In this episode of Sekulow, hosts delve into the complexities surrounding recent political maneuvers. The conversation begins with a discussion on President Trump’s change in position regarding a significant House vote, touching on the intricate layers of political strategy involved. Our hosts also explore the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a proposal stirring debate as the government moves towards increased transparency. Looking beyond the immediate legal implications, they reflect on the broader narrative surrounding political accountability and its impact on American citizens. As the dialogue progresses, our experts analyze the purpose and potential outcomes of the Act, particularly President Trump’s
SPEAKER 07 :
Today on Sekulow, we have breaking news as President Trump changes his position on a key vote in the House.
SPEAKER 06 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host,
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Seculo. Will Haynes here, joined in studio by Jordan Seculo. And we’re going to be talking about a key house vote that will be taking place tomorrow. It’s scheduled for tomorrow. And this is on the Epstein Files Transparency Act. It was a bill that resurfaced after the government reopened and had really they were trying to bypass leadership to get this to a floor vote. They finally got enough signatures on their discharge petition, which allowed them to bypass the leadership calendar for votes and forces to a floor vote. This all comes as the members of the House Judiciary Committee, the Democrat members, released a bunch of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. On the very day the House was voting to reopen the government. This has been something that President Trump, Jordan, has said, can we just let this go away? Why is this consuming so much of our political thought process when there is so much else going on in our country that needs to be addressed?
SPEAKER 04 :
Like trying to reopen the government after the long a shutdown in history but yet this is see the politics of it Democrats fold after their election victories and they fold without a message on the government shutdown they get nothing in return so they have to go to something else okay so those election victories I think people finally realize New York City and Virginia that’s not like game changing for any kind of politics or what’s coming ahead in the midterm elections at this point And I think where President Trump was by Friday night is, you know what? I’ve got to get, as he said in his Truth Social post, I’ve got to get the Republican Party back on track, back focusing on the economy, delivering for the American people. So if we need to release all these documents. so that they can do that, fine. Everybody go and vote this week to release all the documents. So for all that pressure that’s been, Donald Trump doesn’t want these documents out here. He wants some out, but not all of them out. He literally put the message out saying, go get this vote done and get it to my desk. We’ll sign it if you do. And all the documents will get out. They’ll go through the committees. They’ll go through the processes so that we can move on. You can let investigators investigate that if you want that to be taken seriously. And I do want to hear if you have 1-800-684-3110. Once this move is done, is there much more you want from like president Trump or Republicans other than ultimately disseminating information that would be important for the public to know, which will take some time even after this vote goes through. Can you, do you think that the American people and the voter who’s paying attention right now, which again, a special kind of voter, kind of the voter that votes in the midterms or at least primaries in the midterms that, you know, they go with like the next level. Um, Can they move on you know past this vote because there’s just not enough salaciousness in the news right now if you take this story out of it right now and you turn on the news there would not be a lot of news to cover today. Now that’s okay in the United States of America every day doesn’t have to be 24 hours of breaking news and crisis that’s what President Trump’s talking about. you know get this stuff done all these distraction votes and then you know I’m not afraid of what’s in there I will sign it and it’s all out there and does that move on so 1-800-684-3110 do you think then Republicans President Trump together can refocus then on the issues that the American people care about because that is so key in moving forward past these issues and heading into the midterm elections. He’s got to continue to deliver for the American people while we have these slim Republican majorities.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right, Jordan. We’ll talk about this more in the next segment. As Jordan said, call us at 1-800-684-3110. to talk to us on air. But we have important fights going on here at the ACLJ. We’re going to talk about some of those coming up as well. We have Rick Rennell joining us. We have Ben Cisney, an attorney in our DC office, joining us coming up. Stick around. You don’t want to miss that. Go ahead and like this video. Leave a comment where you’re watching from or a question in the chat as well. We’ll get to those. But support us during our Freedom Drive here in November. It helps our work continue. And we’re going to talk about a lot of that work coming up. Your donations are doubled at ACLJ.org slash freedom. Donate today. We’ll be right back. welcome back to seculo and i’m joined in studio by jordan seculo we’re talking about this vote that will be happening tomorrow in the house this is a discharge position petition that is brought by members of the house when they want something voted on they want a floor vote on a piece of legislation but The leadership hasn’t set it in the calendar. Oftentimes it’s used by the minority party that can get a few in the majority on their side to force a vote on a piece of legislation. It doesn’t mean it will pass necessarily. In this case, we assume it will. And the president has now said, go ahead and vote for it. Here’s the problem with this whole story as I see it. Yeah. And how much air it’s taken for years.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’re not going to talk about this for multiple shows. So if this is your chance at 1-800-684-3110. And if you don’t want to talk about it, I’m totally cool with that too. We thought we needed to address it because it’s become a story that now the president has said, fine, vote, get it all out there. So I think it’s become a different kind of story. But I do want to hear from people if you think… That, you know, now that we can kind of move past this, that the president said, get it all out. There’s nothing I’m afraid of. 1-800-684-3110 if you want to join us on the show right now about this.
SPEAKER 07 :
And Jordan, I think what’s interesting, and I think it was Chris Cuomo that did a video about this, that was basically saying. Both sides have kind of played the American people on this because when the Republicans didn’t have the power to release stuff, they were calling on the Biden administration and the Biden DOJ to get this stuff out there.
SPEAKER 04 :
I would take the Biden DOJ if they thought that there was truly anything that was really damaging, not just these things. Even though we’ve read in the last two weeks, that’s probably not enough, right? I mean, it’s not damaging enough. It’s kind of like you don’t even know if it’s – you have to take Jeffrey Epstein’s word for it. uh which is not someone michael wolf by the way of which of writing down what he was right exactly or was he spinning things and so you know at this point we do know that from people that have said anything about interactions with epstein and trump that epstein was the bad actor and that their interactions with trump were nothing but professional if not more than professional because uh some of these people that epstein would hire initially worked for president trump which is how he eventually kind of moved him out of the mar-a-lago scene and said no I’ve told you to stop doing this, stop hiring these people. They’re all disappearing. And so you’re out. You’re not coming back here anymore. Whether he’s a member there or just came there as part of other members in the Palm Beach scene, I think we get too affixed in those lines. But the truth is the president has said. Get it all out there. Go vote. I’m done trying to tell you that this is a, I do think it’s a distraction issue, as what President Trump said, but if we need to be distracted by it by a few more days so that we can then get back to doing the business of the American people now that we’ve got the government back open for at least a little couple months here, let’s get back to doing everything we can for the American people through the end of this year.
SPEAKER 07 :
And I think it’s also important to look at the context here now that Democrats have all of a sudden after for years mocking Republicans and conservatives that said that said this is such a conspiracy theory. There’s nothing there. Now, all of a sudden they’re weaponizing it. And honestly, to some degree, that is what tells me that whatever documents there are, there isn’t the stuff that people that have been interested in this story are looking for. Because one, if there are very powerful people named as clients in some sort of documentation, then how polarizing this story is, that would have been leaked or used against someone because both sides have had power at this point in the timeline of this scandal. So if there was that information and someone had access to it, Washington DC is the hardest place in the world to keep a secret, to actually keep something under wraps. If there was actual evidence of someone in power that had done something or Jeffrey Epstein had some sort of leverage against these individuals, that I believe would have come out. So I think that there’s the question there. We also know that the Trump administration went to court asking for all the grand jury information to be released. And a judge blocked that. So we don’t necessarily know what files are here, what they are still, even by this legislation, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, what can come out. Because grand jury information, not to protect anyone in this case, but the precedent there of why a judge blocked it when the administration was like, we should get this out there. is because that is a sacred process and the public it isn’t supposed to be transparent in a way uh so that isn’t necessarily the judge protecting someone in this case but is to protect the entire grand jury process which is a very important thing to preserve in this country so yes the the trump administration tried to get that out that was blocked by a judge now we’re here it’s been this back and forth kind of political football that I think the president rightly so is like, can we be done with this? Can we move on? And if there is something that can come out, if there is something that DOJ could do, then they can do that. But why does this have to be dominating our political system when we have a lot of big issues?
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, this is what’s going to be interesting. So once these, if the votes are actually taking place and we see kind of how the votes come down and it gets to his desk and he signs it, can really anybody complain anymore? Right. No. Now they can go through documents and try to find this and that and that will take time. But, you know, ultimately there, the president is the one who is the who greenlighted this, who said, you know what, I’m not going to I don’t care how you just go vote on this. Get it to my desk. Let me get all this out. And I think that ultimately that makes it tougher for the left now because he’s saying. I’m not worried about anything in here. And now the left is worried because he’s talking about other people’s names from the left who are also in there, the Bill Clinton types and others. And he’s saying, you know, maybe we’ll have some focus on this too. And then they say, oh, I can’t believe he said that. Well, I mean, you’re going to dissect all these names. The Democrats will on their committees. The House will on their committees if they do get this kind of tranche of documents. And you’re going to find out on both sides. The truth is… I’m hoping that this lets us move on so that we can start actually working on legislation and reforming legislation that actually benefits the American voter who got these people elected.
SPEAKER 07 :
So Jordan, as we also move ahead.
SPEAKER 04 :
That we need to come out and in very big numbers again in the midterm elections or we’re going to be giving the final two years of President Trump’s presidency away to the stonewalling of the left.
SPEAKER 07 :
Jordan, when you also look at the things that are going on in this country. Yes. If there is a major scandal with people that need to be prosecuted, of course, the DOJ needs to go after that.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think that we’re just a lot more skeptical about it now because the DOJ has been going after senators. They’ve been going after Donald Trump at the federal level with Jack Smith and Crossfire Hurricane. I mean, God, we were part of that Mueller team, president’s legal team. And then, of course, impeachments after he’s even in office. I mean, we did the first one when he was in office. Chief Justice was there. Second impeachment, he’s not even there. I mean, you know, and so they’re looking for another impeachment opportunity. It’s all ways to basically prevent his administration from moving forward with any lasting action. lasting change you can keep doing executive orders you can keep running the executive branch you can do a lot that way it can just all be reversed very quickly if Republicans weren’t to maintain control of the presidency following this president’s term which we’re still three years away from finishing
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and I think what the Democrats have missed in this story of why conservatives were interested and concerned about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal the entire time is that conservatives and Republicans and the ACLJ and groups like ours have been concerned about human trafficking for a long time. The left has not. That was why this story mattered.
SPEAKER 04 :
Remember we talked about those issues with immigration and they would say that we’re crazy and that we’re making those stories up? What you’re seeing is, Jordan, this is a… They do movies about it. They say those movies aren’t real. That trafficking is not happening.
SPEAKER 07 :
Headline from this morning. Missing Florida kids among the 122 rescued during Operation Home for the Holidays. Yeah. Federal, state, and local agencies have rescued 122 missing or endangered children from Florida and nine other states. So the human trafficking and missing children and child exploitation is still the work that conservatives are getting done and they are still focused on. So don’t let anyone tell you that, oh, Donald Trump doesn’t care about that or Republicans are trying to protect predators by not wanting this. The most ridiculous, disgusting political lie you’ll ever hear because this administration is doing that work.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 07 :
And they are delivering on campaign promises. That is a big difference. The Democrats don’t even know why conservatives latched on to this story and scandal in the beginning. It was because of our concern of what’s happening in the United States of America, which is child trafficking and human trafficking. And that is something that is actually being combated very aggressively by this administration. But Jordan, we’ll be back. We’ll be joined by Ben Sisney because we have some big topics to talk about there about those phone records of U.S. senators and Jack Smith and how it can affect you as an American citizen and our fight against the deep state. But I also want to remind people today we’re filing a major amicus brief in New York versus Trump in the Second Circuit. This is us putting our argument forward in court of why the government must be allowed to go after waste, fraud, and abuse to root it out and let the executive do their job. We’re filing that brief today in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, as well as we are fighting against that city in Colorado with a lawsuit where they were not letting churches meet and citing them criminally. Donate today, ACLJ.org. Welcome to Seculo. Will Haynes here, joined in studio by Jordan Seculo. And we are also joined by one of our attorneys, Ben Sisney, out of our Washington, D.C. office. And we’re going to be talking, Jordan, this is about the Jack Smith scandal. We found out he had targeted eight U.S. senators, one member of the House of Representatives, by seeking their phone logs. And fortunately for some of the senators, like Senator Ted Cruz, AT&T was like, you know what? this doesn’t sound above board. We’re not going to comply with your subpoena, which takes a lot of courage, by the way, for a big corporation when special counsel comes a knocking and says, give us these phone records. And they say, we’re going to meet with our general counsel and maybe this isn’t right. But other companies did hand over these records. But Jordan, let’s talk with Ben now and talk about one, some of the actions that have happened recently that could combat this and what we need to be doing.
SPEAKER 04 :
Ben, our folks know that we filed the FOIAs on behalf of many of these senators who we know were targeted, including people like Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn and Lindsey Graham and Bill Hagerty. And then they got kind of put forward with this piece of legislation that was dropped in on how they could further take action against bad actors at the DOJ and FBI. retroactively, but also in the future. This also dropped in the House bill. House wasn’t really happy about it, mostly because there wasn’t a lot of discussion about the $500,000 penalty per illegal action that may be found in court. What we found is that most senators, and I want to say this right off the bat, Ben, because I think it’s important. A lot of legislation looking at protecting the government from not doing these bad things or taking these bad actors would have large financial penalties attached to it as a deterrent. So that’s part one. It’s not about enriching senators. But part two is if the $500,000 became too distractive, we’re totally fine with taking that out and just focusing it on both the, again, getting relief. So whether that’s injunctive relief, ultimately consent decrees, things like that, but also discovery, because discovery would allow this information to get out quicker than even a FOIA process. So what we’re hoping is that in the House, and listen, they can adopt this to cover themselves as well, that they keep the key cause of action for groups like the ACLJ so that we can represent these senators and get this information out to the American people.
SPEAKER 05 :
I do hope they keep that provision, Jordan, even if they need to fine tune a few things like the damages amount or increasing the applicability of whose data is protected. You know, fine tune it, tweak it. That’s kind of what happens in the legislature. It’s part of the process. But at the end of the day, that provision is an important one. As we wrote about recently, it is not even that it has to be the complete and total fix. There’s a lot of work, as we know as well as anybody, that needs to still be done. But this is a big step. It’s a good step. It’s a step in the right direction. And I do hope that they’ll hang on to this so that bad actors within the government sort of abusing that badge, that shield, With the full weight of the federal government, they’re using that to violate constitutional and, at this pass, statutory rights. We need to increase accountability however and wherever we can. This is a big step in that direction.
SPEAKER 07 :
Ben, also, when you look at the step in the right direction, you’re already starting to see people like Senator Lindsey Graham, who is saying, I think that we should now also offer a bill that would cover a cause of action for other Americans swept up in this dragnet policy. You’re hearing other sorts of reforms. Does this, one, serve two purposes? One, it allows quickly… the American people and the oversight of Congress by using the court system, be able to get individuals and bad actors like Jack Smith into depositions, into discovery, into things like that to get to the bottom of what really went on. as well as open the door for discussion in places like the House of Representatives, which is, as we’ve seen, been a little unruly of late. But open that door for that discussion. Now they want to talk about real reform. So I almost see this as twofold. It helps us get us in the door quickly while it’s still relevant to go after these people, as well as open up the conversation for broader reform.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think that’s completely right. This opportunity, even though this is just focused on the senators’ electronic data, is a critical opportunity for the American people to see just how bad it had gotten, how bad the actors were, what they were doing, and the lengths to which they would go. And just to make a point here, Will, If they’re willing to do that to sitting United States senators, you don’t think they’re willing to do that to you, to any of our listeners today? If you’re on the wrong side of something, we know many people have been on the wrong side of it. And we’re hearing that more is coming. More news is coming. We’ll see. But I think that’s exactly right. And this is a nice illustration of the problem of how high and how, honestly, how deep it will go to. But at the same time, I hope it is the beginning of a new wave of conversation of reform. We’ve been calling for reform for a long time. And this is exhibit A, you know. And like I said, we have a long way to go. But if we’re having the conversations now, that’s already an improvement from where we were.
SPEAKER 04 :
So we’re going to be sharing this with our friends on the Hill. Make sure Mark from our government affairs team, we want to make sure we get to Mike Johnson’s office. Say, listen. You might want changes to it. You might want to expand it. All good. Just don’t do away with what could be a very powerful tool of your oversight when you are subject to a potentially illegal search and seizure, Fourth Amendment violation, First Amendment, which, by the way, still applies to all Americans, Ben. So, I mean, we all have those rights when we believe this happens. And I think Congress, because of their duty that we elect them to do they you know whether it’s classified information or highly sensitive information I mean it should be even a higher bar I mean to try and get this this information but it doesn’t prevent and I want this to clear it doesn’t protect corrupt politicians either Ben if you are the target of a criminal investigation you will not get special notice there are exceptions like that throughout even what may be this first flawed package that needs to be reformed
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, Jordan, I’m glad you brought that up because that’s exactly right. And because people who are opposed to this kind of accountability could easily even even accidentally fall into the misperception that this is protecting, you know, it’s kind of some kind of inside protection deal. No, as clear as could be in that provision, as you know, the first days that we went over this together, that the provision that clarifies specifically if a senator is a target of an investigation, and that’s a term of art for investigations, there’s a definition for it, but it kind of speaks for itself. If a senator is a target, the special notice requirements just don’t apply and the current status quo applies. And guess what? That’s how it should be.
SPEAKER 04 :
right and no one is above the law we hear that is that we could utilize a tool like this in whatever form it finalizes in we just what we’re really pushing is that keep keep it in there somehow because the ACLJ would be happy to take those same six senators we’re doing with the FOIA work with and the ones who want to move forward the lawsuit under this new cause of action we’d be happy to take that on and folks you know how we’re able to do that with your resources you donate to the aclj these senators come for us let me tell you i’m not going to name any names of course but they were coming to us last week saying okay how can we measure this so that we still can get to this information uh to see what these bad actors were doing what happened to other centers what happened to other members of congress So that’s what we’re talking about right now. And we can do that work if you support the work of the ACLJ today and be part of our freedom drive to double the impact of your donation. You go to ACLJ.org slash freedom. Your donations are doubled. That’s ACLJ.org slash freedom. And that’s how we continue to fight in Washington, D.C., whether it’s on behalf of you or U.S. senators to get to the truth and reform our government.
SPEAKER 06 :
keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever. This is Sekulow.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Sekulow. Will Haines here. Jordan Sekulow joining me in studio. And Jordan, we’ve been talking about a lot today. Yes. We just had Ben Cisney on from our D.C. office talking about this issue with the seizure of phone records.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, I mean, you want the ACLJ. I don’t care about the $500,000. The senators I’ve talked to don’t care about the $500,000. It’s normal to put in in those kind of situations. It’s become a distraction. Strip it out. What we want… is for those senators to have the cause of action to go to court. That court can ultimately issue adjunctive relief and also consent decrees. That means, like in the IRS cases we took on, the DOJ and FBI coming forward and saying, yes, we know this law exists, we know in the past that it appears to be violated, and we know that it governs us moving forward in the future, these notification requirements. And that if we don’t, follow these notification requirements there will be penalty you know there there are sanctions and this and that and that okay so that’s a consent decree but guess what comes in the middle of that discovery so if you think maybe it’s more than eight senators and a former member of the house uh and a couple more because we found out kevin mccarthy was also involved in that early on so can we get more of that information through discovery we’ve already got the foia in but you know the foia fights that’s a different kind of fight in a situation like this where you have a cause of action for your client, the discovery process, if you could get to that point, you’re going to be able to uncover a lot of information about this wrongdoing so that it does not happen again. I mean, the goal is this doesn’t happen to members of Congress again, regardless of what side of the aisle they’re on, and the exceptions are there to protect actual crime and fraud from elected officials, so it doesn’t protect them from that, doesn’t shield them from that. It’s almost like I wish we didn’t have to have this, but we do because every two weeks we’re getting new documents about how they’re spying on presidential candidates, spying on senators, spying on House members. The ACLJ has been at the tip of this. We’re representing those senators immediately through FOIA. And I know if they had the cause of action, I don’t know if everyone wants to go into federal court, but I know enough will with us at the ACLJ that we can be the lead organization to get this information out about what Jack Smith and his team were doing so that the Jack Smiths of the future are too scared. are too scared because this will be not just career ending, it could also face other penalties. Remember, this is the penalties senators can enforce. The Department of Justice and FBI can then go and look at this employee and say, wow, you violated this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. You’re not just fired, you’re in trouble. I mean, so this is bigger than just that piece of legislation, but we need to preserve that cause of action. We’re going to get that out, making sure that’s clear. I’d love if they want to extend that to the House of Representatives. More sunlight on this is better.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah. And I think this actually ties into the vote that the House will be taking on the Jeffrey Epstein documents, because at the end of the day, we know he got a sweetheart deal a long time ago where he was able to have they knew what he was doing. And he went to minimum security, got to go home on the weekends to go work, et cetera. And we know that that is a corrupt system that allowed that to happen. We know the corrupt system was targeting U.S. senators. There’s from just the news. Actually, we’ll get into this in the next segment as well with Rick Grinnell. But a former U.S. attorney went to the DOJ in 2018 with information about Hunter Biden. What did the DOJ? Nothing about that information from this respected former U.S. attorney. Instead, what did they do? Subpoenaed the U.S. attorney’s phone records. This wasn’t just U.S. senators, folks. This was everyone they saw as a political threat.
SPEAKER 04 :
We have no idea how deep this goes, too, because these are phone records. This is to the point where you don’t have to be a target. Right. You just have to be someone that they’re looking for information, evidence from. And so, Lord, you think about how many people that could involve with Arctic Frost. We see the scope of it’s continuing to broaden out every time we get a document dump. And we’re not shocked about what they’re doing, but it’s something we shouldn’t allow in the United States of America when we have ways of correcting it. So we need your support. Because I want to go not just file these FOIAs we’ve done, but I want to go right into federal court with these senators, maybe House members too, if they expand the law, to get this information out so that this does not happen again to another administration that wants to change Washington for the American people for a better way, like the Trump administration.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Sekulow. Will Haynes here, joined in studio by Jordan Sekulow, and we have Rick Brunell joining us. But also, if you’re watching, we’ll be taking your phone calls in the next segment. Call us at 1-800-684-3110. You can talk about anything we’ve talked about today, or if you’ve got other questions about political process in D.C., now that the government is back open, etc., give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be happy to take you on air in the next segment. But Rick, We’ve been talking about this situation where we knew that Jack Smith had been spying on U.S. Senators and a member of the House of Representatives, that he’d gone after their phone records in his January 6th probe, but we’re also…
SPEAKER 04 :
And if we could keep some kind of cause of action, I know we can drop the $500,000, we can expand it to the House, we could expand it to more people, but we know that with these senators, that if we just had some of them who signed on to endorsing our FOIA, some of them comfortable taking it into federal court, that we would get… Obviously, you try to get to discovery, and if you get to discovery, you get a lot more information than just through FOIA. That’s right. So it’s a key thing for us that we don’t want Republicans to just give away because of that $500,000 that everybody said we can cut out, and we endorse that too. You can totally cut that out and still have the right causes of action here.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right. And Rick, what we’re also starting to see is more reporting about how this this tool was being used by the Department of Justice. It appears to go after political enemies, not just when it came to U.S. senators, but maybe former prosecutors in some cases, everyday Americans. That is there a need for reform in the way that the Justice Department can use things like metadata that may be in a gray area as far as the way the laws have been written because of the way technology has advanced? But what do you think about this concept? Do you think we’re in need of reform to kind of rein in what the deep state has been using this for?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes. Let me just talk to you a little bit as a former director of national intelligence. I saw the lack of oversight, the lack of interest from senators to get into the details. That’s one problem. The second problem is we have a whole bunch of bureaucrats who we just have to trust. They get these incredible tools and, and sadly, we’re finding that individuals are using these incredible intelligence tools for nefarious reasons. And so, we’ve got to develop a system where the individuals are outed. Now, what I tried to do is to have a fast alert system. We do have alert systems within the intelligence community where someone, say, is printing some sort of information or And maneuvering it from a classified computer to an unclassified, those are immediate red flags. But I have to tell you, even when I was DNI, we caught a couple of people doing very shady things. And we turned them over to the FBI. And Chris Wray at the time refused to prosecute that. They go out to the home. They listen to the excuses. I had one individual case where someone was literally writing very specific information from classified information, distorting it about the president of the United States. And he also had up on his unclassified computer half of a news article where he was transposing the classified into his own unclassified using classified information. And he was about to send it to a very left wing NGO. We caught him. We immediately shut off his access. But when we turned him over to Chris Ray, you know, for whatever reason, he wasn’t prosecuted. That’s that’s either DOJ, FBI or some local judge. And so it’s it’s not an easy fix. We have the tools. We know what we’re looking for, but we need brave individuals to prosecute so that it doesn’t keep happening.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, I think this is why, Rick, you’ve got the tools to figure it out, but then when you’re handing it over to the law enforcement officials, they weren’t doing anything about it. This cause of action, again, they got so much, oh, it’s a $500,000 kickback decision. Take the $500,000 out. That’s not going to survive. None of them want it. None of them care about it. We were talking to them last week. But what we would have is a way, a cause of action for those senators to go into court, represented by ACLJ. You’re taking on Department of Justice, but in a more friendly way, because this is, again, something they’ve also tried to get at. And then you get to a discovery process, and the discovery process is you’re able to uncover potential more wrongdoing, others that may have had their information taken that shouldn’t. That could have been people inside or outside the government, by the way. That could be… And then… ultimately a the consent decree that has to be signed by the DOJ and FBI saying no understanding that there’s now a law in the books that if they do this um and they don’t follow this correctly um that they are in violation and then I think Rick it gets to that point where um DOJ and FBI can then determine how they want to handle those who who are violating this law um through their own potential process, you know, recommendations for prosecutions that may come from other Intel agencies or departments.
SPEAKER 03 :
Look, one of the things that I’ve learned is because there’s so many different pieces is that light and sunlight is one of the best ways to make sure that we’re watching this. Having an intelligent conversation about this issue here on ACLJ, people talking about it, petitioning their elected officials, other people just beginning to put pressure on on all of the various elements of law enforcement. That’s how we’re going to solve this. It is not an easy fix. If it was, we would have already fixed it. But we do need brave Americans to stand up and say, look, this individual is abusing the system. We have to have great tools, intelligence tools. But we also have to have great systems to out those individuals who are abusing the system. And I just don’t think we’re acting fast enough.
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and Rick, to me, this reminds me of the Tea Party scandal, which we represented a bunch of Tea Party groups. We sued the government. We fought hard. Jordan testified before Congress. How many times? I mean, dozens of times. And we fought for years. And what did we get? Well, we sued the government and we got a consent decree in court which said the IRS can never do this again. Now, the IRS still processes non-profit organizations. That is a core function of what they do.
SPEAKER 04 :
We still haven’t done work for a non-profit organization that’s been processed through, but we haven’t seen it at a mass level.
SPEAKER 07 :
At the same time, when we fight back and use the law, we can fix broken things and ensure that bad actors can’t use systems as
SPEAKER 04 :
The Washington Post said, we gutted the IRS tax-exempt division. The ACLJ was responsible for that. And by gutting it, what they truly meant is Lois Lerner and her allies, who were all hoping to get political appointee jobs in the Obama administration and move on to that side, so they tried to impress these political appointees at DOJ and FBI, were removed from government forever. Forever.
SPEAKER 07 :
And Rick, I feel like this is another one of those instances where we don’t want to get rid of the tools that intelligence can use for the right thing. What we want to do is ensure that bad actors are using the tools for the appropriate thing, not for going after their political enemies. And I think we have a unique opportunity here.
SPEAKER 03 :
This is a challenge to use a scalpel, not an ax. We have to make sure that we get it right. And we need to have brave politicians and judges who will dig into the details so that we can find the solutions.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah, absolutely right. Rick, and we appreciate you because he’s coming from that other, having to see it from the intel world where everybody’s saying, you know, what are you doing here? What are you doing there? We always are trying, you know, there’s always that back and forth. This is very straightforward. It’s that if you are not a target of investigation and you are an elected official, let’s say the House broads it out to the House and the Senate, and I would encourage them to do so. And so you are not a target of a criminal investigation. And yet the DOJ, FBI, federal law enforcement goes to get your phone records. You must be notified. Did it say that they won’t get the phone records? No. but you must be notified so that you could object so that you could ask more questions and then of course if you are a target of a criminal investigation that is excluded because we know that there are still be people in our imperfect but best system in the world that do get elected who do then commit crimes And so we don’t want to take the tool away from DOJ to be able to target those bad actors. I don’t care if they’re an R next to their name or a D or if they voted 100% with President Trump or always against him. If they are committing crimes, yes, they should be able to be investigated. And those people do not get the notification provision. And so it makes that, like Rick said, it also makes the intel community and the law enforcement community that acts kind of like quasi, like FBI, It kind of works in an intel-ish way to use a scalpel as well. So that when you’re investigating something involving people who are elected by the American people to serve a duty of oversight and function and to fund the government, that you, as the DOJ, you can’t take the hammer either. We’re both using the scalpels to protect the constitutional rights, both of the elected officials, but also to make sure that our DOJ and FBI can go after the bad guys.
SPEAKER 07 :
That’s right. And that is one of the reasons why you watch this broadcast or listen to it, because not only do we do the work. But we’re going to explain it to you. We’re going to have someone who’s been at the highest level of the other side of that information as well as the attorneys here at ACLJ that are fighting for reforms.
SPEAKER 04 :
Donate today at ACLJ.org slash freedom. Double your donation. Donate. ACLJ.org. We need that support today.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome to Sekulow final segment of the broadcast today. You still have time to get your phone call in 1-800-684-3110. We’ve had a lot of people listening today. Not a lot of people calling, uh, but go ahead and call.
SPEAKER 04 :
And again, we’re not going to jump on you. So if you’ve got questions about this, uh, Please call 1-800-684-3110. If you have questions about why you want to preserve that cause of action and the $500,000 that kind of became the distraction issue there, we’ve tried to explain that thoroughly. We’ve also got a blog up on ACLJ.org that we wrote on Friday evening. to help people start understanding why, hey, don’t just do away with a cause of action like this. If you need to refine it, you want to expand it to the House, great. The House can do that. Senate can’t do that. So do that and take out that $500,000. Fine with us. here’s what we need in there, we need the cause of action, we need the ability to get the ultimately discovery, consent decree, injunctive relief if necessary. Those points are all in there, more refinement, they can come to us for assistance on that too and we’d be happy to represent the senators who we know have been targeted, that doesn’t cost them anything, it doesn’t cost their taxpayers, they’re not using taxpayer funds, they’re using the ACLJ and to go and to utilize that cause of action So we want to try and preserve that in a form that we can utilize to further really illuminate the deep state and then take more of the bad actors out. Let’s take as many bad actors out and put as many safeguards as we can in in the time that we’ve got these majorities.
SPEAKER 07 :
Let’s go ahead and go to the phones. We’ve got Wendy calling from California on line two. She’s calling related to what we led the broadcast with about this vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act that’s supposed to take place in the House tomorrow. Obviously, if it passes there, it’ll go to the Senate. And then if it passes there to the president. But Wendy, you’re on line two calling from California. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes, I’m kind of confused and don’t understand why it’s so complicated to just take care of this Epstein situation, what all the legalities are behind it, and why it seems to be so difficult.
SPEAKER 04 :
You’ve got complications. Jeffrey Epstein is dead. One of the main accusers is also dead. That main accuser, by the way, who also worked at Mar-a-Lago, was asked… It was teed up with the question if you wanted to go after Donald Trump, whether it was true or not. And she said no. Donald Trump was always professional, always kind. And you’ll hear that from basically all of his staff, any of his properties or facilities that the Trump organization operates around, whether that’s Mar-a-Lago or other country clubs and places and hotels. um and i hear that all the time too not just with him but like you know you play golf they say oh you guys did this yeah how’s it when he’s out here the caddies will be like oh he’s the greatest he’s the best he’s you know um so that’s that’s part one part two is this is investigation information right and you’re not supposed to the government is not supposed to release a bunch of people’s names if they weren’t charged with a crime but it sullies them so we have protections against that now congress if they believe the oversight is so necessary that this is so distracting so important to the American people that we need to go around that still try to protect those who are guilty of no crimes uh guilty of nothing while at the same time you know I think the president endorsing it saying listen he knows his name is being used by Jeffrey Epstein a lot so much the fact that it actually kind of underscores that Jeffrey Epstein looks like he was just spiraling like we were talking about writing a thousand emails about Donald Trump I mean you know just anything to try to get out of the situation his bad actions had got him into but second second is like random people’s names we try to protect not just important people like you know that have no bearing on any wrongdoing here weren’t investigated but were in one you know in some email in some document some receipt because in America even with our legal system we try to protect you from being basically reputation destroyed by the government without the government actually having to prove that you committed criminal wrongdoing
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, and to that point as well, Jordan.
SPEAKER 04 :
So you don’t just release this kind of stuff. What you brought up. And you’ve also got grand jury information. Remember, that was leaked to committees. Now, again, you’ve got to have a lot of things passed through Congress, and then it’s got to go through. And most of that is not to protect the politicians, by the way. It’s to protect you and me, the citizens who don’t have that kind of standing at the federal level.
SPEAKER 07 :
And where it also becomes tricky for precedent with the DOJ is that because he died before facing his trial, he was just an indicted.
SPEAKER 04 :
So even there, even with him, you could talk about what he had accepted responsibility for. He had pled guilty to crimes before, served time for that. But for this one, it never got to there. So usually the government is not able to release that information because, again, of what we said, you can’t go after the person who has no constitutional, as you’re guaranteeing the Constitution, ability to confront your accuser. You can’t do that to a dead man.
SPEAKER 07 :
And why I believe it’s the right course of action for it to go through Congress is because I want to preserve that for you, for me, for the entire country, that if for some reason the government or there’s the mob rule everyone knows first of all he was convicted of charges before even though he got a sweetheart deal everyone knows in the in that sense of what was going on but the government’s burden is still innocent until proven guilty they cannot run this campaign of releasing right this is not a political campaign But we can allow Congress to do this to have a very specific oversight law and that is what they are doing here and that’s why it is the appropriate way instead of just saying DOJ give us everything into the public searchable database because that brings up ethical questions that could affect what happens when it’s a political enemy. And they just want to sully their name. They did a lot with that with Donald Trump. They tried as much as they could. So we have to be careful with our institutions, not for the sake of monsters, but for the sake of the American people. And let’s try to get to one more phone call here. Let’s go to Richard. Richard calling on line two from California. Richard, you’re on Seculo.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, good morning. My question is, it won’t apply now. But for the future, is it possible for Congress to extend the statute of limitations? Because you know what? If you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about. So it could be five years, 10 years, 50 years. But I’d like to see the statute increased by at least five years.
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m talking about the congressional, like the oversight of these phone calls of the senators and that statute?
SPEAKER 02 :
No, for everything. For everything.
SPEAKER 04 :
Oh, just to see statute of limitations increased. I mean, listen, some do. So you have to go kind of law by law and they increase based off the complication of kind of what it would take to investigate or even look at, you know, to figure out that this wrongdoing had happened. So the complexities and also the seriousness of the charge or the crime that is being likely potentially investigated and then even alleged, you try to go and then get the indictment and then have to prove that in court. But, I mean, statutes and limitations are never at one level. So, I mean, there’s statute of limitations that are almost endless, right?
SPEAKER 01 :
Right.
SPEAKER 04 :
Some crimes and then others. But basically, the lesser the crime, the smaller, the tighter statute of limitations or else the system doesn’t work because it’s overwhelmed. That doesn’t mean there’s some that shouldn’t be changed. Right.
SPEAKER 07 :
And Congress can do that.
SPEAKER 04 :
They can pass a law. Yes. That’s like a judicial review bigger than what we’re talking about today. I’m not against that. I think this is the start of that. Like we said, this is the start of getting a check on these bad actors in the deep state so that we can identify more of them and get them out.
SPEAKER 07 :
Folks, thank you so much for watching and listening today.
SPEAKER 04 :
And we can do that with your financial support. I mean, really, you know, we will do the FOIAs. We will go into federal court. Let’s get as many of these bad actors out as we can. But we need your financial support to do it. ACLJ.org. Donate today. Have your donation doubled. ACLJ.org.
