Breaking news, President Trump just briefed on new threats.
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And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.
Hey, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. That’s 1-800-684-3110.
This is Jordan Sekulow, back from a pretty amazing event in Texas at Prestonwood Baptist Church. Let me thank Dr. Jack Graham and Jeremiah Johnson as well for putting on this Biblical World View Conference. That is what I was doing yesterday for about 5,000 people who were attending in person, all from the ages of, I’d say, 80 to about 14 years old.
So from high school students to parents to grandparents. And then we did three of these breakout sessions that you’re getting photos of. The main stage remarks were the, why Israel matters to you.
And then in the breakout sessions, which we had to keep moving rooms for because the interest was so high, it was the myth of Palestine. So it was a, if you’ve seen the video we prepared, it was about 7minutes at aclj.org. It was an extended version of that, about 45 minutes with question and answer.
I will tell you, good news about young people in America. One, everyone who came up to me, maybe they don’t want to ask the question in front of the big group because there were some parents and adults asking some very specific questions who have lived through all of these different moments in Israel’s history and our history dealing with terrorism. But these teenagers who know, they are currently even from Christian schools, very conservative Christian schools, they’re already facing this from their friends.
Are we sure that Israel is the right side of this? Are we sure that Israel are the good guys? And they want to have that information easily available to them in a way they can fight back.
And so we’re able to direct them to the right sources, give them the right information, and kind of help them learn what to say, how to talk about it in a way that could convince even those who just have questions. They have questions because if they turn on most of the news or they just talk to their peers, in the academic settings, even in the Christian world, you’re starting to hear more and more negative thoughts about, negative ideas about the Jewish state of Israel, which we’re going to have an update on from our director of ACLJ Jerusalem, Jeff Balaban, about what may be a preparation for a ground invasion of Lebanon by the IDF. That means boots on the ground, and that was put out by the IDF’s spokesperson today, preparing their troops for the possibility of going in to Lebanon, which is very dangerous even with a more depleted Hezbollah.
We also know, when we’re talking about Israel and Hezbollah, you of course are really talking about the Islamic Republic of Iran. And President Trump last night tweeting out that there are big threats on my life by Iran. The entire US military is watching and waiting.
Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again. Not a good situation for anyone. I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before.
Thank you to Congress for unanimously approving far more money to Secret Service. Zero, no votes, strictly bipartisan. It’s nice to see Republicans and Democrats get together on something.
An attack on a former president is a death wish for the attackers. And, Will, we have confirmation from Biden Harris, office director of national intelligence, that this briefing was given to President Trump about this very real threat from Iran, not just a hypothetical.
That’s right. The ODNI’s office did confirm to news outlets, which typically you don’t get a lot of information out of the ODNI, so they didn’t go into the specifics of the briefing. But a spokesperson for the Trump campaign said, President Trump was briefed earlier today by the ODNI regarding real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.
So we’ve already seen two assassination attempts on the former president’s life this election season. And what it sounds like is the ODNI, Office of Director of National Intelligence, is concerned that there are real and specific threats of another attempt.
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All right, welcome back to Sekulow. By the way, what I was talking about too, at the Biblical Worldview Conference, that Prestonwood Baptist Church put together, and Jeremy Johnson and Jack Graham, bringing people, not just from Texas, by the way, but from states across the country, and young people who are about to make that step into the university setting, who have attended Christian schools, they’ve been preparing them for those moments, as well as their parents and grandparents. And then, of course, I think there were 11 countries around the world watching live and participating in this event.
So it was really amazing. And we’re going to have both the main speech that I gave, I guess made remarks, on why Israel should matter to you, as well as the second, those breakout sessions that we did on the myth of Palestine. Those will be available for you.
We’re going to get those videos and post those up at aclj.org. We continue to dive in to this latest statement by President Trump, because it has been confirmed. I just want to make sure to keep underlying that to you.
This is not just something President Trump is saying based off of discussions on the news. He was specifically briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A spokesperson for that office confirmed that happened on Tuesday evening, that there was a briefing, and that the intelligence officials have identified continued and coordinated attacks that have heightened in the past few months, and law enforcement officials across all agencies are trying to ensure President Trump is protected and the election is free from interference.
These are real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate President Trump in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States as we prepare for, of course, an election, which we are getting closer to. And people are already starting to vote in more and more states every single day, which is, again, I think people have seen they’ve seen the way President Trump is having to give public remarks with the bulletproof glass around him. And also the idea that this is an ongoing threat, not just to, again, when you’re a current president, you can really shift things up security wise.
But when you’re running for office as a former president or current president or current vice president, you have to get out there to the people.
That’s right. And one of the narratives I’ve seen kind of from the left is Trump isn’t doing as many rallies as he did in previous elections. Well, I wonder why.
Because this is the most important time. But what’s happened at one of a major rally in Pennsylvania, in a battleground state? There was an assassination attempt.
And then there was a second assassination attempt. And he has heightened security now. I wonder why there aren’t as many rallies happening.
Exactly.
That’s the words that the security world and intelligence world can’t hide from the American people. I don’t think it would be good for the country probably to know how many of these get to a certain point. Like they say, these are real.
These are specific threats. And they have been prevented because of that, from getting from the idea of being a real and specific threat to one that is on scene, that has to be prevented by an agent who’s actually with President Trump. That’s a different situation.
But, I think we’re living in a time period again, where, yes, President Trump’s security has been increased. The real enemies of the United States are being identified very clearly. And I think, again, people are thinking about who to vote for.
The fact that Iran is going to these steps potentially to prevent President Trump from returning to office. Why? Because Hezbollah and Hamas would have no resources.
There would not have been October 7th because Hamas wouldn’t have had drones. And they would not have had the backing of a country that had billions of dollars in reserves now because of your taxpayer dollars going straight to the Islamic Republic of Iran with Hezbollah, the same idea. Now, I think Israel has decimated a lot of Hezbollah leadership and even members of their army.
The question is, what happens if Israel and the IDF decides that we’re not only having to fight in the Gaza Strip, but we’re going to have to take this battle into, that’s the word specifically, with boots on the ground into Lebanon. We’ve seen those operations before. I have close friends who are in the IDF who have fought in wars with Hezbollah on the ground.
And I will tell you, it is next level. It is different than even Hamas in the West Bank, in the way Hezbollah is trained, in the way they operate. But they are an international warfare organization tied to a terrorism group.
They are terrorists, but they are an international warfare organization. They operate all over the world, Will, and including, they fought ISIS because there were interests that Iran had as well, because ISIS was a radical, radical Sunni group. What has been interesting is that Hamas used to be a radical Sunni group, but they have turned to receiving this funding from Iran now, and being basically an Iranian proxy, even though most of the membership of Hamas have Sunni backgrounds.
Many of these Palestinian radicals, religion is not their number one issue. That’s why Hamas is not a religious name in nature. It’s the Islamic, yes, it’s the Islamic resistance movement, but it’s not the army of God as Hezbollah is.
I mean, here, the word Allah is in their name.
Right. And when you talk about Iran and the strength that they have to be able to fund these groups abroad, that’s what gives these specific threats, specific and ongoing threats to President Trump even more concern for, should be for the American people, is that this is a foreign power that has an intelligence service that has, and now they aren’t as good as, let’s say, Mossad or the United States intelligence service, but they still have resources that alone wolf trying to take out a president that’s radicalized by the words and things that they hear. They, these are governments that have resources to try to carry this out.
We know that Iran has tried to assassinate Saudi officials on US soil in Washington DC. And this is also concerning because the interim report on the Secret Service response in Butler, Pennsylvania came out this morning as well. And this is a bipartisan report.
This is from the Senate, doing their interviews. We know that we saw Senator Blumenthal talking about how astonishing and shocked Americans were.
Senator Blumenthal, I mean, this is a very partisan left Democrat who is pretty nasty when it comes to going after President Trump and conservative Republicans, but still an American. And when he got that briefing, you know, said he was absolutely shocked.
And in this interim report, so this isn’t even the final report, they say that the planning failures preceding the first assassination attempt on former President Trump were, quote, forseeable and preventable. They went in to all of the failures, whether no one had clear roles. There was supposed to be a drone flying over, scanning the area.
The drone operator wasn’t properly trained and was having issues so much so that he called the toll-free number on the drone to try to get tech support. During this entire unfolding situation, so while I am appreciative of Congress showing the bipartisan vote, approving more funding and security for the Secret Service and applying the same levels to all major party candidates, what it is concerning to me is when these are the failures, does money put a band-aid on the failures? Because delegation of responsibilities, ensuring coverage of a building, to me, that doesn’t sound like something that money fixes.
It sounds like an institutional problem that they also need to be getting to the bottom of. And while I am thankful there’s more funding and more resources for the Secret Service to be able to protect the former president, it also concerns me when it’s a government that has more resources, that has a very serious, ongoing, specific threat, is what we’re hearing, that the Secret Service has the ability right now to handle that.
Yeah, and I think that we have learned too, is that the government, especially these security agencies, have got to modernize with the times, with the fact that our enemies are also using the new technology that our military has, that they’re utilizing it to some extent, but maybe in a more crude way, but they are able to utilize it too. So the threat is different. The way to deliver potentially deadly assassination attempts is not just people with guns, so that is what we’ve seen it most recently, and that is what is in our history, that has been prevalent, but you’ve got, of course, drones, and you’ve got serious technology and planning that can go into things, and the way to communicate is different.
So I think all of that, the level of sophistication from especially Iranian-backed assassins who’ve got significant resources, unfortunately, because of the United States of America’s decision to allow them to start doing more business in the world and not sanction the countries that are doing business with Iran in a serious way, so that Iran is able to sell its crude oil. Also, you know, delivering Iran, there was hundreds of millions of dollars the US had frozen that had decimated Iran’s domestic economy to the point that during the Trump administration, what we mostly saw from Iran will was people in Iran protesting because they could not afford basic necessities. And if people, we always say this, if people don’t have bread, they’re not so focused on, let’s go to war with Israel.
They’re more focused on taking out their own government because that is the key. If people can’t eat, they are not going to deal with you spending your resources trying to, in the minds of most Iranian people, I’m sure, try to deal these military blows against an enemy that seems so far away to the everyday person. 1-800-684-3110.
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You go to aclj.org/champions. To kind of sum up to this discussion we’ve had about the specific threat to President Trump, there’s been a lot of talk about rhetoric as well. Rhetoric that we use in politics, day-to-day politics.
And yet, this obviously has not gotten across to some of our top leaders, including cabinet members of the Biden, Harris, again, the top cabinet members. These are secretaries of departments making, using language, using language, which is not just, again, I think, heightening, you know, making things hotter, tougher. It’s the kind of language that encourages people.
It’s violent language. It’s almost, I mean, the kind of rhetoric that sounds like you want your enemy, well, technically, we’ll play it for people, to be eliminated.
That’s right. And so this is the secretary of commerce, Gino raimondo. And once again, also, when you talk about Iran, you may think, okay, well, you know, this language isn’t going to change their mind.
But what does Iran do sometimes? They look for someone who’s been radicalized or that is susceptible to carry out some sort of plot. That’s how ISIS operated when they got Americans to flee America and go join their terror network.
That’s what Iran does many times. They find people that are susceptible, isolated, and radicalized by language. And when we criticize people using terms like threat, we must stop him.
But they’re getting so creative in their ways to say things that make it even worse when you hear what Gina raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, said on Morning Joe this morning. This is after we know that there is a current specific threat against the president from Iran. Let’s go ahead and play Bite One.
What he says is the opposite.
It’s just another lie.
Like how did we get here? Let’s extinguish him for good.
We have an answer.
We have a remarkably talented candidate who is sincere, who’s pragmatic, who’s open. Let’s just get it done.
Extinguish him for good. That’s not even a normal political phrase you would use.
No, I’ve never used, the word extinguish sounds like a Nazi about trying to extinguish the Jews or what Hamas would like to do from the river to the sea that we talked about again yesterday. But this idea, extinguish? Like he’s a cockroach?
Because that’s the language Nazis use, like he’s a rat. And that’s the kind of language, again, I’m not comparing her to a Nazi. What I’m saying is that kind of language is just another term for kill and death and to take, I mean, not the idea that we need to change America’s thinking or his ideas and his platform or something that could be even using the word dangerous is less than we have to exterminate.
And what about his supporters too, Will? I mean, think about that. If you have to exterminate President Trump, what about all of those supporters across the country who stand, you know, who vote Republican and are planning to vote or already have voted for President Trump?
Do they need extermination too?
Well, if you listen to people like Hillary Clinton or like the lady running against Elise Stefanik in New York, they think that there needs to be re-education camps for MAGA. I mean, these are the same lines from fascist countries.
Exterminate the top and try to, and then those of us who will be re-educated, and then you can come back into society, and that’s okay for you. 1-800-684-3110 is the number you call to talk to us on air. I want to go to the phones, take a call, too.
Bob, are you?
Yeah, let’s go ahead and take Bob calling from Illinois on line one. Bob, you’re on Sekulow.
Yeah, thank you for taking my call. The question I have, and I know you probably have talked about it before, it should have come up. But if either candidate is eliminated, let’s say assassinated or whatever, who or how would the policy or the actions work from that point on for people who have voted and are planning on voting?
The political parties will have a process. It’s not automatically necessary, the vice presidential nominee. It may be that the Republicans decide that would be the move to make.
So the leadership of the Republican Party, you’ve got the committee men and women. And the same thing goes for the Democrat Party, could then decide to use a VP or a candidate or decide someone else should replace the person who was, unfortunately, and I hope we don’t ever have that situation in our country for anybody for either side running for President of the United States because all of it puts the country into chaos and it sows fear and even more division. But we’re just talking about the hypotheticals here so you know the answer.
And the answer is that. So the political parties, it’s not an automatic for the VP, though I think the closer you’d get to election days, the more likely it would be someone like that.
That’s right. So each party sets their own rules for how they would choose that person. And that would be if someone died of natural causes, not just an assassination.
If there’s, for some reason, that a presidential candidate is no longer running in that capacity. There are party rules, if it’s before election day, the same would most likely stand if it were post-election day, but before the electoral college meeting. And then it would get a little bit more dicey in between that area.
So there’s kind of some dispute between constitutional scholars about what specifically, but it’s still, whether or not it would go to the House of Representatives, or if it would still be a replacement, or if it’s the vice president automatically at that point. But I’m pretty sure if it ever got to that point where someone passed away for whatever reason before, I’m pretty sure there would be some sort of Supreme Court looking at that regardless. But if it’s before…
We have a structure too, a constitutional structure. That’s right. The Speaker of the House is the third in line to be president behind the vice president.
So again, founding fathers thought about this with the line of succession. So there is no question once someone has become president, who would then replace them if something happens to them. Usually, it would be either because of some horrible event or even health.
It could be just natural causes. And then the Constitution has laid that out. So we as a country don’t have to fight over that once someone has already served in office, then we move on till the next election in the country and the parties have the opportunity to put forward candidates again.
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Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever. This is Sekulow.
And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right.
Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. In the next segment, before we go to our director of ACLJ, Jerusalem, Jeff Balaban.
And I know our team last night in New York at the UN General Assembly, there’s a lot of, of course, going on, both inside the UN and outside the UN. You know, through our European Center for Law and Justice, we have consultative status with the UN as a non-governmental organization, which allows us to have access that other groups don’t have. You have to get approval from the UN, go through a lengthy process that we did a couple of decades ago, almost three decades ago now at the American Center for Law and Justice, through the European Center for Law and Justice, headquartered in Strasbourg, France.
And I know that our team last night was with the new ambassador from Israel to the UN. He’s had that position before. Danny Denone, who’s a good friend of ours, he’s been a member of the Knesset there, he’s been ambassador once and has been brought in again from Israel to take on, in his own words, one of the most difficult diplomatic, if not the most difficult diplomatic post for anyone, for any Israeli to take, which is to be their representative at the UN.
Remember, they are the most sanctioned country in the world at the United Nations. Not only that, you’ve got the UN right now saying, and I know you guys talked about it this week, but that they’re, those UNRWA employees, because the Palestinians have their own refugee agency, they’re the only group of people in the world that have that, which gets funding by the UN. We’re the number one funder of the UN, the United States, and the Biden administration restarted the funding to UNRWA.
That even the members of Hamas that were also working for UNRWA, that they have universal immunity, world wide immunity from prosecution, even if they were involved in the October 7th attacks, even if you have hard evidence, and they’re apprehended outside of the Gaza Strip, and they’re taken, or again, wherever they’re traveling to, or if there’s operations by the IDF, that they have complete universal immunity worldwide. So, this idea again of the enemies that we fight, yes, there are enemies that are being fought in actual conflict, and then there’s the ideas of lawfare, the idea that they want to prosecute the IDF soldiers, they want to prosecute American soldiers. We’ve been at the International Criminal Court on both of those issues, but when it comes to the UN’s own staff, even those who committed atrocities, they believe they should have complete worldwide universal immunity.
And I’m not just talking about random people, I’m talking about people you have evidence on that you know they were involved in the atrocities. So, we have all those teams in place, and we’re able to still broadcast, still keep all this information going to you, keeping you as some of the most informed folks in the country on all of these issues, which flash up on the television screen and sometimes go away very quickly. I mean, Will, there’s a hearing right now, just kind of finishing up in Washington DC by whistleblowers and Empower Oversight, Tristan Levin, who we work with, and our former client Marcus Allen.
I want to remind people, too, he was from the FBI. We filed a lawsuit against the FBI and the Department of Justice, and in his settlement, Marcus got his security clearance back. It made him whole as well, restoring full security clearance to him, providing him with a letter of good standing that also included his health insurance, his retirement benefits, back pay, and reimbursement as well for those costs he had for the time period.
Remember, where they stopped paying you, but you cannot move on to another position.
That’s right, and we’ll talk about this a little bit more later today and tomorrow, but I do want to play this bite from Marcus Allen that was said this morning, because it shows you not only all the work Jordan talked about being in Texas and New York, but also our attorneys were sitting right behind him this morning.
And you guys here on the show while we’re all, I mean, everything is happening at the same time. That’s just the ACLJ doing that.
And he delivered this statement this morning.
The battle for truth and justice will cost you, but the arduous good is worth it. The FBI’s restoration of my clearance earlier this year, thanks to the efforts of Empower Oversight and the American Center for Law and Justice, was absolute vindication.
You know, I mean, Marcus Allen again, that FBI, former FBI agent, whose life was like tried to be put on hold. Thankfully, one of those, it is actually one of those examples, because again, you’re taking on the FBI and you bring in experts to the ACLJ, where you’ve got to use resources, donors and your support. Donate today at aclj.org.
You’re seeing how those resources are used in real time. Don’t take it from me, take it from Marcus Allen.
So welcome back to Sekulow. We are gonna take your calls too, just to hold on a bit longer, because I wanna go to the director of ACLJ, Jerusalem, Jeff Balaban. Jeff, thank you for joining us today.
And I wanna make sure people get the right updates for what’s going on now in Israel and on the border with Lebanon. We saw a statement yesterday, which I thought was very unique. I saw it was on X, it was from Prime Minister Netanyahu, and it was made I think about 12 to 15 hours before Israel increased its operations in Lebanon, deeper into where it wasn’t just kind of Hezbollah safe houses, but where ordinary folks might live.
And it was a warning that said, if you’re getting the phone call, if you’re getting the text from us, if you’re seeing the leaflet, seeing this information, you’re in danger, you have time to leave, but you need to do that immediately, go north. And we saw then, you could see it, because of the media that is there, the logjam of cars that took those warnings seriously from Israel. But it does show, again, it underscores the difference of dealing with the state of Israel when it feels like it has to respond to a constant onslaught of rocket fire and even ballistic missiles being used, to the point where 100,000 Israelis have been displaced to the north.
So the state of Israel versus groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, which actually aim and target citizens instead of military.
Jordan, that’s exactly correct. Israel, at the very least, I would say, shares American values. Israel exemplifies what’s become known as, well, for us, it’s Jewish, but it’s also Judeo-Christian values.
And in terms of knowing that life is the ultimate good and trying to preserve life, and even while they’re fighting an existential war, and this is genuinely an existential war, Israel is trying to preserve life. Now, when Israel does this, let’s understand, of course, Israel’s critics, which are numerous, are saying they only gave them two hours. I mean, what other military does this?
They’re saying you have two hours to leave, meaning they know that terrorists are also going to scramble. They know that they may have to fight them again elsewhere, but they also know that not unlike what we saw in Gaza, and maybe to a different extent, though, Hezbollah has dug in to these neighborhoods, these areas where civilians live. They have not only ammunition caches, they have launching sites.
There are terrorist headquarters that are throughout these areas. So Israel’s warning the civilians to get out, knowing that the terrorists will leave, but also knowing that the infrastructure there is vital to wage this war, because the kind of stockpiles that Hezbollah has of Iranian weaponry can reach, and we’re already beginning to see it, very deep into Israel, very highly targeted, and extremely dangerous, and including, we don’t know the extent of non-traditional warheads and the passions they have, chemical, biological, other weaponry, anything, these people will do anything. They want to murder as many innocents as they can, and that’s the war Israel’s fighting.
Yeah, there was an already heightened level of attack by Hezbollah, thankfully intercepted, but there was a ballistic missile fired, Jeff, at Tel Aviv. So, the largest city in Israel, and this is the first time it’s been confirmed, at least, that Hezbollah has used that level of weaponry, that range, that large of a payload. It was intercepted by Israel.
But again, if something like that were to strike the center of Tel Aviv, just one ballistic missile, the death toll could be pretty unimaginable, because again, it is not something that necessarily the residents of Tel Aviv would have prepared for. Now they have to.
That’s right. This war is really functioning on parallel tracks. Israel is fighting its own existential war.
And honestly, I don’t view this as a war that started October 7th. I view this as a war that has never ended since the founding of the state of Israel. There have been elements that have wanted to eradicate the Jewish state, wanted to commit genocide against the Jews for all these decades.
And now, largely because of what you were talking about before with Will Jordan, and largely because of the way this administration and the way Democrats have been really coddling and helping the Iranians, the Iranians have a whole new, they have an entirely new calculus about how they want to wage war. And let’s make it very clear. Israel, again, is fighting its own existential war, but they’re also fighting there on the front lines of the war that has already been launched against the West, against America.
We see it in the reports, the very credible reports of assassination attempts against Donald Trump. We see it in the fact that Israel, that we know that Iran is looking for ICBMs that can reach the United States. And they’re very close to having their own nuclear capabilities.
It’s really a matter of very short, now they can do whatever they want. And so they are watching this election very, very closely, because if it’s a Harris administration, the Iranian, and again, all these Hezbollah, Hamas, all these proxies are Iranian proxies, the Iranian war against the West and against America in particular will ratchet up dramatically. And this is, you know, our government, the United States has been trying to topple Netanyahu government, this coalition has made it very difficult to function, as you pointed out before, is dragging them in for all kinds of trumped up charges of war crimes.
Meanwhile, they’re coddling this Iranian regime, which the own people want to see toppled. It’s really, we live in a very, very dangerous and dark world right now.
Yeah, I mean, Jeff, we know that this weekend on, let me play it for folks. This is from ABC. This is John Kirby when he was asked directly by George Stephanopoulos about this US role, because you’ll hear from the Harris-Waltz campaign that they’re better for Israel somehow and that they will make the world a safer place.
Listen to John Kirby in a moment of pure honesty when he has to acknowledge why the US has not been able to make strides in even getting remaining American hostages freed from the Gaza Strip and Hamas.
It’s certainly apparent to us that Mr. Sinwar remains the big obstacle here to getting a deal. And it certainly is the case that he has done nothing in the recent weeks to prove that he’s willing to move this forward in a good faith way. He is the major obstacle, no question about it.
And whoever that official was is right. I mean, it’s tough to get him to say yes to things that he’s already said he wanted. So it’s very, very difficult.
So again, Sinwar, the new head of Hamas, after Ishmael Hine was taken out, Jeff. But as you see, the US is, they won’t even talk to the United States of America. I mean, John Kirby had to admit it.
Under the Trump administration, it puts the fear of God literally into Hezbollah for real and Hamas and Iran. And because they know they’ll be cut off from much of the world’s economy and their people start turning on them.
Yeah, I mean, look, it’s honestly to me, Jordan, it’s bizarre for an American official and for the American government to imagine or pretend that there could ever be honest negotiations, good faith negotiations with an organization like Hamas. Did they not really learn already from their discussions with the PLO? Did they not learn that they’ve never abandoned their desire, their intention to wipe out every Jew, to wipe out the state of Israel?
They’ve never changed their intentions. This notion that months and months going by where all the pressure, 100% of the pressure, is on Israel. Because the other side, they’re brutal terrorists.
They want to kill as many civilians as possible. So even the premise is ridiculous, and we’re normalizing this. And unfortunately, Israel is left.
Listen, you’ve mentioned it before also. Many of my friends, they’re being called up, their kids are being called up north right now. The war is clearly ratcheting up.
Israel has no choice, because Israel, unfortunately, to a large extent, stands alone on the barricades, at the front lines, fighting this war for all of us.
And that’s the final question I have for you, Jeff. We saw the statement by the IDF spokesperson that troops inside the IDF, as you just said, friends that you know, their kids are being called up, that the IDF soldiers need to prepare for boots on the ground inside Lebanon. Not just special forces, not just tanks.
We’re talking about what becomes urban warfare against the highly trained, though they have been decimated to some extent. We will see very soon, if this does occur, they’re preparing for it, saying, be ready for it mentally, to be on the ground inside Lebanon, which is very dangerous because Hezbollah is kind of a next level military operation from Hamas. They operate all over the world.
That’s right. And by the way, other factors, there was a report of an Iraqi drone today striking in Israel. Thank God nobody was killed, but it blew up a building on an Israeli military base.
Could easily, this is becoming a much wider war. And again, Iran is behind all of this and they’re making their calculus. And Israel is making a calculus based on that calculus.
Israel would make peace tomorrow with everybody. We see this since the beginning. But this does look like it’s rationing up into a full scale war.
Israel knows that it really must prosecute this war now because God forbid from its perspective, if another administration like the current American administration or worse, and Israel’s possibility of waging real war is completely corrupted, it’s destroyed. So Israel has to do this now. And the threat is truly existential.
And yes, it’s becoming more and more evident. The rocketing into Israel is more extensive, more directed, more targeted, bigger payloads. And they are calling up more and more reserves and more and more troops.
And it looks like the war in the north, unfortunately, it looks like it has to proceed now.
Yeah, which Jeff, always we appreciate you joining us and directing that office in Jerusalem. And folks, that’s why we exist for these times. This entire, almost a year since the horrific October 7th attacks.
We have to stand in when our own government’s not going to, to defend Israel, our ally. Unfortunately, our own government won’t do that, but we will. We’ve done it before at the International Criminal Court.
We’ve done it, again, we’ll do it in Congress. We will do it all over the world through our European offices, as well. Support the work of the ACLJ at aclj.org, because you know, the Harris administration, if there was one, would not be standing with Israel like it should be.
Support the work of the ACLJ. And we know, I mean, right now, it’s going to be the Biden-Harris administration, which is, again, a very difficult situation for Israel. Unlike the US.,
we can destroy ISIS, but Israel is not allowed to destroy Hamas or Hezbollah in the world’s eyes. Support the work of the ACLJ.
All right, welcome back to Sekulow. Tomorrow on the broadcast, we’re gonna do a deep dive with Tristan Leavitt from Empower Oversight, who we partner with to represent these FBI whistleblowers like Marcus Allen. And Tristan and Marcus were testifying today before the House Committee on the Weaponization of Government Agencies.
And Tristan’s gonna join us for a couple minutes. I know he just got done with the hearing, and he’s joining us now by cell. Tristan, today, Marcus Allen was able to return to Congress and testify after we successfully secured what should be his two years of back pay, health insurance, his security clearance as well, other benefits, but also learned, Tristan, that he has not yet received those resources.
Yeah, that’s exactly right. So they’ve had plenty of time to be able to make good on that settlement, but it hasn’t happened yet. They keep saying it’s around the corner.
And in part, that seems to be because the Inspector General has gotten involved, and it shouldn’t take that level of involvement for the DOJ to honor its word in the settlement agreement.
No, I don’t know. What can the Inspector General do after a settlement before a court? I mean, the idea, Tristan, I think obviously there’s a point we could get involved.
But I do want to ask you about today’s hearing first. We can get into that tomorrow when you’re on for a longer period of time. Tell us about that hearing, what it was like for Marcus to kind of go in without that kind of fear that you might not have your security clearance restored and might not be able to utilize that then to provide for your family.
I think Marcus definitely seemed unburdened. And he seemed like he was able to say the things that were in his heart and in his mind more openly than he was before. There were some very emotional moments in the hearing before we even, I remember it was at the very beginning, but I think it was just after his opening statement, I was kind of trying to dab the corner of my eyes because I was like, we’ve hardly even started and I felt a little emotional there.
But I think it was really powerful for Marcus.
Well, I want to say, Tristan, thank you for your work. We’re going to have you on tomorrow. We’re going to walk through all of the hearing today, but I know people saw it.
And again, I want to remind people that we’ve got that settlement. We’re going to make sure it’s made good on. I have no idea how the Inspector General is holding that up.
Doesn’t sound right because the settlement is done legally through the court. The Inspector General cannot prevent what the court has deemed to be settled. You don’t just settle it, the court has to agree to it as well.
But we’ll get Tristan back on tomorrow, so we can go through that entire hearing, what we learned as well. But I do want to remind people that because of Tristan’s organization, Empower Oversight, because of our work, Marcus will be restored. He’ll be able to live his life and continue to testify to this FBI wrongdoers.
Thank you, Tristan, for joining us. But, Will, that’s really the most important thing here is we’re trying to reform the way these whistleblowers are protected so that they don’t have to do this anonymously, but that we know that when we talk about kind of draining the swap, we learn directly, we see in first hand how the swap treats its own people. We’ve heard from O’Boyle, Special Agent O’Boyle, about how they will crush you using those terms.
And Tristan was able to bring up Special Agent O’Boyle today, saying that he compared Marcus Allen that there has been justice for, and maybe not the restitution yet, but at least the exoneration of his character.
It’s kind of like waiting for the government to get your returns, things like that.
Exactly, but then we have O’Boyle, we have an oral argument in just a couple weeks in his case. So Tristan was able to bring him up. We sent out, as the ACLJ, we signed on to a letter with Empower Oversight that went to members of Congress of various committees, Judiciary, House Oversight, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, asking for reform to the protections of whistleblowers so that they aren’t caught in this limbo for multiple years as Marcus Allen was.
So, our work just getting the restitution of the security clearance and the back pay secured, we are still waiting for that to pay out for Marcus Allen. That’s not where the work ends. These whistleblowers put their lives, their careers, their family on the line to do what was right, and the federal government is punishing them for doing the right thing.
And so, the ACLJ is not going to stop our work there. That’s why working with Empower Oversight and Tristan has been such a key partnership to be able to push these forward. Them with the advocacy and policy side, and we here with the legal side and also the advocacy side, it’s really been a wonderful thing to watch take place, how we can take on these issues from two different angles for the same goal.
And today is also, I mean, just the breadth of our work is See You at the Poll. And that was something, again, 20 plus years ago, probably getting close to 30, we made sure that students could participate in, faculty could participate in, parents could participate in before the school day started in the prayer. But we are still fighting individual cases linked to prayer and schools and officials and individuals.
In a major victory, the ACLJ did secure a teacher’s right to pray today and participate in See You at the Poll. After she was banned from praying anywhere, get this, banned from praying anywhere students might see her. This is while in Minneapolis, the mayor has signed an ordinance that allows the Muslim call to prayer to go out, one of the nation’s biggest cities.
But when we’re talking about silent prayer by an individual who is a teacher, if students could see her, that has to be banned. Well, that is no longer the case. We have secured that right.
Our lawsuit continues, again, because there’s more issues there when you make that kind of move as a school district. But that is just a massive win to remind people that, no, we’re not going to let you treat people differently because of the faith that they hold. And again, for everyone participating, see you at the polls today.
Just a reminder, those same individual school districts and government agencies tried to shut that down decades ago was the ACLJ who stood in the way and got secured. That’s why the events usually occur without issue all around the country, but you still have these one-off districts that did assist a teacher. And of course, the ACLJ 30 years later is there standing with her.
Let’s take a call before the end of the show here. Let’s go to Michael calling from Florida on line four.
Gentlemen, when it comes to the assassination attempt on Trump, one of two things had to have happened. And first off, the protocols are either not robust enough, which I don’t believe. I believe the Secret Service has got probably pretty stellar protocols in place.
The other alternative, which I think is more believable, and that is that they were tragically and virtually catastrophically ignored and or due to ineptness. Now my question, my comment is this, without being, you know, without having direct contact with the lone wolf, as it were, was this done on purpose?
No, I mean, listen, that’s why Congress is investigating. And you don’t put any theory aside that, again, we see bad, there are bad actors inside and outside the US government. It’s not a conspiracy theory until you know the facts and they’re investigating it as of right now.
But when the rhetoric is at the level it is, it’s like, do you even need that? I mean, we know Iran is actively trying. They don’t care who actually carries it out or what their values are, why they could be motivated.
They just need to motivate someone to do it, to get to their goal. But President Biden, it just broke on the news. I mean, it just said that President Trump doesn’t believe in democracy.
So we’ve now had a Biden cabinet secretary say he has to be eliminated, extinguished, extinguished. And President Biden’s saying that President Trump doesn’t believe in democracy. I mean, these are, again, these ideas to stoke fear in the American people, that President Trump and his allies and his supporters are evil people trying to overthrow the US government and our basic ideals of freedom and our rights and liberty.
We all know that’s not true, but bad actors, folks, they just need to be triggered. So when you make these comments, in a time like this, especially after two assassination attempts, shame on you, President Biden, but shame on our country as well. We’ve got to get back.
aclj.org.