SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. What a weekend it was. Obviously, the news out of Venezuela. We’re going to cover that later. Mike Pompeo’s going to be joining us. But there is some breaking news this morning, and that is that Governor Tim Walz, former vice presidential running mate to Kamala Harris, who we’ve been talking about for the last couple weeks, been involved obviously in the big fraud investigation that has been going wild.

We were told for a long time there wasn’t a lot of smoke there, that this was just a bunch of Republican talking points, conservative talking points. Well, how often do conservative talking points end in someone saying, "You know what? We’ve decided not to seek reelection after already announcing"? And that’s what happened, as Tim Walz had announced that he was going to be seeking a third term as the governor, but now has withdrawn that, said he needs to focus on being the leader for the next year to get Minnesota through the chaos that is happening.

Of course, he spent a lot of time blaming the Trump administration about that. He will be making a formal announcement coming up very soon. We’re going to be staying, kind of making sure that’s happening live. We’ll be watching it, cutting in if we can. But we’ve seen the statement. It’s been out there since a little bit earlier this morning. As well, obviously, as Nicolas Maduro, who is captured. I think we all woke up and had to read that headline a few times, that America had captured Nicolas Maduro and his wife and brought them to New York City.

Tim Walz is speaking right now. We will cut to that live here in just a moment when the team tells me to. I’m just going to make sure that we are up for it. You guys let me know when. I don’t know if you all even care, but you know what? We’ll do it anyway. Phone lines are open for you before we go to this live at 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110. Of course, it’s our first show back since the New Year. Will, do you think we should cut to it? Should we go to it?

Will Sekulow: Let’s hear what the Governor of Minnesota is having to say right now.

Tim Walz: Even as we make progress in the fight against the fraudsters, we now see an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of a crisis. I don’t want to mince words here. Donald Trump and his allies in Washington and in St. Paul and online want to make our state a colder, meaner place. They want to poison our people against each other by attacking our neighbors. And ultimately, they want to take away much of what makes Minnesota the best place in the country to raise a family.

They’ve already begun trying to withhold funds that were meant to help families afford childcare, and they have no intention of stopping there. Make no mistake, we should be concerned about fraud in our state government. We cannot effectively deliver programs and services if we can’t earn the public’s trust. That’s why over the past few years, we’ve made systemic changes in the way we do business. We’ve gone to the legislature time and again...

Logan Sekulow: All right, we’ll cut back into this later on. We kind of know where this is going. He’s sticking very much to the script. Can we cut his audio there? He’s very much sticking to his script of what we saw earlier. We can get those quotes, essentially going to eventually say, "Hey, but with that, I’ve decided to focus on getting out of this race and focusing on kind of restoring Minnesota." But look, we’ve seen this time and again in politics.

How often does just political pressure get you to drop out? Very rarely. It is usually because there is some glowing reason, whether it is clear that you are not going to win reelection, like what happened with President Biden, or a situation like this where a controversy is brewing so much you have to give the new leadership time to be able to run successfully.

We’re going to be taking your calls on this. We’ve already got some calls lined up even from Minnesota. We want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. Of course, we’re also going to be talking about what happened with Venezuela. Mike Pompeo’s going to be joining us. Great person to hear from in that situation. Once again, phone lines are open for you. 1-800-684-3110. I did want to also give a thanks to everyone who supported the work of the ACLJ during the month of December.

It was a groundbreaking, record-breaking month. We really appreciate it. And we’ll be back in just a moment on Sekulow. I did want to take a quick second and say, pray for our team here at the ACLJ and for members of our family here. We lost one of our own over the weekend, one of our security guards, Mike, who really took care of us, made sure our families were safe, made sure everyone here was taken care of. Just a tragic loss over the weekend. So I ask you to just keep us in your prayers. We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Sekulow. Of course, we are covering a couple breaking news items of the day. We have Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, announcing he will not be seeking reelection after the mounting pressure that came over the last couple weeks on the fraud scandal that has broken out in Minnesota, where it looked like what went from a billion-dollar fraud went upwards of nine billion dollars. We saw the YouTubers who were going to some of those daycare and learning centers, Lering Centers. It wasn’t even... yeah, a Lering Center.

And really, that pressure, which shows you the power of independent journalism, shows you the power of what’s going on here, pressured Tim Walz to not step down, but to wrap up his time in office. This is after he announced he was going to be making a third term run, something that was kind of unheard of even in Minnesota. So big moment there and a big moment for a lot of people. This shows you that these kind of shows, this kind of pressure, does work. Change can happen.

Of course, we’ll see where things go from here. They’ll blame you. They’ll blame the independent journalists. They’ll blame President Trump and the administration. But of course, we know how this all plays out, which is there has to be a lot of pressure from some people on the inside for this to have been the decision that he made. Not something anyone who’s really in power wants to do because you’re ending your term.

Two terms as governor plus your controversial but unsuccessful run as vice president, which catapulted you into a massive spotlight. And that turns into leaving with egg on your face. And that is not something that anyone wants to wrap up their political career with. He’s going to try his best to spin that, but we know how it is. We also know right now that Maduro is in court right now, which is wild that that is happening in New York City. The self-elected president of Venezuela is there.

Will Sekulow: That’s right. And when you read the statement from Tim Walz, it’s four pages long. It’s kind of meandering, blaming just about everybody but himself for what has gone on. And as you mentioned, you know there has to be a lot of internal pressure. Clearly, polling numbers or something came back and said, "Listen, you’ve got to just get out," because he goes from blaming Donald Trump and Washington, people in St. Paul, online.

He says it’s political gamesmanship from Republicans and no one has done more than he has on fighting fraud. But yet then there’s YouTubers. It literally just goes all over the place and says, "So I’ll let others worry about the election and I’ll focus on work." So he’s trying to save face when clearly the writing was on the wall as far as where the election was going to go.

But it still shows that he’s not willing to take responsibility for what was going on. The entire time he had kept saying, "I kept asking for more resources from the legislature. I kept asking for more things," but never really just owned it and took responsibility for like, "Yeah, this is ballooned to be one of the worst fraud scandals ever. I’m going to fix it. I’m going to end it." And so I think that probably for many in the state was enough. And if they were doing internal polling, they were looking at things, I’m sure his consultants were like, "You’ve got to get out of this race. You are not going to be the first third-term Minnesota governor in the modern era."

Logan Sekulow: Yeah, and giving it a lot of time, really. You think about it, we’re pretty much a year away, 11 months away from the election for Tim Walz. So it’s giving enough time for somebody to get their act together because I’m sure that Democrats were not looking at primarying him. That probably was not happening. So there's probably not even an infrastructure set up for who will take his place. I’m sure obviously there is always someone in politics angling, but this gives them enough time to get something together in Minnesota.

Will Sekulow: Well, they’re even saying Senator Amy Klobuchar is considering running for governor, going back home. And I feel like that type of a move would be a smart one for the party. Someone who has won many terms in the Senate would be seen as kind of a stable force, familiar name, would probably be able to do well there coming out of something like this where the incumbent governor is having to step away.

Logan Sekulow: Or it’s Mike Lindell’s time. We’ll see what happens. There are two calls right now from Minnesota. I want to take both. Let’s go first to Mike, who is an ACLJ Champion. Go ahead, Mike.

Mike (MN): Hi, and thank you. You know, this is a joke in Minnesota. The thing I’m concerned about is here we get the biggest fraud, and what are we going to do? Ship these Somalis back to their own country with millions and billions of dollars? Why don’t we send them to South American prisons? If we want to stop this garbage, we’ve got to have some severe penalties. And if it’s proven that Walz and Ellison have stolen money, they need to be sent to prison. We’ve got to put some teeth in this stuff or why would anybody quit stealing when they can get billions of dollars and get shipped back to their own country?

Logan Sekulow: Well, Mike, I think there is that concern of yours when you’re listening to when someone says, "Hey, I’m going to decide not to seek reelection." There also is to avoid potential consequences and try to get around that by saying, "Hey, I stepped down. Let’s try to distract from what’s going on and move on." But we’ll see. It looks like that the FBI and the group is really taking a hard look at what went on in Minnesota.

It doesn’t feel like they are letting people slide. You never know. It’s politics, unfortunately, as we’ve all learned. Look, Nicolas Maduro right now is in court right now. Not something I thought I would be saying, but also who knows where this is going to lead? You’re in New York. Your judge is over 90 years old, is what they just put up on the screen. I just saw the 92-year-old judge. Who knows where this ends? We live in a very interesting country right now and it’s something that we should obviously always be digging in on.

Will Sekulow: You know what’s so interesting right now is that as Maduro is about to be arraigned, there is also an emergency UN Security Council meeting going on because of the operation in Venezuela. The country who is the... there’s a rotation on who is the president of the Security Council. This month, it’s Somalia is the presidency of the UN Security Council.

So all these things tie together or it’s a simulation or something, Logan. But we will be talking about that as well with Secretary Mike Pompeo in the next segment because sometimes you look at what is happening in the United States and you forget about kind of the bigger things, about what can happen when these dictators get away with just wreaking havoc on the world for years and then finally someone steps up.

You know, you’re seeing the Democrats say this is illegal, that this was impeachable, all these things. But they forget that the Biden administration actually increased the bounty that leads to the capture of Nicolas Maduro when they could have just done it. So either putting a bounty on someone’s head saying we want the capture of this individual for an indictment that was sitting in US court, or they don’t believe it at all.

So that’s where I think that the Democrats are going to have a lot of explaining to do is whether or not they believe the Biden administration saying, "Yeah, this person needs to be captured," even though we’re not necessarily going to do anything about it other than put a bounty on his head. The Trump administration raised that bounty from 25 to 50 million, and then what did they do? They went and captured him. They went and put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

Logan Sekulow: Let’s take real quick before we get to Mike Pompeo in the next segment. Let’s take one more call. Let’s go to Warren, who’s calling also from Minnesota, listening and watching on the Salem News Channel. Warren, welcome.

Warren (MN): Hello. I’ve got a couple divergent things but still connected. You know, Milei is running the playbook of emasculation and of collectivism.

Logan Sekulow: Oh yeah, that was one of those moments in that speech where you’re like, "Ooh, maybe he isn’t just pretending to be this way." That was a bit of a... even my kids were like, "Oh, no more rugged individualism." But okay, go ahead, Warren.

Warren (MN): That’s the exact playbook that Tim Walz, Tampon Tim, has been running for the last eight years in Minnesota. Emasculation of men, children, gender surgeries, and all of that crap. And collectivism, the amount of billions of dollars he’s taken from families, middle-income people, small businesses, and the grifter takes and gives it to NGOs, nonprofits, and you’ve got...

Logan Sekulow: ...that may not exist. You know, Warren, I think that’s been one of the big things is when you look at this, there’s a lot that people vote for. And you can’t... look, people voted for Milei in mass. And it’s not like he was hiding how he felt. There was maybe a little bit of that glimmer of hope when he met with President Trump going, "Maybe this guy won’t be as bad as we think. Maybe he is a bit more of a showman here."

And then the first thing he did in office was revoke the description of antisemitism and then started to wind things back. And of course, that big statement of, "We want to get rid of rugged individualism for the warmth of collectivism." And man, I was pretty shocked. I don’t know why, but it was that. But when people vote for something like that, I don’t feel as bad.

But when there are moments like this where I don’t think people voted for Tim Walz and thought, "Yeah, we’re voting for a guy who is going to be at least should be held accountable if not responsible for fraud beyond belief to the tune of nine billion dollars." With that, we are going to be back in just a minute. Thank you, Warren. Thank you everyone who’s called from Minnesota. If you want to keep calling, I love hearing from locals, 1-800-684-3110. But even if you’re not in Minnesota, I’d love to hear from you. And we’re going to move on in the next segment, talk mainly about what’s going on obviously with Maduro, Venezuela, and all of that with Mike Pompeo in just a moment. Be right back.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are going to take your calls and comments coming up in the next segment, so get on hold, 1-800-684-3110. We’re now joined by Mike Pompeo, who’s been a valuable member here at the ACLJ and our broadcast team for many years now.

And Secretary Pompeo, I can’t think of a more important time to hear from someone like you than what happened over the weekend. I think a lot of us looked at our phones and said, "Oh, what happened? We had some sort of action in Venezuela." And then we read, of course, it says captured Nicolas Maduro and his wife. And now they are in New York City being arraigned in court. I just wanted to get your overall thoughts in general about all of this, how it went down. Obviously, from a military point of view, it seems like it was an excellent moment, but just in general, we’ve got to hear your thoughts.

Mike Pompeo: Yes, so I woke to the same news as well about 4:00 AM, if I remember right, East Coast time, when something flashed and picked up my phone. Important for the world. We now have a narcoterrorist that’s in the US court system. He’ll get his legal due process, but he can no longer wreak havoc either on the United States and the risk that is presented to us for years and years and years.

He can no longer cooperate with the Russians and the Iranians and Hezbollah down in Venezuela, not too far from our southern shores. But importantly, the Venezuelan people now have a chance to live a life that is more decent and when they do, they will be more productive. And that will be good for the United States of America as well. This was a once-thriving economy. It can be so again. And a thriving Venezuelan economy is great for the American economy as well. And I think President Trump appreciates all of that and it’s why he did what he did this past weekend.

Will Sekulow: And it’s not something that we’re used to waking up and seeing, that the US has swooped in and arrested a foreign leader and captured... I mean, I think it was 36 years to the day that Noriega was arrested out of Panama. But there is a portion of the right that kind of has this regime change fatigue, concerned about getting involved in foreign theaters and how that could potentially not want to lead to another Afghanistan or Iraq situation. How should the administration be explaining this action to the American people to one, alleviate some of those concerns, but also bolster support for the action taken here?

Mike Pompeo: Look, we’ve all got memories of big foreign troop commitments in mind. Some of us are even a little bit older, remember Vietnam, right? So you can go back an awfully long way and see that this has an enormous toll on the American economy, the American military, our soldiers, our families, all of that. I don’t see any evidence that what President Trump did here is remotely related to that.

I remember when we took the strike on Qasem Soleimani, which was exactly six years to the day before this strike. That seems like January 3rd should put bad guys on notice. People said, "Well, we’re going to get involved in a big war." Pelosi and Schumer said the same things that they’re saying today about that strike against General Soleimani. But the world was a safer place and Americans were safer as a result of what President Trump did six years ago. And I think we’ll find the same thing here today.

It’s not the case that we’re going to deploy US Army divisions inside of Venezuela to retake ground and hold and capture big pieces of Venezuelan real estate. That is not the model that President Trump has ever talked about or that he’s ever actually executed. So I think what you saw was a well-conducted operation, and now America using its diplomatic and economic pressure to give Venezuela a shot at being a normal nation again.

And that will make us an awful lot safer. And the risk of an extended deep engagement there, it’s never zero, I suppose, but I haven’t seen any evidence that the friends of Maduro, the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, are coming to the rescue of the leadership in Venezuela. No, now the United States has firmly demonstrated the place that Venezuela needs to go.

Will Sekulow: You mentioned the Iranian people, lost in all this is that there are still massive protests in Iran going on about nine days going right now, some of the largest we’ve seen in some time. Could Iran be the next shoe to drop as far as the people rising up and taking back their freedom?

Mike Pompeo: Boy, these protests are big. There have been protests for years in Iran. These feel different to me. Make no mistake about it, the Iranian regime is no different. It still wants to suppress and kill these protests and maintain power. But they’re an awful lot weaker today after Operation Midnight Hammer and what the Israelis did. And so perhaps this will be the moment where the Ayatollah will hop a plane and join Assad in Moscow.

That’d be a great thing for the broader Middle East and certainly a great thing for America. And we shouldn’t take our eye off the ball. Cuba, too, is weaker than it’s ever been. Venezuela, Iran, each of these places where the political middle, the normal people in the street are looking for a change in leadership. Hopefully, we can facilitate a model which gives them the opportunity to do that.

Logan Sekulow: Secretary Pompeo, thank you so much for joining us. Look, we’re going to be back in just a minute. If you don’t get us on your local radio station, find us broadcasting live full video, television-style broadcast. If you don’t watch us, you should be watching us at aclj.org or YouTube or Rumble. We do that each and every day from 12:00 to 1:00 PM Eastern Time, full hour there. You can always be a part of that. You can hit that subscribe button, get involved.

It’s a great way to do it and support the work of the ACLJ in doing so. However, I know a lot of you are joining us right now on YouTube. I can see the number just spike. So you’re probably wondering what those details are in the Tim Walz exit. We’re going to talk about that coming up in the next segment. Don’t worry, we’ll get back to that topic.

We definitely loved hearing from Secretary Pompeo and hearing about everything that happened in Venezuela. Maduro just pled not guilty. We’re going to keep covering that as well for the next half hour. Stay tuned again. That’s at aclj.org. But hey, all our phone lines are open right now. I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. That’s at 1-800-684-3110. We’ll be right back.