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On this episode of Sekulow, we delve into President Biden’s controversial last-minute commutation of death row inmates’ sentences, a move that has sparked debate across the nation. With only a few days left in his presidency, Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates has been scrutinized for its potential political motivations and timing. Join us as we examine the implications of this decision and its impact on his legacy, with insights from legal experts and guest contributors.
SPEAKER 07 :
Today on Sekulow, Biden disregards crime during his last days in office.
SPEAKER 05 :
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.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Seculo and we hope you all had a Merry Christmas, a time to celebrate the birth of Christ with your family and your church and those that you love. And we are talking about today on this day after Christmas, something that may have happened, uh, under the radar for you as you celebrate the holidays. I know many of us don’t like to get too bogged down in the news over the Christmas holiday, but President Biden issued a commutation as he’s been building up these numbers of commutations and pardons across the last few weeks, which is normal at the end of a presidency when the president exercises the pardon power and commutation power that he has. But this one was a little bit of a head scratcher for many. And this was a statement from President Joe Biden on federal death row commutations. This came on December 23rd, a time when many people are traveling, already spending time with family, getting ready for Christmas Eve services, wrapping presents and the like. And what President Biden did here was he commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row. Now, he’s not releasing them from prison. They’re not being pardoned. But it’s a commutation from a death penalty conviction down to life sentences without the possibility of parole. And at this time, as his legacy is being cemented, as his time in office is coming to an end, it still seems like the president is playing politics with his pardon power and with his executive powers. The 37 of these 40 individuals, three which will remain on death row, are notably Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was one of the Boston bombers, the perpetrator of the Emmanuel Baptist Church shooting, and the Tree of Life synagogue shooter. I don’t even want to say their names because they are horrible criminals that are on death row. And now there is a very lively debate around the use of the death penalty around the world and the federal level. But it is a curious timing that President Biden, decides to commute these sentences of these convicted mass murderers in many cases down to the life in prison without the possibility of parole, with the exception of three, which he gives the explanation of these. These commutations are consistent with my moratorium. My administration is posed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate motivated mass murder. So he has exceptions about something that he is convinced the federal government must stop the use of. We’re going to talk about it with Harry Hutchison in the next segment, and we’ve got a lot more ahead. But it just seems inconsistent and more of a political game to mess with the incoming Trump administration. More than anything. And he does it right during the Christmas holiday. So we’ll get into that. And we have a lot more ahead on the show today. If you’re watching, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. Leave a comment. Tell us where you’re watching from. Or if you have a comment about this, you can also call in at 1-800-684-3110. We’ve got Rick Grinnell coming up ahead. But I also want to remind you that we are… as this year is almost over, if you can believe it, in the final days of our Faith and Freedom year-end drive. This is the most important month of the year at the ACLJ. It enables us to do all the work you see forward-facing, like this broadcast, like the big victories in court you hear about, but also all of the legal work and analysis and education that we provide here at the ACLJ at no cost to our clients because of those of you that give faithfully to the ACLJ. If you donate today, your gifts are doubled. Go to faithandfreedomdrive, year and drive at aclj.org. You can scan that QR code if you’re watching on one of our many video platforms. But donate today, have your gifts doubled, aclj.org. Welcome back to Sekulow. I’m joined by Harry Hutchison here in the studio, and we’ll get to that. More analysis of this commutation by President Biden just days before Christmas in just a moment. But I do want to remind you, if you are watching right now, we are in the final days of our Faith and Freedom year in drive. And actually, today begins a triple match. So we have had gifts doubled throughout this match, but because of ACLJ champions and those that provide that matching fund, we are with just five days left Unlocking a triple match. So it’s no longer just your gift doubled. A $25 gift now becomes $75. A $100 gift becomes $300. It is your tax deductible gift is triple matched at ACLJ.org. And this provides the funding as we budget into the next year to fight many cases. We’ll talk about some of those cases here today. But these cases are fought at no cost to the client. When a track team is told you can’t pray by their coach at a public school before your meet. And the courage that it takes for a high school student to say, I know this is wrong. I need to fight it, but I don’t know how. That’s where the ACLJ comes in. And we’re victorious. When we fight those cases, we know we have the law on our side and we know we can take it on. And we know that it’s not going to cost those courageous teenagers or in many other cases. And we’ll talk about those, too. The individual doesn’t have to worry about, how am I going to pay a lawyer to fight for me? They come to the ACLJ and they get those services at no cost to them because of you, the donor who stands up. We had 175 pro-life legal matters this year of 2024, 197 free speech matters that we fought this year. 142 religious liberty matters and 126 legal actions battling the deep state and hundreds more that don’t necessarily fit into that clean category of just free speech or religious liberty. But we fight these at no cost to the clients. And that is such a profound impact on our nation, on ensuring that our Constitution is followed, and that these individuals’ rights are protected. And it’s been a rough time for individual rights and religious liberty in fighting the deep state over these past four years. But just because there’s a change in administration doesn’t mean that that everything goes away that we have to fight. Many times we have to fight it harder because then it’s the individuals at these bureaucracies or these states that don’t believe in protecting the freedoms that we have in our constitution that start to go on the offense. And that’s why the ACLJ is here. The federal government can do a lot, the new administration, to protect rights and to reestablish the guidepost for how this nation should behave. But that doesn’t mean it goes away. That means the bad actors sometimes come out in more force. And that’s why it’s so important to give today in our Faith and Freedom Year in Drive. Go to ACLJ.org. Have your gift tripled today. and make sure that we are prepared at any challenge that is thrown our way in 2025. But I want to get back to this comment and this commutation by President Biden, because Professor Hutchison, I know there’s a very robust debate around the world, in the United States, about even the use of the death penalty. And that’s not what this is about in this issue here for me. But what it is about is the Biden administration trying to hamstring the next administration. It’s also about the ability of the president to show consistency, which he currently is not, I believe. And it also brings up the issue of where have you been on this issue for four years? Why now, as you try to cement your legacy in what you hope will be a positive one, with just a few days left in the administration? What were your thoughts when you saw this come out over the Christmas holiday?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, number one, I think it’s crystal clear that President Biden’s enduring legacy is his ongoing mental decline. And so consistent with his ongoing mental decline, he offers arguably an inconsistent explanation for commuting the death penalty for death row inmates. And you are quite right, Will, to point out there is this huge question out there. Where was Joe Biden two years ago, three years ago, four years ago? He had the opportunity to commute these sentences much earlier. It’s important to keep in mind, as you correctly point out, that there is an open debate surrounding the death penalty. One of the arguments against the death penalty has always been the possibility that one of the defendants is in fact innocent. But there’s no evidence, at least that I’ve seen on the record, that any of the commutations that he issued recently fall into that category. In other words, none of these prisoners were innocent, and there’s no evidence of innocence which could potentially justify a commutation. But it’s also imperative to look at the background. Joe Biden has basically offered a commutation clemency festival. Keep in mind, on December the 12th, he offered clemency to 1,500 inmates. He recently pardoned his son, Hunter, And now he’s offering a commutation for 37 death row inmates, notwithstanding the fact that the victim’s families have gone through a trial and sentencing phase. And he basically says to the victims’ families, I don’t care about your sense of justice. So at a minimum, he should have demonstrated that he was willing to talk to those victims before offering a commutation. But I would also quickly add that would be asking too much of President Biden given his mental decline.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and there was that – big report out of the Wall Street Journal last Friday, where it appears that the decline of President Biden happened even during the campaign in 2020. And that for four years, he hasn’t fully been operating as president. He held far fewer all cabinet meetings than his predecessors. He stopped meeting with the Secretary of Defense regularly, which was happening earlier in the presidency. but people were alarmed at how infrequent it became, especially when there were two global conflicts that America, at least by proxy, was involved in, the war in Gaza as well as the war in Ukraine, and his meetings became less frequent with his Secretary of Defense. And you look at these issues, and it does bring concern, and all of this is hindsight. There is a future ahead with the new administration. But One, it makes you question who is making these decisions, who is calling the shots. But also, if this were something that were a deeply rooted moral issue for the president, as he brings up, that he believes that I’m more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. Well, they did put them on hold. There was a moratorium on carrying out the executions during this presidency, so that is why no one was executed. But then he took the step of granting the commutation of the sentence from a death by execution down to life without the possibility of parole. But once again, if it’s that moral issue, and I do believe there are – many, many people, even conservatives, liberal across the spectrum that don’t believe, especially as you brought up, because of the issues that can happen in jury trials across this country, that necessarily the death penalty is the right thing for the state to have the power. However, Why, if this moral issue is so necessary at this time, were three left off? We’re not going to talk about the crimes that were committed by those that got their sentence commuted, but I read some of them, and they are horrific. But yet, the three… equally as horrific crimes were left their penalty and the others were not. We’re going to continue on with this discussion and much more, and you can call in at 1-800-684-3110 to join the conversation. But remember, we are in that triple match. If you donate to the ACLJ today in our Faith and Freedom year-end drive, your gift is effectively tripled. A $25 gift becomes $75. A $100 gift becomes $300. It’s important now more than ever. that you join us in this fight as we look forward to 2025, a year with so much opportunity, but also with many, many fights ahead. Donate today at ACLJ.org slash faith and freedom to have your donation tripled. Welcome back to Seculo. We hope you had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with your family. But we at the ACLJ are back at work. We are wrapping up 2024, which has been a very eventful year. But we also look forward to the fights ahead in 2025. I’m joined now by ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow. We are looking at the fights we have ahead. And you know more than anyone that just because there’s a friendly administration in the White House sometimes means that the fights become harder as you fight harder. more localized fights with states, with cities that are almost lashing out at the change in the administration and the way that the country is run. How great of a threat do you see both the deep state as well as just governments on a smaller scale or bureaucrats that want to push back and fight against the freedoms that we celebrate and fight to protect here at the ACLJ?
SPEAKER 06 :
so sometimes and this has been true over many years you’ll see that even with an administration that would be more friendly uh obviously in this situation um with president trump incoming president trump but the fact is that the bureaucrats are entrenched and if you look at some of our biggest fights We were in the middle of them. I remember when it went from President Obama to President Trump, we had the IRS targeting cases. And ultimately, it took a while for the new administration, you know, for everybody to catch up to speed. But we were able to get that case resolved successfully for our client because we utilized the benefit. of having lawyers that were taking a fresh look at this now within the government who acknowledged the wrongdoing of the Internal Revenue Service. Well, I think about the, right now, I think about the whistleblowers that we have. And we’ve been very aggressive in court and fighting back very aggressively. But the fact is now, we can now use other processes internally within the FBI, now that we’re going to have a new FBI director and a new attorney general in Pam Bondi, to get justice for clients that have been wrong. I think of Garrett Elboy, I think of a whole group of them. So there’s going to be those, but rest assured also, there will be new cases and new issues. I think you’re going to see a lot of congressional fights. Our government affairs office is going to be very, very busy, but we also have a great opportunity to reshape the law in a positive direction that literally brings equal justice under the law to everyone. I want to take a moment here on behalf of the Sekulow family, but also on behalf of the American Center for Law and Justice and all of our teams on radio, on government affairs, our lawyers, people that work in the social media to say a huge thank you to our donors who are supporting our ongoing work at the ACLJ. Your donations right now mean a lot because this is literally it. The last five days here are the biggest five days of our year for the ACLJ. So I would encourage you, if you’ve donated, thank you. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to do so at ACLJ.org because the impact will be great. We’re expanding. We have a lot of new opportunities ahead. And I’m excited about what’s coming, but we’ve got to be realistic that these are going to be a lot of fights. And you’re right, Will, a lot of these will end up on the local level.
SPEAKER 07 :
And you look at where we were at this point last year when we were preparing to fight at the Supreme Court over the 14th Amendment. And it’s just a vast difference of where we were just 12 months ago to where we are today. But that it took that fight of the ACLJ standing with the Colorado Republican Party and also the Trump team fighting for ballot access there as well to even get where we are today. And that’s happened this year.
SPEAKER 06 :
I mean, the 14th Amendment case was huge on a whole host of levels. And that was, of course, the idea that you would remove a duly qualified candidate from running for president, which is what the Colorado Secretary of State was trying to do, to win it at the Supreme Court and then ultimately win it overwhelmingly. Everyone recognizing that you can’t do what Colorado tried to do. Then you had the immunity case, which we were heavily involved in because as someone who is represented in uh the president while he served as president i know what the demands are like and the idea that um you lose immunity would be ridiculous no president would be free to make a decision that they need to make in protecting the country because everybody there’s already enough lawyers involved let me just put it that way you don’t need a dozen more but that’s the truth uh so those are listen we had a great run at the supreme court this year there’s no doubt about it but as i said without the support of ACLJ donors and members around the country. None of this happens. No daily radio broadcasts, no broadcasts on YouTube and Rumble and Facebook and X. None of that happens without the support of the people that are listening to this broadcast or watching this broadcast right now. And we encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ. Look, I mean, we’re at a strategic time and you want to take it… In the last administration, obviously, we were fighting the administration a lot. That doesn’t necessarily change in the sense of some of the ongoing cases may continue, and certainly in the beginning until the new Justice Department’s in place. But we do have great opportunities to get justice, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right, and that’s why we are here broadcasting December 26th to let you know what the fight ahead looks like and also how you can join the ACLJ and take part in this triple match here, these final days of our Faith and Freedom year-end drive. but we also have had many cases that aren’t the headline gripping cases that you see like the 14th amendment and things of that nature. But even the ACLJ work continues down where we protect individuals, individuals that, Can’t pray at a track meet before a track meet because their coach violates their rights or the student that we finally after years of fighting in Nevada was forced to read that monologue. And we got victory against that school district for that family as well. These victories are very important as well.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, listen, that’s how we started as an organization was representing individuals. And we still, that’s mostly what we do. People that could not afford lawyers that represent a president, but they, because of the generosity of our donors, they can be lawyers that have that kind of skill set let me take it a step further will on you you mentioned the school case and that was a tough case and you know we had a really fight uh to get justice in that case for the student and her mother let me tell you there are other ones we’ve got a case coming that’s out of florida on a prayer meeting that was held a prayer vigil actually for a community that was challenged by an atheist group And we’re fighting that out now with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and at the district court and ultimately go to the Supreme Court of the United States. We have a case that’s at the Supreme Court right now on pro-life sidewalk counselors. So there is, whether it’s at the school board level or the Supreme Court of the United States or the International Criminal Court, which is now officially indicted, The sitting president, Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, the ACLJ, heavily involved in that defense as well. So that’s our global offices. Logan has been over in our office overseas and has been visiting there and talked to our executive director, the head of the programming there, and they’re doing great work. So there’s a lot of activity that goes on, like you said, Will, that you can’t report every day because there’s so much of it. But that’s what we do every single day at the ACLJ.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right. And we’ve just got a minute here, but Jay will be staying with us in the next segment as well. So don’t tune out and go ahead and give a thumbs up and like and subscribe wherever you’re watching. And make sure you go to aclj.org slash faith and freedom to have your donation tripled. here through the end of the year donations will be tripled you’re hearing about the important fights that we fight every day at the aclj and as we try to navigate and predict what those fights ahead will be that’s where you come in when you donate it helps us budget out for the year it helps us know what areas we can go how aggressively we can fight and we fight aggressively at the aclj So go to aclj.org slash faith and freedom. Have your donation tripled today. We’ll be right back with more on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 05 :
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome back to Sekulow for our second half hour of the broadcast. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas with your family and friends. And now we talk about the fight ahead. And we have ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow joining us on the phone. And we’ve been talking about kind of that fight here domestically but we know the issues whether it be israel you mentioned the arrest warrants by the icc against prime minister netanyahu and even poland recently announced that if he were to go to the memorial at auschwitz they would they would actually have to carry out that arrest warrant because they are signatures to the icc how big of an impact and fight ahead is that for the aclj
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s going to be gigantic. And let me just say something. You talk about disgusting. Think about this for a moment. The sitting prime minister of Israel has been indicted on bogus charges. It’s nonsense. OK, this was in reference to Israel’s response on October 7th. So they’re going after the prime minister, who’s now told that if he goes to and I’ve been to the March of the Living, I’ve been to those memorials. that if he goes to Auschwitz, where relatives of mine and many Jewish people around the world lost relatives, the Jewish prime minister of the Jewish state can’t go to the Holocaust memorial because the International Criminal Court in The Hague has indicted him. Meanwhile, every dictator around the globe gets away with impunity. And here, Netanyahu did nothing. So what’s the fight going to be like? It’s going to be long. It’s going to be hard fought. But you’ve got to understand something. Look, I’m one of the few lawyers that have argued in front of the International Criminal Court in The Hague a couple of times. And it’s like nothing else you’ve ever experienced. We’ve showed that video before. But we’re committed to standing with the Jewish state. We’re committed to standing with Israel. And we’re going to fight. And I think we will ultimately prevail. But it’s going to take time and resources and a big international effort to do it.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right. And I was even seeing reports, and this goes back to the importance of even this broadcast in the media that we put out. The AFP, the Agents Free French Press, they put out a whole article yesterday about Christmas in Bethlehem because of the war in Gaza. And the entire article just referenced that Bethlehem is occupied by the Israelis and also said that Gaza and the West Bank, the Palestinian territories, are separated by Israeli-occupied land.
SPEAKER 06 :
You know what, Will? It’s interesting that the AFP said it, but let’s get it a lot closer to home, which is a case we have right now. How about the FBI in the United States saying it? That is real. They recognized the state of Palestine officially as a diploma was handed out to a Palestinian security officer, okay? And it is handed out and they announce it as the state of Palestine, which neither the United States or the rest of the world legally recognizes as a state. So this shows you the level of that hostility. And that’s why we’re fighting back on the domestic front, because that we send in that Freedom of Information Act request. I am sure they will not respond. And I’m sure we will be in court and we will prevail.
SPEAKER 07 :
We will prevail. And we also know where to direct a new FBI director and administration to be looking.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s exactly right. Look, we have relations with these people. I mean, Pam Bondi was on our impeachment team. Of course, Tulsi Gabbard is a team member of the ACLJ. Rick Grinnell is now the special envoy and is a team member. I mean, think about that for a moment. of the people with the ACLJ that have heavy involvement in the next administration. It’s very impressive. It’s impressive because God opened doors and our supporters have supported the work of the ACLJ. Let me say this really clearly to everybody. Your support is now more critical than ever. And, you know, we had that Now More Than Ever campaign, which was very successful for the ACLJ. And the truth of that is, this is, folks, we got a moment here where we can see some really great things. We have to seize the moment. And that’s where your support comes in.
SPEAKER 07 :
And you can do that today at aclj.org slash faithandfreedom or just aclj.org and have your donation tripled. The impact is tripled. These final days of the year, go to aclj.org slash faithandfreedom. We talked about these matters. We had 175 pro-life legal matters in 2024, 197 free speech matters, 142 religious liberty matters, and 126 legal actions against the deep state. And that’s just scratching the surface, folks. We fight every day here at the ACLJ. Join us, ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Sekulow. If you want to have your question or comment on air, go ahead and call us at 1-800-684-3110. I’ll be taking phone calls in the next segment of the broadcast. But right now, I’m joined by Rick Grinnell. who has been on this broadcast many times, and we are always happy to have Rick’s insight into these many complex issues that we face. But I saw this in The Hill. It seems like the left just doesn’t know how to lose, so they have to keep digging up old arguments in trying to stop the Trump presidency. But this headline… Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now. Rick, I thought this time last year when the ACLJ was preparing to file at the Supreme Court on the 14th Amendment cases and then we had a resounding victory at the Supreme Court, That issue was going to be dead, and we didn’t have to deal with that. But it seems like the short-term memory of the left is ever pervasive, and we’re seeing now history repeat itself as they try to get Congress to not certify an election, which I thought also was an insurrection. What are your thoughts on this, Rick?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, first of all, the one thing that we always know that will always happen, death taxes and the hypocrisy of Washington. Politicians will always be hypocrites, and we see this now. If we play by the same rules that they played against us, these lawyers who are filing cases to undermine democracy, this is their words, they should be disbarred. They should be canceled. They should be debanked. That’s what they did to us. And while I’m not advocating for that, because I think that it is a reckless trap for America, the reality is that this is what they did to us. And I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get them to stop. They started this whole thing, remember, in 2016, which most people forget. 75 Democratic congressmen and senators refused to go to Donald Trump’s inauguration. They said it was stolen, it was illegitimate. So they didn’t even go. They didn’t show up. They boycotted the peaceful transition of power. And it was just a very short time later that they were then screaming about undermining democracy while they were selecting rather than electing their candidate. And so the hypocrisy is just huge. Here is the problem, Will. In Washington… It is called a Tuesday. It is not unique. No one is surprised. It won’t be called out by the press rooms because they love the power of Washington and making sure that they protect that power. For the rest of us, you know, we ignored the media in the 2024 election. They piled on Donald Trump. They said, you know, terrible things. And the American people just came out and voted for him anyway. They know the truth. And I think the big news here is that the power of the media is really waning.
SPEAKER 07 :
And as you look at also the things that are coming out of the media now, after they participated in the cover-up of the state of our president for the last four years, they’re now feeling free to tell the full story. You saw that Wall Street Journal report that came out just before Christmas, so congratulations Timed perfectly to not get a ton of press, but still to be in the national record that really the decline of President Biden happened before he even took office when he was running for office. And they were trying to downplay how much Jill Biden was campaigning because it looked bad because President Biden wasn’t able to. And then you think about how much has been done under this presidency with a president not fully in charge. How much more was the deep state empowered by having the bureaucrats run the entire show with no real check from the president? And now we have to go in. We thought the swamp was swampy in 2016. How much worse is it now after four years of unchecked bureaucratic power, Rick?
SPEAKER 03 :
Look, I think that every single person that was around Joe Biden and stayed silent, the entire cabinet, the entire staff of the White House, they need to be held to account. They lied to the American people. They knew that he was declining. They said he was fine all the way through the summer. And we all know that that wasn’t true. And you have people like Barack Obama and Hollywood types that were saying, oh, I was with him. He’s as sharp as a tack. General Milley, for instance. How dangerous is it for General Milley to act so political that he overlooks a failing and declining president who can’t make decisions in order to keep his job? That is really scary in America that that has happened. But that’s exactly what happened. People were afraid to stand up. And yet what do they do? They always say that, you know, the other side is afraid to stand up. And and we see it very, very clearly. And I think they should be held to account. I’ll add this. I don’t think that the pardons that all just came out, the outrageous pardoning of murderers is something that Joe Biden did. I think his staff set him up, maybe even auto penned what happened. But Biden is in no position cognitively to make these decisions. And somebody should have stopped it.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and Rick, we talked about that earlier in the broadcast, the commutation of 37 out of the 40 death row prisoners down to life imprisonment. But even that… was so loaded with a political game because they, in their statement that was purportedly from President Biden, that he believes this is not a practice that the federal government should be doing, but he still left three on there because whoever was writing this policy and deciding this would go forward knew how untenable it would be for the American people. If you pardoned the Boston Marathon bomber and the Tree of Life synagogue shooter and the Emmanuel Baptist Church shooter. that there would be outrage across this country that you lessened the sentence for those violent, terroristic criminals. But the stories that people don’t know, they knew they could get away with this to help, I guess, cement a little bit better legacy with the left. It really just boggles the mind.
SPEAKER 03 :
Look, it’s politics that permeates everything. And this kind of far left, We’re against the death penalty, uh, is exactly what the staffers did. They looked for every case of someone on death row and they just swept all these cases together and they asked Joe Biden to sign them, or they just got them to, uh, shake his head and they auto-pended. This is, this is outrageous that it’s happening in America. Uh, these people need to be held to account. Every single person who works in the white house, the chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, All of these individuals, including the cabinet, Pete Buttigieg is going to try to run for office in the future. Jennifer Granholm, all of these people sat by and watched the president lie to America and they participated in it. This is something that they should be run out of town for, not try to get elected to come back to Washington to do some sort of job.
SPEAKER 07 :
And Rick, we are in the last few days of our faith and freedom year in drive. And one of the things I’ve been telling our audience is that there’s a big job ahead for those filling positions in this new administration. And because of how recklessly the bureaucrats have acted over the past four years, Many times they need even the expertise of the ACLJ through our FOIA process, through pointing out to these administrative branches that here’s where the issues are. It’s so much mess to try to clean up when you just are thrown in there, but that’s why we will stand alongside these administrative departments, these agencies of the federal government, and point out, here’s where the problems were. We’ve been watching it for four years. Go look here to clean up this mess.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, look, the institutional knowledge of all the corruption is exactly what ACLJ does. The government is going to need help showing how to reform these agencies. We’re about to launch the most incredible reform effort in Washington. Outside groups like ACLJ that have enormous clout, great resources of lawyers, offices around the world. We need to support ACLJ. I hope people will recognize here at the end of the year that they should support an organization like ACLJ, which is doing the good work.
SPEAKER 07 :
Thank you, Rick, for joining us today. I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and we’ll be talking with you soon. But as Rick said, now is the time to support the ACLJ. Go to aclj.org slash faithandfreedom. You can scan the QR code that’s on your screen if you’re watching on one of our many video platforms. We encourage you to do that if you only get the audio version. We have a beautiful studio, robust broadcast. that you can watch five days a week. Go to aclj.org, support the work of the ACLJ and the work ahead, more importantly. The Faith and Freedom Year-End Drive. It goes to help us budget for the next year. to know where we can fight, where we can direct our resources in the year ahead. And we need your help to do that. Go to aclj.org slash faith and freedom. From now until the end of the year, your gift is tripled. Your gift is tax deductible and your impact is tripled. aclj.org slash faith and freedom. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Seculo. Executive producer Will Haines sitting in today. And if you want to be on air, I’m about to take phone calls. Go to 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. You can call and we’ve got a few lines open and I’ll get to those calls as they come in. So I’m going to do that right now. I’m going to go to Robert calling from Maryland on line one. Robert, I hope you had a Merry Christmas. You’re on Seculo.
SPEAKER 04 :
I did. Thank you, Will. It was a wonderful Christmas and still enjoying it. And I wanted to ask you, and I think you probably partially answered the question, what may be the primary motivation for President Biden to commute the sentences of three individuals, one that committed an act of terrorism and two committed some hate crimes? He committed some terrible crimes. It’s not like it sounds like any of these men of the sentences that he commuted worked with the government to break up other criminal organizations or to bring some other criminals off the street. That’s why I was asking that.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, from his statement, if you take it at face value, is that he is convinced more than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level and that this is carrying that out. President Biden talks proudly about his Catholic faith. The death penalty is mostly not held as something that the government should be involved with within the Catholic Church. The Pope speaks out about the uh the evils of the death penalty and that government should do away with that um so i assume that the rationale and this is this is from an outsider’s perspective would be something tied to that and that doesn’t believe the federal government needs to be involved with it but that’s where it does seem to be the disconnect if if it is something like your faith driving you to to say that the federal government needs to be out of the business of the death penalty. then why is the commutation not for all 40, just for the 37? Now, the heinousness of what happened, this Boston Marathon bombing, an act of terrorism that gripped the nation for days as that manhunt took place, or the horrific tragedies of the targeted shootings of the Tree of Life Synagogue, a horrible act of anti-Semitism and hatred, or the racially motivated Emmanuel Baptist Church shooting in South Carolina. Those things are all heinous crimes. The other crimes that these others committed where they took the life of children in many cases, equally as heinous. These are horrific things that these people did to get themselves convicted of these crimes and put on death row. So I don’t personally understand the distinction between someone who is committing acts of violence and killing children. to commute that sentence, but the mass shooters not commuting theirs, it doesn’t seem to have an ideological square to it, where if you believe that it should be gone and all of them should just be in life in prison without parole, then I think that that would have been the ideologically honest approach here. But as Rick said, it seems that Potentially, someone else was involved in this decision-making process, and it wasn’t just President Biden who came up with the idea to commute the sentence of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates. Somewhere along the line, someone got political and said, there is no way that your legacy can be commuting the sentence of either mass shooters or that committed religious and or racially motivated killings, or a terrorist, the Boston Marathon bomber, that put the entire Northeast in a state of fear, and America was gripped by watching that story play out live on our TV screens. So I think that there was politics mixed in with that motivation, not just pure ideological honesty, if you want to put it that way. Let’s go to Courtless calling from Florida on line two. Courtless, you’re on Sekulow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, hi. The world saw Biden’s last debates I wanted to know, why isn’t anybody legally challenging all of his bad decisions up until the end of his presidency, claiming that he is incapacitated?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, courtless, the method for challenging the president in office, whether he has the ability to serve, would be using the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. There is a process laid out, and it would take members of the cabinet and the vice president it would take them to really start that process. And that is not something that we have seen any will to do. And whether or not it matters at this point with under 30 days left in his presidency, I think is one thing. But I also, I think many of the decisions, because the ideology of those cabinet members and the vice president And anyone who would start that process is in line with President Biden, or maybe they are the ones. making a lot of the decisions. So why would they want to pull the rug out from under what is an easy time to make big policy changes and big policy shifts here at the end? I mean, even the fact that we mentioned earlier, the FBI at that ceremony announcing someone from Ramallah, the state of Palestine, that is a the FBI appears to be changing U.S. foreign policy against U.S. law. about what Palestine is recognized as here in the final days of the administration. And should that be challenged even from within the Biden White House? Because the FBI is under the executive branch. Yes, it should be. That should be an issue. But it’s not because they’re coasting their way out, changing policy as they go. Planting landmines, so to speak, for the incoming administration to have to deal with so that they can’t be as effective as they need to be on day one of cleaning up the mess. But that’s why the ACLJ immediately filed a FOIA request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation about who made this policy. Who okayed this script? Who said that a table could be put up at a reception that says State of Palestine with a Palestinian flag covering the entire state of Israel so that there was no Israel on the map at Quantico? That’s what we’re going to find out. And then with an easier route forward with a more friendly administration, we can fight to get those results quicker than the Biden administration like to give them to us. It took years to get certain things, but we don’t give up. We keep fighting. Those FOIA fights, especially under a hostile administration, take years because we have to go to court. We have to fight. in court to get a judge to tell the administration, give them the documents they’re required to be given to the ACLJ under law, the Freedom of Information Act. And then we have to dig through the tens of thousands of pages they dump and we find that nugget and we find out where the corruption was and we find out who made the policy change, who deleted the video, who lied to the American public. We do that every day here at the ACLJ, just like we fight for students’ rights to pray before a track meet, or parents’ rights to protect their children from content being forced upon them in the schools that is inappropriate, or whether we’re fighting for the state of Israel at the International Criminal Court, or whether it is fighting for your rights to free speech and religious liberty. Donate today, ACLJ.org. Your gift is tripled.
