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In this episode, we explore the growing controversy over potential preemptive pardons by President Biden, diving deep into what such a move could mean for the political landscape. With high-profile names like Adam Schiff and Dr. Fauci in the mix, we discuss the implications of issuing pardons before charges are brought, examining past precedents and how they may inform current political strategies. We also tackle the concept of de-weaponizing federal agencies, evaluating past actions by the FBI and DOJ and contemplating a future where these institutions operate unbiasedly.
SPEAKER 07 :
Report today on Sekulow that Biden could pardon Adam Schiff, Dr. Fauci and Liz Cheney.
SPEAKER 08 :
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.
SPEAKER 07 :
And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, folks, welcome to Sekulow. We’re taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. That’s 1-800-684-3110. You heard that right. Now, this is something, it’s got to get the left, right, going, I don’t know, I mean, to the point of their hardest line conspiracy theories, because you’ve got the Biden White House, and this is out in Politico, so this is not out in Fox News, this is not out in Newsmax, or just coming from us or some, or X, but in Politico, that… The Biden White House is discussing preemptive pardons. Now remember we talked about issues in the past about could a president pardon themselves for kind of preemptively like for everything they did as president even if there had been no charges brought against them and there had been that kind of discussion President Trump didn’t end up doing that and by the way he had lots of charges brought against him now the federal charges are dropping the state charges are falling apart as well we’ll talk about that today but this idea that the left believes because we want to de-weaponize de-weaponize the Department of Justice and the FBI and law enforcement so that they don’t have the perception or the belief or the actual facts. I mean, we’ve had the people testify. We’ve had the whistleblowers. We represent them. We know that the people that were put inside the radical traditionalist Catholic churches, they put inside FBI informants inside those churches. So to de-weaponize, the left feels like, Well, they may actually file lawsuits, not against bad actors at the FBI that they’re worried about, but politicians and former politicians. So people like Adam Schiff or government employees like Dr. Fauci. for not disclosing certain ties and kind of having these battles again and some of this I think by the way is trying to get President Trump to refight battles that you don’t need to fight again it’s almost like will you go here will you look at this and say hey could we file a lawsuit against Liz Cheney can we do that I mean the fact is they’re making this up there is no
SPEAKER 06 :
basis for what you say we want to de-weaponize that to de-weaponize the fbi you’re going to weaponize the fbi against democrats yeah i think this is a interesting time because i looked at x last night and this started a report started coming in about this the idea of pardoning all of these people and honestly just due to the list of the names i kind of disregarded it i was like this feels like just a viral x post that some you know account posted and it got some traction and all of a sudden some celebrities started posting it and People started sharing it. And then now we wake up to legit reports that this is on the table. It is a wild time to think that this would be the situation where you could go in preemptively, pardon people based on potential previous crimes. It’s a mess. But of course, we saw the reaction to Hunter Biden, and I’m sure they think this could be a time where you could just do the same.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and I think it also sets a dangerous precedent if they are to do this, that the pardon power, while the president has vast pardon power, most people don’t think of it as something where you’re issuing basically immunity for things that may or may not have happened. But that was also what you saw in the Hunter Biden pardon. was it went back to 2014 and it was very vague. It wasn’t very targeted at the gun charge and the tax trial he’s facing. It was wide open. And it’s almost like a preview of what they’re talking about. This is out of Politico that Biden aides are deeply concerned about a range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries. So they’re talking about these blanket potential pardons for members of the White House and the political sphere that are on the left. And we talked about those top three names, but they’re also looking at if they were to do this, it could be vast with aides, people underneath that you don’t even know their names.
SPEAKER 07 :
Right. So… pardon power that they heavily criticize they’re now you know criticizing their own president president biden for the use of hunter biden do it doing using one for hunter biden that was very broad as well i think went back to 2014. now they’re stuck with do we need preemptive pardons and of course it’s always president trump who’s criticized about this stay with us 1-800-684-31 to join us on the show share it with your friends and family we’ll be right back All right, welcome back to Secular. A lot of people are asking questions. We’ll start getting to those, too. We’ll start taking them on air. I see some of you writing in those questions. Some of those are coming in through the phones. We’ll take them in a minute. But the idea is these reports all over the place now… that the White House and the Biden administration is thinking about these preemptive pardons and they named some high-profile people two who were on the January 6th committee Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney and then they also named Fauci so for those would be for various different things you know of course President Trump a lot of this remember the information they were sharing was they were saying that they were doing it in a partisan way and they weren’t actually letting people see all the evidence it was one-sided with the January 6th committee I don’t know exactly what charge you would bring against them but this is not really about that this is the left trying to scare the American people about President Trump’s FBI being reformed so that it’s no longer weaponized and I think what they’re scared about and how long have we talked about for just the last four years that this FBI has become weaponized against pro-lifers, conservatives, Donald Trump and anyone associated with him if they could get anything charged they even went too far most people believe on what happened with most actors on January 6th with these people getting 20 and 30 year jail terms so to de-weaponize the FBI you would think would be the opposite of bringing criminal charges against politicians and former politicians and instead saying that was wrong then it’s also wrong now and in the future we’re going to actually focus on actual criminal behavior now if inside the department of justice You could show that there were attorneys like what was happening under the Mueller investigation. You saw those investigations go and that anything was improper there, but we had a special counsel look into that and they got one prosecution done over the guy who edited the email and it was not, I mean, those didn’t go very far. So I think it’s kind of like, let’s look towards the future. We either have to get rid of these institutions or reform them? Because we have to have something like a Department of Justice and an FBI in a country our size. We have to have a federal law enforcement agency. Is it that the FBI is beyond repair? People have talked about that with the IRS. There’s a new IRS commissioner that’s been announced. This is a business guy. He also wants to come in and streamline the IRS and think… Hey, is the IRS really doing its job, which is to really be helping the American people follow the rules, file their taxes on time in a way that’s simple enough that you don’t have to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to file your taxes, to pay your taxes so that you don’t then get a bigger tax bills because most Americans are just trying to follow the rules. They are not, they are not criminals. They just want to follow the law. and the law has become so complicated that you can’t really do that on your own and even if you use an outside specialist you have to be concerned that they’re not even doing it right on their own. So I think there’s a lot of issues inside this idea when we talk about a weaponized government than when you talk about de-weaponizing it. And you’re not going to be able to de-weaponize it by going after Democrats. Republicans going after Democrats, that’s just going to be continuing to weaponize law enforcement and there’ll be just that much more lack of faith in the institutions. I think what you really have here is that the left and Democrats, and let’s just say Washington, D.C. as a whole, let’s go bigger than just Democrats, they thought they were going to win this election. They thought the move to take Joe Biden out was all they had to do, that Kamala Harris would be historic, that even though she wasn’t that great of a candidate, the fact that she would be the first woman, first black woman, so you add these things to it, she was going to just waltz her way to the White House. And not only did it didn’t happen, this race, unlike what many of us were…
SPEAKER 06 :
hoping didn’t happen but preparing for was done very early and very quickly even though California still took until yesterday to finally certify some of them I’m looking at some of the comments a lot of people are commenting very similar questions and even our calls are leaning that way so I’m going to take a call because we have some answers a lot of you have questions specifically about pardon power what does that look like and how does it even get put in place but we know because Will pulled this up that the groundwork has been laid in the Hunter Biden Let’s go ahead and take a call. Let’s go to Michael who’s calling in Florida on line three. Michael, you’re on the air.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, Michael.
SPEAKER 05 :
Gentlemen, I thought that the spirit or reason for a pardon was to pardon someone who was either already found guilty or convicted of a crime. If we’re pardoning someone beforehand, are they not basically admitting to guilt?
SPEAKER 07 :
Michael, I think the idea would be… That was brought up in the article. The one reason they may do this kind of quietly and go to people and say, would you like this? Because they do believe that there are a lot of individuals that would not accept the pardon because of what you just said, Michael. A pardon does imply… that you’ve committed criminal conduct usually it’s that you’ve been convicted or that you’re about to be convicted of criminal conduct and maybe you’ve been sentenced and so you’ll be released maybe you haven’t been sentenced yet but the idea here is that there will be a lot of these individuals that we’re hearing about and by the way these are the ones who again are the bigger names that could afford to defend themselves And I feel like that would look like a political target. They would say no to this anyways. But the idea that they’re testing the theory. Remember, they said that a presidential self-pardon would be going too far. Now they’re going further than that by saying, can you pre-pardon?
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and what many on the left or in kind of the Washington think tank world, like the Brookings Institution, note that… Pardons don’t need to follow convictions but can be issued before or during criminal prosecution. The rationale for so-called preemptive pardons is there’s no point in requiring someone to live in fear of conviction or going through trial. And they even point to Gerald Ford pardoning President Nixon before there was a criminal case or thing actually established.
SPEAKER 07 :
That may establish it, right? there.
SPEAKER 09 :
But then you also look at the way that Joe Biden wrote the pardon for his son. A full and unconditional pardon for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1st 2014 through December 1st 2024 including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted by the special counsel. So it was it mentions those but makes it clear It’s way broader. It’s anything that he did or may have done. And I think that’s the type of language you would see if they were to go forward with these type of preemptive pardons to leave it vague and say anything they may or may not have done that’s an offense against the United States.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, this is, again, we can go to Bill in Wyoming, too, because he’s got a question on this as well. I think it’s important to answer these questions for people. They are putting this front and center in the news. Of course, Hunter Biden did that to an extent, and now they’re taking it steps further. Hey, Bill, welcome to Seculo. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, thanks. I think he partially answered my first part of the question about preemptive pardoning. But I understand from you guys that read your email where there is a possible attempt to prevent President Trump from actually being able to have a pardon. That sounds kind of strange to me about trying to do something like that. How can they do that?
SPEAKER 07 :
Well, I think, again, the question here is when can you pardon? So can you pardon before a crime has been committed or crime has even been charged? And the answer is yes, I think you can. I mean, I don’t think you have to have a criminal charge in the works to actually do that. And I think in Gerald Ford with President Nixon, it appeared that they would obviously there could be criminal charges coming after he was out of office and after he was impeached. But an impeachment doesn’t protect you from other charges once you’re removed from office. So because he left office, he granted him a pardon and no one questioned whether or not you should even be investigating anymore. That was done.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, so I think you’re right. The precedent is set and the verbiage that was in the Hunter pardon really just says pretty much anything that happened over the 10 years that could have happened, might have happened, did happen, it’s wiped away. as long as the federal has been wiped away. So I think that you could probably, Blake, do the same thing. Now, you’re right. It is a political decision for some of these. But if they spin it as we’re protecting you from a Trump White House that is going to unjustly go after you, then that makes the political spin a little easier for your own base.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I think that you’d have to really think through taking something like this if you have much of a political future in mind, because as the callers are correct, a pardon is not a grant of reprieve. It does not mean you are not guilty. It’s the opposite of that. It has nothing to do with your guilt or innocence. It doesn’t wipe away that you were convicted. of a crime it just means you won’t be suffering the sentencing yeah or the consequences the consequences of what could come from a prosecution if it’s done before or the sentence that you were given that you will no longer have to serve so it’s a little bit you know obviously this is only on federal issues and I think this is to some extent is to just scare members of Congress who are going to be doing these confirmation hearings into thinking that to de-weaponize an institution means that you have to weaponize it. And that is not the case. We just have to have a way in Washington to get bad actors out. It’s something we’ve been working on at the ACLJ for a long time. This is an important time of year for us at the ACLJ. Your support this month sets our budget for really the entire year. It’s how we set our budget so we know what we raised in December and with, again, doubling the impact of your donation, we can then budget out for the rest of next year. So this is a great time and really an important time for you to have your gift doubled through our Faith and Freedom year-end drive at ACLJ.org. If you’re able to, become an ACLJ champion with a monthly recurring gift at ACLJ.org slash champions, and you’ll take part in that. So I think the part in question, listen, people still have a lot of… And listen, I understand why. It’s something unique in our Constitution. It’s a unique power of the President of the United States specifically. I mean, it’s right up. It’s in Clause 2 of the… Section 2 of the Constitution and Article 2 of the Constitution, which lays out the powers of the President, and it only gives that power… of pardon power to the president of the United States and again it is limited to federal crimes and federal issues. We’re about to talk about something too with the remaining cases against President Trump that are in state court and how that operates somewhat differently from at least the federal procedures that have said that you know a sitting president cannot be prosecuted so all those cases with Jack Smith are coming to a close and he’s filing everything to basically bring those to a close, and how that interplays with what’s going on in places like Georgia. So we’ll get to that in a minute, but I do think we can play out a little bit more of this pardon issue and answer some more questions for you. Let’s go to Jeff in North Carolina on Line 1. Hey, Jeff, welcome to Sekulow. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hey, guys, thanks for taking my call. Just curious, does President Biden have the authority to pardon people
SPEAKER 07 :
a blanket pardon for all illegal immigrants is that possible to blanket pardon for all illegal immigrants now this this is interesting they’re not citizens of the united states i don’t know if that would come into play let me bring in harry hutchinson harry do you think that you could actually blanket pardon people for entering the country illegally though that wouldn’t necessarily give them citizenship either i mean that would really just mean they couldn’t be prosecuted for it i don’t think it would stop them from being removed
SPEAKER 02 :
I think you’re precisely right. You don’t get citizenship from that. So you don’t have a presumptive legal right to remain in the United States, even if you have entered the country legally. So, for instance, someone from France who, let’s say, had a visa or there’s an agreement between the French government and the American government. They could enter the United States legally, but nonetheless, the US government would have the right to remove them. So I don’t think a presidential pardon with respect to illegal immigrants will necessarily prevent President Trump from removing them because they are no longer in this country legally.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah and I think also there what you’ve got is this all right so you’ve got a situation there where you might not be able to then be prosecuted for the charge But that doesn’t mean that you can stay. So I think that’s, again, I see why people are starting to look at it broadly. That’s because of what President Biden did. Not because of President Trump. Well, it’s because of President Biden issuing a pardon that goes for Hunter Biden that wasn’t specific to the charges he was dealing with, even while President Biden was in office, but goes back to 2014. And then it says for anything that he might have, might have been, may have been, doesn’t know if he was or not. I mean, it’s so broad. Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Right. And the way that I read the Constitution, yeah, he could pardon someone who’s not a U.S. citizen. It’s not that it has to be a U.S. citizen to get a pardon. However, as you mentioned, it doesn’t mean that that grants you a citizenship or even future immunity as well from things. And that’s I know I’ve seen a lot of people asking that question, too. And I’ll pose it to you, too, of that question. The pardon power is past looking. It’s not a forward looking blanket immunity for anything you may do in the future. And the president’s pardon power ends on January 20th of 2025 when he leaves office. But I think the concern that a lot of people have, and even on the left with how broad the Hunter Biden pardon was, and now this discussion we’re seeing out of Politico that raises this question of just going through the government and giving these people pardons, does it set bad precedent for anyone? Because if they can then do that, And Biden can, which it is a very broad power. But if you’re not using it necessarily responsibly and you’re using it as a political weapon against your to be weaponized. Exactly. I think that’s the more dangerous precedent here is making the world look at America as acting very banana republic ish.
SPEAKER 07 :
And that’s what the pardon power to be the most important power of a president. I mean you want to kind of be a power that is used rarely and uniquely and it doesn’t usually absolve the person who gets the pardon. Usually the person who gets the pardon was already seen in the eyes of the public as someone who was guilty. It is, again, it’s, I think, tough to have that power and not use it for your son, which is why I think the White House was so out of step with Joe Biden. And it felt like a White House that was talking not on his behalf for the last two years, at least, of this White House, including removing him from the ticket, that really he wasn’t being consulted. And by the way, you know what’s interesting on this issue? It’s all in the news, right? Guess who they haven’t asked about doing this yet? Joe Biden. So they say in this article, though the White House counsel for Joe Biden has been involved in these discussions, so very high up in the legal chain at the White House, that Joe Biden himself has not been consulted about whether or not he would want to even consider offering these potential pardons to individuals in a pre- pre-criminal way. And again, I think there’s a big concern that because they’d be preemptive, a lot of these politicians would say no. Now, is that the same if you’re talking about some of these mid-level bad actors at the FBI or DOJ? Maybe not. And I think that’s where it gets more troubling because those people Have to be cleaned up to de-weaponize government. And there may be legitimate crimes that occurred. And though you may prosecute some, it may actually just be a way to easier. And Harry, this is because we know how hard it is to remove federal bureaucrats once they’re entrenched. And if you’re a mid-level DC IRS or DC FBI or DOJ, you’re pretty entrenched at that point. That at least if you want to de-weaponize the government, if you don’t want to bring the criminal charges against them, maybe at least the idea that they have committed these crimes or could have committed these crimes is a way to remove them.
SPEAKER 02 :
I think that’s absolutely correct. I think it’s also important to keep in mind that Joe Biden is a particularly selfish guy, and a large number of commentators have suggested his pardon of his son was very selfish. It benefited Joe Biden, particularly with respect to Burisma and Ukraine. So the question becomes, will any of these proposed pardons actually benefit Joe Biden? And I think at the end of the day, the answer is no. So I’m not necessarily sure he will care whether Liz Cheney or James Comey or Fauci is indeed pardoned because the question becomes, does it benefit the Biden family?
SPEAKER 09 :
And Jordan, before we go to break here, it also shows you something about the people in the White House that were so concerned about President Trump being a threat to democracy, how little respect they have for our democracy, of being a strong democracy, and trusting our judicial system. If they believe…
SPEAKER 07 :
think they do yeah right they understand that the DOJ has been weaponized by them and that means it could be easily weaponized by Donald Trump and his team and that doesn’t take many steps that’s like one step all you do is say investigate these people we believe that they committed crimes um that uh that uh that would not be these acts would not be covered by their their position in congress that they did commit crimes that or they leaked information that was classified the list goes on um or for some of these prosecutors at the DOJ that what they did was improper and the way they used the information was improper. But again, if we want to de-weaponize, it does not mean that we’re not going to have to get rid of or prosecute some actors inside the FBI and DOJ. But going after just big names to go after big names is not the way to de-weaponize a system for the long-term future. Support the work of the ACLJ. That’s at ACLJ.org. Be part of our Faith and Freedom year-end drive. We need your donations today.
SPEAKER 08 :
keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.
SPEAKER 07 :
All right, so lots of talk about pardons. We will see if we get to that level. I think, you know, when we talk about Hunter Biden’s pardon, we go to the power of the president. We walk through that very specifically on the show. We’re looking to see about these other preemptive pardons. I do think if you look at the pardon of Nixon by Gerald Ford, you see that there is precedent already for preemptive pardons. And no one at that time tried to challenge Nixon. that that I know of there may have been people that tried to bring lawsuits against President Nixon but once he left office I don’t remember ever reading about anything moving anywhere past being dismissed immediately by a court so it does look like it would be possible to do this does that mean that it wouldn’t be looked at by a court now and you know now that we’re in to 2024 2025 no it doesn’t so I think that again you have to take all this with a grain of salt and remember this is another kind of story showing you what’s happening at this White House the moment Joe Biden leaves the country or Joe Biden’s outside the White House. His team has got stories out that he has not even been consulted on. And Jordan, another thing… Because I think they’re mad about what he did with Hunter Biden. I think his own team, the left and the Democrats, realize he created a precedent for Donald Trump in the future so that this, what happened to Donald Trump and his staff… Never happens again.
SPEAKER 09 :
And I think another point to bring out on this is that even the left that’s saying he’s abusing this power, really, if it were to somehow be challenged, I don’t know, and I’m not the attorney, but it seems like it would be very hard to find someone who is standing to bring that challenge. And even if they did, and it made it all the way to the Supreme Court, this Supreme Court has been very generous with the interpretation of presidential power. We got that from the immunity ruling. And so you see that. And even if it did get all the way to the Supreme Court, challenging his wide sweeping pardons, I don’t know that even if… There are some commentators that can make the point that maybe it went too far, that the Supreme Court would be inclined to put a limit on that presidential pardon power because it’s pretty plain in the Constitution. The only thing he can’t grant a pardon for is for impeachment because that’s the political process. So people may be crying foul on the left. And I think that people like Karine Jean-Pierre may be pretty frustrated that she had to go out there and repeat that line. No, it will never happen so many times. But I don’t know that there’s any recourse for anyone to go back after the president and try to clean up the widespread usage if he chooses to go down that road.
SPEAKER 07 :
No, I think that, listen, I think after that, it was all bets are off. And this White House, again, they’re not even consulting the president. He’s the one that actually has the power. I guess they’re kind of come up with, what do we give him a briefing on this? And should we actually recommend this to the president of the United States before he leaves office? on january 20th usually these come on uh you know very late the day on january 19th uh where these kind of more controversial pardons get issued but they would have to approach people i don’t think they want a bunch of people offered pardons by the president who then say no no i don’t need a pardon because i didn’t do anything wrong or illegal i’m not worried about like that i just uh called for investigations into something. And the people who made the decisions about that are the ones who have to follow the law the right way. 1-800-684-3110 if you want to be on the broadcast with us. That’s 1-800-684-3110. And Logan, this is really a key time for us at the ACLJ. We’re fighting, and we’re going to talk about it in just the next segment, to defend school choice in a major case. At the Supreme Court of Ohio, as you saw more states go red, we are seeing school choice programs be broadened out. But we’re seeing the teachers unions try to fight back with creative ways like, well, we can’t pick your kid up because that’s going to cost us too much money. And if we send buses, so there’s no way to actually get the student who qualifies for school choice to school without putting a burden on the parents.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s right. CC High House Senior Counsel is going to be joining us in the next segment. You’re going to want to stay tuned for that. It’s always good for you to have an understanding of all the work the ACLJ is doing on the individual level, on the big level. But we can’t do any of it without your help and support. So I encourage you right now, during this Faith and Freedom year-end drive where all gifts are doubled, as we fight to defend the rights of students… and so many in the pro-life community. We got so much going on. I can’t wait to show all of it to you and so much of it we can’t even talk about yet. We need your support. Go to ACLJ.org right now and become an ACLJ champion if you can. That’s someone that gives on a monthly recurring basis. Be right back.
SPEAKER 07 :
Welcome back to SecU. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. So if you’re hanging on, we will get you. We’ve got a couple of ACLJ cases to update you on. CeCe Hallis joining us. It’s CeCe, one out of Columbus, Ohio. This, again, involving school choice and students who are not being the bus situation, which is supposed to be covered by the school choice law. law that you could get that transportation if you need it to the school of your choice and in Columbus Ohio the school district saying we can’t do that the they tried to come in and have this case dismissed and it was they were not successful we move on now.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah, so like you said, the Ohio law, there is a law in Ohio that says school districts have to provide transportation for any student within their district. And that means even private schools or religious schools. And that’s our client has students that go to a private Christian school. And the law goes on to say that not only does the school district need to provide that transportation to all these students, that if… They decide that they cannot because they’re outside the district or they don’t comply with the certain regulations. They are mandated. The law goes on to mandate that in that interim decision time when the parents are appealing the school. district has to provide interim transportation. So that’s where we are. Our clients have been denied transportation. They’ve appealed. There’s a long administrative process. The law requires that transportation, interim transportation be provided. So we filed a writ of mandamus in the Ohio Supreme Court. And that’s just a fancy way to say that the court needs to compel the government to do a specific thing. And here it is compelling the school board to provide the interim transportation. And like you said, the school board filed a motion to dismiss. The court just denied that. So the case goes forward. On December 16th, we have to submit evidence. And by December 26th, we have to provide a brief on the merits. So like we say all the time, just because it’s a holiday event, We’ve got Christmas coming. We’ve got New Year’s coming. The ACLJ will still be working defending these parents’ rights to have transportation under this Ohio law.
SPEAKER 07 :
To me, this is like the last and we have another one of these cases actually come in recently. We’re reviewing it right now, but it’s another transportation case. and it’s like another way these teachers unions and school districts are seeing that when school choice laws are passed especially what we’re seeing now is they’re being broadened so more people are eligible than were before usually it started out as something you had to have like maybe meet a certain economic condition or special need that you the school could provide and now it’s getting broader and broader to the idea that school choice should be available to every taxpayer because everyone’s paying for these public schools
SPEAKER 10 :
so their next the next way they try to make this difficult for parents is say we can’t pick your kid up yeah and and it actually and they actually tried to get this dismissed i mean they wanted to walk in say it just shows you how little they care about the kids right and how much they care about their own power and it actually affected more than our client there were over a thousand students that actually were denied transportation and so the ohio attorney general has also filed a similar lawsuit and we’re working in tandem with that because This school board, the Columbus School Board, is not following the law.
SPEAKER 09 :
And Jordan, this is another interesting and tragic fact of this, is that in the school board’s motion to dismiss, so when they asked the Supreme Court of Ohio to throw out the case, They said that the law imposes a penalty on school districts that fail to provide this. Now, this is, you know, the capital district of of the state of Ohio. So it’s not a rural district that they can’t necessarily get this together. But they argued not that we haven’t violated the law. but that the law has a penalty in it and if we pay that we’re covered so effectively they choose to waste taxpayer money paying a penalty that they know that they have to pay because they’re not following the law instead of providing students with the mandated transportation that the law covers so once again you talk about the power of the teachers unions and and the rights of students not being taken seriously or as of the utmost importance they even argued to the court that hey yeah we know that we’re supposed to be doing this but we’ll just pay the fine instead of helping the kids and Fortunately, the Supreme Court of Ohio denied the motion to dismiss so it can go forward as a case. But just that alone, that the school board would argue to the Supreme Court, we’re going to waste money paying a fine instead of helping children.
SPEAKER 07 :
These kids to school, even though… They were given more money to actually enact this program. So the public school system, because of the bus system, was given more money, CC, under the school choice law so they could get these kids to school. And instead they say, nah, we just rather take all the taxpayer money we get. We get plenty of that. We’ll just pay the fine courts. So there’s no issue here.
SPEAKER 10 :
And I think that’s why you see the attorney general there in Ohio getting involved because they see that this school board, the Columbus Board of Education, is violating a law, doing it willfully, and they need to, you know, make it right.
SPEAKER 07 :
A second case, this one involving life out of New Mexico. We’ve talked about this hospital. It was purchased, as we see lots of hospitals now, in consolidation. And these hospital workers… who had conscience protections at the hospital they were working at when the new hospital ownership came in got rid of those conscience protections and are required at the moment to perform abortions we’re waiting right now the hospital’s response but we’ve also got another client we’ve added another for a fourth client in this case at the same hospital who has realized now their conscience protections have been done away with by this new owner where does that stand?
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah. So in this case, we we actually have two issues going on. There’s the federal laws that protect conscience rights. And we see that even the Supreme Court just recently reiterated that absolutely federal law protects the right of health care workers to be able to say they don’t want to participate. in an abortion or assisted suicide or anything of that nature due to their religious beliefs, that that’s absolutely protected under federal law. But there’s also a Title VII claim, which is the religious accommodation claim that under their religious beliefs, our clients. The four health care workers there at the New Mexico hospital, you know, for religious beliefs, do not want to perform abortions or participate in any part of an abortion. And they should be allowed a religious accommodation. So we have gone forth. We’re in the stage of they’ve requested the accommodations from the hospital. We’re waiting for that response. If the response comes back and they don’t grant the accommodation, then we have a title seven claim that we can. pursuing the federal courts. And we can also file with the Health and Human Services the complaint for the federal conscious violations.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, I mean, so it’s these kind of new battles when you see the overturning of Roe versus Wade and then some states taking actions. that we’re fighting these new conscious battles whether it’s the school choice battles after again the Supreme Court opening the door for much more broad school choice programs across the country and then you’ve got to fight the cases that come from that because CC what happens whether they’re they uh to call it a healthcare industry when you’re talking about abortion but they won’t they try to make money It’s an industry, especially these ones that are buying and consolidating hospitals that were a lot of times in the past related to either religious institutions or nonprofit institutions to some extent, but could no longer afford to operate that way. So they had to sell to keep open. We’ve seen that fight. We’ve seen the fight on school choice be not now about whether or not you can actually choose the school because they’ve lost that fight. It’s, well, we don’t have to take you there. and so figure out how to get there on your own, even though many of the people that right now can take part in most school choice programs, though they are broadening out, still have requirements that have to be met. It’s not always yet open to everyone. I think there are states that are opening it, and it sounded like this year through elections, to 60,000 and 70,000 more students that will be eligible in states. So it’s certainly not everyone yet, but we are getting that direction. The… The teachers unions, the school boards, and the left, who has been able to use the public school system to kind of begin the indoctrination of students, and we’ve talked about parental rights so much these last four and five years, realize that when the parents are given the choice and the opportunity… What they’re doing first is taking their kids out of these schools.
SPEAKER 10 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 07 :
They’re not able to, even though they’re given extra funds to try and compete because these schools go to the point of saying, well, if you’re not going to go to our school, we’ll pay a fine. of your taxpayer dollars rather than pick your kid up to go to a private school.
SPEAKER 10 :
And this is where you see the ACLJ is so important because, like you’re saying, there are federal laws in place that have protections for schools, for hospitals, for conscience rights. There are state laws that have protections. Again, in Ohio, we see state laws, but then you will see local pushback. And in these two cases, you see it from a specific board of education, the Columbus Board of Education, or the specific hospital in New Mexico. And so even though there are laws on the books that protect these rights, the ACLJ still needs to step in and actually defend our clients’ rights under these laws. And we will do that. And like I said, it’ll be right through Christmas and the new year. We’ll be working straight through.
SPEAKER 07 :
You know what, folks? This is our most critical month of the year. We’re facing immense challenges. We know there’s going to be a lot of legal work, attacks on faith, freedom from the radical left are increasing. These new proposals every day that we’re hearing about from the left. But your support allows us to take on each of these challenges. Right now we’re fighting to defend school choice, as you heard, in a major case at the Supreme Court of Ohio. That has ramifications for the whole country. Representing several ultrasound techs, again, who are told they have to violate their faith, violate their conscience and participate in abortions or go look for a job somewhere else. They can’t work in the healthcare industry, can’t work in a hospital if you won’t kill a child in the womb. We’re fighting for them. We’re defending Israel against those unlawful arrest warrants by the ICC. Heard about it today, this idea that this will tar Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s history because they will be treated as war criminals even if they are never actually ever taken to court, just like Nazis. We have to fight back on those issues, and we are. So support the work of the ACLJ this month. Donate today. Have that gift doubled. ACLJ.org. Your financial support is critical. Welcome back. We are taking your calls. Let’s go to Ronald in South Carolina on line one. Again, talking about these issues involving pardons. We’ve talked about self-pardons. We’ve talked about preemptive pardons now. We’ve seen the pardon of Hunter Biden. There’s talk about will there be preemptive pardons of other well-known Democrats by Joe Biden. Of course, one thing to note in here, Joe Biden they haven’t even talked to about this because they don’t really talk to him about things until I guess he either makes decisions. It’s like the pardon decision on Hunter. He decided he didn’t want to talk to any of them about either. But I think that was why this was a White House that did not work. and so they would go out and make statements like this would never happen and they had to go out you know what I always say as someone who’s worked for a president before and on the legal side don’t go out and say things that will never if things are legal things that the president has the power to do I don’t think you should ever go out and say they will never do if they have the power and constitutional authority to do it you probably shouldn’t preemptively go out and say there’s no way 100% that you could ever change their mind on it
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, and we have Ronald still, right? Ronald, you’re there in South Carolina. Go ahead with your question or comment. I’m not sure if we do have a problem. Let’s put him back on hold and see if we can get to him. Let’s make sure he’s good. There’s a lot happening right now also with this year-end drive, and I really want to encourage you all to take a minute while we get those phone calls cleared up to support the work of the ACLJ. If you’re watching right now, scan the QR code. If you can’t support financially, we understand, and what I encourage you to do, an easy way to support the ACLJ, if you’re watching on YouTube or Rumble, subscribe. If you’re watching on X, you know, follow, do those kinds of things. Those are free ways that you can help support us. Over 446,000 people alone on YouTube have subscribed to our channel. And we know that about half the people that watch our broadcast each and every day don’t subscribe. So I’m looking at you. right now. If you’re watching this right now and you haven’t hit subscribe, hit the subscribe button right now. We know we’d appreciate it. And if you already have, hit the thumbs up. All those things help make sure that your message gets into the hands of more and more people. It helps us get within the algorithm so new people who have never seen the ACLJ, who have never seen this broadcast, see it. We know thousands do each and every day.
SPEAKER 07 :
Yeah, and this is, again, important to do. And like Logan said, it’s important to do because by you, it’s important that you come and you’ve figured out how to come and watch even if you haven’t subscribed. But if you subscribe, they look and they say, okay, this kind of person subscribed. We should send out this show to more people like this person. Absolutely. And that makes sense then that people like you would also want this information and these discussions. So when they see on the news in five minutes that there’s this talk of preemptive pardons, well, let’s go into a discussion with actual attorneys who have gone through these presidential power issues and can actually talk to you about this stuff in an honest way, not in a partisan way. Notice we didn’t just come out and say, if he does this, you know, put him in jail, right? We actually went through and said, well, let’s think through this. There might not be a ton of precedent, but there’s one. Pretty big one. The pardoning of Nixon. Yeah, a pretty big one. And if you, just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not true. And I think people sometimes think, well, he’s a president and that was known that he was going to get prosecuted. Well, then you could say that for a senator.
SPEAKER 06 :
You could easily say that for a… You could say that, honestly, at this point, you could say that just about anybody.
SPEAKER 07 :
Anybody involved in the political fight feels like you could be a target of the weaponization of law enforcement, which is why the goal of the Trump administration, and it’s a big goal to get there in four years, But the goal is that the American people on both sides of the aisle and no aisle at all have faith again in our legal system. That doesn’t mean, again, that you love the fact that the IRS is going to audit you occasionally or that the FBI doesn’t sometimes get things wrong. But that generally speaking, they are trying to do the right thing and not the wrong thing. And they’re certainly not doing it because of politics. That’s where we’re trying to get to. And if we can’t get there, we’re going to have to change the systems entirely. And that’s going to take more than four years, and that’s going to take an even bigger type of election over multiple election cycles if we want to see those reforms done.
SPEAKER 09 :
And Jordan, I think we should play this bite as we wrap up the show today. This is from Jill Winebanks, who was a prosecutor during the Watergate scandal at the Department of Justice. She was one of the individuals looking into this on that team. And here’s what she had to say about, one, she’s coming off talking about the Hunter Biden pardon, but also looking forward to potential preemptive pardons. And I’m curious if… She would have said the same thing about President Gerald Ford after Nixon stepped down if she had the same feelings back then. But let’s go ahead and play bite six.
SPEAKER 01 :
It is really appropriate for a grant of clemency. I hope that President Biden will also issue preemptive pardons to all of those people threatened by the injustice of what will become the Department of Justice in the Trump administration. That, of course, includes Jack Smith and all of his staff. many Department of Justice lawyers. It includes President Biden himself, although we don’t know that anyone can legally pardon themselves. He will need a pardon because he is going to be harassed and charged for no crimes whatsoever. Donald Trump has promised that.
SPEAKER 07 :
I saw President Biden and President Trump in the Oval Office smiling. I don’t think on the top of President Trump’s list is, I’m going to go prosecute an 80-year-old former president who I didn’t even get to run against because he did so bad in the debate that I didn’t get a chance to beat him the second time, who’s obviously no longer consulting with his staff and probably had no control over the DOJ either and all of these individuals. because you see that he did exactly the opposite move of what his staff was telling you for three years about Hunter Biden when that stuff starts happening you start thinking you know what this is not about Joe Biden anymore and why does Jack Smith need a pardon preemptive what did he do illegal I mean if he did things illegal in a prosecution of a former president I’d like to see the case move forward. Because we do have to de-weaponize the government. And that has to mean that prosecutors can’t feel like they are God. And that the rules don’t apply to them. That the rules of justice. And remember, we’re still keeping this in the federal system. This isn’t going to reform the New York DA’s office. This isn’t going to reform Georgia DA’s office. But there are cases going on about that. We’ll talk about that too. Probably tomorrow on the broadcast and get to it today. But… At the end of the day, what we have to stick with over these next four years is one, being very careful about prosecuting people just because you don’t like their politics and you think that they were too heavy-handed in their dislike or distrust of their politics against Donald Trump. Look deep into the bureaucracy. That’s truly where the bad actors are. The leakers, the ones who have potentially altered evidence. Whoever scattered those classified document pictures, I’d like to know who that was. And is this normal practice for them that they do against American citizens who don’t have the power of the President of the United States? Because if it is, and they go into your house, and they always make you look like you’re a criminal with the pieces of paper that you have, even though you didn’t know those pieces of paper were even there, and it makes you like you keep it in a toilet, and all those things. Those people probably deserve to be investigated. That does not mean they should be prosecuted, but it might. Because if you don’t do any of those actions, how are you going to de-weaponize? So you don’t focus on the big names. If you do that, you’re just continuing to weaponize the government. That means whoever’s in charge will prosecute the high profile people who are in charge the next time. You look at the actors inside, the people… with their hands on the evidence, the people who decided, let’s scatter the documents around and take a picture so that President Trump has to come out and say, that is not what this ever looked like, and make it look like it was this mess or disaster, when in fact, it was not. Support the work of the ACLJ. Logan, again, a critical time. It is how we budget for the entire 2025. It’s where we start and where we are in December at the end of the month.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, the fact that we are already headed towards the end of the first week of December is wild, and you can be a part of the ACLJ Faith and Freedom year-end drive. You need to do it right now because the attacks on your faith and freedom are amping up. Scan the QR code. Go to ACLJ.org. All gifts are matched and doubled.
