Chris Wray Surrenders to Trump

Breaking today on Sekulow, Chris Wray, head of the FBI, surrenders to Trump, says he will resign before Inauguration Day.

What does this mean for the FBI? 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.

Hello and welcome to Sekulow. So I guess he didn't want to be fired by Donald Trump. So Christopher Wray, who was initially put in place by Donald Trump in those, again, that era where, again, President Trump was a new President. You're trying to find good fits that can quickly be confirmed and trying to kind of counter Comey with someone with similar credentials to Comey. And unfortunately, what happened there was Chris Wray, I wouldn't say became another Comey to some extent, but he did order and prove the raid on the former President's and now President-elect's home.

So at that point, you think about judgment. And it's not just because, hey, he did this to President Trump. He also did this to people who were pro-life activists and it was showing up their doors with guns. And remember, he's doing, they did this to radical, traditional Catholics. That was all done by the FBI.

Christopher Wray is the lead. So it's a good move. Obviously, I think it opens the door to where you look at the difference between a cash Patel and when you go back to Christopher Wray, who honestly, in those congressional hearings, Logan, to me, every time I would see Christopher Wray, I was kind of like, ah, that's not instilling much confidence in the FBI. I think even though he wasn't necessarily Comey, but he became a pretty toxic figure, became a name that you kind of, our audience would react to in a negative way. That raid, but in some ways less because it didn't lead to basically an attempt to remove Trump from office.

Yeah, it more became an annoyance. Someone, when you heard the name, you knew that there was something that felt political was going to happen. They were trying to bar him from actually being able to run. Yeah. And that was their big move there is that convicted felon, blah, blah, blah.

But here's what you have. You have Chris Wray saying, hey, before the end of the term, I am going to get out of here. And of course, there's a lot of reasons that he'd want to do that.

Yes. One is there could have, there was a threat of a potential constitutional showdown because the FBI director is supposed to be independent. You're not supposed to be able to fire them. I think the current Supreme Court would say anybody in the executive branch who was appointed by a President can be fired by a President. It doesn't matter which President appointed them. They're not part of the bureaucracy. You don't have to show any wrongdoing at all.

You could just say this doesn't work. And there's so many conflicts now. How on earth, if you're Christopher Wray, could you really be sitting across with President Trump knowing the fact that you've been trying to go after him, allowing others to go after him as well to the point where you raided his home, faked the photos of where documents were all over pieces of paper that you didn't give his team time to even put together.

So goodbye, Christopher Wray. Then we bring in then Kash Patel and individuals like that. And I will say this, I think because of the disdain about some of these agencies, Logan, someone like Kash Patel, who they wanted to make in this controversial figure is hitting the Senate and they're realizing he's had every job leading up to this that would qualify you to be an FBI agent. They just don't like the fact that like most of them, he's politically active.

Yeah. He's someone who has been a loud voice for a number of years now, really through the last four years or so, the rumble generation, I guess he's kind of one of those guys who's come up and has been become one of those names, one of those social media names that you hear that you maybe don't know about his true background. I look, I'll be one of the people who say that I knew Kash Patel as an influencer, if you will, as a political voice online. I didn't know all about his background and that he is qualified for this position. So when the first thing came up that he was going to get nominated, I was like, oh, that's interesting.

And then of course you do your research, you realize, okay, incredibly qualified person. Folks, we need your support. This is going to be a lot of work. One, getting these nominations through, we do a lot of that. We're working on Tulsi's nomination as we speak. You can sign that petition at aclj.org, but we also need your financial support so we can double down on that government affairs work in Washington, DC, and make sure that the right people are being appointed. So donate today, be part of our faith and freedom challenge. Your gift will be doubled. So important, the impact these donations make for the ACLJ for the entire next year.

Donate at aclj.org right now. We'll be right back. Back to secular. So I want to take your calls on this 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. There's a lot to talk about there with Christopher Ray resigning.

And I think we, I want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. So Time Magazine names a President Trump Person of the Year. He could reshape the country. What I am hoping a little bit more is that he is reshaping the Washington, DC bureaucracy while at the same time focusing on how to keep Americans safe from the drug cartels, from fentanyl, and also keep our economy secured where we're not the ones who are, you know, sending all these high tariff imports into the US and not, you know, putting enough tariffs on outside companies as well.

And those fights, I mean, the goal here is keep America safe and then get Americans back on track financially. And you could do that very quickly. Stock market's already doing that, but you could do that very quickly if we get interest rates down and if the prices of things start to fall. I think you'd also see, Logan, less and less people who aren't able to buy their first home. Is that the price of the home? It's what the mortgage ends up being.

Right. You end up being able to spend. I mean, I know this from personal knowledge is, you know, I purchased a home back in, I guess it was 2015. And if I was just to purchase that same home at the same price, my mortgage would be nearly double if not that. I mean, it's just is what it is and it makes it impossible to even consider moving or coming up with options. My wife and I decided we're going to redo our house because we can't really, really look at anywhere to move that would be any upgrade. It would be not even moving to the same. Even with the fact that it'd be easy to sell your house in our market.

Sell it with no problem, but then where you're going, I think a lot of people have this sort of problem and they're looking to a Trump administration to address and fix some of these big economic issues that are hindering growth from a lot of young people who are trying, like you said, young people, by the way, I mean, people even in their thirties, who are trying to make that next step in their life, in their career, whether that. Kind of a place where you're based, you know, and again, that doesn't work for everybody anyways, but we know so many people wish they could, are working hard and have the salaries that in the over 10 years ago would have had been no problem to purchase a home, probably a home that they didn't even imagine that they could purchase. But I've had one of my mortgage payments that wasn't locked in has doubled. So, I mean, it went from, I think it was, I'll just say to people, the difference between $2,000 a month and $5,500 a month. That's a big difference.

It's a rental property. So getting that back, I mean, so people are being hurt. There's a lot to do, but we have to clean up Washington first. And I want you, people should hear from Christopher Wray. Yeah. And phone lines are open also at 1-800-684-3110. We should hear first.

I think this gives you an idea. This is President Trump with Kristen Welker on NBC news, you know, last week going over the, what would happen to Christopher Wray? Does he get fired?

Does he not? We do know obviously that Christopher Wray has said, Hey, before I get fired, I am just going to bow out nicely over the next few weeks. Let's hear that conversation. Are you going to fire the current FBI director, Christopher Wray, who you appointed? Well, I can't say I'm thrilled with him. He invaded my home. I'm suing the country over it.

He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I'm very unhappy with the things he's done. And crime is at an all time high.

Migrants are pouring into the country that are from prisons and from mental institutions, as we've discussed. I can't say I'm thrilled. I don't want to say, I don't want to, again, I don't want to be Joe Biden and give you an answer and then do the exact opposite. So I'm not going to do that.

What I'm going to say is I certainly cannot be happy with him. You take a look at what's happened. And then when I was shot in the year, he said, Oh, maybe it was shrapnel. Where's the shrapnel coming from? Is it coming from, is it coming from heaven?

I don't think so. So we need somebody to straighten it. You know, I have a lot of respect for the FBI, but the FBI's respect has gone way down over the last number of years. Don't you have to fire him in order to make room for cash brutality is in fact confirmed. Well, I mean, it would sort of seem pretty obvious that if cash gets in, he's going to be taking somebody's place, right?

And somebody is the man that you're talking about. And listen, I think Christopher Wray did the right thing here. He has not been someone who has been a very successful FBI director. He's gotten way too political, like the President said, raiding his home, those documents being scattered, sending in agents to spy on churches with no basis. It wasn't like they were looking for an individual who might be trying to utilize. It was just, hey, you know, we should look into these Catholic churches because that's where we see so much domestic terrorism, you know, except I don't see any.

But you know what? They consider us a lot of us domestic terrorists with pro-life activists. And that is work that we are having to do, even with the overturning of Roe, even with Republicans in control. So pro-lifers in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. Logan, you're working on big projects now that we won't be able to do without people's financial support right now where they can double their donation because these are some big pro-life projects.

Yeah, absolutely. We're signing contracts hopefully in the next few weeks. And a lot of it's going to be based on your response. We're going to unveil a lot of that coming up in the next week as something that we are working on, big pro-life projects that are beyond just the law. We're also going to influence culture in a way that we've been working on for the last six months or so. These are projects that are dealt with some of the highest level of incredible marketing and creative people who are putting together these campaigns that we think are going to be revolutionary.

But of course we can't do it without your support because that is how this works. It's not like we're running an ad campaign for the ACLJ. We're running an ad campaign to support the concept of keeping your child and why that is a good choice to make. There's not a return on that ad campaign, if you will. What we need is your support to make sure we can take over these spaces.

We're going to talk about that again in the coming days. The ACLJ Faith and Freedom Drive is happening right now. It's our year-end drive.

It's our biggest month of the year. Have your gift doubled right now through our Faith and Freedom year-end drive at ACLJ.org. You can scan that QR code on your screen. If you can't do that right now, I understand. But right now if you do, your gift's doubled, that means another ACLJ member, ACLJ champion that's someone that gives on a monthly recurring basis is ready to make and unlock their matching donation.

This is a gift you can give this Christmas season that makes a global impact supporting the work of your ACLJ. I encourage you to do that if you can. And if you can't, an easy way to support the ACLJ for free, hit that subscribe button if you're watching on YouTube. Hit that follow button on rumble. If you're watching on X, follow us there.

Share it with your friends. Make sure that this content gets out there for more people to see. These confirmation petitions are very important. A lot of us on the right don't have a very close relationship with Tulsi Gabbard because if you were in Washington, D.C. as a member of Congress, you might have worked with her on some issues and she's got some definite Republicans in the House who support her work and some who have gone from the House to the Senate who knew her well and how she could work in a bipartisan way. But who better to kind of validate than a conservative Christian legal organization that she joined up with to be on this broadcast to talk directly to you and with us about serious issues, whether it was issues for the country, issues when it comes to our military, and issues when it comes to our allies and the deployment of U.S. troops and the hot wars going on around the world.

This is someone who, while doing all this, has served over 20 years in the military. So that's a great way. Those petitions don't just get signed online to show everybody, look, we've got a lot of signatures. We deliver them, hand deliver them to the Senate teams so they know exactly how many Americans. And ACLJ supporters want to see Tulsi Gabbard confirmed because we have worked with her over this past year, even a bit longer. And so we got to know Tulsi.

She's the real deal. And so that's why we've got that petition up at ACLJ.org. So another way to really assist us if things are getting too tight this season, but if not, again, making that donation now at ACLJ.org is our core. It is how we get to figure out kind of where we go with that budget, like Logan was talking about. How far can we go with a pro-life campaign? What cases do we need to already be preparing for that we kind of see bubbling in our own caseload, but also in what's happening in the country as well. So we'll take your calls at 1-800-684-3110.

But I really encourage you, if you've got that $50 or $25, again, it doubles the impact of your donation. And that is serious for the ACLJ and it really does matter. So if you want to talk to us again, ACL against 1-800-684-3110, what would you have done if Christopher Wray had done this to you? And do you think that the President should just leave that alone or do you agree that the President should be able to fire anybody who is appointed by a President? Democrats might not like it, but that should be, you know, it's just, we don't even need laws on that. It's clear how the constitution is written. This is just a, well, we've always done it this way. And guess what? That's why Washington Logan can't stand Donald Trump is because he doesn't care how Washington used to do things.

That's right. We'd love to hear from you about this. Give us a call at 1-800-684-3110.

When you heard about Christopher Wray in this situation, did you, yeah, it was a sigh of relief to know that he is going to, I would say a peaceful transition, I guess you'd say. 1-800-684-3110. Give us a call. We've got some great segments coming up also. Jeff Balabon is going to join us from ACLJ Jerusalem as well as we have special guests coming up in the next segment.

So you're gonna stay tuned for that. And of course, support the work of the ACLJ. As Jordan said, we are, this is the most important month of the year. So I know you're going to hear a lot of fundraising over the next few weeks. Just know that that's why 25% of our annual budget comes in in the month of December. So we can't do it without you right now.

ACLJ.org, but give us a call at 1-800-684-3110. And if you're online right now, if you're watching on YouTube or you're watching on Rumble and you have nothing to say, and you're like, I don't know what to put in this chat. I see it going by. I like to know where everyone's watching from. So just during this break, if you either go make a donation or put in the comments where you're watching from or do both. We'll be right back.

All right, welcome back to Secula. We're joined by a great friend of ours. Someone we work with as a colleague, Tristan Levitt from Empower Oversight. We always encourage you to check their site out at empoweroversight.org. You know, we work with Tristan for those whistleblowers like Marcus Allen, who we achieved the successful settlement with the FBI.

I want to check in with Tristan on that. We're still in court going on with Garrett O'Boyle, the one who said, you know, if you speak out, the FBI will crush you. And they are fighting back.

They did not in a very different way than they did with Marcus. So we continue to fight that as well together with Empower Oversight. But I also know Tristan that you've got some new information through FOIA and through the work you're doing and with the Department of Justice. And I wanted to give you the opportunity to share people about it. It's really important when we talk about these cases.

Yeah, absolutely. So my partner, Jason Foster, who founded Empower, he and I used to work together for Senator Chuck Grassley on the Senate Judiciary Committee. It was where we investigated Operation Fast and Furious. And when I was over in the House side after the Hillary Clinton email investigation, he stayed in Senator Grassley's office. And as various things came up, like the Russiagate investigation, Jason was really thoroughly involved in that. Well, about a year ago, we learned that from a phone provider of his, that way back in 2017, the Justice Department had sought out his communications records. And it turns out that it related to a leak investigation, the news of some of the information that DOJ was providing to Congress. And so just this week, the Justice Department Inspector General finally released its report, which found that back in 2017, DOJ took 43 congressional staffers, two members of Congress, and sought communications on, you know, sought records from all of them. So for instance, Jason's information, you know, communicating with whistleblowers in the Justice Department, those call records, not the call themselves recordings, but the records, the phone logs, all would have been produced. And what's worse, the Justice Department then got courts without ever telling the court that this related to congressional records, because obviously we have a separation of powers under our Constitution.

That's there for a reason. Congress is supposed to conduct oversight of the executive branch. Jason's job on the Senate Judiciary Committee working for Senator Grassley was to conduct oversight so that when the Justice Department is doing things, Congress has insight into that and can look for wrongdoing. Well, the Justice Department used that backward and never backward and never told the judge when they sought these communications that they were congressional records they were seeking. And so finally, this Inspector General report highlights what a huge problem that is, how it can expose whistleblower information, and also how the judge never knew that for four or five years after that, DOJ got non-disclosure agreements to stop Google or Apple or anyone else from informing those whose records had been obtained. So this is a really big problem. Kash Patel is one of the staffers whose records were also obtained, but this is something that there's got to be more change on because DOJ just saying, well, we won't do it again is not good enough.

No, it's not. I mean, there's got to be something done. And Tristan, we've talked about the legislative reform necessary so that whistleblowers are protected, but now we're going to the point where we're talking about people inside the executive branch who are being investigated by the FBI. They're getting the okay to go from a judge.

And I wanted to kind of get this from you because I think this has got to be, people are thinking, how did that happen? How did they go to a judge and say they wanted these records without telling the judge where those records were? So it's because they sought it, they didn't use their official Senate-issued phone or House-issued phone.

They sought their personal side records. And in Jason's case, it was significant though, because it was a Google Voice number. He's explained this publicly, but that Google Voice phone number routed directly to his Senate phone. So even though they weren't using, because if they had sought directly the Senate-issued phone numbers, there is a requirement out there from Congress that Congress has to be notified if there's any sort of request there.

DOJ was sneaky. So they just found the personal communications avenues for these individuals and sought those out. And so that's why none of the information to the judge was just presented as, here's a leak investigation. Some classified information has been reported out there. We want you to allow us to go and look at the communications records of all these individuals.

And the judge was never the wiser. Tristan, there was a commentator on MSNBC yesterday that was talking about the nomination of Cash Patel, reacting to Chris Wray, announcing that he'd be leaving. And he said, and this is a former state Senator of Florida, and he said something to the effect that Cash Patel used to be on Team Normal, but then he got investigated and became radicalized. And I think when you hear what Empower is talking about here and what the Office of the Inspector General has confirmed through their investigation, when you hear people say that, oh, they were investigated and radicalized, it rings hollow to me because it doesn't seem radical to want the Department of Justice to want to follow the law, not spy on congressional staffers doing their constitutional mandate of oversight. But here we are. The mainstream is going to say it's radical, but I think it also shows the importance of getting these reforms through in the next Congress and under the next administration while we have this opportunity to ensure this doesn't happen again.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And what's unfortunate about this whole radicalized narrative is this impacts Republicans and Democrats, right? So this is not a partisan issue. To be clear, people can spin this however they want. This was the beginning of the Trump administration.

That's how a lot of people reported it. On the other hand, it was career folks in the Justice Department, the FBI, that are seeking these out. They sought out records from both Democrat and Republican members of Congress. But I think everybody has to take a step back and understand the Constitution was established before there was a Republican Party, before there was a Democrat Party, and the separation of powers in there, the checks and balances are really important.

They're there for a reason. And so to the extent that we just allow this to happen, just allow people to run those over, because we think, well, if I'm a Republican, it's fine. It's just Republicans.

If I'm a Democrat, it's fine. It's just the Democrats, really, really has led to part of the erosion of our protections in our government and our separation of power systems. So they absolutely need to be reformed.

DOJ cannot have that kind of access with no checks on them. And you're right. This is the key time to do it, to make those changes. And we've got the President to do it. We've got the House to do it. We've got the Senate to do it. We just have to fight hard alongside and power oversight to do that.

Tristan, thanks for joining us. We're still in the fight with you to get both Garrett O'Boyle and make sure he is set and gets what he deserves. And also to make sure, hey, just really quickly, Marcus Allen, because remember last time, still were issues over back pay.

Where does that stand? So he's gotten, we're whittling it down, but he's gotten more. He got an initial payment. He got a subsequent payment, and we're still doing the kind of final due diligence to make sure that he's gotten everything that he's owed. But he's in a much better place than he was six months ago, obviously, thanks to all the work that we've all put in.

Thank you, Tristan. Folks, that is just great news. I wanted to make sure you knew that, because if you remember the last time we talked to Tristan, that was the big holdup that the FBI had agreed to a figure that they didn't want to really, then they started fighting to pay out. So all of this work, even when you get the victory, this is a great example, Logan, when you get a victory at ACLJ, that doesn't mean that work on that case for that client is done. In fact, it could go for another year.

And Garrett O'Boyle's case, similar kind of client, still in court. Yeah, you have to celebrate it. We want to make sure people know when there's a victory, that you take that victory and go, wow, this is great. We saw the work the ACLJ said they were going to do.

They did it and they won. And that's great. But as you said, we are paying the best of the best. We're paying the best lawyers, the best media people to make sure that we be able to provide this not only to those clients, but to future clients in the future and have broadcasts like this to make sure we can stay on the air. So I encourage you right now, as we head to the second half hour of this broadcast, if you don't get that on your local station, find us on YouTube or rumble or ACLJ.org right now, ACLJ.org and support the work at ACLJ.org.

Scan the QR code. We'll be right back. Second half hour coming up.

Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We're taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Tristan brought up some interesting things too about current nominees whose information got sought in this way that we want to fight in Congress to make sure isn't done because this kind of being able to go to a court and say, no, no, we're not looking for any kind of official government records. This is not a separation of powers issue. We just want their personal records. We believe the wrongdoing is done on the personal side. And if we had access to that, that's enough. We don't need government access, but someone has a phone forwarding, a call forward set up so that it goes to their work phone so they don't miss calls that might be important for the senator they work for.

And it happened to Kash Patel, who now they're fighting back. What you're really seeing is separation of powers being kind of fading away because you've got one of the branches of government able to spy on the other branch of a government by utilizing a loophole, technical loophole. And one of the issues that we've seen in court all the time, Logan, you don't have to be an attorney to see this, is that courts are not always the best place to figure out technology. You've got to have the laws and they've got to be clear because a lot of times you're dealing with judges and then when you get to even the US Supreme Court that are not as active on the technologies that are available today so easily. And that's why you have to fight on the legislative side, which takes me to Logan, when you're supporting the ACLJ, it's not always just the legal work, it's all the policy work and legislative work that we do on Capitol Hill that's just important to issues like this.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's important that we have people who can go in into these courtrooms, like you say, and explain it in a way that's easy to understand. Not that these judges are technologically not savvy, but sometimes they're older, they don't know what we're talking about here.

Look, even for us, we have to do our research on what people are using or not using. I did want to throw back a little bit, Will brought up in the last segment, that clip from MSNBC about Kash Patel and how he was quote unquote radicalized. Let's take a listen to this. This is from MSNBC just today. I was disappointed, Jonathan, that Ray capitulated. That's what he did.

He ran from the building. He's still fighting the last war. He's still in a world of norms. This is the Trump era.

It's different. He should have stayed and fought, forced Trump to fire him. His replacement is likely to be Kash Patel.

I do think he'll be confirmed by the Senate. And Kash Patel is someone actually, I know he was a public defender in Miami, so he was in my neck of the woods. He was actually on team normal for a while, even when he worked for Congressman Devin Nunes.

Kash Patel was a very likable guy. He was not part of the ultra maga, but what happened was he changed during the Russia investigation. He was investigated himself. It took a lot of time, money out of his own pockets. And some would say it radicalized him.

And now it's a different Kash Patel. Well, no kidding. First of all, you're not radicalized because you support a President of the United States and you have political positions that you care about. That is not being radicalized. He was a Republican who saw the problems with oversight, because even as a top staffer on those committees, he gets investigated himself while he's doing the investigation. And you think about that investigation into Russia. Wouldn't you be pretty upset when you realized that the entire Russia narrative was fake?

It was all made up. And then they use a term, Logan, that makes them sound like a terrorist. Radicalized.

How often do you hear that for anything other than that? The traditional Catholics. We have to go to them. So we have to make everybody out to be this kind of on the line domestic terrorist if you happen to be pro-life, if you happen to be a Christian who shares their faith with others in any kind of public way, or if you have political positions that because of a President that you supported, who, by the way, you work in the world of Republican politics and executive branch, Kash Patel's got a long record there, that you're being spied on. And what I always put it, and we know this, is that if they will do it to Kash Patel and Donald Trump, we know they will do it to us. They already have.

They are still, they tried to send spies and were successful in one case into churches. Think about that. They want your records. They want to say that, you know what, this person, you know, he called somebody in a different country.

So because of that, we're gonna, we're not only gonna listen in on that call, but we can deem them a foreign agent and now spy on them through the FISA court. We gotta fight back. Donate today. Double your impact. We need that support.

ACLJ.org. Donate today. Welcome back to Sekulow. As you know, Israel in the news a lot these days, our number one ally in the Middle East, if not the entire world, because of what we're seeing kind of shift in Western Europe. We still do have NATO together to some point that I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done there by the Trump administration. They know that to push to make sure those countries pay their share because it's really right now, it's the United States paying for an international military and a lot of those other countries aren't up to speed.

So if we needed NATO deployments, we'd still have to also bear the brunt of that by using our own troops and our own supplies because they're not investing enough in their own militaries. But we are able to have that relationship with Israel where we do develop these new technologies. I mean, the Iron Dome has been one and these smaller Iron Dopes has protected so many American troops and was all really tested out in Israel at a larger scale to keep civilians safe. But I want to bring in Jeff Balaban for our director of ACLJ Jerusalem because people are looking towards a... I mean, it's never forever end to a conflict with a group like Hamas that calls for the murder of all Jews wherever you see them in their charter. But there is some optimism right now in Jeff in Israel because Hamas leadership that is currently still alive has shown some interest in hostage releases for a ceasefire and even more that to allow the IDF more access.

Tell people about it. So there's news that there's a potential new deal that Hamas is opening up to in Cairo and negotiations in Cairo and America seems to be pushing this deal, the current administration. And the deal has broken through certain things that Hamas has always said no to, which is that some IDF presence remains in Gaza, which obviously needs to remain there.

I mean, the entire Gaza is a military base or terrorist based used against Israel and the IDF needs to be there. And the other is that they've given a list of a certain number of hostages, including American hostages still held in captivity, although we don't know their status. And again, Hamas is utterly unreliable. And so this is, you know, in Israel, it's being greeted by some sectors who are desperate to have hostages home. Well, everyone's desperate for the hostages to be home and they're appreciating this moving forward. And everyone recognizes that the only reason this is happening is the imminent change in the American administration. And the Hamas is nowhere to run after this and no one who's going to protect them the way the American administration has been protecting them.

So that's one aspect. But the other aspect is that most people don't really trust Hamas, don't understand why part of this deal is likely to be the release of some huge number of terrorists, which is exactly what triggered October 7th, that terrorists that were released in exchange for a Jew taken hostage or an Israeli taken hostage ended up plotting and leading the October 7th massacres and atrocities and war. And so there's a tremendous amount of skepticism and concern at the same time as there are people who are desperate for some good news about returning some of these hostages, if not all of them.

Yeah, I wanted to circle back on a couple of things. One, Jeff, they actually put forward a list, Hamas, of the hostages that would be released and their condition. I don't know if they put their condition of this hostage is deceased, this hostage is still alive, but that we know that they presented a list like that. The importance of that plus the fact that they have conceded at this point, if this deal goes through, to allowing the IDF to keep a presence in Gaza, not just on the outskirts, for a certain period of time to make sure that this is not just a bluff move by Hamas to be able to rearm.

That's correct. Those are details that have come out. Again, let's realize who we're dealing with. And you know this, obviously, on the other side, we're dealing with people who decided that it was a good idea to murder, rape, mutilate whole families, burn them alive, and videotape it and share it.

So their credibility is somewhat difficult to really believe. But at the same time, Israel is making this deal, or is looking at this deal, I shouldn't say making the deal, based on also knowing there's a timeline while Biden and Blinken are in charge of this policy, or Biden and Harris and Blinken or whoever's in charge of this policy, this administration, and in these waning weeks before Donald Trump takes office, knows that there's tremendous desperation by Hamas, and they will see what they can get out of it during this period of time. Is some of this, Jeff, and I'm just curious about the sort of the mood on the ground, the way I was talking about that in Israel, is some of this that the people, the citizens of Israel, are just wanting some sort of, and it sounds weird to say this, but some form of normalcy again. So it goes, okay, we need to get our tourism back. We need to get all these things back.

So if this is not necessarily the best solution, but it's some kind of solution to the problem, is there that feeling going on? Or you feel like there's some pressure there to say, hey, the country's got to get back on track. The war needs to wrap up and we need to get things back going, because we were in a very Western civilization, again, driven pretty highly by tourism.

And of course, when the news coming out of Israel is a war 24 seven, that doesn't help. So the economy in general, and tourism is an important part of the economy here, but the economy in general has been buffeted by this war. I mean, we have a huge sector of people who would otherwise be in the workforce who have spent most of the past year on the front lines, fighting a war. And so things have shut down in the domestic economy, not just in terms of tourism, it's been affected, not shut down, but affected greatly.

And there is desperate hope for that. But as you, based on what I just said to you, you'll imagine even more hope is that their spouses and parents and children and brothers and sisters are going to come home from the front. And so the tourism and the economy are extremely important, but they also want their loved ones to be safe and sound. And we just had a return to the North here. Finally, because of what took place in Lebanon and Syria recently, they finally allowed people to return to the North. And there are all kinds of celebrations.

People have seen their homes for the first time in a year. And this, we're not talking about a few people to our tens of thousands of people tens of thousands of people, thousands and thousands of families who've been away from their home and even refugees within their own country for a year. And so we are so far from normalcy here and yet people have had to contend with it and focus on it. And people ask me all the time, you know, are the Israelis, do they have the gumption to stick this out or are they, you know, or are they reeling from this?

The answer is both are true. Yes, they have the gumption to stick this out. They're taking the lead here. And by the way, what Jordan said earlier, I want to get back to that about what just took place in Syria and in terms of Israel being America's ally. You know, when Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor, most of America criticized it, leading America criticized it. Some didn't.

Some said thank you. Imagine if the Iraqis had had nuclear weapons. Imagine if what's now happening in Syria, which is a total collapse, and now you have multiple black hats fighting each other.

No one's good there fighting each other for control. Lots of terrorist organizations. Imagine if they had access to the kind of caches of weapons, including chemical weapons that exist in Syria. And Israel is really leading the charge in saving the West from this.

You know, Jeff, talking about the hostages as well. I always say that about Israel too. They are the tip of the spear in the battle against Islamic terrorism and new technology to keep their soldiers and most importantly to them, civilians safe like here.

And we're now able to use that technology by working together. So when people question, why do we send these resources? And I want to bring up this, like in the national defense authorization budget, why do we send these kinds of resources like 500 million to Israel? Well, it's not just 500 million, Jeff, to Israel. If you actually look at it, what it does, it's 500 million in spending on U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation. What I was just talking about, Jeff, is that we are able to work with Israel to test technologies that work in a smaller area, as Israel is a small state, that we could then deploy on the battlefield or in any situation necessary to protect American lives. That's why we invest in Israel because we're working together to save lives. I agree, Jordan. This is obviously much more of an investment. People complain about it like we're giving a gift to the state of Israel. First of all, as you say, all that money is spent in America. Unfortunately, what this Biden administration has done by withholding weaponry when it was needed have actually damaged Israel's ability to trust America to be there when there's a time of great conflict and wars. But it's always been based on the idea that there's a mutually beneficial arrangement here. Israel is the stabilization, the stabilizing force in this very volatile and violent region. This is a region that Russia and China both have interest in to turn it also and control it. And so these issues are incredibly important to every American.

I'll add to that. We have a major, as we know, problem with people, illegal aliens in America. There's going to be mass deportations, hopefully, from America of illegals.

Criminals will come over. Well, many of those are jihadis, and we know that. And guess who has the best intelligence that can help the United States of America and the individual states root out the terrorists or the potential terrorists who have come over the border in the past few years to America? We know they're there, and I believe that we will be working closely with Israel to help them, to them to help us be able to root out those terrorists from America. You know, Jeff, to end this on those hostages that we don't ever want to forget in these talks, we negotiate and are representing about 10. Four of them have been released, two have been confirmed killed, and then four remain. And two of the four remaining are women, so they should have gotten out with that humanitarian release but weren't. So we need to continue to work very hard to get those hostages released. And again, the way we do that, of course, it all starts with having the resources to have ACLJ Jerusalem and other people we have to associate with to get those Americans and Israelis home, and as many as we can, alive. So support the work of the ACLJ right now during our Faith and Freedom Drive.

Double your impact at ACLJ.org. Donate today. We'll be right back.

All right, welcome back to Secular. Let me thank those of you who have been holding on the line. We're going to get right to those calls at 1-800-684-3110. If you want to be on the show, you need to call right now.

That's 1-800-684-3110. A lot of calls in on, of course, Christopher Wray and Kash Patel. Let's get to them. All right, let's go to Robert. He's calling Maryland on line two. Robert, you're up.

Yes, hi. I was calling about the FBI director or former FBI director, Christopher Wray. If he's now the former FBI director, what's the main reason or reasons he either resigned or was fired? And I want to say before you answer the question, thank God that Assad has fallen in Syria, and we need to continue to destroy all those jihadist groups in Syria. We don't want Syria to become another Afghanistan. Appreciate that.

Thank you. No, we don't, Robert. I mean, Syria, as you heard from Jeff Balaban, it's something we have to watch very closely. On the one hand, to see a dictatorship fall like that should be a good thing for the world. Should is what I say, because sometimes, I mean, those were dictators that were using chemical weapons on their own people.

So it doesn't get much worse unless you put in a terror group that starts executing mass executions of people in Syria because they don't share their exact faith or the women aren't wearing the clothing the right way and they are killed and executed. So we will see if this group really has changed the way they say they have. On the other point, Christopher Wray has not actually resigned yet. He announced that he will resign before the beginning of the next administration. So what will happen is, unless it happens a little bit earlier, which wouldn't really change the procedure much...

In general, we're only a month out. He's got a deputy, a principal deputy. Unless that principal deputy resigns with him as well, they could set their resignation date, depending on where Kashpatel's nomination is, somewhere, again, right after the President takes office.

And they are basically holding the spot. And you kind of go down the list to figure out who would be there as an interim director who can keep the ships kind of running. But it's certainly only there until the moment you can send Kashpatel in, who is someone that continues to gain support on Capitol Hill. And I think that's a great thing because a lot of people know him more for his work in politics outside of government. I mean, he's someone who's been chief of staff to the Department of Defense. So chief of staff to the head of the US military, the deputy assistant to President Trump.

When he was chief of staff at DOD, he oversaw the $3 million employees, a $740 billion budget, and $2 trillion in assets. He was the deputy director with Rick Grenell, the deputy director of National Intelligence, and where he, again, assisted Rick in Trump's mission to get those intelligence agencies back on track as best they could. And he was, so he worked very close with Rick on that. And Rick is, part of our team is working hard to get Kash there. So the tough part is, when you look at his legislative background, the fact that he worked with Tristan Levin, he worked with Devin Nunes in uncovering the Russia story being a complete lie. That's what the left doesn't like about Logan. It's not that he's a political actor.

It's that Kash Patel is the one who exposed their lies about Donald Trump. Of course, of course. Let's go ahead and continue on with these calls. And by the way, if you want to call in last chance, 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Melissa, who's calling in South Carolina, watching on Rumble. Melissa, you're on the air.

Hey, Merry Christmas, guys. I expected Christopher Wray to resign before Trump got in. But what I don't understand is why are people upset with Donald Trump potentially being able to fire him or fire somebody? The Constitution gives him that right. People that are treasonous, that are not doing what is in the best interest of the United States, according to the Constitution, should be removed. And I just don't understand why we wasted four years on the Biden administration, but then to knock Trump about wanting to fire people or remove them, that's his right. So that's my comment.

You know what it is? Because, Melissa, they love traditional Washington, D.C. and traditional Washington, D.C. follow this procedure of, well, an FBI director should serve a little bit more than just two terms of the President that maybe nominated them. So let's give them 10 years. And then at that mark, they automatically will resign.

But there's nothing that stops the President from saying, you know what? No, you don't get your 10 years because of how you're conducting the running of the FBI. I disagree with how you're doing it.

I don't like your working style. You're out the door. You're appointed by the President. This isn't a lifetime appointment as the Constitution makes clear that those judicial nominees are. This is an appointment by the President like any other. They serve at the pleasure of the President and people, Logan, are actually now mad at Christopher Wray for resigning.

Yeah, I'm sure there's a big group that's upset about that because he should have a few more years left in his term. Let's go to Mary, who's calling in Pennsylvania on Line 1. Mary's watching on Rumble, favorite free speech platform, Rumble. Mary, you're on the air.

Hi, thank you. My question is about information that the FBI has been holding undisclosed, such as the Epstein list and the January 6 information. I just wanted to know what keeps that information protected. So when Cash does take over, if he does, then he can disclose that information. Ultimately, Mary, information like what you're talking about, the FBI director would work with the Department of Justice. That would be led by Pam Bondi as attorney general, former AG of Florida, and you'd work together on those steps and then take it to the President to get the final authorization. The President makes the ultimate call. On those kind of issues to release that, and it depends on how much you're releasing. Are you releasing portions that are in a summary and then quoting it, or are you just going to give everything to everyone?

I think the more you're giving, the more you want that final sign off from the President. Now, you said what guarantees they won't try to keep things from him. He'll be able to bring in his own team to an extent, but remember, he understands that most of that office, unfortunately, will be trying to work against him.

So what do you do? Well, you take every division within the Department of Justice, and they're all divided up by the different areas of law that they cover. And one of those that has been a serious problem for Republicans, it doesn't like it should be, but has, is the Civil Rights Division inside DOJ. So when you get to that level, you make sure that the right person's there. So to work with someone like Cash Patel, who'd be the director of the FBI, which the Department of Justice oversees, so there's that interplay there. That's going to be Harmey Dillon through her confirmation, and she would then oversee. Now, she was, again, someone who was head of the California Republican Party, has a firm that is very directly involved in election law, so totally qualified for that division. And you've got to make sure all of those people in the DOJ are set, and then you got to make sure if you're Cash Patel that you've got that you've got the right team as well. You don't get as many picks, but you certainly get enough to where you've got a team that's going to make sure you're able to carry out the job that you have been tasked to do by the President of the United States and likely confirmed to do by the U.S. Senate. And if people are, I think this is what's going to be different about Trump this time around more quickly, and definitely the left you never see this is, they're going to be more aggressive about, Logan, getting rid of the bad actors. And what I know the ACLJ will be involved there is that will become a constitutional question potentially that goes all the way through federal courts. What is the line where you can remove a federal bureaucrats who have all these protections if they aren't providing information? Is that enough?

Is it just insubordination? We're going to have to fight those issues out. It seems like we shouldn't have to, but we know we will.

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