We’ve got breaking news, second attempted Trump assassin charged in federal court.
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Welcome to Sekulow. Will Hayes joining me in studio. This is Logan Sekulow.
We’re going to be taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard on the air today. Obviously, we’re reporting on the coverage of the second in recent history assassination attempt on President Trump. This comes yesterday outside as he was playing golf.
The suspect, Ryan Wesley Ruth, who’s 58 years old, was arrested Sunday after allegedly pushing the muzzle of an AK-47 through a fence where Trump was golfing a few hundred feet away. So, that is what we know so far. He was caught a bit while up the road.
And we’re finding out a lot more information about him, but he was just charged.
That’s right. So, while President Trump was playing golf, this would-be assassin had taken a place on the edge of the golf course, had some body armor plates that were attached to the fence, and had a GoPro set up filming. And when the Secret Service, who was ahead of the president on the hole ahead of him, noticed the gun barrel, they actually opened fire and engaged the perpetrator, the would-be assassin.
He took off running, got in his Nissan, and was able to make it almost 50 miles away before he was caught off I-95. But he has just been arraigned in federal court, and currently is charged with two gun charges, charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and charged with possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
We’re going to have some legal experts join us a little bit later in the broadcast to really go through why these are the charges and why not. We have not seen charges yet for attempted assassination or attempted murder, when clearly that was the point. Now, this figure, Mr. Ruth, was well-known.
This is someone who has done, I mean, as recently as last year, was doing interviews with The New York Times, has been a part of pro or anti-Trump movement over the last few years. Claimed to be a Trump voter, by the way, originally and would have found himself disenfranchised, and eventually what seems to be almost radicalized over the years, including time he spent trying to recruit soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Again, someone who seems like a very troubled individual.
But again, note, this is someone who is a note. Another one of these examples of someone who is involved in, there’s tons of video content, there’s tons of interviews with him, there’s a lot of content of this attempted assassin.
That’s right. And as the media likes to talk about people being platformed that shouldn’t be, the New York Times focused on him in a profile they were doing of efforts by Americans to join the Ukrainian Legion. That’s an international group of people that go and fight on behalf of Ukraine.
They platformed him there in that piece. Newsweek did an interview with him on camera. And then this is also another one where, much like the BlackRock ad that had the assassin crooks, it featured prominently the Azov Brigade, which is the Nazi brigade within Ukraine that has gotten so much criticism over the course of this war, they actually featured him in a propaganda piece showing international support for the Ukrainian cause.
So once again, someone that wasn’t hiding in the shadows, they were hiding in plain sight. And they also were taking talking points from Kamala Harris with tweets like, democracy is on the ballot.
I think this is when you have those moments where you feel that they are pushing rhetoric too far. This is what happens on either side. Because you start activating people who are not sound and could go and take these kinds of measures.
And we saw a temporary pushback of that after the first Trump assassination attempt. Where they said, everyone said, we got to cool it down, calm it down. That did not last very long.
And it certainly did not last during the last debate as we saw. And there was a moment in that debate where actually, in the moment, I thought, this is a bad idea of what Harris had just said. We’re going to play that bite in a moment.
Because in that moment, I thought this is going to potentially drive more people to do this type of thing, to attempt an assassination. Phone lines are open. I’d love to hear from you and your thoughts on this 1-800-684-3110.
Join to be joining us in the back half as well as Mike Pompeo. So we have a packed show today. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back to Sekulow, we are going to take your calls. I’d love to hear from you, 1-800-684-3110. I also wanted to take a moment before we move on to this topic and continue more to talk about the ACLJ and a special thing we just were able to do.
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We know in the moment they stopped, they shot at this suspected assassin and he fled. Fled immediately and they were caught miles up the road. They were able to finally apprehend him again, someone I believe he eventually almost pulled over, turned himself in in some ways, what it sounds like.
But it does bring up a lot of red flags to wonder what’s happening here.
That’s right. And as we mentioned also, this is someone who has a criminal history as one of the charges was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. About 20 years ago, he was arrested after he was stopped in a traffic stop and then fled from officers and then barricaded himself in a business for three hours with a fully automatic machine gun.
And that machine gun was listed in those charges against him as possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Now, we’re unsure if he served jail time or any of that, but he was convicted on those charges, so he is a convicted felon. And once again, he had a weapon, an AK-47 style rifle, and is now charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, as well as possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
They’ve said that they have now sent that rifle to Quantico to try and decipher the portions of the serial number that have been scratched off to try to see if they can trace it and understand the history behind this firearm and where he obtained it. But as of right now, there’s a lot of questions that are floating out there about how he was able to get so close to the former president, how he was able to mainly travel back and forth to Ukraine and be involved in this operation to try and fight on behalf of Ukraine. And he had said that he was willing to die for the cause of Ukraine.
And we see as well what he wasn’t charged with. And our attorneys have been getting us information on this. There is a 18 US.
Code 351, which is titled Congressional cabinet and Supreme Court Assassination, Kidnapping and Assault Penalties. And it specifically lists a major presidential or vice presidential candidate as a member of this category. And then if you go down to subsection C, it’s whoever attempts to kill or kidnap any individual designated in subsection A of this section shall be punished by imprisonment for any term of years or life.
He was not charged with this by the Department of Justice. Now, I’ve been talking with Jordan. He is in DC and he’ll be in the studio in the back half of this show.
He is headed straight to the studio from the airport. He’s up there for some meetings. He was saying, while hopefully this type of charge is coming, that a lot of times, they charge early with what is very obvious, easy, so that they can keep that person in custody while they do an investigation.
Then they can amend those charges later with the more serious ones, because this is a potential life sentence, as opposed to the 15 to 20 years he’s facing with the two gun charges. But if they have him in custody, they can charge him, they can hold him, continue this investigation, and hopefully more of these are coming.
Sure, you’re right. I think so. Maybe they need to explain that, what’s happening.
Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. I wanted to play this bite just for the debate, just the other night. Again, when I was texting with our group as we were watching the debate, I thought in that moment of all the talk of toning down the rhetoric, of calming down, of trying to make us less divisive, and to become more unified, and just be able to argue well and disagree well.
When this statement came out after we had just been only a couple, you know, what, eight weeks or so from the first Trump assassination attempt, which obviously left one person dead at one of his rallies, this is what Vice President Harris had to say, and it sent off some red flags for me.
And understand, this comes at a time where the people of our country actually need a leader who engages in solutions, who actually addresses the problems at hand. But what we have in the former president is someone who would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem. And I’ll tell you something, he’s going to talk about immigration a lot tonight, even when it’s not the subject that is being raised.
And I’m going to actually do something really unusual, and I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, because it’s a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer.
And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early, out of exhaustion and boredom.
What I was really just trying to focus on was that soundbite of saying, hey, I encourage you all to go out to rallies. You know what that does? To me, that signals a lot of people who may be not be of clear mind to go and take action like this.
And sure, this one was not at a rally, but the last one was. And you can’t tell me that they don’t write these statements for people, that these are not off the cuff, and you don’t think for a moment, this could engage in bad behavior.
That’s right. And you mentioned earlier that for a time, we did see a very short brief time, a cooling of the rhetoric, where it weren’t as many people calling him directly Hitler, but they were, you know, Hitler adjacent for their rhetoric for a time. But then they immediately ramped up that he’s a threat to our democracy, a danger to our democracy, he must be stopped.
It was the exact same rhetoric that we criticized them using before the first assassination attempt, and they went right back to it. And they keep telling, in this case, deranged people that he is a threat to them, a threat to democracy, and he must be stopped, not he must lose. He must be stopped.
That tells people that are already inclined to this sort of deranged behavior, it’s granting permission, to some degree, of when you hear that rhetoric, it can set in motion things like what we saw over this weekend and just eight weeks prior, where someone decides, I’m going to take this in my own hands, and I’m going to be the hero. That isn’t the answer.
And when you comb through his social media post, he says things like, your campaign should be, he was talking to Biden and to Harris, the campaign should be called something like KADAF, Keep America Democratic and Free, and democracy is on the ballot, we cannot lose, we cannot afford to lose, or we cannot afford to fail, the world is counting on us to show the way. These are the type of situations when you have people who are willing to take what you’re saying, though it may be, you know, verbose, it may be this, you know, you’re talking, you know, puffing everyone up, but there are people who will take these moments literally. What Gwyl said, when you say democracy is on the ticket, and that, you know, this could be the end of our democracy as a whole.
If he becomes president, that becomes a big issue. Now look, I would say the same on both sides here. I don’t think that, obviously we’re seeing it more on one side right now, but I would love to see a place again where you could have these debates, where conversations can happen, where people can argue well and have these discussions.
Sadly, we’re not there right now. Some of it is the birth of social media. I really think that it started this split, where you can’t have those conversations, because it’s very easy to hide behind a keyboard.
It’s very easy to spew hate on either side, because you don’t feel like these people are real. They become faceless individuals. I’ve felt that before, my family has felt that before.
That’s what happens time and time again. So I encourage you to take a breath, before you obviously post, before you say something insensitive. Look, we had, who was it?
Venman’s wife? Who said something like, No ears were harmed during this assassination attempt. Ha ha ha ha.
Go bow your Sunday.
Yeah, and then had to apologize. Why? Because if you took three seconds before you click post, you would realize, one, why do I need to weigh on this?
And two, you’re saying something that is offensive and mean. And again, it is just part of the problem. I love to hear from you.
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Welcome back to Sekulow. We are joined by Senior Counselor of Global Affairs, Mike Pompeo. Excited to have you on today.
A really interesting time in America. Now we have just gone out of the second failed assassination attempt of President Trump. You tweeted this this morning.
You put, one thing is beyond clear. President Trump is not getting the protection he needs, and there needs to be a full investigation. We know Congress already investigating the first attempt.
What angles do you think they should be looking at it now, knowing that this would-be assassin was able to get so close? Once again, to President Trump.
Logan, it’s pretty clear that whatever it is they did in the aftermath of the first attempt, what they’re working on today, is insufficient, insufficient to protect President Trump. And I say this broadly, I suspect it’s they’re not doing enough for others who are under threat as well. I want President or Vice President Harris to be protected too.
When someone can get after you’ve had a first assassination, some get within several hundred meters of the former president at a private golf facility, that is a demonstration of a failed leadership and process inside the Secret Service, inside DHS. And frankly, ultimately, the responsibility falls to President Biden. This is not about politics.
This is about the fundamental obligation to have a candidate for President of the United States to be able to go out campaign, live his life, have his family live their life, and do so without the risk that some crazy guy or someone who is acting on behalf of a foreign government, either way, or a terrorist, befalls our nation with an absolute tragedy. I’m so happy President Trump is safe, happy for him and for his family, but I’m also happy for our nation that is now just seeing the inability of the United States government to perform its most basic institutional functions. And so I hope not only will Congress investigate, I hope the state of Florida will, and then most importantly, I hope that these investigations will be released so that the American people can see that the mistakes that were made, if any, and those who were responsible for those mistakes held accountable and that there’s corrective action put in place so we can be confident that our leaders can travel and campaign and meet with their constituents and their voters and tell them why it is they believe they’ll be the rightful president and the next president of the United States.
Mr. Secretary, we saw last week Senator Blumenthal tell members of the press that, quote, the American people are going to be shocked, astonished and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt. That was obviously just a few days before this second potential attempt. But to see his outrage from the Democrat senator from Connecticut about the details they were finding out, how important do you think it is for the Senate to release what they know now to the American people?
We’re overdue. Whatever it is they know, whatever he said shocked, appalled, amazed us, or would. We need to know.
Go ahead, shock us, appalled us, amaze us. We need to see what failures happened there in Pennsylvania. We now need to see how this happened in Florida.
Then, most importantly, while we have a right to know, the government has a duty to fix this. I’m going to guess that some of the same failures that were in place in Pennsylvania, I think we’re going to find those same kinds of failure of communication and the like here. I have no inside information, but when you see someone get this close and get this close, not only physically, but to actually executing an assassination, these are institutional breakdowns of the highest order.
Let’s also talk a bit about the rhetoric, because I think this has been something that has come up, the conversation keeps happening. When the first attempt happened, the idea from the Biden administration even was to tone everything down, to calm everything down. We need to quit talking the way we’re talking.
We need to quit. We need to be able, like I said, to argue well, have conversations, actually be able to work with each other and live with each other if we have differences in political opinions and not take everything to these extreme measures. We saw that for very, very briefly.
Very briefly was it dialed down and maybe from both sides, but it was not dialed down near what it probably should have been. We saw that rhetoric even get elevated in the last debate. I talked about this a little bit early in the broadcast.
There was a moment even where Vice President Harris said, if you don’t like Donald Trump, I still encourage you to go out to, loosely quoting, to go out to his events so you can see it for yourself. I thought in that moment, this is going to encourage people to do something bad again because we obviously knew that happened at the last one. But the rhetoric keeps getting hotter and harder.
Will there ever be a wake up call for the American people, including on social media and everything, that we need to be able to return to some basis of normalcy in that way?
Logan, I heard you earlier, you were talking about the fact that it’s happened to you. It certainly happened to all of us who have been public figures. You see these kind of remarks in you.
You know that the person who made them isn’t likely to engage in what we saw happen to the president this weekend, but people who are just a little bit off their mark and people with deep agendas who have nothing to lose, may well take those exact comments that you described, talking about the end of democracy, talking about cataclysmic failure of our republic as a result of an American election. They are creating the conditions that increase the likelihood that you’ll see more and more of this. You know, Logan, I also, I was happy with the things we saw President Biden and Vice President Harris say in the aftermath of the incident yesterday.
But what we’ll be truly telling is what they say in the days and weeks ahead. Do they continue to condemn this, not just political violence, but those who are out there speaking in ways that encourage it or at least may give some hope that they will be seen as martyrs and heroes if they do what this gentleman tried to do just yesterday.
And Mr. Secretary, final question for you today. And this is about the debate last week where Vice President Harris claimed that there was no active-duty personnel deployed to a war zone. And ABC declined to real-time fact-check her on that one, as they did many of the things that President Trump said.
But social media quickly rose the occasion, including some members of the military posting videos from combat zones and conflict areas around the world, saying, well, where are we if we are not here? Do you think that, one, the Harris campaign thought that they could sell that line to the American people? And two, is that a disservice to the men and women that are fighting so bravely?
It appeared in the debate that night when I heard it. To me, I was appalled. I thought about some of the folks who I know who have kids who are in the military, who are serving on ships in the Red Sea today, or who have friends who are in Iraq or in Syria.
And I thought, first, two things. One, this wasn’t just offhand remark. This looked like a very well-prepared remark.
And so your point about, were they trying to sell this, tell this narrative to the American people? I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. So giving her some excuse that she was ignorant, she was unaware that we had service members today, even today, as we sit here today, whose lives are at risk in combat zones across America, I think was something that was a fundamental mistake because not only does it diminish the service of these, but think about someone who’s contemplating going to the Marine Recruiter Station and signing up saying, take me.
If you’ve got someone who might become commander-in-chief saying, we’re not going to consider a threat to your life as being real combat, or we’re going to pretend that it’s not so, we’re going to risk your life, but not honor your service. I think that is a check mark against her being prepared to actually lead America’s military and be our commander-in-chief. And I think they hoped this would not get fact-checked.
It didn’t. I was happy to see Martha Raddatz on her very same network fact-check it yesterday. And then I hope the two who didn’t fact-check it will come out and put out statements saying, hey, we screwed up.
We got it wrong. We didn’t know. We didn’t react fast enough.
All of us have an obligation. When we get it wrong, go fix it, make a public apology, square it up. That is the least that the two of them that night who failed America so badly in the moment have an obligation to do.
Secretary Pompeo, it’s always great to have you on and get your perspective. I really appreciate it, especially on days like today. It’s really important to hear from people who have been in these situations before.
So thank you so much for being a part of the broadcast today. All right, we get back. We have a second half hour coming up.
And my brother Jordan will be joining us from Washington, DC. We’ll be taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. And again, if you’ve ever considered becoming an ACLJ champion, this is the time to do it because all first donations are doubled in match.
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Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.
Welcome back to Sekulow. For those just joining us, we are obviously discussing the second assassination attempt at President Trump in just a matter of weeks. Another sad day, but another time when we could be thankful that nothing, I mean, obviously, the first one, someone died in a horrific moment.
This one Secret Service did maybe a little bit better of a job and actually stopped this shooter from actually taking fire at President Trump only a few hundred feet away. And this comes again. They took fire on the attempted assassin and were able to apprehend him down the road.
We do know now that he has been charged with a few counts. So we know he’s been charged on gun related charges. We are hoping and looking at least that there will be more charges ahead, attempted assassination, so on and so on.
But right now, it’s charges that are gun related.
That’s right. And there’s actually a question coming in from Joanne in Ohio on line three about state charges. Joanne, go ahead.
You’re on Sekulow.
Well, I mean, I heard earlier today, by the way, hi guys. Thanks for taking my call. I heard earlier today that Florida is doing their own investigation.
And I think they need to maybe hold back what they learned and see what the FBI comes up with in the Secret Service. I’m curious. I mean, I’m frankly, I’m not very trusting of either agency at this point.
And I just wonder if maybe there could be some state charges that have more teeth.
So, Joanne, as far as state charges go, yes, I did see that Governor DeSantis said that they are going to be also doing an investigation on the state level. But when it comes to that charge that we mentioned earlier, 18 USC 351, that would be the assassination charge or the attempted assassination charge, there is a subsection in it that says, if federal investigative or prosecutive jurisdiction is assertive, asserted for the violation of this section, such assertion shall suspend the exercise of jurisdiction by a state or local authority, any applicable state or local law, until federal action is terminated. So if they are indeed investigating this particular charge, which I would hope, and I know it’s hard to give the benefit of the doubt to the FBI and DOJ these days, but let’s hope and give them the benefit of the doubt that they are investigating this and will bring this charge up later, then the federal investigation suspends state investigation on that.
They have the super jurisdiction over this, if you will, to look into it, and then the state and local authority can resume investigation once federal action is terminated. So we’ll see how this plays out, and hopefully they are asserting that this is what they are investigating, so that they would be looking to bring this charge against him, but we will hopefully know more in the coming days and weeks.
All right, thank you so much for your call. Let’s continue on. Let’s take Terry’s call in Florida online, too.
Terry, you’re on the air.
Okay, it seems like it’s been a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so. I remember clearly hearing Joe Biden say that Donald Trump should be put in a bullseye. What’s happened to that?
Has anybody looked into that? I mean, the democracy that I grew up under is no longer. It’s very, very sad.
Terry, I think that that is a common issue that we’re having, which is some of this, like I said, this big rhetoric, this verbose rhetoric, starts to become real to people, and people who are not mentally well, or people that are working for, as Secretary Pompeo said, working for foreign governments or for adversaries or terrorist organizations. And all of a sudden, you feel like you get a license because your political candidate is using terms like this. And that does happen time and time again.
Now, Will, do I think things will change? I sadly don’t. I thought the first time things may change, and they did for about, I don’t know, a week, maybe, really until the convention was over.
And then once Biden was out, Harris came in, all of the same stuff came back from both sides. They both started, you know, posting and talking and saying things that were outlandish and big. And they stopped the focus on calming it down.
And I still think we need to get there as a country. Phone lines are open for you, 1-800-684-3110. I’m going to encourage you again, become an ACLJ champion, because starting today, all first donations, all first donations as a champion, that’s a recurring donor, are doubled.
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President Biden just said, the Secret Service needs more help. So that’s what he said. And then of course, a new development that just came out from the New York Post that the shooter, potential shooter, was hiding there for how long, Will?
So the federal prosecutor said Monday that he hid on the golf course for nearly 12 hours before the apparent ambush. So once again, it goes to the question of resources and security for the former president. If he’s about to go play golf and they’re not doing a full sweep of this golf course, that brings to mind where are the resources if they aren’t able to do this, and if they have the resources aren’t doing it, why are they not doing this?
This is an open area. Now, it’s obviously there’s fenced off. It is a private golf course, but at the same time, it is out in the open.
Are they checking vantage points? Are they checking the fence line? Clearly not.
If he is there for 12 hours, he’s set up in a sniper’s nest of sorts with body armor plates on the fence to protect him, a GoPro position so that he could film his potential assassination or his assassination attempt, and then he fled and got almost 50 miles away before he was apprehended. And there was one commentator, it was an FBI analyst that was on one of the news networks earlier, that said that the fact that he was allowed himself to be taken into custody probably shows that he is even more politically motivated than the first assassination attempt because many times you see someone that fails or doesn’t get away with it, they end their life in the pursuit. But he allowed himself to be taken into custody by the authorities in Florida.
It brings up a lot of questions about the protection of the former president.
That’s right, Jordan’s going to be joining us here in just a second from Washington DC. We’ll get it clear when he is ready because I want to get his point of view. Jordan, are you there?
Yeah, I’m here.
All right.
So obviously, this has been a big new story as we’ve been talking. And of course, more things are coming out, like the fact that the shooter looks like he was there for 12 hours waiting. So all of these moments keep building.
Yeah, I think that the fact that the shooter was there for 12 hours and that no law enforcement, no secret service noticed this individual. They didn’t do a pre-walk of the course to check the holes, to check who was maybe waiting in the holes or had left anything. That could be dangerous for the former president of the United States.
You’d think this would just be like kind of common sense security when you think about the amount of individuals that are involved when the former president takes any kind of, makes any kind of movements. But we now know that they weren’t securing the full perimeter. We learned that from the police department last night.
And I think, again, you could put this on President Biden and Vice President Harris, because they have yet to approve a full detail for President Trump. And we’re getting, you know, two months out before an election, less than that. And yet he doesn’t have a full detail as he goes around the country.
And he’s had a second assassination attempt by a very different kind of assassin. This one obviously motivated more politically by Ukraine. And I think we need to look and dig deep into this, who this person is.
They’ve had contacts in Washington, DC. This isn’t conspiratorial. They’ve been on the ground in Ukraine.
They’re recruiting mercenaries to fight and die in Ukraine. I mean, this one who dyed their hair the colors of the Ukraine flag. It looks like if you were trying to recruit someone who was just crazy enough to do something like this, this would be your guy.
And I say that again, not knowing that was certainty, but I really hope that we don’t just say, well, it was just a crazy guy. This, we need to look at a step further because he’s connected to a foreign war and he believes that President Trump would not be good for the Ukrainians, even though we’re pretty confident that if President Trump was in office, the Ukrainians would stop being killed. But we’ve learned now recently is that Ukrainians want to go deeper into Russia and continue this conflict.
Donald Trump does not want to see that happen. Many on his team don’t. RFK Jr. talked about that as well.
So I think, yeah, I think we’ve got to really investigate this to see. The international connections. Was this person prodded on by someone connected to a pro-Ukraine movement?
And Jordan, what we’re seeing as well, and you and I played this on the broadcast last week where Senator Blumenthal was appalled at what they had received in the Senate briefing from the failures of the first assassination attempt. But you are seeing some level-headed members of Congress that are Democrats. Ro Khanna actually put out a very strong statement about this cannot be happening.
But I also want to play this for you from Jared Moskowitz, longtime friend of yours, and has been an outspoken member of Congress, sometimes in the face of his own party when it comes to certain things. But I want to play this bite from Jared Moskowitz and get your response, bite 13.
I’ve talked to members of both parties and people just don’t get it. They don’t understand how we’re in this situation for a second time. It is shaking the confidence, quite frankly, in our institutions.
And that is something that’s hard to explain to the American people.
So Jordan, he’s laying it out there. It’s shaking the confidence in our institutions. What are your thoughts?
Yes, and that damages America domestically. It scares Americans because, one, this can put a chill on the events that President Trump holds. The idea that if you’re somehow around President Trump, you’re not going to be as safe.
So that’s why President Biden, Vice President Harris and the Democrats in the House and the Senate better come together with the Republicans and make sure he’s got a security detail that’s up to the task these final weeks of the presidential campaign because that is not how we want American politics run, is that we have to be afraid to attend political events. Secondly, and I think that bigger point from Jared, which I totally understand, I appreciate his comments as a good friend, is that when people look at us abroad, it’s not that America is always going to be perfect. We’ve had assassinations before, unfortunately, because we balance the idea of liberty in America with giving up some security, some security.
But Presidents of the United States give up most of their liberty to be President of the United States so that they are fully secured. So these, again, you’ve got to fully secure the present or else, former president, the rest of the world sees an opening. And I’m not just talking about our friends.
This is not good for our friends, by the way. They see this as just us being weak. But for our adversaries, China sees this as weak.
Iran sees this and says, you know what? Maybe we could carry out some of these fatwas if it’s so easy for these other individuals to get close to the present, if we had people that were really dedicated to doing it, carry out these attacks. So that’s why we’ve got to fix this immediately.
And it’s got to be fixed before President Trump is back in office. It’s got to be fixed starting today, starting right now. We don’t have time just to review it.
Changes have got to be made.
Jordan, I wanted to get a quick update from you also, because I know there was some movement in the Green Party case. And I think we need to give people who maybe didn’t see Friday’s show a bit of understanding of what this is. We have about three minutes in this segment.
We can talk about a little bit more. But I know there was an update on that, what it is and why we’re involved. Because I saw some of that commentary also coming through of why is the ACLJ getting involved there?
Why is the Sekulow getting involved in this? So I’d love to get your thoughts on just the general topic and then the big update that just happened.
Sure. I mean, obviously, in the Green Party case, we got involved because of the right to vote for all Americans. It is the same reason we got involved in the 14th Amendment cases.
It was not to make anyone vote for President Trump. It was to make sure that the leading candidate there in the Republican primary was on the ballot and had done everything right to be on the ballot. The Green Party in Nevada had done everything right as well.
They followed everything the Secretary of State told them to do. And then the Nevada Democrat Party came in and said, uh-oh, and by the way, that’s a Democrat Secretary of State. They gave you the wrong form.
The form you actually proposed to the Secretary of State was the right one. So you need to be taken off the ballot. There’s no time to correct it.
They won at the trial court. They lost at the Nevada Supreme Court. We appealed because we believe this is wrong.
This is not how America should run. Democrats tried to take away your choice, whether it’s Republican or the Green Party. So we again took it to the US.
Supreme Court, asking for a stay, but also to vacate or take up the case on cert. And immediately, Justice Kagan has asked for a reply in the case tomorrow by the Nevada Democrat Party. So again, today is a federal Columbus Day, a federal holiday.
So we are going to have a reply in that case by the Democrats, by the Secretary of State, as early as tomorrow on why they want to take away Americans’ right to vote for the candidates of their choice. Isn’t it interesting, Logan, in every one of these battles, we’re fighting Democrats and their allies, whether it was the 14th Amendment or it’s for the Green Party, it’s the Democrats trying to take people off the balance. It’s us and conservatives standing up for people’s right to vote.
Reactions from people like RFK, and they’re joining that. Right now, you’ve seen the political environment. It’s more volatile than ever.
First, obviously, they tried to take President Trump off the ballot. Now, they’re trying to get the Green Party off the ballot. We defeated the first one, the Supreme Court.
Now, we filed a lawsuit to fix this problem. We’re taking urgent action right now. Again, we were able to get this approval.
I’m really excited about this today. I want you to become an ACLJ champion. Month after month, our dedicated champions keep us in the fight.
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Welcome back to Sekulow, Jordan’s joining us from Washington, DC and our DC studio, Will Haynes joining us. Here’s someone said they don’t know your name, so they like it every time. I feel like I say it at the top of the show.
Right.
I guess I need to say it more.
More frequently.
All right. So Will Haynes is joining us in studio as well as I said, Jordan’s in DC. We do have some phone calls coming in.
And again, update on that Green Party case. There is the big update coming from that is that, Jordan, maybe you can give it again. They need a response in by tomorrow from the other side.
That’s right. So we filed after about 24 hours of work Friday with the US. Supreme Court and you file with the justice who oversees that circuit.
That is Justice Kagan. She got our filing representing again, the Green Party and immediately sent out an order requesting the additional parties that we were up against in this case. Think about it.
We’re the ones fighting for the right for the Green Party to be on the ballot so people could vote for who they want to after they got all the petitions they needed to get to be signed. And it is the Nevada Democrat Party who on the last day they could, filed a lawsuit to prevent the Green Party from going on the ballot, saying they used the wrong form. The Secretary of State messed up.
And now the Secretary of State has acknowledged they’ve messed up, but they’re a party to this suit as well. So we’re going to see a response from the Nevada Democrat Party. And I would expect the Secretary of State will be interested to see what the Secretary of State says.
But this was a move, Logan, so clear by Democrats to play politics with who gets to be on the ballot. Yeah.
And I also wanted to give an update. They’ve just released some body cam footage of the attempted assassination attempt. So you should take a look at that when the show is over.
It’s pretty interesting to watch all that kind of went into this. Really, another historic moment. Another moment that we’re going through and having to figure out how we kind of weigh our way through.
There’s some calls coming in. I want to go to John who’s calling in Texas. And then if you want to be on the air, we got a couple of lines open right now.
1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110 to be on the air right now. But John, you’re on the air.
Yes. Good morning. I have a question concerning that assassination attempt.
The sheriff in that town stated that he didn’t have the security details because he wasn’t the sitting president, which would have made him a federal employee, technically. But the fact that he didn’t have, and he’s not the sitting president, wouldn’t that give Ron DeSantis the authority to take that case? That’s the first question.
And secondly, because I’m afraid that if he doesn’t take that case, we might not really know who this person is, or what his problem was, or why he did that.
Right. I think, Jordan, maybe you could follow up on that, the legal ramifications of that.
Yeah, I think, listen, this is going to be a federal case, because President Trump is a federal candidate, and he is, the issues that were involved involved Secret Service, federally. Now, again, who gets charged and how they get charged, I think will come under both federal and potentially state law, but the federal charges usually kind of trump the state charges. They go ahead first.
That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be state charges. To find out, it’s not too hard to piece together, though, if what is we’ve seen online is correct, this was someone highly motivated to try and recruit mercenaries to come and fight in Ukraine. He was in Ukraine.
He was doing interviews with the New York Times, interviews on television. He was someone known to some other politicians as well, and he was a lifelong Democrat. He believed, I guess, he said it, that Donald Trump would be disastrous for a continued war that Ukraine wants to, I guess, wage, or he wants to wage against Russia.
I’m not even saying that’s definitely Ukraine’s policy. So what I want to know is, who else is he connected to? Did someone encourage him to take these kind of actions?
Were they Ukrainian? I’m not even saying they were Ukrainian government, but I’m not trying to, again, make statements that we can’t back up yet. But because we have a living, a failed assassin, which is not the usual situation, because we have a living failed assassin, we’ve got to find out, is he really doing this all by himself?
And I know that they talked to his son, who’s had a falling out with him, and said he previously had never been violent before, never even owned guns, but they didn’t have a relationship anymore. Something about this Ukraine war changed this guy, and he’s all over pictures, all over DC, all over Ukraine, and it’s all about war, and it’s all about how President Trump is bad for Ukraine. And I think, again, there are a lot of the interrogations that are happening right now need to really get some answers to the American people.
This is obviously a very different failed assassin than the failed assassin in Pennsylvania.
And Jordan, also to follow up on that, that section of US. Code, 18 US. Code 351, that we talked about as you were traveling into the studio where there is that whoever attempts to kill or assassinate or kidnap an individual designated in subsection A, which includes major presidential or vice presidential candidates, it specifically states that if federal investigative or prosecutive jurisdiction is asserted for a violation of this section, such assertion shall suspend the exercise of jurisdiction by state or local authority until federal action is terminated.
So if they are investigating this as an assassination attempt, then the state, to John’s call, would have no jurisdiction for these purposes right now. But one other thing you bring up is the Ukraine side as well. One of the things that was reported by, when the New York Times platformed this individual in their profile on foreign fighters in Ukraine, one thing that this individual was reportedly working on was getting former Afghani fighters trying to get them passports through Pakistan, fraudulent passports to get them to Ukraine to fight.
So now you’re looping in the Middle East and you have to wonder what other contacts, what negative contacts. There was one fighter that was in Iran apparently, and we know that he had also spoken positively on social media of Iran. Was Iran able to get to this individual?
Those are the type of things that we know the federal government has to get to the bottom of to figure out who this guy was.
And they need to do so very quickly because if you’ve got actors like that involved, this is likely not the only person they’ve tried or they have been successful in, you know, figuring out how to get to in their mind so that they would carry out or attempt to carry out this kind of assassination attempt. I’m going to call it exactly what it is every time. I thought the mainstream media’s initial response to this was horrendous yesterday.
I mean, I don’t know if you guys saw it, but the initial response was the gunshots were fired somewhere near a golf course. And that’s not so unusual because it’s near a main road and that really President Trump had nothing to worry about. They didn’t know any of the facts yet.
And yet that’s what the mainstream media tried to play it down. This though, this event is on the hands of Joe Biden and Vice President Harris and Mayorkas. And if they don’t fix this, more people will get killed before election day.
And that is really, that is something we cannot accept in the United States of America. And I think the reason why you saw those quick notes from Harris and these others is they know that, and they know that this is on their hands, and they better get it fixed, or else the American people are not going to come out and vote for Kamala Harris if she can’t even run a government that keeps Donald Trump safe.
That’s right. We want to encourage you right now to join with us as we continue these fights. As we said, the political environment is more volatile than ever.
But we have the ACLJ who’s out there supporting. Make sure you have the ability to vote for who you choose to vote for, including our current support and the current lawsuit we have with the Green Party. That’s right, because we’re going to make sure that everyone can vote for the candidate of their choice.
The Supreme Court said that they are going to need a response by tomorrow. We are working vigilantly on this. If you’ve ever considered becoming an ACLJ champion, now is your time to do it.
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We’ll talk to you tomorrow.