SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. I want to hear from you. Every day, we have a meeting and we talk about what we are going to discuss. We go through new shows and what the segment is going to be today and what the topic will be. At the beginning of today, we said enough with Minnesota. We have to take a pause. We are wearing people out on Minnesota. Not everyone is this involved in what is happening in Minnesota.

We said there is nothing new to talk about, so that will be fine. Then about ten minutes before we go on the air, of course something new has to break. It is once again another instance of potential fraud and really the fallout from the immense fraud scandal that has rocked Minnesota.

Will: Right. As of right now, there is a hearing happening for the US Congress in the House of Representatives about the fraud situation in Minnesota. Right now, it is members of the Republican State House and things of that nature, members of the DOJ that are testifying before Congress about this situation. At a time when all eyes are on Minnesota and everyone is concerned, in some ways justified and in other ways maybe it has gotten hyperbolic because of how the left has responded in things saying they already took care of it years ago and there is no big deal here.

There clearly was something there because even Tim Walz himself had to drop out of his next election due to the scandal. You would think that optics would be something that people care about at this time, making sure that they are not doing anything that could either raise tensions or cause scrutiny so they can get it settled down and get back to a positive for their state.

What we are seeing now is we know that this budget fight is coming once again. Remember at the end of January, we could potentially see another government shutdown. Ilhan Omar, the representative from Minnesota, as well as the two senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, have earmarked a million dollars. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a ton in terms of earmarks for non-government agencies and things of that nature in Minnesota.

A million dollars would go to a nonprofit that works to create a better, safer, more connected community for individuals experiencing drug addiction and substance use disorders in the greater East African community of the Twin Cities metro area. They have a single line item earmark for a million dollars in the next round of funding that is going to go before a fight that people have now been questioning. Why now? Why is this million dollars so important now?

For them, why would they think it is a good idea to raise a spotlight on one single organization at the time when all this is going on? It raises questions not just about how things work in Minnesota, but also the use of taxpayer money in this way, the special interest, and the earmarking of special projects like this. It is showing the American people that they are fed up at the way that Washington has been operating for a long time.

Logan Sekulow: I think it has very little to do with the actual root of this, which is, of course, if funding is going to things like addiction recovery, fantastic. I think that that is a necessary expense if you are to expend money like this. If you are going to be spending money like this, sure.

Now, there are some odd issues that have come up with this organization. It is not to say this organization is fraudulent or having any issues, but there were at least some moments that make your ears perk up where at least the discussion happened of what is going on inside of this one.

Again, like you said, it may be paranoia. It may be more than that. We are going to keep the discussion rolling. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Rick Renell is going to be joining us later today. We have a pretty packed show, but we have plenty of time for calls and I would love to hear from you. That is at 1-800-684-3110. We will be back with more on Sekulow. Don't go anywhere.

Jay Sekulow: The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, and our constitutional rights are under attack. It is more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms and defending your rights in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena.

We have an exceptional track record of success, but here is the bottom line: we could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedom. That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you are already a member, thank you. If you are not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today at ACLJ.org.

Jordan Sekulow: After nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade, the tragic ruling that manufactured a so-called right to abortion, has been overturned by the United States Supreme Court. This is the moment the ACLJ has been fighting for. It is the biggest victory we have achieved in our three-decade-long fight against the soulless abortion industry. Believe me, abortionists like Planned Parenthood are devastated.

This victory would not have been possible without the steadfast prayer and support of ACLJ members like you. On behalf of the entire ACLJ, I thank you for standing with us against the abortion industry and helping us save defenseless babies. I thank you for making this victory possible and I ask you for your continued prayer and support as we continue to battle against barbaric new abortion laws across our nation.

Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open. I think we lost some of those calls, so there are about five lines open for you right now at 1-800-684-3110. Give us a call back. I have to restate what is going on. If you have seen the headlines, the headlines read something to the effect of Democrats steer a million dollars to an addiction group operating in Minneapolis in a Somali restaurant amid the fraud fallout.

Again, I want to make sure that we don't suggest things like this was meeting in a restaurant. If you look at the organization's website, which does exist, they have got a little bit more background than a lot of these organizations. They say they meet in this restaurant along with other different places. I am not playing devil's advocate here, but I am also saying we have to make sure that we also are playing by the rules here and we are fair. You understand when you look up where this one million dollars is going to that is earmarked from some of these leaders in Minneapolis and you realize it is going to an addiction recovery center that may or may not be actually in a restaurant, that you at least would question the authenticity.

Will: I think this goes to the larger discussion of what we've been saying since this was a thing. It is waste, fraud, and abuse. Not all mismanagement of government funds is fraud where someone is stealing it and no use is going towards the alleged explanation of the use, like just stealing money. Then there's waste, spending money on things that shouldn't be spent on that's just a complete waste of taxpayer money.

Then there's abuse, which is abusing the system to get more money into places that maybe it shouldn't be or there's abuse of the mechanisms that govern that. There are these three categories of spending that's frowned upon, I think we would say, by a majority of Americans at this point.

When we talk about these things, it doesn't necessarily mean, and we firmly believe in America you are innocent until proven guilty. That is the basis of our legal system. That is a benchmark that we don't ever want to lose. You would think that the political ramifications for seeing how Tim Walz denied that there was even a fraud problem as it kept growing and all of a sudden he has to not run again, that these senators and Ilhan Omar would think maybe at a time where this debate is raging so much so that our preferred person as governor of the state, because he was also the nominee for the vice presidency of the United States just some months ago, maybe we shouldn't be earmarking.

It's not even like it was an earmark for addiction recovery in Minneapolis to go to the state agency to then dole it out. This was an earmark for a million dollars of Department of Justice money to go to this group. I think a lot of people in American consciousness may think of if an individual group gets a grant of a million dollars, which is so funny that we're sitting here thinking a million dollars isn't a lot of money because of how widespread the fraud that has been uncovered is, that we're like a million dollars is nothing.

When the billion dollar words start throwing around then a million dollars is like nothing. But this group, and we say it's shared an address with a restaurant, all these things, that doesn't sound like the groups that in your head are the ones getting million dollar grants directly from the federal government.

It doesn't say that we're not trying to say they don't do good things or they don't have it together, but it just sounds like I would think that the groups that are getting a million dollar grants are ones that have a building, that have a track record of dealing with these issues that they're getting, that there is a stewardship involved when the federal government is making a direct grant. We know that's not the case. I think that's why this goes even beyond fraud. It shows how broken the system is when it comes to how Congress spends your money.

This is federal dollars and it's just we're going to do this and we don't care about the optics. We know it's going to be elevated because it's potentially another shutdown fight coming. Of course they're going to scrutinize everything they can, but they're going to name a group and not just the representative, but co-sponsored by both senators from the state is going to be in this budget. It's shocking how brazen they are just to fly in the face of everything that's going on in America right now.

Logan Sekulow: Right now we are following a hearing on it right now. There's also right now happening as we're live the first White House briefing since the Maduro arrest. We have our team monitoring it to see if there's anything worth going to, anything that's breaking news items, probably not. They usually just kind of go over the basic facts, but it is interesting that we are there. I also see some confusion in the YouTube chat about the funding, like why are we funding other countries' addiction recovery? We should clear that up. I know it's confusing because it specifically aimed to the Somali community, but we are talking about the state of Minnesota.

Will: Right. It is the greater East African community of the Twin Cities metro area. So it's the Somali community within Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Logan Sekulow: I just want to make sure we cleared that up because we are talking about communities within the state. That's why I said if it's addiction recovery, I have no problem with that being where the funding is going. I understand where you may have problems with that being funded in general, but that's just a political mindset. That's just how you feel about federal and state funding in general.

Let's take that aside and go with humanitarian needs, feeding people, taking care of people who are on the street. Great, no problem with it. Do I think there should be double checks on it? Sure. Do I think when there is a moment where there is this intense fraud being uncovered in one of our states, and look, we're going to find out I am sure that Minnesota is not alone in this.

I feel like it's a college football scenario back in the day when they'd be like, well, these players came here and who is paying what players. It's like, well, all of them were probably doing it. It's just who gets caught. I feel like we're probably going to learn that some of this was commonplace in American politics where whether it was intentional or whether it was someone who just kept their eye off the ball and funding was abused.

Will: Once again, these are deeper philosophical questions that come out of when you see how badly it was abused, the safeguards that are supposed to be there that were abused. Those were abused by fraudsters to defraud the taxpayer. I think that's a bigger philosophical question of things like addiction recovery that is being outsourced by the federal government, by the state government, to NGOs.

A lot of the times and we've talked about this is that the work that traditionally we held as that of the church, the people of faith that would go and reach the least of these, go to the people that need help, whether it be feeding the needy, clothing the needy, and things that church groups do great work.

When the mindset of especially in ideology politically replaces the state with the church, and when you think about even the separation of church and state of the concept that Thomas Jefferson was writing about wasn't what the left tried to make it. It was that he didn't want the state to corrupt the church. That's what we've seen is that the state has replaced the church in the minds of many politicians for sure, but that work is like this is the duty of the state.

So we are going to take your money and we are going to dole it out. What happens when you get to states like Minnesota or California where they have a lot more of the social programs? They take a lot more of the citizens' money to spend on these things. What you start to see is that the guidelines, the restrictions, the safeguards of protecting that and being good stewards of that, something that a lot of churches are very mindful of, the state doesn't necessarily have that.

A lot of times the bureaucrats are just making sure that they are meeting quotas and they are doing things. You even see in Minnesota where the bureaucrats were what we see trying to warn the state. This is out of control. We've got to do this for over a decade. They were doing nothing about it. A lot of that is because what happens when the safeguards are ignored and the communities that benefit from it happen to be a special interest group that gets certain types of politicians elected?

Those politicians want to make sure that money keeps flowing, not necessarily because they think it's being stolen, but because they think it's making the populace of their constituents that vote for them happy with the work they're doing. It becomes a vicious cycle and it gets out of control like you saw in Minnesota. Those safeguards then when they get tried to be put in place become a political fight instead of a decency fight, a protecting the hard-working taxpayers of Minnesota and protecting their investment in their state through their taxpayer dollars. It becomes how dare you, you're a racist Republican if you think that we shouldn't be helping the needy when that's not what this is about.

Logan Sekulow: All right, when we get back, we're going to take some calls and comments. I want to hear from you at 1-800-684-3110. The ACLJ is on it as well. We're going to let you know how we are getting involved on the next segment in the entire situation in Minnesota. If you want a little bit of a sneak peek on what that is, go to ACLJ.org.

You can go ahead and sign our new petition that just launched. Again, we're not just talking about the fraud. We're taking action and we need you to take action alongside us. That is at ACLJ.org/sign if you want to go directly to the petition or just go to ACLJ.org. You'll find it there and on the app. When we get back again, I want to hear from you whether you're in Minnesota or not, 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back.

Jordan Sekulow: After nearly 50 years, Roe v. Wade, the tragic ruling that manufactured a so-called right to abortion, has been overturned by the United States Supreme Court. This is the moment the ACLJ has been fighting for. It's the biggest victory we've achieved in our three-decade-long fight against the soulless abortion industry. Believe me, abortionists like Planned Parenthood are devastated.

This victory would not have been possible without the steadfast prayer and support of ACLJ members like you. On behalf of the entire ACLJ, I thank you for standing with us against the abortion industry and helping us save defenseless babies. I thank you for making this victory possible and I ask you for your continued prayer and support as we continue to battle against barbaric new abortion laws across our nation.

Jay Sekulow: The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, and our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress, and in the public arena.

We have an exceptional track record of success, but here's the bottom line: we could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedom. That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. If you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org where you can learn more about our life-changing work. Become a member today at ACLJ.org.

Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are being screened right now, so stay on hold if you are on hold. Give us a call at 1-800-684-3110 if you want to be on the air. I teased earlier that the ACLJ is going to get involved and there are many ways we are going to get involved. But the start today, as the hearings have begun in Congress about the Minnesota fraud situation, the ACLJ is filing six different Freedom of Information Act requests, FOIA requests, to expose and defeat what they've called this industrial-scale fraud.

Again, we're going to do our best to uncover these crimes. It's a great way to start. It's a great way to get involved early on and we have a petition also that you can sign. Will is going to tell you a bit about it and I'm going to pull up the wording from the petition so you can hear it from us directly.

Will: Right now our team has been working very hard on this actually to create six different FOIAs. Some are FOIAs at the federal level, some are the Sunshine Laws under Minnesota, so the state level FOIA, if you will. One is going to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Then we've got one going to the Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota. One is going to the Office of the Governor of Minnesota, currently Tim Walz.

One is going to the Minnesota Department of Human Services. That is the department that all these whistleblowers have come from. We've got one going to the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families, and another one is going to the city of Minneapolis. They're all worded differently asking for different things obviously because different records would be at different places.

Obviously the federal level is different than the Governor's office and different than the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. The entire impetus of this is to try to get to the bottom of what kind of records already exist in some of these exposed previous fraud investigations or ones that maybe were not investigated but there are red flags of because of the reporting that we've been seeing coming out.

This is the ACLJ's take from the outside of the government. We know that Pam Bondi has dispatched more prosecutors to the state right now to be going over things. We know that assistant US Attorney said that it was the tip of the iceberg, industrial-level fraud. We are also doing what we know how to do best outside of trying to get more information as well. We use the FOIA process, we know how to litigate these things when they stonewall us. So we are starting now. We're getting these out as quickly as possible and we are going to move forward to try to see what we can uncover ourselves knowing the terms to use, knowing the different levels to go through within these state agencies and with the federal government to find out what we can to expose more of where the balls were dropped by the state government in protecting the taxpayer dollars in Minnesota.

Logan Sekulow: And you can get involved and there's a great way to do it. You just go to ACLJ.org. Hold Governor Tim Walz accountable for the fraud scandal. That is at ACLJ.org. We're trying to reach 50,000 signatures here by the end of this campaign. Hopefully by the end of today because just launching today we have had over almost 7,700 people sign on to this petition.

Again, this is a huge scheme, a huge scam that we have heard about for years. It's been happening for years. We've heard about for the last few weeks and of course every time I think we're going to move on to another topic, this ends up being one of the leads. It was not the plan. It's not even something we necessarily do care about fraud and corruption, but it's not like we're sitting here going over what's happening in Minnesota, what's happening in Minnesota.

It keeps growing and growing and growing and again, I think it opens up, as Will talked about in the last segment, a much bigger discussion, which is beyond how the fraud was happening. It's how the federal government and how the state governments spend your taxpayer dollars. Is that what we want?

As Will said, a lot of these kind of programs, addiction recovery and these kind of things I think are incredibly necessary and important. A lot of those were funded by the church. A lot of those were funded by charitable organizations, were funded by the community directly because they felt like it was necessary. They weren't taken from your taxpayer dollars and just divvied out.

Now if you're more on that sort of social train and you think that's the way the government should run and that's how they should spend their money, look, I think there are social programs we can all get around. We all want streets that are safe. We all want to have a lot of these things that are social programs, if you will, but when it comes to stuff like this, we should at least have the guard rails up and have better control over where the money is going, how the money is being spent, and of course, if it is being spent on people who are actually doing the good work that they say they're doing.

Again, that's not to say this one specifically was not. There's just things that feel like red flags. Those red flags become a bigger issue now that we know there has been so much corruption. When you say an addiction recovery center is actually at address to a restaurant, that's not to say that they aren't meeting there. That's not to say that that isn't legitimate, but at least optically gives you a reason to question it.

The big picture is does this need to be where your federal funding and state funding is going in general, where your taxpayer dollars are going? Is that what you want out of your government? Maybe you call me, let me know. 1-800-684-3110. You may be right because the church maybe has slacked off. I don't see that. I see it more as the church maybe doesn't get as much publicity as they used to in terms of the way they would handle these kind of crises and a lot of times they do it without the pomp, without the ceremony, without the circus behind it, without the press coming.

If they're feeding the hungry, they're not also calling Channel 2 to come down to show let's feed the hungry, where of course a lot of the times the government is going to do that. They want to show off: look, look, we're spending your money helping people. But the real people who are doing the job often are not the ones who are in it for the fame. We're going to take a phone call real quick. Let's go to Mike who's calling in Minnesota on Line 1. Go ahead, Mike. He's an ACLJ Champion, someone that gives on a monthly basis. We appreciate it, Mike. Go ahead.

Mike: Hey, thank you so much for taking my call. You guys are doing a wonderful job for our country. There was a news article that just came out with Alpha News, the one newspaper that tells the truth and deals with issues in our state, that the Office of Legislative Auditors audited the Department of Human Services. They have found out, this is just breaking yesterday, that the Department of Human Services is creating new documents and they're backdating other documents and they're trying to cover their tracks.

My opinion is that people that are put into government should suffer twice the penalty because they're put in a position of trust. We need to get some teeth in the prosecution of these guys, send a few of them to South America to their prisons and this would stop. We're tired of losing. We had a billions of dollars of surplus in Minnesota and now we're billions of dollars in debt. People in Minnesota are getting tired of it.

Logan Sekulow: I think you're right. Minnesota's been through a lot over the last few years. Right now we're watching a breaking news item that's coming on the police responding in Minnesota to a shooting that involved ICE. There's a heaviness that seems to come upon certain areas at certain times. I don't really know why that happens. It could be spiritual, it could be just political. There's a lot of reason that rot starts to be exposed or comes out of certain areas.

I love Minnesota. I've spent a little bit of time there. Great people, interesting food. Always seems to be a bit, but real human beings and people who are sweet. I've had nothing but good experiences there. I hate it when this stuff starts happening. I think you're right that to build trust out of the chaos, there needs to be accountability. What that accountability looks like is sadly maybe a bit different for you and for me than what it would be for the people of Washington, D.C. or the people in politics.

I think we have to know that that's just the truth. But the ACLJ team is hard at work and we're going to get involved where we can. I'm going to ask you to sign that petition right now at ACLJ.org. Let's get these Freedom of Information Act requests out there. Let's do it today and let's also go ahead and get your name on this petition. We're trying to hit 50,000. We have already had close to 8,000 of you sign up already.

Go to ACLJ.org/sign if you want to go directly to the petition or just go to ACLJ.org. You'll find it there and on the app. We only got the second half hour of the show left. We're halfway done, can you believe it? But you may not get it on your local station. Find us broadcasting live at ACLJ.org, YouTube, Rumble, however you get your podcast. We'll be right back.