Join us on Seculo as we dive into the explosive new report on Jack Smith’s congressional spying. With a distinguished panel comprising Jordan, Will, Jeff Balaban, and Rick Grinnell, we unpack the intricate details of recent political machinations impacting both the judiciary and legislative branches. From disclosures of non-disclosure requests to understanding the depths of congressional inquiry, this episode bridges the gap between complex legal proceedings and everyday understanding.
SPEAKER 06 :
We’ve got breaking news, a bombshell new report on Jack Smith’s congressional spying.
SPEAKER 04 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 06 :
Welcome to Sekulow. We do have some breaking news we’re going to get to. Jordan’s in studio. Will’s in studio. We’re going to have Jeff Balaban joining us and Rick Grinnell. It’s going to be a packed show, but of course we want to hear from you as well. At 1-800-684-3110. Want to lead off with a big thanks to everyone who joined us during Giving Tuesday. Of course, the month of December continues on with our year-end drive, but we did hit our goal. We were trying to raise within the show $50,000. It would be $100,000 matched, and we did it just barely. Yeah. But you showed up and we appreciate that. And of course, we had a massive day in general, though, with a lot of you showing up throughout the day, whether that was responding to emails or text messages, whatever you may have gotten. Of course, we know it’s a big day for everyone during Giving Tuesday. But now we’re heading into Wednesday and your generous support, obviously, for November and for Giving Tuesday made a huge impact. And this time of year, it’s very important. So if you want to give, great time to give. Of course, your donations are doubled. We’re going to hit the Tennessee election that happened last night. Of course, we were joined by now.
SPEAKER 05 :
Congressman-elect Van Abs. Van Abs.
SPEAKER 06 :
After his appearance yesterday, we should take credit for it. He was on the show for about four minutes. I think that four minutes took him over the top one by quite a big margin. But still shows there’s a big push in some of these more… deep red states to bring in a liberal voting base, and they did show up to some extent. We’ll get into that, as well as the breaking news, Will, out of Washington, D.C. Once again, Jack Smith shows up in the headlines.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s right. So this is a fascinating response from the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. This was a letter sent to Chuck Grassley, who had inquired about why Judge Boasberg, who many people know from these nationwide injunctions issues, he was kind of at the front line of the judicial lawfare against the administration right at the beginning. So not a strange name to folks that watch this program. But they were inquiring why, because he was the one that signed off on the subpoenas to get the phone records of the sitting U.S. senators and congressmen. And on top of that, Jack Smith also filed a nondisclosure order request wanting to make sure that Verizon, AT&T, all these phone companies that were getting these subpoenas would not notify their customers, your data, your information, your records have been subpoenaed by the federal government, by the Justice Department. And Chuck Grassley wanted to know, why did he sign off on that? Why did the judge say, you can’t tell Ted Cruz, you can’t tell Marsha Blackburn, you can’t tell Lindsey Graham and all the others that were subpoenaed that their records have been taken up? And it’s a very interesting response, Jordan, from the courts. This director, Robert Conrad of the Administrative Office of the Courts, is arguing that that the reason that this judge signed off on the non-disclosure order barring the U.S. senators from knowing that they had been subpoenaed is because it’s pretty much just a standard form he didn’t probably even know it was senators because the only thing on this request which is boilerplate information so no arguing of why it’s important they not be told But the only identifier is the phone number itself. Therefore, the judge would have to see it and instantly recognize the phone number of a sitting senator in order to know that that’s who this is.
SPEAKER 07 :
So here’s what, you know, Will, just to break that down. So like what Will is saying is that they don’t even attach the subpoena when they go to the judge to say we want nondisclosure orders on these going to those telephone companies of the records that we’re requesting on these. And here’s a bunch of phone numbers. and then that’s it. So the Department of Justice under their policies at the time, now these policies are changing, but the policies at the time, you could just submit a bunch of phone numbers and say, please sign off on our non-disclosure order, and that’s it. Now, does that mean the judges couldn’t be a check? No, but the usual practice, which is a little bit scary if you think about it, has been DOJ doesn’t even have to attach the subpoena, just says, we want these numbers, we want this info, and by the way, You can’t inform the owners of those numbers.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s right. Phone lines are open for you. If you have questions, we’re going to break this down even further when we get back from this quick break at 1-800-684-3110 to call in. But of course, support the work of the ACLJ and our legal work and our media side over at ACLJ.org, where all donations through the end of the year are doubled. Be a part of it today. Welcome back to Seculo. We are going to take your calls, like I said, at 1-800-684-3110. Well, I think it’s important because a lot of people are just joining us right now. We’re seeing those numbers really tick up, especially on social and on YouTube right now. So I think we’ve got to give people a bit of what we’re talking about here. Of course, they see the headline breaking, Judge Bombshell Jack Smith case. You may have heard me give my tease saying new report breaking new bombshell report. So we’ve got to give an idea of what this is and what’s going on. I will tell you that we’re live. I know that a lot of people, because of the holidays, you may think, oh, I’ve heard this. I’ve heard about a Jack Smith report. Well, maybe a time or two. So what lets you know that we’re live? We are live here. It is Wednesday, first Wednesday in December. We’re here. We’re live. You can tell because I am in a nice button-down shirt, which meant I had a school assembly to go to this morning. No, it’s not summertime either. You’re in that cozy flannel over there. I’m in that fall… Even though it’s the early winter, it feels like now it’s freezing here in Tennessee. Or below. Yeah, it’s been for us. It’s been brutal. You know, Will’s got the quarter zip going on. That’s a full zip. That’s not cool right now. Well, it’s a vest. I know. I’m just saying, man. People are into the quarter right now.
SPEAKER 05 :
So what we’re looking at here is Chuck Grassley of the Judiciary Committee had asked the courts about specifically why Judge James Boasberg had made this decision to issue a non-disclosure order on the subpoenas that Jack Smith had issued against sitting members of Congress. You know that there were I think was it nine or more of them that were just in the Senator category. Plus you had a member of Congress that was scooped up in it where they had subpoenaed the phone records around before and after January 6th of these sitting members of Congress. And then they asked the court to issue a non-disclosure order to the phone company saying, you cannot tell your customer in this case, the sitting member of Congress that their records have been subpoenaed. Now, Chuck Grassley was asking the courts, what was the decision-making process? Why was this done? And the response, and I think, Jordan, this is, once again, why these stories are important, especially when it happens to a member of Congress, because it sheds light on how the system is run and happens and can affect even everyday Americans. So what the court’s rationale here is… It says, and by the way, we’re not going to get into, we don’t think it’s prudent or within the separation of powers for us to go into the decision making of a judge. However, we will tell you this, that when these orders are requested by the Department of Justice for a nondisclosure order under 18 U.S.C. 2705B, which would prohibit a service provider from disclosing information about a grand jury subpoena, generally is filed electronically. The DOJ typically requests that such applications and all related filings be docketed under seal, and these requests are normally granted. The district court dockets NDO applications in related court orders using its SC, stored communications case type, and the applications orders remain under seal unless and until request for unsealing is made and granted. The applications for NDOs typically do not attach the related subpoena, Rather, they identify the subject accounts only by a signifier, e.g. a phone number. And they go on to say that normally these are boilerplate requests, so it doesn’t go into any specifics of why maybe it’s important to not let the target of a subpoena know that they’re being subpoenaed. And in fact… the judges normally just grant them. So DOJ requests and they complain about separation of powers here, but yet they’re just rubber stamping through the courts these requests. It raises a host of constitutional issues, Jordan, as well as the protection of everyday Americans’ information. If judges are just getting the request in boilerplate language, rubber stamping it through, and they would have to know the individual’s phone number at a glance or ask more questions to even know who this order is pertaining to.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, what’s interesting here is that there are administrative subpoenas that the DOJ can issue on its own. Now, when you look at those, you’d say it’s like drug crimes, health care fraud, reasons why you’d want, you know, we were talking about before, like drugs is on there. First thing we talked about today was, again, not disclosing to a bunch of drug names out. You wouldn’t want that public because then they’d know and it would mess up the entire investigation. Right. And I’m wondering if that’s how Jack Smith went at this. But his was a criminal investigation. Now in criminal, those are administrative subpoenas are kind of a part of investigations, but they’re not supposed to be like the criminal investigation, which would go through a grand jury subpoena process. So the grand jury can subpoena the documents. It would then be issued. That doesn’t require a judge approval, but it requires a grand jury to say, yes, let’s get these documents. And then there’s, of course, there’s actual judicial subpoenas. So I’m wondering here is, Where did he file this? I’m trying to go through the document as a criminal investigation. Was he doing it under the administrative subpoena ability of the DOJ? But this has been changed in 2024. This was changed. so this law is but he filed these before 2024 so moving forward after 2024 prosecutors are required to notify the court if they’re seeking a gag order against a member of congress so that judges can take that into consideration so that has changed but he is using the previous gray area to say well i don’t need to ask questions and by the way Just to make clear to everybody, they don’t have to be a rubber stamp. There’s no law that says you can’t ask these prosecutors, what am I doing here? I don’t have your subpoena. You didn’t attach it. You’re asking for all these different phone numbers. I don’t even know what this is about. And you’re not only asking for the phone numbers information going to Verizon and all these different companies, you’re asking me to keep it under seal so that the people whose phone numbers those are never get notified.
SPEAKER 06 :
what i like in these moments when we’re on air and these kind of breaking news moments happen is we are posing a lot of questions we are doing the deep dive jordan’s saying how did this happen and what we’re able to do is actually reach out to members of our team who are working understand that you’re seeing a very small portion of the organization right now there’s a large group of people we said hey we have a question so you’ll send it to some of your legal experts they’ll start doing a deep dive we’ll get actual legitimate answers we’re not just posing questions to post questions here So in these moments where you hear us questioning, well, how could they do this? What would it may be? Understand there’s people on the other side of this glass, if you will, who are doing that heavy lifting right now, who are finding out all that information so we can report it back to you. Same, obviously, with our media work, all the incredible crew. But when you’re talking about these kind of topics as they break, it is why it’s important that we have such a top team.
SPEAKER 05 :
And what we’re also seeing is, one, it’s exposing a lot. And yes, there are times, Jordan, when, yes, the DOJ, if they are pursuing a case against someone, would need to keep that under wraps and not let someone know they’re the target of an investigation, where that person’s a flight risk, or whether it’s because of an impending threat to Americans or to people that could be harmed by that, or whether or not they could they’re afraid of tampering with witnesses or something of that effect or destroying or obstruction of justice in some sort of way. When you’re talking about members of Congress and it being rubber stamped, and also to some degree, I feel like that should be the exception of issuing these type of non-disclosure, not just the general rule that every judge follows this rubber stamp method. If that is the case, If the Justice Department can effectively ask whatever they want of the courts, at least under a Biden administration, when it’s going after conservatives here, then what is the point of the third co-equal branch of government being the judiciary if they’re just effectively a rubber stamp administrative office for the Department of Justice?
SPEAKER 07 :
Right. I mean, I’d say again, this is why we have said the Department of Justice, like so many government agencies, we talked about the IRS, we took on the IRS, and they’ve had to change their policies when it comes to their tax exempt division. And we totally, you know, kind of cleared house. of that division and you know there haven’t been the kind of issues those haven’t arisen lately if you’ve realized and okay one-offs every once in a while but but it’s not widespread and you would know about it widespread now because people are looking for that like hey if my conservative group got this did other groups that were like this get this and you’re not hearing about now that’s because that whole tax exempt division got new rules we got the consent decree that said you can’t do this you can’t politically target the information you were seeking was wrong When you read through this and you start realizing that it’s like what we’re seeing here is they’re playing hot potato. So first it’s Jack Smith. Then you go to Jack Smith and say, Jack Smith was looking for this information. And then you go to the judge and say, hey, judge, why didn’t you just sign off on all this? And then the judge’s administrative division, not the judge themselves, but their administrative division, writes back and says, well, because the judge doesn’t even know what they’re asking for. Well, then why does it even go to a judge? I mean, at this point, like you start for gag orders. I mean, so they’re just issuing gag orders at random based off numbers. They don’t even know if the numbers are real. So think about that. There’s no… Now, that has been corrected for members of Congress, but we also have to think about should this be corrected further for Americans as well? I mean, it just seems like where this needs to exist… is pretty simple. Violent crimes, terrorism, money, just investigating whether, I don’t, first of all, Jack Smith really didn’t have grounds to get these numbers. These members of Congress are protected by the Speech and Debate Clause.
SPEAKER 06 :
We’ll keep talking about this as well as we’re going to head over to ACLJ Jerusalem in the next segment if you’ve been waiting for an update on what’s going on in Israel. We’ve got some pretty big updates. There’s a lot happening, but we will continue this discussion, so don’t go anywhere. If you’re here for this, stay tuned. We’re going to continue that in future segments and within the segment.
SPEAKER 07 :
And I’m going to break down for people later, too, why last night’s victory was a big win for the GOP and a big loss for Dems because you’re not going to hear that in the mainstream media when it’s a special election that they outspent like 10-1.
SPEAKER 06 :
My social media got very quiet last night. Again, phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back. Welcome back to Seculo. We are joined by phone by Jeff Balaban, head of ACLJ Jerusalem, and by phone for a very specific reason. That’s because Jeff has been spending time on the border of Lebanon today. Jeff, let’s get an update of where you are and what you’re seeing.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, without giving away exactly where I am at the moment, it’s been a very interesting trip this particular time because I’m joining a group of senior legal scholars from around the world who to see what’s happening, you know, not just the ceasefires, but everything that’s happened since the October 7th war represents new challenges in the law. Because there really are no laws that cover the kind of atrocities that are being committed, the kind of terrorist armies that are committing the atrocities, and how to keep the peace, how to move legally against the enemies of Israel who perpetrated these horrendous acts. And so it’s… It’s actually Israel is struggling with working with lawyers from around the world and experts around the world about how to go forward. At the same time, yes, we were on the Lebanon border at one point today watching an exchange of fire, watching rockets land on the Lebanese side and on the Israeli side. And I don’t think it’s been reported at all. So, you know, there are possibilities ongoing.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, I’m not sure what the reports are there, Jeff, but it feels like in general, America seems to have moved on from what’s going on in Israel. In some ways, that’s good because, of course, that limits the amount of anti-Semitic rhetoric that feels like was spinning out of control at one point. But another point is still there’s active military things happening. There are humanitarian issues that are being addressed right now. There’s still a lot going on in Israel. Maybe it has gotten quieter, which is great. but it’s also the new cycle of America eventually always tends to do this, which is not necessarily move on when things are over, but move on when they may be, America’s ready to kind of forget it’s happening.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you know, the flip side to that, I agree exactly with what you’re saying, but you know, part of what we heard today was from non-Jews, right? We were from Druze who are very concerned about the compatriots on the Syrian side, who until recently said, They, Christians, other minorities, were being slaughtered, massacred, atrocities committed. I mean, horrendous. I don’t want to repeat them on air. And it’s being underreported because there’s this charm offensive with this new Syrian president who, until a moment ago, was an al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist. And there’s a tremendous amount of concern. And so the fact that it’s out of the news cycle should actually be concerning to us because it’s not just about Israel and the Jews.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, Jeff, what I wanted to bring up to you, this is Jordan, is just the fact that there’s still active fire coming in from places like Lebanon when we’ve kind of heard this report that, and I think that some of it’s true to the extent that Hezbollah has lost a lot of leadership, doesn’t have the same kind of capabilities, but they are still firing into Israel.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, yeah. I mean, for example, we weren’t very close to it, but we saw clearly the entrance to a tunnel that was 200 meters into Israel from the Lebanese side. Hezbollah had massive tunnels under virtually every home in bordering communities going into Israel, plus that and reserves of weapons, massive reserves of weapons. to launch an offensive really thank god thank god hamas acted first terrible thing to say because of those horrors but if they had coordinated with hezbollah up north it’s unclear whether israel could have even survived that attack well i mean we all like to believe that god would have saved israel but i mean it would have been horrendous so yes it is ongoing and by the way we were on the gaza border yesterday and today there’s a report that the idf um rated uh five loaded rocket launchers on the go on the border from gaza coming into israel
SPEAKER 05 :
And Jeff, as you mentioned, the issue with Hezbollah, even though Israel, in the miraculous way with the attacks that were unprecedented, the way they took out the leadership, there are reports even today that Hezbollah is working on rebuilding. with the financial assistance from tehran so it doesn’t mean that just because we uh pummeled iran with their nuclear program and that the leadership of hezbollah was taken out that you can just sleep on this and think that it is over because they all we and we repeat this i know this is not news to you obviously but when they have a stated goal of death to israel That doesn’t mean, oh, no, we took some losses. We’re just going to give up our stated goal. Regardless of their losses, their stated goal is still death to Israel. And we should remind everyone, death to America.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. Someone pointed out today that Hezbollah’s flag, which has certain Iranian symbols and death symbols, also has a globe because that is their goal. They want to dominate the world. They do say death to Israel and death to America. And America is a great Satan. And let’s remember, they had close to nuclear capability. They were looking for ways to transport weapons to the American mainland. They remain a threat. It is wrong to disregard them.
SPEAKER 05 :
And Jeff, also, I wanted to mention, you talked about that you met with Druze leadership in Israel. That is an issue that we at the ACLJ have been working with our ECLJ and UN office and our office in Jerusalem as well about the genocide of the Christian and Druze minorities in that part of Syria and the attempted genocide. It is something that While the world cries genocide, genocide, genocide about what Israel was executing with the war in Gaza, they are turning a blind eye when real terrorist regimes, whether it be in Africa, whether it be in the Middle East, when they are attempting to wipe out minority groups that are Christian, that are Druze, that are just not beholden to Islam, the world is silent.
SPEAKER 03 :
By the way, one of the things we heard, we don’t have much time right now, but one of the things we heard was from diplomats who were saying that the other nations of the world, the same ones who are accusing Israel falsely of genocide in Gaza, they’ve been complaining that what Israel does when it wages war by warning the enemies to leave is setting the bar too high for international law. The same countries that are yelling at Israel about genocide are complaining that Israel is waging too moral a war and preventing civilian casualties.
SPEAKER 06 :
one of the things we also need to obviously always pay attention to is we’re in the month of december now uh hanukkah is around the corner we know that the jewish holidays have also become uh you know while you’re there in israel have become obviously moments of celebration but obviously uh sometimes tense sometimes when they are targeted attacks so you make sure people are keep an eye out and that’s happened in america as well by the way it’s not just happening in israel where these days and we know the hanukkah is just about a week and a half away from starting on the 13th uh so i’m sure uh there’s festive atmosphere there but i’m sure obviously as always uh a call for a little bit of concern
SPEAKER 03 :
There is always concern, you’re right, because there’s a lot of kids in the street, young people in the street. It’s a huge festive holiday going on, obviously, for eight days. You’re exactly right. The holiday season is always a cause for concern. And by the way, I just want to point out, you know, just because we talk about this all the time, while I’m here working on this, we’re also working, and I’m also involved in protecting Christian families whose kids are being subjected to pornography back in the United States. Everything we’re doing is really global. It doesn’t stop because some of us are in Israel or in America at any given time or in Europe. And, uh, yeah, there is a global war on our culture.
SPEAKER 06 :
Jeff, thank you so much. We’re just running out of time. I appreciate you chiming in. Will, you got something? Okay. You looked at me like you had something pressing. It’s that plaid shirt, Logan.
SPEAKER 05 :
I was just waiting to hear what you had to say.
SPEAKER 06 :
You want one for Hanukkah, which starts next Sunday. With that, Jeff, thanks for joining us. I do want to say we only got about a minute left in this segment. We have a second half hour coming up. Some of you don’t get us on your local radio stations. If you’re listening on Terrestrial Radio, we broadcast live, full video, television style, on YouTube Live. That’s every day from noon to 1 p.m. You can find all of it at ACLJ.org. Also on Rumble and also on a lot of other platforms. Of course, you can catch us on whatever kind of way you podcast. I do want to say we are 5,000… Subscribers away from our 2025 goal for YouTube subscribers, that is obviously to hit 450,000 subscribers. If you haven’t subscribed today, I know a lot of you are brand new, maybe you haven’t yet, or you get us in your feed and you realize you haven’t subscribed. I’m going to encourage you to do that and send it to your friends. It’s a great metric for us to be able to share and to get the word out there. Financially, obviously, we need your support. This is a great free way to support the work of the ACLJ, support this show, get notified, you click that bell and all that. But subscribe right now. I’d love to see that number spike if you haven’t yet. And let me know in the comments if you have subscribed or if you just subscribed. We’ll be right back. Second half hour coming up in less than a minute.
SPEAKER 04 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever. This is Seculo. And now your host, Logan Seculo.
SPEAKER 06 :
Welcome to Seculo, second half hour of the show today. If you missed the first half hour, you can go back and watch it later on at ACLJ.org or however you get your podcasts. And of course on YouTube, as I just said, we are 5,000 subscribers away from our goal. That’s going to hit over 550,000, but it’s also… our goal of we wanted to add another additional 100,000 subscribers this year, and we are almost there. So if you are watching this and you have not subscribed yet, I’m going to encourage you to do so. Our team just asked me to say that. They put in the work, man, to make sure that you guys get this each and every day on all the different free platforms, and YouTube is one of the ones that’s been growing and growing. So I encourage you, if you are on this platform, to subscribe. There’s great content, not just this show, great clips that come out, all these kind of things that happen throughout the year and throughout the day. So do that at ACLJ.org. I do want to restate a little bit, and then we’re going to be moving in to talk a little bit about that Tennessee election. You may remember yesterday we had Matt Van Abs on. It was a highly contested election in Tennessee. A lot of you didn’t even know it was happening, but it became national news as the Democrats really put a lot of money together. into running Afton Bain to potentially take this spot that Mark Green held and of course we’re talking local Tennessee politics but it became a nationwide story really in the reverberation of Mamdani and the reverberation of a lot of these more leftist crowds.
SPEAKER 07 :
You have three vacancies in the House and then two of those are Democrat. Now we know one of those is being filled by a Republican. So the other two if she had won Um, which no polls ever showed that she would, but if she had won and pulled out because that one poll that showed she was in 2%, uh, that would, could have cut the house margin to two. I mean, and then with other retirements, the way the house works, I mean, you could have gotten down to a one seat majority, which makes the legislation very tough to pass when you’ve got the Thomas Massey’s of the world voting against almost everything Republicans are putting forward when they need Republicans to stick together. On this more partisan kind of legislation. What we saw last night was that Tennessee voters, even during a special election, right after Thanksgiving, I mean days after Thanksgiving, people are just getting back to school, just getting back to work. And tough weather. And you know what? He still almost was at 10%.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, and when you really look at the amount of people that voted, Will, it’s significantly less in this district than voted just a year ago.
SPEAKER 05 :
When you talk about 14 counties, it’s very small. Well, that’s right, because just a year ago in the general election year when we had Mark Green versus Megan Berry, 322,000 people voted for this district. Last night, only 179,000 voted.
SPEAKER 07 :
But one of the other interesting things— We don’t have midterm numbers for this district yet, right, because it’s newly drawn? No.
SPEAKER 05 :
No, we did. So this was Mark Green’s district, but he had won the first year. This is the third year, third cycle.
SPEAKER 07 :
I wonder what the midterms are like, because that’s what we’ve got coming up next. I feel like it’s probably going to be somewhere in the middle between a general election and a kind of special election. Because midterms get more votes, they don’t get nearly as many as when the president’s on the ballot.
SPEAKER 05 :
And I’ll be able to pull that out. up for the for the final segment when we get back into this because the fundraising and the financial spend is the big interesting factor here especially when you couple it with how much was spent just last year for a candidate that was more popular to a Tennessean Megan Barry former mayor of Nashville that was very well liked did a lot for the city as far as the investment economically left in a scandal But when you look at these and compare this and then you hear what CNN and all these people are trying to say, it’s quite laughable.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, so they’re saying Republicans just won when Democrats poured a bunch of money into a red state, into a red district, because they picked one, probably the worst candidate they could have run. Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Someone who, on the record, talked about how much she hated Nashville, our capital, the biggest city, really the biggest representation she had in her voting. When you look at that, and still, she won that county by a lot, but that’s just going to happen. Phone lines are open for you. In the last segment, we’re going to take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. But the last segment is only one segment away. Next segment, we’ve got Rick Grinnell joining us. We get an update from him. Always good to hear from him. And of course, then we’re going to hear from you. But it is still our year in drive. I need you to join us right now. We have done a lot right now, whether the fight for life where we are making emergency filing right now to appeal Planned Parenthood defunding case about the Massachusetts judge yet again blocked the defunding bill against the American people’s will. The American voters will, but we’re not going to have it. We’re going to stand up for all of you pro-lifers out there at ACLJ.org. Make your year-end donation right now and have it doubled. Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open. We’re going to take your calls in the next segment at 1-800-684-3110. But now we are joined by Rick Grinnell. Rick, big week for you. We know it’s Kennedy Center, but also got a lot going on in general. But thank you for carving out a little bit of time to join us.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, no, it’s a very busy week here at the Kennedy Center. We’ve got the FIFA draw on Friday. Tonight, we’re kicking it off with a big FIFA dinner. And then, of course, we got to quickly switch Friday night into the celebration of the Kennedy Center Honors, which are Sunday. And we have such a big show. We have not announced who’s performing. But let me just say this to our ACLJ audience. When you hear… who’s performing at the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, you are going to say, whoa, we just made an incredible show, and I should be there.
SPEAKER 06 :
Will, let’s chat about – I know you had something you wanted to bring up with Rick.
SPEAKER 05 :
This is not about the Kennedy Center. I’m sorry, Rick, but this is about – Rather it be. What we’re seeing unfold, it seems like the old playbook is being used again by the left, by the media. We’ve seen these attacks on Pete Hegseth, where obviously the deep state has their knives out for the Secretary of War. But now we’re seeing… them turn their attention also to the FBI director and deputy director. We’re seeing hit pieces come out anonymously sourced. And you’re seeing people like Eric Swalwell, who’s a gubernatorial hopeful in your home state. But in the odd thing here is it’s running in a more conservative friendly space. It’s not from the Washington Post. It’s not the New York Times. This was published yesterday. in the New York Post. But it’s once again, it reads as though the deep state puts in anonymously sourced hit piece into chat GPT and gets it to spit something out that tries to mock and belittle people that are trying to restore the credibility of these institutions. I want to get your take on what we’re seeing unfold over these last week or so.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, look, Kash Patel is one of my closest friends. Actually, we had dinner last night. And he’s doing an incredible job. I don’t care what anyone says. This is an organization that has the FBI, which has come at conservatives for so long. And think about trying to lead an organization that had one of the lowest approval ratings with conservatives. And the conservatives felt like they were being targeted. I certainly felt like I was being targeted. And yet now with Kash Patel and Dan Bongino there, they’ve literally turned this place around in a short period of time. Kash was announcing arrests constantly. And he is one of the most prepared people for this job. He’s worked in law enforcement his entire career. He’s worked both as a prosecutor and as a public defender. The guy is just completely balanced and focused and working seven days a week. I don’t understand some of these crazy hits from conspiracy theorists on him and his girlfriend. I think it’s inappropriate. I think it’s crazy. People need to get some sleep. and figure out that Kash Patel is actually working for us in cleaning up the FBI. And I saw this Miranda Devine piece in the New York Post. It’s all anonymous quotes. I think it’s bunk. She’s constantly going after the FBI with anonymous sources. And I think she too needs to understand that the place is completely turned around under Kash’s leadership.
SPEAKER 05 :
and and to somehow pretend like he hasn’t forged a completely different path and the fbi rank and file are loving it uh misses really the the big point well and i think that’s the concern i have when i see uh you know people on x that will take the bait and and read things from the media like they haven’t learned uh yet apparently that the media is lying to them about so many different things uh but then when you think about just the stark difference in just a year ago when we saw the fbi raiding the home guns drawn early morning raid as though it was a cartel member of a pro-life advocate that protected his son from being attacked by a pro-abortion supporter and he was raided at dawn by the fbi churches that we’re having spies and informants infiltrating them in case they were too conservative in their theology. When you think about all of these things, meanwhile, what have we seen this past year? We’ve seen thwarted terror attacks on the u.s homeland multiple and we’re hearing about them which is typically you wouldn’t hear about because when the fbi does their job you they aren’t the type of organization that you normally hear about the big successes press release didn’t drop it right but one i think it’s important now to restore that credibility to show the work to let the American people know they aren’t in churches anymore. They’re stopping mass shootings and terror attacks. And I think that It’s only proving the point to some degree that the deep state doesn’t like, that it’s no longer this J. Edgar Hoover style going after conservatives FBI. It’s once again getting back to what we want the FBI to be doing and even getting reinstatement of the whistleblowers that called out the bad things the FBI were doing. That’s not happening anymore. And I think America should be happy.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, people need to understand that these bureaucracies are enormous and they’re very difficult to turn around. And yet I think cash has done a phenomenal job of turning the place around pretty quickly. And so all of these people who are complaining, by the way, Many of them are conservatives who are complaining that everything isn’t perfect. Look, what I have to say to these people is you don’t understand what you’re critiquing. You don’t understand the process. You don’t understand the bureaucracy. You don’t understand the fight. It’s so easy to sit from a place of comfort where you don’t have any responsibility of turning around a big bureaucracy and then just launch bombs and complain about other people. These are difficult jobs. And I think Cash is doing a phenomenal job of turning it around. We’ve already seen evidence that the rank and file are actually liking the changes that Dan and Cash are doing. President likes the changes. And I applaud his work. And hopefully people will chill out and understand the enormity of what we’re trying to do.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, Rick, we’ve talked about the DOJ. The DOJ is a lot more political appointees, but it’s still a huge bureaucracy. You go into the FBI, you get three political appointees. The rest are the bureaucracy. So to try and reform the FBI with three political appointees and the rest being the bureaucracy, as you’re saying, rake and file, loving it, but Washington, D.C., a lot of that office, they’re pushing back. And you got three people there who are directly appointed by the president. The rest are bureaucrats. So it’s even tougher than the reform of the DOJ.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, there’s no question. It’s a really good point, giving us context on how difficult it is to turn it around when you really don’t have enough people to do the job. But what Cash has been extremely credible about doing is these reforms that are geared towards law enforcement, because law enforcement officials, the rank and file FBI agents are loving the changes because it’s just common sense. Let’s get back to finding the bad guys. Let’s investigate the problems. Let’s out the people who are working against us. And let’s stay away from the political aspect of what’s been happening at the FBI. He’s doing it and he’s doing a great job.
SPEAKER 06 :
Thanks, Rick, for joining us today. Always great to hear your insights. Look, if any of this spurred anything in you, I want you to call me right now. We have a bunch of lines open at 1-800-684-3110. And in this next segment, we’re going to take as many calls as we absolutely can. And of course, if you are watching online, watching on YouTube, throw in a comment. We’ll try to take some of those as well. But if you’ve never subscribed, great way to support the work. Obviously, we encourage you, just give financially at aclj.org, year-end drive, all of that. Donations are doubled. We want you to be a part of the team that way. But… I was sent a little note by our friends over in our YouTube department, our social media department. They said, you know what? We really want to have 5,000 new subscribers on YouTube because that is our goal for the year. If we could hit that. We’re almost at 550,000. We have added over or nearly 100,000, 95,000 subscribers just this year. So they want to hit 100,000. So you know what? Do a big thank you to them. If you have not subscribed, or maybe you got other accounts, or maybe you got friends and family, have them go on there and subscribe right now. Let’s try to hit that for them. We don’t need to wait until the end of the month. 5,000 is not that many people. If you’re watching it right now, I mean, we got almost 2,000 watching live, and we know about 100,000 plus watch throughout the day. So if you’re watching right now and you haven’t subscribed, you’re just getting served this right now because YouTube knows that you love us so much, but you haven’t clicked that big button, do it. Just make them happy, okay? How hard is it to make them happy, Will? Well, it’s actually pretty easy. All you got to do is hit subscribe. Yeah, as long as you got an account, you can do that. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We’re going to take those calls coming up in the next segment. We’re going to keep breaking down also that special election that came out of Tennessee, as well as though some of you are chiming in asking about who won in Tennessee. We’re going to discuss that. We’ll talk a little bit more about this Jack Smith business. Some of you are just joining us. I know a lot of you are just joining us right now. A lot of you are commenting on my shirt today. A lot. Someone said there’s a fashion show here.
SPEAKER 05 :
Some people want your vest. I’ve got the ACLJ action vest. You’ve got the plaid.
SPEAKER 06 :
One person said, do you sell the vest? And if you don’t sell the vest, why not? Which to me, maybe you need to. Those are Jordan’s ACLJ action vests, so I don’t know. That’s right. You’ve got to wear an action vest. I feel like that’s a superhero thing. I don’t know. All right. We’ll be right back with more on Sekulow. We want you to join us on 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Last chance to call in. Be right back. Welcome back to Sekulow. We’re going to take your calls and comments coming up right now here on Sekulow. Phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. Kind of last chance to call in. 1-800-684-3110. We had a call about Israel. Let’s go ahead and take that call, and then we can move on and talk a little more about what’s going on in Tennessee. Let’s go to Anna in Pennsylvania. Watch it on Facebook. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hi, guys. Listen, I just want to say I love you guys. You know, I come to you for a complete breath of fresh air. And I literally mean this, okay? My blood pressure is a bit high right now. Because, you know, as a Christian, as a mega, as an America first, as a always true loving American individual, I have always supported Israel. Now, I just want to say this really quickly, okay? It’s bad enough that the left will attack Israel and accuse Israel of this and accuse Israel of that and the genocide and this other financial and, oh, and the Jews control everything. But when people in our own party are doing it, and they have fallen, and they have one person in particular not mentioning names, when they go from once insisting that they’re a Christian Zionist to this, what I call, I guess, a euphemism. Oh, I’m not an anti-Semite. It’s Israel government I’m criticizing. Right. OK, to and literally accusing Israel of everything in every letter of the alphabet. And it needs to stop because conservatives and Christians, we have a spiritual connection to Israel. We love Israel. We’re not saying that the government is always perfect. But at the same time, you’re going to accuse Israel of everything under the sun. And I have yet to see the receipt. Talk about receipts. I have yet to see the receipts about BB. Oh, and supposedly BB will be in prison. This was declared by a conservative of whom I love and respect. Guys, I love you. Thank you for the breath of fresh air, especially pertaining to Israel, because Israel is an important ally. It’s not a protectorate. It’s an ally. If anything, it’s both. But Israel has always been our ally, the only true peaceful nation in the middle of the East, the size of New Jersey, surrounded by enemies that want to destroy Israel and all of us. And we seem to forget that. Yet Israel has invented and done so many amazing, brilliant things for technology-wise. And yes, Hollywood. Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
Uh-huh. And we really appreciate you calling in. I think that’s important to hear people like you who are so passionate about Israel because the echo chamber, if you will. Well, the noise becomes sometimes overwhelming and you don’t hear people like you, Ann, as much as we used to. So I appreciate you calling because it makes us feel a little bit more vindicated when we do bring these up, when we do have Jeff Balaban on, when we do have ACLJ Jerusalem. All of those things that maybe are not the most popular if you were to look at it from… the lies that social media wants to tell you that maybe that that’s not always a great barometer to what’s actually happening in the hearts and minds of Christians and conservatives around the country. But of course, a lot of those voices get amplified. Like you said, some of the ones that you agree with, some of the ones that you really like, but they’ve taken a very different stance on Israel. Uh, we have seen that we’ve all had to kind of deal with that and what that looks like, what it means for, um, really the coalescing of, of what you’d say is Christian conservatism. Um, It used to be a given that you, of course, would be someone who supported Israel if you were likely on this side. But that has changed dramatically. But maybe not as much as the media makes you want to think it is.
SPEAKER 07 :
I’m not sure that some of those people are politically active either. They’re brand new. They’re brand new, and so are they really going to even pick partisan side? They don’t like partisan politics in general. I still think there’s a lot more people out there in the evangelical Christian world who support Israel, and the reason why we’ve seen a shift from some of these talking heads is because they needed a way to rebrand themselves so that they didn’t sound like everybody else. And so they said, well, okay, you’ve got all these people that support Israel that are conservatives. I’m going to be the conservative-ish. you know libertarian who doesn’t and then maybe people will tune in i can have more arguments on my show and more disagreements and it’ll make news and it works for a period of time and then you start looking a little deeper and say well where’s their money coming from why do they make this shift and then it then it becomes clearer and clearer and i just think again like you said you see how quickly the attention moves away in the world That’s actually, you know, there’s some positives there. There’s negatives there, as Jeff Balaban talked about. I think it relates to what happened here last night. I mean, I think all of those things. The Democrats coming into this election, the special election in Tennessee, made a huge deal about one poll that showed the Democrat within two points of the Republican. All the other polls did not show that. In a special election, they will have to run again in the next midterm. So this is going to be happening again in a year. And so… And in the next year, because Democrats almost lost by 10 points last night, what you will not see is likely a couple million dollars of outside money come in. Because they’ve got to go defend seats all over. It’s every race. They’ve got to go defend seats. It’s probably not worth it. There’s a lot better seats to go look at than Middle Tennessee and a district that has gone from… 20 to at least 10 points republican 10 points republican is still pretty strong republican district and yet these democrat liberal commentators are telling us it was basically like a loss it’s not a loss you know why who’s going to be taking the oath and becoming a member of congress it’s not um it’s not what’s her name because that’s what she is now yeah
SPEAKER 05 :
It’s Matt Van Epps. And Jordan, you know what’s really fascinating? Because you brought up this point. The race had about $1.3 million spent on Afton’s campaign from outside groups. $1.3 million spent by outside groups. Last election, in November, when this seat had a candidate that actually was liked by Nashvillians a lot better than… than Afton. This is a crazy stat. The former mayor of Nashville who could have probably been mayor for life if she wanted and she had a scandal, had to drop out, but still loved. She brought a lot of economic opportunity here. Guess how much outside spending was spent on her last November on her race for this seat. Crazy low. $3,876 from outside groups compared to $1.3 million spent on this state representative that hated her city, hated country music, and hated the police, wanted to burn down police stations, or at least applauded those that thought it was fine to do so. That is the difference, and yet they’re saying that… When $1.3 million is spent by outside groups on a special election, effectively targeting groups to get to go vote, they’re saying that a 10-point loss is a win and Republicans need to run for the hills? Give me a break.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. No, I think that this, again, this showed you, and we were talking about it last night. First of all, when you go into a red state and a red district, Yes, you’ve got to get your voters out because you’ve got all that money coming in from the outside. So they’re going to get more people out. But if you look historically, this is not some huge concern for Republicans. It’s like the New York City mayor’s race. Why is that a huge concern? There wasn’t even a legitimate Republican candidate running in that race. It’s a concern for Democrats, I think, is that if they’re going to put forward Afton Bay and they’re going to have Mondami in these people and in every district they’re going to run Mondamis. Yeah, you’re going to see what happens.
SPEAKER 06 :
Because that might work in New York City, but it’s not going to work in Middle Tennessee. Maybe this was the test to find out. Hey, unfortunately, Jerry, we weren’t able to get to you today. I don’t think we can take him. Let him know.
SPEAKER 07 :
Democrats are just trying to look for anything to define themselves right now. And so far, it’s half a party of very, very old people and half a party of Democrat socialists. She was one, too.
SPEAKER 06 :
Jerry, call back tomorrow. We’ll do our best to get to you on the show. Thank you for calling. With that, we’ve got 30 seconds left. I’m going to take that 30 seconds to tell you, you’ve got to support the work of the ACLJ. Help us make this month a record-breaking one. I know it’s a tough time for a lot of people, so obviously, this is only if you can. And if you can, your donations will be doubled and matched. And look, we had a big day yesterday. Giving Tuesday broke a lot of records. Let’s keep the momentum going. I’m going to encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ during our year-end Freedom Drive. Do it right now. Your donation is doubled. That’s right. That goes to our legal work, goes to ACLJ. Jerusalem, if you’re an Israel supporter, goes to the European Center. Of course, goes to keeping this show and our media operation on the air. So do that today at ACLJ.org.
