which he could do. These are federal charges. He is not doing that. He is not doing it because he is living what it means to have a rule of law in this country. And then it is and I mean, if you want to know if he believes it, you can actually see what is happening with his own son.

I mean, there you go right there. The left. That was Andrew Weissman.

Those were the Mueller team guys. They praised him for being he was like, you know, the most gracious. He's like the most American. Captain America. Yeah. How could you be?

How could? And now you know what Joe Biden showed? And you know what, folks, this isn't necessarily bad. There's a reason why the founding fathers put this in our Constitution. It's because there was a high level and there always has been in politics. It's happened to Donald Trump for the legal system and the justice system and the IRS and the other government agencies to come down hard on political leaders that they disagree with. And so was Hunter Biden treated fairly or not? Seems like he was actually treated sometimes better than others because of the laptop he got totally wet. But we all eventually learned that that stuff was not real, that he's gone through rehab very publicly. It's been this very kind of interesting public story.

Yeah. I think at the end of the day, a President is a President, but they are also a father. And when you know that you have that power to maybe help your son stay on the right track this time, why aren't you going to give it to him? And by the way, I don't want to hear another liberal, the entire Trump presidency, ever once complain about a single person Donald Trump pardons because none is going to be like this one. Well, I think you look at this one and you can look at some of the ones that Trump did do. And they were some high level people that were within the Trump world. They may have been his friends. Yes.

Whether that was Manafort or any of these ones, Roger Stone or whoever it may be that were pardoned over time. He wanted a commutation. He wanted to keep fighting, right? Right.

Yeah. I believe there was a commutation there so that he could continue to fight. They put Paul Manafort in solitary confinement.

For God's sakes, folks, when he got a pardon and the left went nuts. That's what I'm more saying is this is where we are. This is where we are in time. So you know what? It is what it is.

But I think if it didn't come down to all of those super cuts you just saw where there is 10 minutes or so, at least the people have already put together of them saying there's no chance. And the reason there's no chance he's going to pardon him is because he's so great. He is America's America.

He is the greatest of the greatest. If you had not said that, I don't think you would have any issues here. I think people would understand and people would expect that you would do this. Well, and I think one thing to also point out, Jordan, is that the left loves to put arbitrary restrictions on elected officials like the President of the United States, but are completely fine with the bureaucracy running amok and doing whatever they want. But when you read the article of the Constitution, the clause that talks about pardons, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, we have, he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except in cases of impeachment. There's not a ton of over-restrictive, what kind you can put. The placement of that.

Yeah. The clause under the Constitution establishing the presidency of the United States as commander in chief. Clause 1 is the pardon power. That is how concerned our founding fathers were with those who were elected because, let me tell you, you think our politics is rough.

It is nothing like it used to be. I mean, not even, it may have gotten close under the Trump years. And, of course, we've seen political violence, unfortunately, throughout our history, and that's that liberty versus freedom balance that we constantly have to look at. But the fact is Article II, Section 1 gives you the pardon power as President.

It's a very important power. And listen, there's going to be a lot of other pardons of people, like you said, Logan, that did much worse things. Yeah, I'm sure those will come out over the next few weeks. Let's go ahead and take a call real quick. Let's go to David who's calling and watching on YouTube.

David, you're on the air. Hey, thanks, guys. And listening to you all really feeds into the comment that I have. We, and I'm talking about from at least right-leaning center on over to the more big-C conservatives, we've known all along what the shenanigans would be. And we've been raked over the coals for even thinking such a thing. Yeah, right. Even just asking how many times they asked about Hunter Biden over and over and over again because we kind of knew this is where it was going.

But even, I mean, I don't even know if I'd go so far as to say it's shenanigans. These are, this is a constitutional power of the President. The fact the left believed him when he said, I'm not going to pardon my own son because he has the power to do it. Did he ever say it after he was not running for election?

From the White House. The White House did put out statements. That was the time, was? No, no, did he? I don't know if he did in person.

That video was way before, right? Correct. But even that fact, it's a power of the President under the constitution. It doesn't say except for family members, it says except for in cases of impeachment. So it gives the Congress that oversight for the political trials that, but it's, it's our culture that has created really limitations and saying, oh, he's got to follow the rule of law. He has the power to pardon. So how is that not following the rule of law based in our constitution? No, I think, listen, folks, this is a time to support the work of the ACLJ.

It's to explain these issues, to get to the bottom of these issues. There's going to be a lot of this under the Trump presidency. And is the left going to forget that they just had a meltdown today and yesterday over the fact that, you know, President Biden made this move and then they're going to act like, you know, what President Trump is doing is fascist and Hitler-esque again.

Because we're just going to point right to this one. Pardoning your family members, which by the way, the President has the absolute authority to do it. Lord knows if I was President of the United States and my son was in a position like that or child, I'd certainly pardon them. And Logan, I hope if I was in that situation, you were President. Pardon me.

I think that's pretty good. You know, TDS continues in Washington, D.C., as you know, with Trump Derangement Syndrome. They're letting out on Joe Biden. I don't know if there'll be JBS.

There might be. I mean, based off this news, except for the fact that he's an outgoing President, it's like they still figured out a way to make Joe Biden the news of the day by just going after him. If you're listening to a lot of conservatives, you know what they've said other than say, you know, it is weird that they lied about this for two years and no one believed any of their lies.

And neither did any of us, by the way. What they were saying, because they were hoping at that time those trials, remember, were supposed to be done. Yeah. Well, they kept asking. I think the reason you have maybe the more conservative leaning news people asking Kareem John Pierre over and over, even though she has said no over and over and over again, is because we knew this is where it was going. Now, supposedly she's tried to spin it already. I think she put out some kind of statement. I have not seen it yet. Hey, T, will you go look for this? Because she's tried to put out a statement that this does not actually contradict what she had been saying for the podium.

But I would love to read how that is possible. We'll try to find it here. And obviously they'll probably take questions later today during the press briefing. You know, one thing I wanted to know before we take the call is that tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, Logan. And that is one of those important days of the year.

Yeah, absolutely. Good sign after we've had Black Friday, which I was in New York City. I want to say good for New York, the fact that you could barely get down the street. Good sign for retail. Good sign for spending. But also, of course, you've got Cyber Monday today. But that doesn't mean that while you're on your different sites, whether it's Amazon dropping, and they've been having it for four days at this point, or wherever you go, think about, hey, you know what? While I'm spending all this and I've put this aside, because you've saved some money today, maybe make that $20 donation to the ACLJ during Cyber Monday. And the reason I say that is you're seeing the savings you're getting. If you've got half off the TV that you wanted, put $20 aside, donate it to the ACLJ.

And Logan, what does that become? Yeah, $40. $40 becomes $40.

Yeah, everything has doubled right now and matched. It is a really important time. It's our faith and freedom year-end drive, and we really know that for all organizations, December is the biggest month as people start to decide where they're going to give charitably. So why don't you start it off strong? So we appreciate if you would do that today and make your donation during this faith and freedom drive as we are headed towards a historic Christmas season.

Honestly, I'll tell you the truth, because we map this stuff out. The way the weeks line up, whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas this year, there's not as much time for us to do our traditional sort of fundraising, just due to the way people's vacations and everything. So if you're going to make your donation and you can, I encourage you to do it now.

Go to ACLJ.org and support our work. Again, gifts are doubled and matched throughout this month. It's a very important time, as Jordan said. Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday, but that doesn't mean you can't do it today, because it's the same deal.

Gifts are doubled. Let's go to Jeff in North Carolina, online one, before we get to some of the other nomination topics that hit last night in the news that I definitely want to cover. Because the media, I think they were so not expecting this that they thought it was going to be Cash Patel Day, let's say that. Instead, it is Joe Biden beat up on the old Joe Biden from the left. Conservatives have an honest, I think, you know, this is the power of the President.

It's his son. It looked like those cases were going to be settled and it wasn't going to be an issue. They didn't get settled. He is not going to get another four years. He knew he wasn't going to get another four years. Or even a full four years. I guarantee you this has been in the works for a very long time.

He's just kept the team around it extremely close. But he's President of the United States. You can criticize this all you want, but this is a constitutional power. This is not a legislative power.

It's a constitutional power. And hopefully, if you mix in what President Trump is hoping to do, that's why I want to talk to Jeff in North Carolina. Hey, Jeff, you're on the air.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to say I truly believe it doesn't matter what happens when Trump starts pardoning some of these Jan 6 folks that absolutely should not be in prison. They should not be in prison and had their lives destroyed. Once that happens, they're just going to spin this as Trump's releasing criminals.

Hunter was just a troubled guy with a drug addiction and his father's just trying to help him. That's the way they're going to spin it. Well, I think they could spin it however they want. The fact is he was convicted of crimes. People on Jan 6 were convicted of crimes. And that's what the pardon power is about.

That's right. And also, you have to take into account is that it was his Justice Department. Now, some of it may have started before he was President, but it was his Justice Department that followed this through and ended up charging and getting a conviction of Hunter Biden. But Karine Jean-Pierre, we mentioned that she's already trying to spin it. She was asked on Air Force One. We have a sound bite from this morning. And this is how she kind of lays it out in bite seven. We'll go ahead and take a listen to this.

And there is some background airplane noise because they are on Air Force One. But let's go ahead and play bite seven. You have said repeatedly yourself since the election, the President has said for months no pardon was coming. I just I wanted to ask you, could those statements now be seen as lies from the American people?

Is there really a credibility issue here given now this announcement? First of all, one of the things that the President always believes is to be truthful to the American people. That is something that he always truly believes. And if you see the end of his eye, I assume that you've read his his statement and you look at the end of that statement. And he actually says that in the first line in the last paragraph and and respects the thinking and how the American people will actually see this in his decision making.

And I would encourage everyone to read in full the President's statement. I think he lays out his thought process. He lays out how he came to this decision. He came to this decision this weekend. So let's be very clear about that. He says it himself.

It's in his voice. He said he came to this decision this weekend and he said he wrestled with this and because he believes in the justice system. But he also believes that the war politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice. So she didn't want to use the term lawfare because that's our term. Miscarriage of justice, though.

And miscarriage of justice. The idea is, listen, she's put in a difficult spot because she was told by Joe Biden over and over. I don't know why she's even still there. The moment Joe Biden was pushed out, if I was to create a job here, I would say this is... Take your MSNBC contract.

This is going to be a mess because this hasn't happened before. He's probably very unhappy. And that means on things like this that aren't going to endanger the American people, that he is going to make up his own mind. He doesn't care about what his advisors have to say.

This is the end of his political career. Yeah, you have to remember that she's not the one to blame for the actual messaging point. They've given her that messaging point for years. She now has to be the person who has to go clean it up. Unfortunately, that is the role of being the press secretary and having these conversations. Why?

It's very important. If I was her, I would have resigned that day and moved on. Yeah, the day... He told her. He told her, yeah. Maybe he told her that because she said this weekend.

If she knew it this weekend, I would have said, Mr. President, I went out there 25 times. I said this for you. That's what you told me. I'm not even disagreeing with your move.

I'd like to just hand this over to someone else to take the questions because I'm going to get beat up. For 40 days. Which is going to make you look bad. Yeah, absolutely. And instead, though, this White House, because they never wanted Joe Biden to be running things, it's like they're upset the one time he actually made a decision. Right. Probably twice.

Probably when he endorsed Kamala Harris and probably this situation here. Phone lines are open for you because we have a second half hour coming up. If you don't get us on your local station, find us broadcasting live on ACLJ.org, on YouTube, on Rumble. We are there on X. You can find this broadcast and make sure you tune in each and every day. If you just listen, watch us. You can see us in living color at 1-800-684-3110.

Also, to have your voice heard on the air. And of course, we are kicking off today our December drive. Right now, it's the end of the year.

This is the most important time to support the work of the ACLJ. And hey! Fun thing.

Given Tuesday's tomorrow. But a fun thing. Jingle Smells, our Christmas movie that we're all in, is available right now on the Roku channel for absolutely free. You just gotta watch some ads.

So take a look at that. JingleSmells.movie. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now, your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Alright, I want to go to the phones. I'll take a... As these pardon calls come in, I think it's important to educate the American people on how broad the pardon power is. And it is only... The only limits to the pardon power are the federal issues. You know, you cannot pardon yourself from a state action because of the 10th Amendment and those are separate criminal charges.

But I want to take Tim's call out of Colorado. We've got a lot of other things to talk about. But this is driving the news.

It's also driving the questions about what kind of power, what kind of precedent this sets for incoming President Trump and his team. Because the pardon process works two ways. There's a formal one where you'll see a lot of people like death row and all those things.

They go through a system of... There's a pardon office. But also, the President, just like how we argued, had the ability to declassify whatever he wants, also has the power to pardon whoever he wants from federal charges without question. Again, it usually happens when they're leaving office because they don't want to be concerned about political ramifications. Not just for themselves, but for their party.

And also, the potential for, even though you can do it, could you possibly be impeached? And I think that's the question Tim wants to know about, I think, looking into the future. Hey Tim, welcome to Sekulow.

You're on the air. Thank you, gentlemen. Yeah, in my mind, the Supreme Court, if they have a conflict of interest, they cannot preside over a case, right? So how can he, as equal... Not true at all. Tim, Tim, no one can make a Supreme Court justice refuse themselves. They oftentimes, in hearings, when they're about to be a justice, okay? And so, if they were working, let's say, at the Department of Justice before that, and they were involved in a case, they will oftentimes agree to the Senate Judiciary Committee and the senators that they're meeting with that they will not participate in that case. No one, though, can force, you can't file, you can't ask for a Supreme Court justice to refuse themselves. And so, I just wanted to clarify that for people right there. And Tim, that's kind of a lesser known thing, because in other court, every other court system, including federal, you can do that.

But go ahead, Tim. Well, yeah, it just seems like such a huge conflict of interest for him to pardon his own child. And as far as I know, no President's ever done that before. I don't believe that they've ever pardoned their own child. They've certain pardoned their top advisors. Yeah, friends.

And their friends. I remember, what was Bill Clinton's name, Mark Rich? He was living in Switzerland as a fugitive from U.S. justice and ultimately was pardoned.

He was a major, I think it was his ex-wife at the time, but that was only because of the legal issues. And she was a major donor to the Democrat Party. Say what you will about it. It's a power that, again, a constitutional power of the commander in chief. And even at that time, there were headlines, Bill Clinton's last outrage. This is from the Brookings Institute. The President's defenders feel betrayed by his pardon of Mark Rich. I feel like the pardon power, because it is so broad when it comes to federal crimes, and the only limitation on federal crimes is the impeachment issue, is that it has the ability to unilaterally outrage people when it's used. And there is a reason, as you've mentioned already on this broadcast, that the founders left it broad for the President. It's a check on the judicial system.

Our entire system is checks and balances. So the fact that President Biden was able to use this on his own son, of course he was. It may not be what people like or the right of that, but this is the elected President of the United States using a constitutional power in the last days of his presidency. You actually see this always in the last days of presidency, pardons that upset certain people. President Trump pardoned Jared Kushner's father, Charles Kushner, in 2020.

He is now, I believe, the nominee to be ambassador to France. That would have been an issue for him, but it's no longer an issue. And so, again, a family member as well.

So you might have said it wasn't his son, but it was the father-in-law of his daughter. So take it with a grain of salt. Remember, I think this is actually a good sign for those political prosecutions that came earlier. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. And let me say this, too. We got so much into the news.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. And we appreciate so many of you who donated until midnight on Saturday to support the work of the ACLJ. These are, you know, between November and December, and you may wonder, like, why are we back at it again?

These are the two months that make it possible for us not just to be able to continue our work this month. We've got those resources really set aside, and we know and we've learned from history how you can get an administration that doesn't agree with you as much, making decisions that they never would have made before, but for the fact that they are leaving office and not up for reelection. And Joe Biden is in that unique situation.

So you really have to watch it. This is when President Obama took a real, I think, first step at the United Nations by not supporting Israel at the U.N. Security Council, and instead abstaining from a vote that criticized Israel. So we have to watch out for things like this.

But it's also, Logan, this is a time to donate because this is how we're ready to hit the ground running on January 1st. And Lord knows, with Donald Trump coming in and a new Congress coming in, there's going to be plenty to work on. Yeah, and I think with Israel being such a hot topic still, I mean, look, we had over the weekend, you had President Biden leaving a bookstore, carrying a very... He's barely gotten the piece, the ceasefire done with Hezbollah, and it's still right on the edge.

So where is President Biden? He is leaving a bookstore on Black Friday with a book that is notoriously known. It is the best known book to make the case for why Palestinian terrorism isn't actually... And that Israel shouldn't exist entirely.

Yeah, the Hundred Years War on Palestine, a history of settler, colonial conquest and resistance, 1917 to 2017. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's no problem with reading something on the other side.

We all do it. I think it's important, actually, to always stay informed of what other people are saying, what they're doing, and what their points are so you can argue back. But if you're doing essentially a photo op, which is, here's how I'm stimulating the economy on Black Friday, just went in for a little light reading, picking up the Hundred Year War on Palestine. It's kind of a ridiculous moment, but of course, this is how the Biden administration's decided to wrap up.

Anybody? No, it has. I mean, this is how the Biden administration has decided. We will see, though, what else they pull at the United Nations. I also can't forget, and what happened on Saturday, CC, was a video was released by Hamas on Telegram of one of the American hostages, Eden Alexander, who has been held by Hamas for more than 420 days. And this is still the reality. While Joe Biden has his photo op with anti-Israel literature, Americans are still being held by the very terrorists that could get a boost from the American President holding a book like that at this time.

Right. And it's sad because it's a 19-year-old. Eden was 19 years old on October 7th when he was captured. And he grew up in New Jersey and then volunteered to go into the IDF, which so many do.

You know, American Israeli citizens do that and was captured. And now 422 nowadays today still captured. And what's really sad is you have we had seven U.S. citizens. Three of them are now confirmed dead.

So you have four possibly alive. We hope that Eden is alive now that we've seen this video. But, you know, the White House releases a statement that says it's a cruel this video that Hamas released was a cruel reminder of Hamas terror against citizens. And what is the saddest part of that statement is why does the the White House that has citizens still captive there, why do they need a reminder that we have U.S. citizens there?

That's shameful. Now, we have been engaged at the U.N. on several things. We do oral interventions. We do written submissions supporting the hostages and demanding their release. We actually represented 10 of the hostages before the working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances. Four of those that we represented were released to unfortunately have been killed. And we have four that remain. And, of course, we don't know whether they're dead or alive. So we continue to fight for the hostages. And we don't need a reminder. We remember every single day that there are still hostages there that need to be released immediately.

And Jordan, in this video, which also gives hope, because many times you don't know if these videos were filmed a year ago and they're just now releasing them. But he is talking about incoming President Donald Trump and actually pleads with the incoming President, President elect, to use his influence and the full power of the United States to negotiate for our freedom. And I think what the hopeful side of that is, as tragic and horrific as this entire ordeal has been, is that the entire time we felt like the Biden administration was more playing to limit the Israelis from getting things done than they were even caring about getting the hostages freed. Now there will be a sea change with even the ambassador to Israel being Mike Huckabee, whether it be just the foreign policy that will be in place. We know that it will be a foreign policy to empower Israel to protect their citizens. But also, hopefully, the terrorists in Hamas won't see a friendly White House that is putting limits on their adversary and instead realize if we don't get something done, nothing will be left.

And hopefully, that influence will be effective at getting these remaining hostages free and really getting an end to this war in Gaza by eliminating Hamas. Listen, we know that these videos are done with a gun to your head. Right. You look at the darkness there, you realize what they're being kept in. Oh yeah, it's horrifying. Could you imagine that? I mean, for over 400 days being basically in pitch black dark and you're being told if you don't say what we're about to tell you to say, we'll kill you right here.

And send that video to your family. Yeah, if anything, it's a wake-up call that people are still alive. I think there's two things we have to watch. One, is it true?

Or did they make him film two versions? A Trump and a Biden one. They're terrorists.

Yeah. So just because they put one out where he says Trump doesn't mean he also didn't film one where he says, Joe Biden, please. So take it with a grain of salt.

I'd still, I think if you're his family, that's the best you could hope for is that you've seen some sign of life and maybe they'd be a better resource in the sense of looking at him now and realizing how much he's changed in a year, probably like his physical, obviously his physical appearance. But it does also then provide President Trump, an individual American to point to, to really squeeze the Muslim world into getting Hamas to release these final hostages. Listen, Israel went into a very difficult ceasefire with Hezbollah.

It is barely holding as we speak. Hezbollah, I think violated it within two hours, I think they were firing back. I mean, so I just, I remember I was in New York over the weekend and you could see the tickers going across that Hezbollah didn't violate it, did it not violate it. Israel's trying to keep it in place. So while Israel's doing the right thing with Lebanon, you would think this is the time where the Trump team coming in can start putting really the screws to, if you will, these Middle Eastern countries who have US air bases and are basically a lot of these regimes.

Or if you want to say monarchies that are kept in place because the US defends it. Those conversations are happening, they have to be happening. Look, whether it's Trudeau flying down to Mar-a-Lago or last night, Benjamin Netanyahu's wife was eating with President Trump.

So you know that, though I'm sure it's a cordial conversation, you know these are the topics that are coming up because it's going to be an important time in the next few months to really hopefully bring this all to an end. And remember, President Trump always wants to see how much can I get done even before I have to take the oath? Can you pull that kind of Ronald Reagan move?

And while the day you're taking the oath, hostages are being released. Who's seen success already? Yes, and there have been successes already around the world. I think that we're about to see a big shift in how the, well we knew it happened the first time, but now that he's got experience, Logan, I think if you're one of those, and Cece, if you're one of those Putins or even Zelenskis or Hamas or the Ayatollah in Iran, you realize you're about to be, your people are about to starve again. Right, yeah. I mean literally, we are going to starve them out so that they take to the streets.

Yeah, and exactly what you said about Ronald Reagan, that was what was coming to my mind because I remember that. That those hostages were released, the Iranian hostages, U.S. citizens being held, as soon as Ronald Reagan is taking office, they are being released. And so I pray that that's what happens with the hostages that are still remaining that Hamas has.

I hope that the fear of God is put into them and they do release those hostages immediately. Yes, I mean I think this is a moment where we could bring this to a close, Logan. Yeah, absolutely, and I think this is a great moment for you to support the work of the ACLJ as well because as you've heard from Cece and our incredible team here, we are not stopping. Things don't stop over holidays.

In fact, especially this holiday, they will heat up entirely so you'll hear so much and you'll get so much information coming up, especially in the new year. We can't do that. We can't have the best of the best, the best video team, the best media team, the best legal team without your support. All of it is funded really by individual small donors. If we really look at it, most donors are given $50, $70. These are not people who are out there giving you huge giant checks if you'd like to, of course, happy to match that. All donations are doubled right now, but understand if you think, hey, I can only give 20 bucks, that is not insignificant. That is the backbone of the ACLJ.

If you are like one of those folks who gives at the end of the year, that's when you make your donations, your bigger donations, you still get that match like Logan said. So speaking to you as well, ACLJ.org, be part of the Faith and Freedom Drive. We'll be right back.

All right, welcome back to Sekulow. And just again, because we like to be fair, honest, and truthful to you here, we don't spin things. We don't put a lot of, you know, if it's, again, it's not that you don't know where we are politically, where we are, you know, legally. But when we do talk about the power of the pardon, it is a basically limitless power, it is a limitless power when it comes to federal offenses. And let me just read it to you again and how you interpret it that way, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1. So this is, again, very early in the Presidential powers in the U.S. Constitution. And that Clause 1 says, and he, that's, you know, talking about the President, shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States. Those are federal crimes, accepted cases of impeachment.

So you can't pardon yourself from impeachment, which is the only way Congress has to remove a President who they believe is violating the law or dangerous to the country. Which we've also seen be politicized, I would hope, learning from this experience from the Democrats about what Joe Biden just did and the future for the next four years that they don't waste all of the American people's times on impeachment. Which, honestly, if you look back on, distracted the U.S. government from being able to focus on COVID. And, Jordan, I would also bring up that the people on the left that are all of a sudden terrified that this sets a precedent that Trump will now be able to pardon people on January 6th that were maybe on the Capitol that day. And we've seen how broad the federal government went after people that may have even just been in the vicinity of the Capitol on that day. But I think that these aren't precedents that are on the same level.

It's not apples and apples. What they really should be looking at with the precedent of what they call an insurrection was what Abraham Lincoln did to unify the country after the Civil War, which was issuing pardons to people that served within the Confederate government, to even leadership within the Confederate Army. Generals, majors, corporals. That was a move to unify the country to move beyond the Civil War during Reconstruction that they seem to have forgotten about that. What Abraham Lincoln did and then Andrew Johnson after that.

They actually tried to impeach Andrew Johnson over many of those issues. And I think the fact of pardoning your son isn't something that's all of a sudden opening the floodgates to what President Trump can do with the pardon power. They seem to think, oh, he's giving permission to President Trump now. Yes, it may give some political talking points for the President, but I don't think he's been waiting around for permission from Joe Biden to do anything. It just makes it easier. It makes it easier from a, well, he did it. You know, that kind of situation.

Same with impeachment or anything like that. Let's go ahead and take some phone calls. Tamara's calling in Indiana on Line 1. You're on the air.

Yeah. And so I think that when we talk about these pardoning powers, I can't imagine that our forefathers would have envisioned the situation that we're in today politically, this environment. And I think that one of the most exciting things about President Trump being reelected is, I believe, I hope, and it seems like we're going to see some restoration of our government back to the way that it was intended to be. Well, listen, I think that the founders did anticipate actually that it would be people very close to the President, including potentially the President himself, who would face these kind of issues.

And that's why the idea of a self-pardon has never been held by any court as unconstitutional or wrong. I think that it's also people that are close to the President. And what did we see in the last administration?

They held back. So what they did was they waited until President Trump was out of office, and then they started filing federal lawsuits against everybody who was close to him. It's easy to frame our mind around current day politics and not look back hundreds of years, but remember what they were dealing with. And remember also what they were dealing with in terms of all the other countries that were in upheaval at the same time, that were having revolutions, whether it was in France or anywhere, where things were happening specifically to families of people. So I don't know if that's necessarily true.

I think in modern politics, you can look that way. But even so, if you look even to the last, in our lifetime, plenty of family members, plenty of people. Roger Clinton was pardoned by Bill Clinton in the final days for drug-related offenses.

That was his half-brother. I mean, this is not the first time that a family member has been pardoned. I just, I feel like there's a reason that it's so broad. I feel like the founders, even if they were concerned about that, knew that it was more important to leave it broad than to start putting constraints on the elected executive of the country.

Honestly, you know what I thought? Let it go. The issue is when the founders were writing the Constitution, the thought that the President's son would become a legal target for the U.S. system, which was still being put into place about what that was even, would be seen as a political prosecution and thus would be more safe for the country to do away with, regardless of what that was. Unless it was like murder or something like that, then it's worse for the Democratic Republic to look like we are going to be like every other country in the world that prosecutes people because of what political failure they're so shut with. Let's open it up. Day one pardons. I want to see what happens. Let's have some fun. Day one pardons.

I think that could be the entire show tomorrow. Let's go down the list. I have a list of people I think, you know, probably shouldn't be in there. Let's go ahead and continue on with some calls. Do we want to go to because we may only have time for one more. We want to go to Gary. Gary, from Washington, you're on the air. Annabelle, stay on hold. We may get to you. Gary, you're on the air.

Hi. My question is, can under our next administration be subpoenaed to testify about Joe's involvement in his business dealings from 2014 to 2020? Obviously there's double jeopardy involved, so he would not. I don't even know if he'd have to seek an immunity deal. He might want one still because it depends on where the questioning wants to go.

But here's the truth. There might be House committees and Senate committees that want to do this, but they're going to look to President Trump as well. And I think you know what President Trump needs to do right now?

Get his team in place. If you are someone who voted for President Trump, what you do not want to do is have the House and Senate wasting their time right now on Hunter Biden. Okay? They did the work. They got the information out there. Joe Biden didn't even make it to November as the candidate.

Okay? Trump won. He won big. Republicans kept the House. The Democrats thought there was no way the Republicans could, and they did. And Republicans added to the majority. They grew a bigger majority of the Senate than people expected, so Chuck Schumer also gets retired from the majority leader situation. What did we see was the biggest issue in the last Trump administration? What was the one thing, and it's not easy to get out of President Trump all the time, that he thought he did not do right and didn't really fully grasp what he needed to do when he became President was having all of those people in place. And a lot of those people require Senate confirmation.

Republicans control the Senate. Let's get the right people in place. We're going to talk about Kash Patel. We're not ignoring that. We'll talk about it a little tomorrow. We've got Rick Renell joining us Wednesday.

Kash Patel was his deputy, so I really want to get some insight there. They're very close. You saw his nomination for FBI, and this is a time, Logan, really that we need people's support because I just listed a handful of what will be very tough confirmation battles, but it is the most important thing President Trump has got to do. Absolutely. Throw that graphic up on the screen.

If you've got that QR code, scan it right now. If not, go to ACLJ.org. Support the work of the ACLJ because right now your donations are doubled. I know it's not giving Tuesday until tomorrow, but it doesn't matter because it's giving Tuesday every day here. Just go to ACLJ.org right now. Make that year-end contribution. We really appreciate it. We'll talk to you tomorrow.