Breaking news today on Sekulow, Marine Daniel Penny acquitted in New York. 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. Alright folks, right to it. So, a good indication that even in New York State Court, when you've got a jury of your peers and they see the evidence, they know the crime that's in the city, and they see a young man who stepped up to help protect people on a subway, they're stuck in a subway, there's nowhere to run, a guy who was threatening to kill people, a guy who was totally out of control, Daniel Penny subdues him, and in the process, he was a former military person, so they try to use that against him, by the way, but he's brave, he took his own life at risk immediately to save others, and New York, instead of going after all the other criminals in New York, has spent their time trying to prosecute Donald Trump and Daniel Penny. Well, when the jury heard all the evidence, we already knew the manslaughter was out. They were supposedly deadlocked on that, but it's interesting because then the judge brought in the second charge that they had to decide on, which is lower than manslaughter, second-degree manslaughter, which is negligent homicide, and when they went to the jury on that, they found him not guilty. So I'm not sure why, and sometimes that's just the jury not understanding even the complex differences, why this didn't happen last week, but it is a good sign that our legal system in the U.S. still can be saved. Yeah, absolutely.
I think that this is a very positive sign. Computers need to keep losing these cases. Because when you have a situation where anyone would watch and hear what happened in this, read the things that go, this guy was a hero stepping up, there was a mother with a baby in a stroller who came in, and yes, sadly, did the guy pass away? Of course. But beyond that, still saved probably a lot of people's lives and certainly a lot of trauma. In this situation, you also, and again, of course, a Marine, in this situation, you had a jury that, as you said, spent a lot of time on this. This wasn't a quick one day, it was over, so much so the judge had to re-instruct them to go back because they were essentially, at that point, they'd become like a hung jury. They're scared. I think one or two of them were scared. They're already saying they're threatened.
One or two of them were scared, went back for the weekend, said, you know, think about it, essentially, came back and they had an answer this morning, yes, you do have a lot of unrest right now in New York where a lot of threats of riots that may be coming tonight. Here's the problem on these situations. We have to get to a point where if you protect people in public and the person who you're protecting them from was making those threats and was also on a serious amount of drugs, they can't even determine, because of the amount of drugs he was on, how he died or why. He probably should not have died from the way he was subdued. No. But he did.
But even if he did. And you know what? He was threatening to kill people. Right. And this guy was brave enough to step up, unlike, we've seen horrible incidents when someone does it and someone even just brings out a knife in New York and, you know, will kill three or four people who are stuck in that subway car.
So, again, we have to keep winning these. Why? Because we have to get to a point where Daniel Penny doesn't have to go bankrupt or raise hundreds of thousands of dollars on Kickstarter to defend himself because these cases shouldn't be in court. They should be investigated because someone died and that should be it. And Jordan, it can't be lost on who the prosecutor was that decided to go after Daniel Penny for being a hero.
Alvin Bragg, the same district attorney that decided to go after President Trump and to create out of whole cloth a way to use state law against him for what would have been campaign finance violations and try to make a political prosecution there. It's all political in New York. It needs to get back to protecting the people of the city and prosecuting the real criminals. And Americans love New York. It's almost like wherever you're from.
Whenever you go to New York, you meet Americans from all over the country. It's the capital of the world. It's the second, you know, capital of the United States. You know, we've got Washington, D.C., New York, and then I'd say, like, L.A. and San Francisco kind of are those core four. And we want it back to a place where, one, if you need to protect yourself, you can.
Right now, it's a place where it feels like that more often than not. So, justice saved here. We've got a lot to talk about. We'll take your calls, 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ. I think this is going to be a big part of the next year is getting our justice system back in order. Donate today.
Your gift is doubled. ACLJ.org. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. I will continue to take calls to 1-800-684-3110.
That's 1-800-684-3110. If you want to talk about Daniel Pinney, I just think it's a good example of the legal system working, the jury system working, but still, such a waste of resources for Daniel Pinney and his family, the fact that he's a name. It makes it very dangerous for him to live. And, of course, what it can cause to the city when you bring charges that you try to make into these most racially motivated murders that are instead just a guy protecting the rest of the people who are racially diverse on a subway train and a heavy drug user doesn't make it out alive who is threatening to kill people. And we demonized the guy who protected the subway users. I want to go, though, right to Rick Rinnell because there's some major shifting, of course, international news.
And the stories are all over the place, Rick. First off, we're seeing Israel say, listen, we started the— I think the best description from any Israeli analyst was, we started the dominoes. And then when we start the dominoes in Israel, and we've not yet done that before until we started taking out top Hezbollah and Hamas leadership, once we started the dominoes, then Netanyahu told Assad, they're coming for you next.
And they're not going to—the other guys can't protect you. Hezbollah's been decimated and Russia's stuck in Ukraine. Well, one thing we should make perfectly clear is that we're in this situation because of the Biden administration, how weak their policies have been, and how much they've funded Iran and all of Iran's proxies. But I think that regular folks within the Middle East have had enough, and they're really fighting back.
And certainly Israel has given so many people hope, including in Lebanon, when they've taken on the fight of Hezbollah. This is a fight that they've done without the Biden administration's help. And I would also say, in spite of the Biden administration, they've really tried to hold a lot of the progress back. A lot of this should have been cleaned up immediately. We shouldn't have had October 7th, but if it did happen, you should allow the Israelis to go in and defend their country and clean up the situation. And we shouldn't be in this more than a year later. But it's because the Biden administration has really held the players in the region, you know, with one hand tied behind their back for a variety of countries. I do think that what's happening in Syria now, President Trump is exactly right.
We need to let it play out a little bit. We don't need to get involved. We do have troops there, and I think the Biden team needs to hear President Trump aloud and clearly that we don't need to be using our troops. But that doesn't mean that we can't be diplomatic leaders and have the State Department be able to do its job in our embassies and around the world. And we should play a leadership role without playing a military role.
And I wanted to ask you about the troops, Rick, because I know our listeners. I remember when Tulsi Gabbard would talk to us about the troops that are still out in Syria, still basically as close to the front lines as you can be when you're battling these multifaceted Islamist groups. And you've got Assad's groups, and you've got the Hezbollah back then, and also these more radical groups. And then you're kind of stuck in the middle as the Americans of who to trust and who to fight with. We see the Kurds they're already going after. But how much in danger are those 900 troops right now? Because I saw that Russia made a deal with these insurgents that Russian assets, Russian airports and bases are not going to be attacked and embassies and their staff.
But can the U.S. make a deal? I mean, we don't quite have the same kind of access points to these radical groups. Look, we have troops there because we wanted to make sure that Christians were protected and that ISIS didn't take hold. We can debate whether or not that's too many troops, whether we could have done it from another place. But the idea at the time was to keep a small number of troops there so that ISIS wouldn't be able to come back in a strong way. Remember, Donald Trump defeated ISIS. So this is one of those situations where we want to make sure that ISIS doesn't come back in.
The brutal treatment of Christians is just one of the reasons why we want to make sure that ISIS doesn't come back. But I actually believe that we have a NATO ally in Turkey, and I know that Turkey has not been perfect, and we've ignored Turkey for too long. But my idea is that if you are going to be in a NATO membership agreement with Turkey, which we have been since 1952, then you can't treat them as a non-NATO member. We share intelligence with Turkey.
We need to get them more on our side. And the Turks care very deeply about what's happening in this region. Again, they are a NATO ally, and I would force the critics of Turkey to come clean and either say that they want Turkey out of NATO, or we should deal with the reality that Turkey is in NATO and they need to be a closer ally. We haven't done a very good job of really pressuring Turkey to be a better ally, be better with Israel, and to help us in certain ways. Remember, Turkey has a very interesting relationship with Russia. Sometimes they're close to Russia, and sometimes they are the blunt force to stop Putin. Erdogan is somebody who I think has some power there.
President Trump recognizes that we have to deal with the leader of Turkey as a NATO ally, and we need to get them more on our side. I think they can do a lot in Syria. Syria right now is a mess, but remember that all of the rebel groups that have been going up against Assad and against Iran and against Russia for a long time, they were united just because they were the opposition.
They're not united because they believe the same way. So now that Assad is gone and the Syrian government has fallen, now we need to be very cautious because we don't know within that rebel group, within that opposition group, we really don't know who's going to rise up. There are some bad actors in there, and there are some decent actors in that group.
We need to give it a little more time, and President Trump is right to just wait and see what happens. We know some of the bad actors coming from the al-Nusra Front, which was kind of a break off of al-Qaeda to be kind of a militant group instead of just a terror group that hides in the shadows but actually goes into cities. But you mentioned that there are some other groups involved here. Are there names of those groups that listeners and our viewers can start trying to get updated about so they understand? They love understanding these issues, Rick, and explaining it to their friends and family.
So if there's those additional actors, if you're able to name them, it would be, I think, helpful for the audience. Look, I want to slow down and make sure that we get these facts right. There are many opposition groups that have come together, and we still don't know exactly the numbers. We don't know who is in control. We see a lot of differing information from the different groups on social media. Some who have risen up to say that they're in leadership positions are former al-Qaeda members.
You've got other organizations that I think are suspect and some that are quite good. Certainly we know the Kurds are there, and yet we have to be honest with the Kurds. Thank them for all the help that they've given us, but also be realistic about the chances of the Kurds coming into a leadership role, which I don't think is going to happen. So I think we should just slow down and wait to see who rises up and who these different groups actually are.
There's a lot of misinformation out there, and we're not exactly sure who's part of the rebel groups. So I'd like to make sure that we give it a little time. I think President Trump's warning of let it play out a little bit more is exactly right.
Let me finish with this, Jordan. The big mystery in the Middle East has always been are these dictatorships, these governments that are human rights abusers, is it going to get worse when they fall and should we take a slower approach? This is one of the strengths of Donald Trump is to deal with the reality on the ground rather than to send in the Americans and try to completely take over the situation or handpick who should be in charge. And then that completely backfires on us.
Donald Trump is a realist. He wants to deal with how the situation unfolds. That's why I talk about Turkey. Turkey is going to play a major role. Syria is a border country with Turkey. They care very deeply about the humanitarian situation.
As a NATO ally, I think we should defer to Turkey and hear them out first before we begin to pick any players as to who's going to rise up and be in charge. You know, Rick, we are in the midst, of course, of our most important fundraising time of the year because it's how we plan our budget going into January. And on these issues, you know, we're very active through our international organizations that we're affiliated with at the United Nations, all over the world, ICC, and of course because of the work in Israel and beyond that we do in the Middle East and the Gulf states. So it's a great time and I know that you've been very open to tell people about why it's important to support the ACLJ and this time they can double the impact of their donation. Well, look, I think the Trump administration is going to need help from organizations like ACLJ. I know everyone seems to be tapped out, but I would dig deep to support an organization like the ACLJ which takes action, doesn't just talk about issues. Thank you, Rick. And you know what? The great thing is, even if you are a bit tapped out, this allows you to double your donation.
So a $5 donation becomes $10, $20 becomes $40. Donate today, ACLJ.org. We'll be back with a lot more. Welcome back to Secular.
I do want to take the call coming in on Sergeant Penny. If you're just joining us, just to be clear, he has been found not guilty completely. This is the New York subway who, again, Good Samaritan, who subdued someone who was threatening violence, who was clearly on a lot of drugs. And when they subdued them, eventually that person lost their life. They were never able to figure out, by the way, if that person was already going to lose their life because of the amount of drugs they were on.
And of course, they were threatening people's lives. He's been in prison this time. He's been threatened with both manslaughter charges and second-degree negligent homicide.
So, serious prison time. And last week, we got the jury deadlocked on the lower charge. Yeah, they brought in the lower charge, which could have been four years still in prison. But what happened here, okay, just so everyone knows again, no, I think it was on the lesser charge.
Right, the man's lower charge. It would have been a much higher homicide. How was the deadlocked?
They couldn't figure it out. I think they said there's maybe one or two is what a lot of the experts were saying. One or two of the jurors, we're not sure. But found not guilty, to clarify for everyone, that means this is over, right? It's over, yes.
He walks free. Again, there can be civil cases. He'll have plenty of people supporting him, I think, through that. Oh, sure. But the next question is, does New York cause a riot?
Yeah, we'll see. Let's go, though, to that phone call. Let's go to Jerry, who's calling in Rhode Island, listening on the radio. Jerry, you're on the air. Good morning, team.
It's a good day. My phone's blowing up with former Marines, former law enforcement. We're hoping that the prayers and donations, including from ACLJ listeners that covered the GoFundMe will hopefully repair all that.
And oh, wouldn't it be great to see Sergeant Penny either at the inaugural or in a Trump position somewhere down the road? Well, Jerry, I think a lot of people feel at least a relief in the sense, as Jordan said, that the judicial system seemed to be honest and fair this time. It seemed to work out in a way, because everyone looking at the facts of this, I'm sorry, if you look at the facts of what happened and you watch what happened, how you can say that this person did the wrong thing. It deserves to be in jail for the rest of his adult life.
It's absurd. Coming out of jail, what, he'd be 60-something years old because he saved people on a subway train from a bad actor who probably should have been out in public. Well, in that second-degree manslaughter charge, which was the first thing that the jury was deadlocked on last week, the judge sent it back to them with some more instruction, came back still deadlocked. And then the judge said, all right, I'm just missing that charge, the higher charge of second-degree manslaughter, and then told the jury, look at the lesser charge of negligent homicide. The jury on Friday then had a question about the reasonable person language within negligent homicide, which would mean that did Daniel Penny act outside of what a reasonable person in their right state of mind would do? And what, as you mentioned, Jordan, is interesting is that they were so quickly able to acquit him of the lesser charge when they were deadlocked on the more serious one.
Now, this lesser charge would have still carried around four years in prison potentially, so he was still facing the jeopardy of prison time. I know that the father of Neely, who was the person who died in the attack, he has already filed a large civil lawsuit against Daniel Penny. But when you heard the witnesses that there was a mother who had her five-year-old son that was taking him to a doctor's appointment and barricaded him behind a stroller. Another woman called it a satanic rant that Neely was going on. These people were terrorized and living in fear in that moment on that train. And as you say, you never know what a jury is going to decide or come out with and how they hear it. But I think the closing arguments of Daniel Penny's attorney were really effective when it said, who would you want to be sitting next to on a train?
The man with earbuds, minding his own business, but will take action when you need him to? Or would you rather be all alone on the train when someone is having a psychotic moment? I think this also brings up a much broader issue, which is New York and a lot of these cities built on having these kind of transportation systems for people that are affordable, that are fast and reliable. They have become areas of great crime and areas of stress and areas where people are unsafe. As less people are working in the city, too. So now we have that mass protection that used to have, if you went in rush hour, it was going to be full. If you went home during, again, when most companies close, it was going to be full.
And so you were really only having to protect yourself late at night, really late at night, during the week. On weekends, busy all through the night. Yeah, I think that this becomes an issue that New York has to really take a look at. Eric Adams, everyone's got to look at it and go, okay, how can we actually make this safe? They keep coming up with solutions, they don't really get quite in there. Tell everyone to come to New York. We've been, you've been, I mean... Yeah, but I'm taking our kids on the subway. That's just the truth.
It's not happening. No, I don't. I don't.
Because of horror stories. I lived in Washington, D.C. I've used their metros my whole life and have been happy to do it when I'm with friends in New York who actually understand how it works. Yeah.
But if you're just trying to go like one or two stops with kids, it's a nice little way because they walk slower. I'm saying all you need to do is figure out how to make this safe again and make these cities more appealing to come to. This is a good step. You got to get the politics out of law enforcement. I'm saying this is a good step. Yeah.
No, this is a great step because it shows these prosecutors, you are wasting taxpayer dollars and your prosecutions are becoming a joke. So stop playing politics as the DA and start actually protecting the people of New York because that's also sends a signal to the world that the United States of America is a safe country. Because there's two places, you know, that people visit from overseas, New York City and what is the L.A. and was it Orlando? Orlando, Florida. Yeah. And Nashville. Yeah, Nashville we're kind of big. Neither of us have, Orlando and Nashville don't have the mass transit situation like that. Right.
So we're going to get it provided by the theme parks to get you there. Phone lines are open, by the way, and we're going to be taking calls in the next half hour. We do have a second half hour coming up. If you don't get us on your local radio station, I know our last caller is listening on the radio. Some of them don't pick up the full hour. They should, but they don't.
Go to ACLJ.org, watch on YouTube or on Rumble. We're broadcasting live on all those options right now, but phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. This is a perfect time to call. Also, we cannot stress enough. 25% of our budget, our annual budget is raised in the month of December. And we need your help because we are falling behind right now. When you hear about the events happening in the Middle East, when you hear about what's happening in New York, we are making sure we are there taking global legal action and we're going to defend Israel. We're going to be there and we're going to need your support. So we encourage you go to ACLJ.org right now. If you support this month, that helps sets our budget for the entire year.
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And if you don't hit the subscribe button, make sure you're part of it. There's a grassroots action I'd like a few of you to take today. Tulsi Gabbard is beginning her meetings on Capitol Hill on the U.S. Senate. You know, we brought her on our team long before she was associated with President Trump or had even made the decision to go that political in this election cycle.
She certainly wanted to be speaking out on issues that we care about, religious liberty and the First Amendment. Will, who are the first three senators she's meeting with today? She's meeting with Mike Rounds from South Dakota, Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina and James Lankford from Oklahoma. Okay, if you are in South Dakota, South Carolina or Oklahoma, call your senator's office if it's one of those three.
Tell them in a nice positive way. Hey, just a reminder, you might want to let the senator know Tulsi has been working with the American Center for Law and Justice and the Sekulows for over a year, including on their broadcast two and three times a week. So that kind of message, let them know. She's one of us. That would be great to do. Don't do it if you're not from their state yet. We're going to launch something bigger for her.
But do that today for those three. I'd love to get your feedback on it tomorrow. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow.
And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, so there's a lot to talk about today, and I do want to take your calls. I mean, the Daniel Pinney verdict, I think, folks, it's bigger than just Daniel Pinney. This is, when we talk about de-weaponizing law enforcement, I don't just mean at the federal level, I mean at the state level, too. We talked about how, in a Supreme Court case, my dad argued for President Trump, and I was the lead chair, but we were having to do it from, literally, we built a Supreme Court over there.
And we were arguing that, you know, a President should not be subject to the political whims of over 2,500, nearly 3,000 local DAs that are partisan elected. And, of course, that shouldn't happen to the President, but it also, our DAs, whether they were elected because they were Republican or Democrat, should not have their politics play into the role when you're talking about murder. When you're talking about, is this a good Samaritan or is this a bad guy? And in this case, everyone knew this guy did something heroic. Is it a tragedy that a life was lost?
Of course. Yes, but the life that was lost was someone who had regularly threatened lives on the subway and was doing so at the time, and he was protecting women, children, and others who were stuck in a tube with nowhere to go. And this crazy person was obviously on drugs, which makes them even harder to subdue, and when he did subdue them, obviously, if you see the video, because they're on drugs, they're pushing back hard and lost their life, unfortunately.
But how many lives were saved? Well, and Jordan, I think another thing... That's what the juries think about because they ride those subways. Another thing to bring up in this whole story is what you've been talking about, the safety of our major cities when the district attorneys have been politicized and making it about leftist politics instead of keeping their cities safe. I mean, you think back to the assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare that happened in New York, right outside of Times Square, and now there is a little bit of breaking news on this. They're saying that a person has been detained about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh at a McDonald's.
The individual had what appears to be a similar weapon that was used in his bag, as well as a fake ID, according to police. But that story has captivated American conscious for days now, and if this is a local police that found this individual at a McDonald's 100 miles east of Pittsburgh, he evaded the entire security apparatus of New York for days and was able to get out of there. It goes back to the fundamental questions of New York should be a place where people are relatively safe, and when that can happen right outside of Times Square, when the Rockefeller Center tree lighting was happening that evening, and can evade police and get out of the city, as well as these situations on the subways, it makes people question the leadership and the priorities of those in law enforcement in cities like New York, and hopefully we are going to see, you've already heard Mayor Adam start to change his tune.
Now that President Trump has been elected, talking about the safety of the citizens when it comes to the migrant crisis in New York, but hopefully you'll see other law enforcement district attorneys, mayors in these large cities in America start to change their tune and say, wait, our job is to keep our city safe, not to push progressive ideology, woke agendas, it's to keep our citizens safe to make sure the infrastructure holds, and we've been seeing that fall to the wayside in far too many American cities over the past decades. Right, and Logan, we all want the ability to show New York off as like, we've got Washington and New York on the East Coast, and in Philadelphia as well for our history, you want people to feel like if they're going to come to the US and make that trip to learn about our country, it's really hard to understand the United States. You can't just go to New York, but you start there and then you understand how the US spread across the country. Of course, yeah.
It's this unbelievable melting pot of people. Right, absolutely. It's where it all started, really, if you want to look at it.
It still feels that way. Yeah, absolutely. It's got that melting pot feel still.
But you have to be good. The problem is you have a lot of people who have not felt safe going or they know certain areas you can't go to anymore, and a lot of these were big, popular tourist destination areas. I'm not talking about out in the bad areas. We're talking about in Maine, tourist spots. I walked down that street last week. Yep. All right.
Hey, we still got more coming up. Phone lines are open. 1-800-684-3110. Quickly during this break, support the work of the ACLJ. Just go ahead and do it.
Scan that QR code. Go to ACLJ.org. All right. Of course, we've discussed the news with the former Acting Director of National Intelligence and Ambassador to Germany, Rick Rinnell, who is on our team at the ACLJ because of your financial support. So we get that awesome insight, by the way. Was able to get that awesome insight last week, over the weekend, so that we were as prepared as possible to understand the, as we call it, multi-angle, multi-dimensional chess games that are going on.
And, of course, more than games. You've got Russia involved. You've got Iran involved. How does it play out for Israel is a question because right now a lot of these insurgents are saying, listen, I remember one of their first orders was do not go in with guns to government buildings. Keep the government buildings. We're negotiating with the current Prime Minister and he is working on a transition so that the apparatuses in Syria continue to work.
So that, you know, food, water, sanitation, even though it's been a war-torn country, that the basics at least get provided. So they have pledged to do that. So they aren't like taking all of the Assad people out, at least we haven't seen that yet, and just like killing them in the streets. They also haven't been just overrunning these different offices that run the country.
So that's a good sign. But that could also just be the first step to get inside. And then once you're inside, you end up, are they going to be more like a Turkey or are they going to be more like a ISIS? And with a Taliban kind of ish flow, what is going to happen exactly? Prisons have been released. So we're going to stay on those issues.
They are very important to us at the ACLJ. Christians were protected, interestingly enough, under the Assad regime. Will they still have that protection or do we need to work on getting those Christians out of Syria?
These are questions we have to start answering very soon as we get more information. Or are these Islamic groups going to say, listen, we have a diverse country. We're not trying to focus on just turning everyone into an Islamist extremist. But usually in the past, that is what happens, unfortunately.
So watching it very closely. Tied to that, of course, is how did this all start? Well, Syria started 14 years ago, and this was with ISIS. And then the US destroyed ISIS.
So we have a limited team there. Hezbollah used to really be the protector of Assad. But they've been decimated because they decided to try and get into a war with Israel. Didn't go well for them. So they've been begging for those ceasefires. But it really started October 7th. And whenever Hamas started planning that attack on Israel.
And I'm bringing in C.C. Howe because, C.C., people remember very early on, by the next month, we were representing families in Washington, D.C., taking them to Republican and Democrat leadership to keep that pressure on getting both Americans who were kidnapped home but also the Israelis out so that there could be a path to a ceasefire that ultimately may lead to the end of this conflict. I want you to update people because we've added more clients about where it stands right now of those who were kidnapped, the good things and the bad.
Right. So once again, we are seeing that Hamas is possibly looking at a hostage prisoner swap. And like you said, Jordan, it's because of what's going on in Syria, what is happening across the world, and of course, that President Trump is now coming into office in January and has made a very harsh statement that the hostages must be released. So we are once again seeing this prisoner hostage swap on the table. And it would include, according to what we know, one of our contacts in Israel was saying, you know, the terms are being guarded very cautiously. So we don't know all the terms, but we think it'll be a humanitarian swap. So that includes like the elderly, children, women, ill, badly wounded. And we had filed, like you said, in November after the October 7 massacre and the hostages being taken by Hamas, Israeli hostages, we filed with the working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances.
And their mandate at the UN is to assist families in determining the fate and whereabouts of their disappeared relatives. So we filed on behalf of 10 total clients. And of those 10, four were released. We had a mother and her three minor children released. Two, unfortunately and tragically, heartbreakingly, have been confirmed dead. And we have four of our clients that still remain hopefully alive.
Basically, their well-being is unknown. But two of those clients are women. So if this is truly a humanitarian release, we would hope that two more of our clients we would see in this swap. What should happen is every single remaining alive hostage should be released in this swap. And that's what obviously we will keep pushing for. But we are hopeful that we might see two of our remaining clients released.
Any updates on those? You know, we've seen Hamas try to do some proof of life videos on some. We've also heard that the Hamas leadership that's still left in Gaza is frantically on the phones trying to figure out where these remaining hostages are, more than just the ones we represent. But for the ones we represent, have we received any kind of proof of life?
We have not. And I met actually after November, when we filed in November of last year, I actually met with a working group on enforcing involuntary disappearances in Geneva in March just to reiterate our clients' positions and to really make our communication the most effective that we could do with all the mandates. One of our clients, actually, there was a proof of life, I believe, video that in the middle of last year kind of was released, or this year, I'm sorry, of 2024. Of course, we don't know what her status is now. But when the video was released, there was hope that she was still alive. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, really pray for these hostages, for our legal team that's been working on this. This is tough work.
I mean, I still almost every day, it's a mistake if I don't, at every event, I wear this yellow ribbon to remind all of you and to remind anybody walking by that maybe sometimes ask, what's this about? Well, we've still got 100 hostages. We don't know their whereabouts, and some of those are American citizens.
And, you know, Donald Trump is calling for them to be released. We have good reports that Hamas is trying to find all these individuals, the bodies and those who are still alive, and I'm sure it will be a mix. But, CC, they can't really get to a ceasefire until the bodies and those alive are back home, and that at least we know that the 100 or so they've been accounted for now.
There's not gonna be a ceasefire until that happens. I believe Netanyahu absolutely has understood that and has, you know, commented to that effect that you have to get the hostages back dead or alive. And like President Trump said, you know, sadly, he believes probably more of them are dead than alive. But whatever the number is, those hostages need to be returned. And like you said, seven of them were U.S. citizens, and three of those have already been confirmed dead. So there's four possibly still alive.
They have to be returned. And, Jordan, I wanna play this for you real quick because this is the outgoing national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. They're already trying revisionist history about the foreign policy of the Biden administration, which has been catastrophic around the world, is probably a polite way to say how bad it's been. But this is his revisionist history on the way out, how they're spinning. It was actually the Biden administration that created a wonderful moment in the world.
Let's go ahead and play bite one. What is amazing about the moment we find ourselves in right now, though, is that Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia are all in a position of relative weakness in the Middle East. And our core security partner in the region, Israel, is in a position of relative strength in the region. And we believe that the United States has taken steps over the course of the past year through military deployments, through diplomacy, and through engagement with all of our partners that have helped to bring about this set of conditions.
You know, here's the thing. The only reason this happened is because Israel decided to go on an offensive that they, in the past, did not want to do, which was to go directly target Iran and Iran's proxy forces, not just the ones right on the border in northern Lebanon and northern Israel and southern Lebanon, but they went after the leader of Hezbollah who's been living underground. And I guess that whole idea that he would never be found, Israel was obviously tracking him and knew exactly where he was the entire time, but also knew the concerns of what happens if you do kill him.
But they had other things planned. They didn't say they were behind the pager attacks. They didn't say that they were 100 percent behind what happened in Tehran with the leader of Hamas when he left Qatar for the first time, and now we've seen Qatar remove the rest of Hamas leadership. I don't know where they went.
I don't think they're back in the Gaza Strip. But the idea that the world already started shifting that way and President Trump hasn't even taken office. Now, does this add another complication? Has the Obama administration and Biden administration put another disaster on President Trump's desk?
Yes. I think that's their goal. And I don't really think it's about Joe Biden. It's these Jake Sullivan types. Joe Biden is on his way out.
He's smiling with, you know, he's happy. These are people who are trying to make it more difficult for President Trump to make good on the promises like ending the war in Ukraine and bringing more peace and stability to the Middle East. But they don't know who they're dealing with when they're dealing with Donald Trump and his allies like we are at the ACLJ. So support our work because we also do it internationally. ACLJ.org. Double the impact today. Donate today.
ACLJ.org. It is so important. It's critical you donate today. Thank you. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.
That's 1-800-684-3110. Still a lot to talk about, again, because going back, I think, to just a bit of Israel, too, Will, is we know that there is an opportunity to end this conflict. And while we've got our clients, the bigger issue, I think, for Israel, and, of course, we have an office there, ACLJ Jerusalem. I know Jeff Balaban actually was home briefly here in the U.S.
He's on the way back as we speak right now. And I'm going to be reconnecting with him tomorrow on these kind of movements, Syria and how that's affecting the Gaza Strip and how many people can really get—is Israel really expecting can be found, whether it's bodies and hopefully many who are still living. Because then if Israel can check that box, they can then refocus on Hezbollah, which continues to be decimated, and really watching what's going on in Syria. As President Trump said, this is not our battle, but we do have 900 troops there. So, at a point, we have to decide if our troops are going to be safe. Right now, I think that group has said we're not really interested in that, but those groups usually end up, once they've cleared out the regime, they focus on other international actors. They're going to play nice with Russia. So, what does that mean for the United States?
And 900 is not 10. Right. And Jordan, one thing I also want to bring up, and this goes kind of back to that Jake Sullivan bite that we played in the previous segment, that's revisionist history, trying to say that we supported Israel to create this moment in the Middle East where Iran is kind of on the ropes in many areas. But I want to point to this New York Times article from over Thanksgiving week, that with Trump returning and Hezbollah weakened, Iran strikes a conciliatory tone. And what it points out is that, remember all the ballistic missiles that Iran shot in retaliation to taking out Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, and then Israel did retaliatory strikes. They point out that Iran was ready at the beginning of November to launch another counter-strike on Israel so that there would be this back and forth shooting match between Israel and Iran, but they changed their mind. They had a plan ready to go, and the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that we have never left an aggression unanswered in 40 years.
They did for the first time. And what changed? The November 5th American election where President Trump was re-elected, and all of a sudden the IRGC and the mullahs in Iran decided not to continue that back and forth with Israel. I think that speaks volumes to what happened under the Biden foreign policy.
In just the re-election of President Trump, they were scared of another maximum pressure campaign from President Trump, and that if they continued to escalate their shooting match with Israel, it wasn't going to end well for the Iranians. That is the real strength, not the Biden foreign policy that Jake Sullivan is trying to recast as some great, wonderful thing that they've been able to bring peace to the Middle East. We all know that the world was set on fire under the Biden administration and under their foreign policy.
Don't let those talking points on national security advisers that are being dismissed from their jobs as their administration leaves out of office. That's not the reality of what we see. You know, I think the reality is we are in a very, as we said, always a dangerous time in these transitions because the work for the new President keeps piling up.
The domestic work, we know that's there. The inflation. Now, the economy already starts moving in a positive direction because they are predicting the policies that will get through a Republican House and Senate that will be helpful to the companies on the stock market. And so you see that even cryptocurrency going up bigger than ever before when it was almost dying. I mean, there were countries trying to go to that system that were being made fun of, and now if they held on, maybe not— Yeah.
It seems like it was very over. Yeah, for sure. Yes. And then it started building back slowly over the last year. And that's because there's a lot of financial advisors on the right who think this kind of idea of currency is not a bad idea if it can be regulated enough to where it's still not the same as our regular currency.
It still has that flexibility but isn't as dangerous for people to invest in as it is right now. Yeah. Let's go ahead and take a phone call. We got a phone call coming. Steven is calling on line one. Steven, thanks for holding. You've been on hold for a while. Yep, thank you.
Go ahead. I'm just glad that this verdict with this young guy was determined that he was not guilty. Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that way. A lot of people feel like there was actually a—you know, justice was served in a strange way because New York—you never knew in New York. There was a lot of feelings that they were not going to be able to acquit him of everything purely for, I mean, somewhat of political pressure, if you want to say that, or cultural pressure, that he wouldn't have been able to be acquitted. But they actually did their job as the jury. I think when you have to look at someone like that, it's not Donald Trump. It's not that kind of like show trial case. This is someone going to jail for violence and murder, long-term prisons.
I think they were even going to have problems with Trump, honestly. But this just shows you that rational people, from whatever background they come from, who live in New York, understand what it's like in New York right now, especially if you find yourself kind of alone on the subway or with a handful of people. There are a lot more troubled folks out on the streets right now in New York than there were—obviously COVID was so quiet, and there's still kind of that COVID quietness. The office buildings, like in D.C., that are only 17 percent full, I feel is not that much different in New York either for a lot of those buildings. You might see some people coming in and out as you walk by, but you certainly aren't seeing the same kind of rush hour movement. The traffic patterns have changed, which means the subway patterns have changed. And strength in numbers was kind of the subway ideas. We're going to be so packed in that if there's a nut, the nut is going to be able to do very little damage because they can barely even move.
Now that's not the case. They can target trains and say, you know what, I'm going to get on that train. There's only about six people, and that guy just chose the wrong train to start threatening to kill people that day. And honestly, New York should be praising Daniel Pinney.
He should be like a Daniel Pinney day that they need more Daniel Pinneys to speak up and to work and to not be afraid to take that action. You know, the law is careful there on good Samaritan work. You have to make sure that if you are going to engage that you will take the consequences of engagement.
That means what could happen to you, and also your training is taken into account. But here, again, this person was threatening to kill people. He wasn't just acting crazy.
He was threatening to kill people. So why aren't we saying this is, we had the guardian angels, we had other groups in New York, and it worked. New York, it took about 10, 15 years. And if you did more work quickly with funding, you could do it quicker than that. And New York could be back to that place where people don't think twice about going.
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