New report shows the Secret Service requested emergency funding weeks ago.
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Welcome to Sekulow. This is Logan Sekulow. Will Haynes joining us in studio as well, and we’ll have Jeff Balaban joining us live from Israel as a very interesting report that came out of Israel today over a very interesting way that they were able to take out a lot of the Hamas militants, soldiers.
It was pretty interesting. We’ll get to that a bit later in the broadcast, but we did want to start off, Will, with some news. A big report that came out that actually showed that the White House had requested more Secret Service.
That’s right. So this is what is being labeled an anomaly request. It was an unusual request, but the White House’s Office of Management and Budget submitted a so-called anomaly request to congressional committees in August.
And this was obviously before the second attempt on President Trump’s life. And they warned in this request that without some flexibility to ratchet up Secret Service spending soon, the Secret Service would have, quote, insufficient resources to sustain and enhance protective operations. So, almost a foreshadowing of what was to come with this request to Congress.
Now, that still leaves a lot of questions out there, like, why was the golf course not a hardened target? And allowing someone to get that close…
There’s a lot of questions that are coming out of this. Obviously, the shooter had to have known a bit more information than was publicly available. So, there’s all that.
How did he know where he was going to be golfing? When he was going to be golfing? We know that he was in the area.
They said very close… When I watched the press conference yesterday, they said very close proximity to where he was found for hours and hours. They went from 12 hours to 11 hours plus.
So, somewhere around 12 hours, scoping out this location, I highly doubt someone’s just like, well, randomly, I’m going to stand here and just wait. There had to be a knowledge that at least you would think so, that President Trump was there, why he was there, and that he’d be playing golf in that moment. But when you have these situations where the Secret Service and really even the White House said, hey, we need to ramp up, and it just hasn’t been done yet, it does throw a lot of questions in the air.
That’s right. And as you see members of Congress, even some from the very far left, like Ro Khanna speaking out and having an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning that reads, protect Trump, whatever the cost, you have to wonder why it’s only money that they need to be able to protect the former president. Why can’t they, knowing what has already happened, and now this second round, how is there not the ability to move resources and shore up protection for the leading candidate for president on the Republican ticket?
It seems, yes, I understand the need for resources and funding, but I don’t think just dollars alone are going to fix the problem that’s happening at the Secret Service.
I think you’re probably right. Let’s take some phone calls later in the broadcast. So I want to hear from you.
Give me a call, 1-800-684-3110. Do you have thoughts on this, opinions on this, with the Secret Service, on how they’re doing? I mean, there was a lot of obviously praise that the Secret Service was able to stop this shooter, unlike the last time or the Secret Service, though ended up protecting the president, in theory, there was some mass failures that happened the first time around.
This time, even though he was there, and there do seem to be some very interesting questions to ask and some big gaps, they were able to stop this shooter without ever, you know, him ever putting on of a round. So good on you, Secret Service. At least there was some positive to say about this, but it does make you question the entire process of how we’re doing this, and the Secret Service even said that yesterday, which was, you know, we’ve been doing this for decades and decades, but maybe it’s time for us to take a new look at how we protect presidents and former presidents.
Pretty interesting time. Look, phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. And as I said yesterday, new ACLJ champions, those that become monthly supporters on a recurring basis, your first gift is now doubled.
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Welcome back to Sekulow, I am taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. For those just joining us, we are talking about the fact that the Secret Service had requested emergency funding just a few weeks ago. And Will, I wanted to break down not only what they did, but we were talking in the break about why it hasn’t gone through yet, why it hasn’t happened, as there is a government shutdown looming.
That’s right, so they asked what they call an anomaly request to Congressional committees back in August. And this was before this latest attempt on President Trump’s life, but in light of the first attempt in Pennsylvania. And so what they were asking was that this supplementary funding be placed into the continuing resolution, which Congress is debating right now, because we are approaching a funding deadline of October 1st to keep the government open.
So they were asking for this monetary package and funding package to go in into this continuing resolution that Congress will be voting on. To me, I understand them at the time saying that Secret Service would have insufficient resources to sustain and enhance protective operations, but asking for that money in a continuing resolution doesn’t get passed until October 1st. Then you’re a month away from the election.
What I feel like should have been requested is that they go to Congress and ask for a stand-alone funding bill of Secret Service of a supplementary package, similar to when you see like all the emergency packages of funding that they’ve done for Ukraine and for all these things.
Yeah, yeah, why is that we’ve stuffed in something else?
Exactly. If you need it now, why are you saying just put it in your funding bill, which there’s going to be a ton of fight over, you know, the government could shut down, then you get none of that funding. Instead, ask for a supplementary funding bill that’s a standalone bill saying in light of the presidential election and the threat climate that we see, the Secret Service needs Congress to pass a bill that would help us in some way beef up security around the leading candidate for president, President Trump.
I understand that they’re going to try to say, look, you know, we had a situation where we were protecting the sitting Usss president and he was also one of the candidates. And then we have the former Usss president, which is a candidate. So that’s a strain on resources.
But then you have a switcheroo. And now we have a new candidate for president. So vice president.
They were already protecting her. So I mean, I feel like that’s an excuse here. We’ve been protecting former presidents for a long time now.
And it obviously is a different threat level when you’re talking about a former president actively running for president. Plus you had Secret Service for at some point, for a very brief period of Secret Service that was going to RFK post assassination attempt that was withdrawn once he stepped down and ended his campaign. But now you have this situation where president Trump has had multiple assassination attempts.
He still has a couple months of, how many days out are we from the election? 55 ish, probably from the election. I’m going to say round number somewhere around there.
So like you said, a long time to do it. They’ve requested more funding, but in typical Washington fashion, they have to tie it up in some other situation. They have to make it pork in one of these bills.
Right. And we are 48 days. I had to look it up real quick, but 48 days from the election.
But here’s also the other thing is you look at, you know that the government loves to spend money.
Of course.
They’re asking for more money even if it passed today. How does just more dollars at this point? Because if it’s, they don’t have enough agents, they don’t have enough resources, they don’t train people.
Exactly. Then you’re looking at a lag time of being able to beef up security. I feel like this should have been done months ago, if not even sooner in looking ahead at this.
At the same time, you have the criticism that the FBI and other agencies once again, probably should have had this person on their radar, as they like to say many times after a mass shooting, a mass casualty event that they knew.
You can’t imagine that he wasn’t on there right now.
Well, right, because the Wall Street Journal put out this morning that Usss authorities were warned about suspected Trump gunmen, not specifically that he was going to try to assassinate President Trump, but of all the activities that he was doing in Ukraine, looking at human smuggling across borders, trying to buy passports. This is someone with his 100-plus encounters with law enforcement, but him being convicted of having a weapon of mass destruction when he barricaded himself in his former workplace with a machine gun, fully automatic machine gun, back 20 years ago.
That is a lot.
100 encounters with law enforcement, and yet this man is still able to freely travel to Ukraine, move about the country, live in Hawaii, get all the way to Florida with somehow obtain a weapon. That’s part of the charges that it has a serial number scratched off. You can’t drive from Hawaii to Florida in general.
In general. It’s just not possible. We don’t have that technology.
So it wasn’t like he was somewhere on the West Coast and had these weapons and traveled. Somehow he was able to leave his home state, acquire a weapon or, worst case scenario probably, get through the airport with that, get this weapon without being caught and make his way down to Florida, literally crossing the entire country. We don’t know how long he was in the state of Florida.
That hasn’t been, I believe, revealed yet.
And I assume that we will, as these days go on, get more press briefings as more information comes to light. You and I were watching that press briefing yesterday afternoon, though, and we’re kind of let down by the forthcomingness of the investigators, whether it be the Usss attorney, the sheriff of the county, and the FBI field agent that were there, because nothing they said was new information that hadn’t already been reported for three or four hours prior to them going up to the podium. At that point, you know they have to have more information, but the reporters already had been told it by someone within these agencies.
It raises once more how tight-knit is this community, how well are they able to conduct an investigation when all the information they’re bringing to a press briefing, someone else within some agency has already told the press hours before.
Yeah, it wasn’t a whole lot of information, and they were getting very snarky with them.
Right.
If they were asking questions, they thought, you know, yelling and screaming. It’s like you just never dealt with press like this. Let’s go to phones.
Let’s go to Eric, who’s calling in North Carolina on line three. Eric, you’re on the air.
If it is, they should have called.
Let’s put Eric back on hold. We’ll try to get to him, and we’ll continue on. We’ll get to some more calls here coming up.
Check on Eric, though. Eric had a good call. If you want to give us a call, 1-800-684-3110.
That’s 1-800-684-3110. I also wanted to tell you, again, we have a lot of work going on right now at the ACLJ. We’re going to break down some of that coming up a little bit later in the broadcast.
I also am teasing, yes, we have Jeff Balaban coming on. And you may have seen this. There was an interesting way that Israel is currently fighting.
And it is a way that I’ve never heard of. It is very unique. It is taking out quite a bit of the troops there, if you will, the Hamas militants.
So it’s pretty interesting to watch. We’re going to talk about that coming up in Lebanon. So let’s go ahead and take a phone call again.
We’re going to try one more time. Eric, you’re on the air.
Hey, good morning. Anyway, hey, I had a quick question about the sticker service and this heat detection kind of technology in 2024. Why they don’t seem to have it, or they’re not using it, or to the degree that they should have it.
Yeah, Eric, I think that they do have access to a lot of this technology. One of the reasons we know this is because the way they were able to track that 12 hours was to ping his cell phone to see where his cell phone was for that day. And it had been in the area of Trump International.
So they do have some access to that. When it comes to apprehending him, I do think there is obviously a hope and a want to de-escalate, to actually bring him in alive, which we did. It will be fascinating to actually find out if they can get more information of what brings someone to this point.
What do they do? Because this is not usual. Usually, even in the situation of Ali Harvey Oswald, you didn’t get to the point.
He obviously survived initially, but did not get to the point of really being able to answer a lot of the questions we all have.
That’s right. And as we saw yesterday, or saw reports of yesterday, he was laughing in court. They said he was smiling.
He seemed coherent answering the judge’s questions, so they didn’t believe that there was a situation where he wasn’t of sound mind for court purposes. Clearly, if you are an attempted assassin, you are not of sound mind for humanities purposes. But he was laughing and joking with his court-appointed attorney, but on top of that, he stopped cooperating when they took him in, as his constitutional rights to do, requested the lawyer and was not answering questions with the authorities at that time.
So we will see, as the investigation goes on, what happens, how they are able to get information out of him with him being an alive perpetrator, which many times is not the case in these types of scenarios.
Yeah, absolutely. I did want to, again, take a minute before we get to break here and tell you about the work of the ACLJ. Because right now, we’ve got a lot of legal cases happening right now.
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Welcome back to Sekulow, CC. Heil, Senior Counsel is joining us in studio. But well, we wanted to discuss this.
As we know, these assassination attempts now keep happening. We’re now on to the second confirmed one. And who knows how many things that they are stopping, that the Secret Service is stopping, or that we know that threats are happening.
I’m sure every day there are these kinds of threats, but maybe they get more and more amplified as time has moved on. But it also seems like the FBI, on the other hand, is spinning their time, wasting their time, going after the wrong people.
That’s right. And even Governor DeSantis, in his comments about this, were saying that it’s not in the best interests of our state or nation to have the same federal agencies that are seeking to prosecute Donald Trump, leading the investigation into his would-be assassination attempt. And we have been at the ACLJ a long time, pushing back and digging to uncover what these agencies are doing in their targeting specifically of conservatives.
It’s become what appears to be an obsession of these agencies to go after conservatives and people with conservative ideology, whether that be your Christian faith, whether that be being a pro-life individual, or any of the other things that you associate with conservatism. And CeCe, we filed a FOIA back in January of this year, and this was specifically related to reports that came out that they were flagging financial transactions. The FBI was, that included the word MAGA, Trump, Bible, people that had shopped at places like Dick’s Sporting Goods or Bass Pro Shop.
Whenever we say the Dick’s Sporting Goods, when people are like, oh, those are probably liberals anyways, but people that are doing outdoor activities, they were flagging financial transactions of these individuals to investigate them, whether or not they were radicalized domestic terrorists. And we actually got a partial victory in some of this, because as many people know, we have to fight a long time with these agencies, go to court to get them to give over the documents we know they have. And we got an internal victory here just yesterday with this one, so it’s a partial victory.
And go ahead and tell our audience about it a little bit.
You know, everybody will remember that it was the banking institutions, that the FBI and the Treasury Department were literally using financial institutions for unconstitutional targeting of conservatives, just like you said. So when we sent out our FOIA, it was because the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee had come across an actual report, and this report was titled Domestic Violent Extremists Likely Embolden in Aftermath of Capital Breach. And that report was shared with these financial institutions for the purpose, for the purpose of alerting private sector partners of the January 6th violent breach by suspected domestic violent extremists in the Usss Capitol building.
And it would serve as a driver for a diverse set of what they call the domestic violence extremists. And again, we saw that those people are the people that maybe have MAGA or Bible or shop at a sporting goods store. And so we had asked for that report specifically.
We wanted to see that report and we got denied. Now, we do, you have to go through an administrative appeal with when you do FOIA requests. And so we appealed administratively and you are correct.
We did get a response back from the Administrative Appeals Department, saying that they have looked at our appeal and they’re actually remanding our request to the FBI for further search for responsive records that to that specific report that we asked for.
That’s right. So effectively what you have here is the FBI, as per usual with these government agencies, tries to stonewall the ACLJ and say, we’re denying your request. Normally, we have to get it finally into court to end up getting them.
So the fact that we sent this FOIA in January, and now internally, this one record that is pivotal to other angles of this investigation, the FBI internally is saying, you have to go back and look for it and start producing that to the ACLJ. That’s a good step because we’re going to start getting that a lot faster. There are other, excuse me, angles to this that we will have to go to court and fight for.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that is something with the ACLJ, with our work and our legal work, and the people need to understand, that goes beyond this broadcast that we do each and every day, it goes on talking points and rhetoric, and we’re discussing the Secret Service, we’re discussing the FBI, but we’re actually getting ourselves involved in a way that a lot of organizations, and a lot of, like if you watch this broadcast, thousands of you watch, just on YouTube, there’s almost 430,000 of you that watch this broadcast. You may not know the legal side of this, you may just tune in kind of for your news.
And we do want to make sure we cover what’s happening in the world, but we also, what’s happening in the world is something we’re also deeply involved in.
Right, absolutely. And it goes to the point of, yes, the House of Representatives and the Judiciary Committee uncovered this information, but we need to go further, and that’s what we do at the ACLJ, especially with these FOIA requests, is we want to know how this report came about. What are the communications?
What are the emails? Who’s the first person who actually said, hey, this is who we need to look after. We need to go after Christians.
We need to go after Catholics. We need to go after people that have bought a Bible or went to a Sporting Good store or have MAGA. And so we want to get to the bottom of it and actually hold those people accountable.
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Just a one minute break.
Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow.
And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome back to Sekulow.
This is Logan Sekulow. Will Haynes joining me in studio. We’re going to kick things off because we have a lot of calls coming in.
I want to take some calls. And then in the next segment, we’re going to take us to Israel. We’re going to have Jeff Balaban joining us live from Israel to discuss some of the new tactics that Israel is doing right now to hopefully end this war.
Let’s go ahead and take some phone calls though. Todd’s calling from Georgia Online 2. Todd, you’re on the air.
Hey, yes. My question is about DHS and their role with the Secret Service, Mallorcas. We’ve seen what TSA has done to Tulsi Gabbard, and I’m furious that they can give away millions of smartphones to illegal aliens and almost a trillion dollars, but they can’t manage one lousy drone for rooftop surveillance or surveilling a golf course perimeter.
That is outrageous.
And Todd, I think that some senators in the Usss Congress also have issues with that as well. Obviously, the Department of Homeland Security is the parent agency of the Secret Service. It used to be a Treasury agency, but a few years ago was moved under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security.
There’s actually been a lot of criticism of that move by commentators as well as members of Congress. But I’m going to play this bite from Senator Josh Hawley, because at the end of the day, a lot of this does stem from the failed leadership of Alejandro Mayorkas, who we know what he’s done with the border crisis. We know what TSA has been doing targeting our colleague Tulsi Gabbard.
And this is some of the insight that Josh Hawley is a member of the Senate investigating the failures of the Butler attempted assassination in Pennsylvania. Let’s take a listen to Bite Five.
What whistleblowers have told me, Bill, is that over a series of years, Secret Service leadership has steadily reduced the number of agents available in the field. They are now having to rely more on more on Homeland Security agents who are not trained. And one of the whistleblower revelations is that most of the agents in Butler that day in July were not Secret Service, and they weren’t trained.
They had never done protective work before. their only training was a webinar, a Zoom call. It’s this pattern that is so troubling.
And I think what we’re finding is Secret Service just doesn’t appear to be prepared to do their job. And the fact that both Secret Service and DHS are slow walking, if not stonewalling and congressional investigations is totally unacceptable and raises a whole bunch more questions.
And that bite came before this assassination attempt. They had been given that information last week that we saw Senator Blumenthal was concerned. He said Americans will be outraged, shocked, appalled at what happened in Pennsylvania.
Josh Hawley, a part of those same committees getting some of the same briefings. When you read that and hear that, it’s very shocking.
I had not heard that they were untrained and had just been through a Zoom call and a webinar. That definitely shows you that things need to change. And when you saw the new head of the Secret Service yesterday saying, I think we need to take a look at how we’re doing things, maybe that’s the reason.
He was in Washington, DC to discuss this, then went down. They said that was unlike the previous head who never even showed up in Butler, Pennsylvania, that the new head of the Secret Service got on a plane, got down to Florida immediately. So, at least taking some action.
But when you see that action, and you know that during these, I mean, a webinar and a Zoom call to be a Secret Service, you know, quote unquote, agent, not necessarily an agent, but a, I guess, what were they even called?
It’s like you’re getting CPR certified. You know, you just watch a couple of videos, watch a PowerPoint presentation, and it’s like, you’re good to go protect a high level principle.
If you see someone with a salt rifle, what do you do? You know, I mean, that’s kind of what it feels like. I’m sure it’s not quite that, but it doesn’t make you feel very secure about what’s happening.
Hey, we will be back in just a moment. Stay on hold if you’re on hold. We got a line open at 1-800-684-3110.
You’re gonna want to stay tuned for this. This is in the war that Israel has right now in Lebanon with Hezbollah, and it is such a unique story. It’s not something to laugh about, because obviously they are taking out the bad guys here.
That is what’s happening. But the way they were able to accomplish it, look, they’re not taking credit for it. I think no comet is probably the official comet.
But Hezbollah themselves have said, we believe this is a giant security breach that happened from Israel. So we’re gonna talk about that coming up. Very unique ways, using technology to…
You’ll see. You’ll see. Just stay tuned.
I don’t want to tease it out too much. I’m sure if you’re watching online, you’re probably gonna see it in the break. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back to Sekulow, we are joined live by Jeff Balaban, who runs our ACLJ Jerusalem office, who is in Israel right now. Jeff, I wanted to bring up this story, because it’s very interesting, it was breaking this morning, on the new kind of way that Israel has been going after, maybe, allegedly, allegedly, they’ve not taken credit, not taken credit for going after Hezbollah fighters. And we know thousands of people were actually injured with this, and a few have died from this.
And that is really taking it to technology. And that was that what appears to be hundreds of pagers, and these pagers were being used, because cell phones, it seemed like, had become too unsecure for them, because we knew they were tracking.
Well, and they took out the Hezbollah leader just weeks ago, and the report is that they had shifted to using a more antiquated technology, perhaps, of pagers, and that they have just introduced these to their fighting force. And all of a sudden, on this fateful day, hundreds of these pagers detonated.
Exploded. And we’ve seen the videos of them. It is a wild thing to watch.
They had just acquired these pagers. And the Hezbollah is saying this is one of the biggest security breaches of all time. But it is a very interesting look into the modern slash maybe antiquated way that Israel is having to fight back.
Yeah. Well, first of all, as you say, Israel has not officially taken credit for this, but there is widespread sense that it is Israel. And people are very excited about this globally.
And here as well, it’s a way to really target the way of going after Hezbollah fighters, those terrorists who transferred over to using these pagers because of the use by Israel by hacking into a cell phone, using a cell phone. And the stories that are going around unconfirmed are that about 1200 of these were siphoned through as an Israeli operation to Hezbollah. So it was really targeted specifically at terrorists in the most personal way, and then done in a beautiful and brilliant way, if of course it was done by Israel.
But put this in context, which is I know why we’re having this discussion now, and put this in context for our viewers. I mean, this is because it’s pretty clear that Israel feels the need to go on a major offensive in the north now. And Hezbollah is as evil and as much damage as Hamas has done and is, Hezbollah is much worse.
It’s worse not morally, it’s equally evil and genocidal, but they are more directly Iranian backed. They have vast arsenals of weapon through a car that’s been flowing straight through from Iran to them. They can reach all of Israel with targeted weaponry.
There was just a report that Hezbollah was trying to blow up an Israeli official using a claymore mine. They were going to remotely detonate that Israel foiled today. So this is a backup of a leading drumbeat to needing to move forward to take care of this threat from the north.
Remember, a huge number of Israelis, tens of thousands have been living as refugees within Israel. Since this war began almost a year ago, because of the threat in the north by Hezbollah.
One of the things that we bring up in these situations, Israel does seem, and though the conversation never gets there, they do intentionally go after the bad guys in these situations. This was another moment where this wasn’t some mass event where they’re going after people that the media wants you to believe. This was targeted directly at those fighting for Hezbollah.
So again, squashing the narrative that this is some mass event where they are going after civilians.
That’s 100% right, Logan. Look, the truth is that people use the words like war crimes and genocide and that they’re cleansing. Israel has the technological, just the pure munitions ability to have turned all of Gaza, all of Rafah into glass.
They could have completely, they could carpet bomb all of Lebanon. They’re not. Not that there’s not a threat, not that there aren’t rockets launching from Lebanon every single day.
Killing civilians, targeting civilians. Again, they can target. They’re targeting schools.
They’re targeting just civilians in Israel. But Israel tries to fight a moral war. I mean, I guess this is a quote I heard a long time ago from my rabbi, and I think of it all the time.
He said, this is the difference between people waging a holy war and a holy people waging war. I think it’s true that Israel tries very hard not to impress the world, because the world doesn’t care, to try to limit casualties of noncombatants as best they can. And we see it in the results.
The media is claiming otherwise, but there are fewer noncombatant deaths in the Gaza war than in any war in recorded history.
And Jeff, I wanted to bring this up, because the New York Times has a new piece out today saying, Hamas is surviving war with Israel. Now it hopes to thrive in Gaza again. And I want to draw the distinction of, when you see if Israel is behind these actions that are taking place, whether it be the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh or these actions against Hezbollah in Lebanon, when Israel is allowed to do what Israel does best, it prevents a broader war.
Because Iran, remember, was going to strike back with fire and fury and launch missiles in retaliation of the assassination of Ismael Haniyeh. But when the media started reporting all of the security failures that Iran did, and the regime and the administration in Israel were saying, hey, if you do it, we are going to unleash everything we have against you. And now you see Hezbollah, who had failed attacks where they were mocked by the Arab world for killing chickens instead of Israelis in their trying to retaliate against Israel.
And now Israel with a targeted, sophisticated attack on fighters of Hezbollah. When Israel is allowed to fight the way that they know how to fight against terrorists, it puts an end to broader war. Meanwhile, if this headline from the New York Times comes true, Hamas surviving the world, the war with Israel now hopes to thrive in Gaza again, that’s on the hands of the Biden administration and the Harris administration for tying the hands of Israel and being able to conduct warfare against the terrorists, the savage terrorists that exist in Gaza.
That’s 100% correct. Well, look, the October 7th, I believe, and many believe never would have happened had it not been for an opportunity administration and the response, which was basically to side with Hamas, side with those who started this war, not just Hamas, but those who live in Gaza, and to say, we’re going to reward the Palestinian people with a state. That’s the result.
You kill, slaughter, murder, rape, torture, kidnap civilian Jews, Israelis. We’re going to give you a state for that. And so the whole genocidal Islamist world woke up and said, great.
And you see it in the streets of America, even. You see it in the streets all around the West, where this presence has come to exist. And Israel, which really is standing on the barricades for Western civilization here in the Jewish homeland, but really it’s like an outpost of Judeo-Christian civilization, is the front line of a global war.
All Israel wants to do, Israel would love to coexist with these neighbors. You see it. Any Arab neighbor, Muslim neighbor willing to make peace, Israel leaps to make peace.
But these people only want to eradicate Israel, and they say it openly. They want to wipe out Jews, and they want to wipe out Christians. And that’s where Israel stands in the breach.
And so this moment today, and that report that you mentioned just now from the New York Times, the fact that they even say it, like it’s okay. The problem is they have stood in Israel’s way of clearing out and toppling Hamas, and Hamas keeps on re-arming, and that’s why Israel has to stay there for the long haul, even as America is trying to push them out.
Alas, Jeff, I just wanted to get your thoughts. You’re in Jerusalem now, you’re in Israel now at our ACLJ offices, and I just wanted to get your thoughts on the fact that we are headed towards a couple of weeks away from the Jewish High Holy Days, of course, which in between will be the one-year anniversary of the attack on October 7th. What is the mood, what is the feeling right now in Israel, headed towards these times which are, you know, historically very reverent but also become celebratory times?
Right, I mean, we consider this nationally to be the day of judgment for all humanity, and we pray for all humanity on the High Holidays in Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And then we lead right in to the holiday of Sukkot of Tabernacles, which is a fully joyous holiday. And of course, it was decimated, the pain of it at the pinnacle when we rejoice in God’s giving us of the Torah and what happened at Mount Sinai.
And it was a terrible, terrible day. It was also a Shabbat, a Sabbath. And so in Israel, it’s called the Black Sabbath.
And it’s on everybody’s mind. The one thing I would say is, well, I would first of all ask, is that in addition to supporting the work we do here, pray, pray for the peace of Israel, pray for the peace of the world. That’s what we’ll be doing on our high holy days.
That’s what we do every day, but especially at this time of the year, and especially conscious of the fact that this is a long whole war, as much pressure as people are putting on Israel to stop and get out, it simply cannot. This is truly existential, and the Israeli soldiers are fighting for all of us. And so please, pray for Israel, pray for them, and this is the season of the year.
Thank you so much, Jeff, for joining us again, as Jeff said. Pray for Israel, pray for our people, pray for our offices there, and for obviously our team here as we continue our support of Israel, sometimes when it’s not easy. And there are times when it’s not easy because of public outcry or the media narrative, but we are there for you, we’re there for Israel, and you can be a part of that as well.
Go to aclj.org, stay updated, not just support the work, obviously financially you can, you can continue with supports, people like Jeff in our offices there, but obviously stay informed. We do that here, we provide you incredible great content. Jeff writes a lot, a lot of our team writes great content that’s available on aclj.org, stuff that’s very easy to share.
I know it’s hard to sometimes share a full hour broadcast with someone, but we clip it out, you can send clips, you can send articles that are some of the leading names and professionals in this world. So be a part of that right now. Just go to aclj.org, visit.
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Welcome back to Sekulow, now it’s time to take your phone calls. We want to hear your voice, you’ve heard from some leading experts. Now it’s time to hear from the smartest people in the room, which are always you, our callers.
Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. You got two lines open. If you want to be on the air, it’s a great time to get in line.
1-800-684-3110 will go in order of those who’ve called in. And by the way, I didn’t say this before, you’re an ACLJ champion, you tell our phone screener, you get priority selection here, so you could jump to the front. I don’t know if any of you are, but you didn’t tell him if he was.
Let’s go ahead and go to Ronald, who’s calling in South Carolina, who is watching on Rumble, which is great, one of our favorite free speech platforms. Ronald, you’re on the air.
Thank you for taking my call, enjoying your show. Just one caveat before I go into my comment, and that is that with what Will said earlier concerning agencies investigating the second attempt on Trump is hope it doesn’t end up like a Lee Harvey Oswald. But now to my comment though, and that is this, of the second attempt that has been made on Trump, and yet the Harris and Biden have been saying that we must stop these types of hate speeches that’s going on, but yet I have not heard an apology.
Right, it seems like the theory is to say we should lower the mood, we should lower the rhetoric, and then not lower the rhetoric. That seems to be the common case. And look, this has been happening for a long time.
The Trump campaign put out a whole list of times. And we can even go back to when Kamala Harris was on the Ellen shows, the Ellen DeGeneres, I assume. Are we talking about here?
So this was years ago at this point. This is how early it was. Let’s go to bite 16.
If you had to be stuck in an elevator with either President Trump, Mike Pence, or Jeff Sessions, who would it be?
Does one of us have to come out alive?
So, I mean, obviously, done in jest, but a lot of this is done in jest, and then it encourages the wrong people.
Well, and not only are they not taking responsibility for the rhetoric they’ve used, such as democracy is on the ballot, he’s a threat to democracy. You remember the dark Brandon speech where Joe Biden stood before a red background and had this very dark tone about the threat of MAGA to America. But you’re even seeing people in the media spin this, not as the speech from the left that’s dangerous, that it’s still President Trump that’s causing this.
Tom Nichols, who’s kind of a Never Trumper, used more of a moderate Republican historically, but definitely Never Trumper, wrote this for the Atlantic. Donald Trump is using another possible attempt on his life to inflame tensions in America, which is one more reason he should never be president again. So once again, he’s had a second attempted assassination on his life, and this is, blame the victim.
It’s President Trump’s fault. If he weren’t him, we wouldn’t have to worry about this. And that’s not just Tom Nichols, you’re seeing it on MSNBC, across the media.
It’s Trump’s fault for the assassins wanting to take his life.
Even Hillary Clinton yesterday, I believe, said he was a danger to our country and to the democracy. You know, all the court of normal rhetoric, right back at it. Let’s go ahead and continue on.
Thank you for your call. Let’s go to Jill, who’s calling in Connecticut, on Line 1, listening on the radio. Jill, you’re on the air.
Hi, thank you so much, Sekulow. I’m a Jewish believer, and I’ve been listening to your show for decades. I’ve been praying for you and love your perspective of the Jewish people in the state of Israel.
I’m also pro-life, so I just wanted to thank you. Well, thank you, Jill. I appreciate it.
So my question was getting back to, I was wondering why the attempted assassination, the assassin wasn’t charged with that crime. He got…
Right, it was God charges.
So Jill, actually, we talked about this on the show yesterday that we suspected the reason it was the two gun charges, where they were very easy to lay out because he is a convicted felon and he was in possession of a firearm illegally, as well as had the scratch serial number. They could get that indictment returned immediately and keep him in custody. That’s what we suspected on the show yesterday.
Federal agents have now confirmed that they placed those two charges immediately so that they can keep him in custody. So he has been charged, he can be kept in custody. It’s not just a holding while they do an investigation, but they also said they expect more charges coming.
So I think we will see 18 Usss Code 351, a violation of that, which includes subsection A. Whoever attempts to kill or kidnap any individual designated in subsection A, which includes a major presidential or vice presidential candidate, I expect that charge will be added. So they will definitely bring more charges, according to even the agents, in this case as they do this investigation.
But they also are saying they want to do it properly and do the investigation so that they can convict in the court of law, not just rush it.
All right, thank you, Jill. Going on, continuing on, Jim’s calling in Colorado. Jim, you’re on the air.
Yeah, hi. My question is, why doesn’t the Secret Service and other police agencies use canines to patrol areas? They can spot a person in a bush before a human can.
They can smell a gun in a crowd.
Jim, I mean, my assumption is that they do use these kind of resources. I don’t know for sure, but that would be what you would have believed, and what I would have believed, that these resources are being used. Whether that be dogs, someone called in earlier about drones.
Why are these seemingly basic situations being used or not being used?
And let’s go to even the basic point. They didn’t use canines. They didn’t even sweep the perimeter of the golf course before the round of golf.
That was a moment that did come out of the press conference, which was saying, yeah, we didn’t sweep it, because we weren’t sure it wasn’t on his schedule. But we also know from earlier in the day, because Sean Hannity spoke about this, because he was with him earlier in the day, said, yeah, they were talking about playing golf all morning. So clearly, it was coming.
And when you own the course, you may not have to get a tee time.
They didn’t sweep the golf course. And I’m thankful for the agent that was ahead of him and saw the gun barrel. That’s a great eagle eye to be able to see that gun barrel poking out of the bushes, because if they didn’t, that was the next hole that President Trump would be playing.
Different story. All right, let’s take one more call for the day. Robert’s calling, Colorado.
Robert, you’re on the air.
Thank you, guys, for letting me speak. And I appreciate you guys a lot, and I do pray for you and…
Appreciate it, Robert…
.donated in the past.
I really do appreciate it. I’m going to let you know real quick. We are running really short on time, so just give me your comment.
Okay.
Yeah.
Is there any way that Congress can beef up the funds, or anything to help Trump?
Sure, more security. I’m only cutting you off, because we have one minute left.
Well, Robert, we know that the White House has requested additional budget funds.
That was our first thought.
And there’s also, they could pass a short, a very quick additional funding bill, I think would be a lot easier than getting it through the CR. The problem though, is what one of the other callers brought up. This is managed by the Department of Homeland Security.
I don’t have a lot of faith in Alejandro Mayorkas’ leadership, and them utilizing the proper resources to do the right thing, because they haven’t been already for a long time.
Yep, well, thank you so much for everyone who called in. I encourage you all to support the work of the ACLJ right now. As we head into the end of this show, know that we create incredible content that is put out each and every day.
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Talk to you tomorrow.