SEKULOW

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. We made it, folks. It’s Friday. Phone lines are open for you. Wrapping up our Stop the Madness week here at the ACLJ, where we’re going to uncover a lot of the great work the ACLJ is doing that you frankly couldn’t imagine is actually happening a lot of times in our own country. Today, we’re going to be taking you over to California. Of course, we’re going to be talking about our case in support of Calvary Chapel and against Gavin Newsom in the state of California. We’ll discuss that a little bit later.

We also have Rick Grenell coming on in the next segment, so you’re not going to want to miss that. Today, the big news of the morning is about Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence. She has been a friend of ours, a colleague of ours, and a contributor to this show for a number of years before she was given that position.

What I like about her is that it feels like no stones are left unturned. It doesn’t matter how many years ago we’re going to go back. This one isn’t that many years ago. We’re going back just to the 2024 election and a report that came out from our friends at Just the News saying that there was a multi-million dollar, hundreds of millions of dollars, of potential fraud going on specifically to bolster the Biden reelection campaign, and it’s coming from a foreign source.

Will Sekulow: That’s right. For those of you that watch the show, this may not sound shocking, but it is shocking when you read that there are intercepts that were in the possession of our government. Intelligence agencies had these intercepts from Ukrainian government officials' communications as far back as 2022. The US government had these as far back as 2022 that talked about a plot that would redirect USAID money that was earmarked for clean energy projects in Ukraine to be funneled back to the United States and into the coffers of the Democratic National Committee as well as the Joe Biden reelection campaign.

We’ve been concerned about the Ukrainian issue for as long as Joe Biden was a candidate for the presidency. This report shows there’s a summary of these raw intercepts that say the Ukrainian government and unspecified US government personnel through USAID in Kyiv reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project in Ukraine. That would actually be used as cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.

This is shocking and newly uncovered. We obviously know that the intelligence agencies that had possession of this were under the Joe Biden administration. Tulsi Gabbard is now doing a massive investigation into this, finding out through records and other ways if this plot was carried out and whether a criminal referral should be made to the FBI. We’ve talked about corruption in Ukraine and election interference from these governments, but right here you’re seeing that even the administration under Joe Biden had receipt of this.

Logan Sekulow: I want you to understand, folks, it’s not saying now, because I think a lot of people in the podcast world seem to get caught up in this kind of thing, that this corruption happening in Ukraine must make Russia the good guy. No. What it just shows you is there is corruption happening at all levels of politics, including here in America.

Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. When we get back, we are going to hear from a former Director of National Intelligence, Rick Grenell, who is going to be on the broadcast. So make sure you don’t go anywhere. It’s going to be a short break. In that break, I’m going to encourage you. It’s the last day of Stop the Madness. Be a part of it and have your donation doubled today at ACLJ.org. All donations are doubled right now, dollar for dollar. Help defend our incredible clients and help keep this show on the air.

Jay Sekulow: Right now, your most sacred rights are under attack: your right to free speech, your right to worship, and your right to educate your children the way you choose. If successful, these attacks will have a destructive impact on the future of our republic. We’re fighting in courtrooms across the country to have a lasting impact, defending and upholding our values that this nation was founded on.

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The attacks on our constitutionally protected rights persist. Countless unborn babies remain in jeopardy, and across the globe, innocent Christians are being targeted and killed across this country and around the world. This fight isn’t just the ACLJ’s; it’s all of ours. It belongs to every American who wants to preserve the values and beliefs on which this nation was founded.

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Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. Rick Grenell is joining us right now. Of course, we are, if you’re just joining us, a lot of you are right now. If you’re in the chat right now, let me know where you’re watching from. I love seeing where everyone's coming from worldwide. I think that’s what’s really cool about the way we’re able to present this broadcast now; there are people watching worldwide.

When you understand and when you travel around the world, you start to notice how much American news, American politics, and American pop culture influence the world. Often the faces you’re going to see are the faces you’re going to see here, like President Trump, whoever it may be, are showing up on the news because what happens here really does influence the world.

With that, of course, we are talking about this Just the News coverage, this breaking news that came out. It’s not necessarily shocking news, Will, that the Ukrainian government potentially was involved to the tune of hundreds of millions.

Will Sekulow: It’s sad that that’s not shocking, by the way. John Solomon, our friend over at Just the News, has this report. It’s one of the only places you can see this report, but it is coming off of a declassified summary from our government that apparently, during the Biden administration, they intercepted communications between the Ukrainian government and unspecified US government personnel through USAID in Kyiv. They reportedly developed a plan that would provide hundreds of millions of US taxpayer dollars to fund an infrastructure project in Ukraine that would actually be used as cover to send approximately 90% of funds allocated to the DNC to fund Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.

Rick Grenell: First of all, raise your hand if you’re shocked that this didn’t leak out during the Biden administration. Every little piece of information is manipulated from the intelligence agency when it is an anti-Republican moment. And yet, here we have the raw intelligence showing that the Ukrainians were trying to funnel US taxpayer money back to the Biden campaign in order to help them win.

Now, let’s unpack this. They wanted Biden to win because they were getting money from Biden for this war between Russia and Ukraine. They didn’t want the money to end, so they were willing to sacrifice a couple of hundred million dollars to send it back to the political system in America, even though it started with US taxpayer dollars. It was supposed to go for an energy program; instead, the allegation is that it went back and helped Biden’s campaign.

This is outrageous. This should be front-page news. We should be investigating this. Thank God that Tulsi is the one that has found this and declassified this. Now they’re trying to figure out if any of the money actually went into the campaign.

Will Sekulow: Rick, this story to me has so many elements to it that should be almost vindicating to people on the right and the conservative media that have been talking and raising genuine questions. Was there corruption between the Bidens and the Ukrainians? Well, that’ll get you impeached and kicked off social media if you ask that, and you’ll have all the intelligence community writing a very strongly worded letter against you if you were to say that.

Once again, people that say, "I feel like a lot of this clean energy initiative is kind of a scam." How dare you, you climate denier, that want everyone in the world to lose their cities and have all these things bad happen, apocalyptic happen because you deny climate? Yet in this one story, and it’s not like it’s some random person—this is intercepts within the government that now the investigation is whether or not people acted on this—the intercepts clearly showed that there was a plot, whether or not it went forward, that encompassed all the things that if you were a conservative questioning, you were canceled.

Logan Sekulow: This is not a far-fetched idea. When you read the report—sure, it’s a report, we know our friends at Just the News do a great job, so I’m not questioning their report—but when you do read it, you go, "Well, yeah." As Rick, you stated, it’s clear where they were going and why the reasons they were. A lot of money was being funneled to them, so of course they wanted to keep things going.

Rick Grenell: One of the cabinet officials in the Biden administration that literally got away without having scrutiny—she escaped public and media scrutiny—and it's really a shame, and now we're finding out that there's a lot here that needs to be investigated. The woman is Avril Haines, who was the DNI during Joe Biden’s tenure. She’s never answered the question for what was going on with all of the Ukrainian money.

Clearly, we now know that there were intelligence sources showing that it was being abused. Why didn’t she come forward? Why didn’t she say, "Wait a minute, lawmakers, we should do a little pause here on funding the Ukrainians until we figure out if they’re playing political games with this"? This would have been something that a real DNI who was interested in transparency would have come forward to say.

I don’t care if this is helping Joe Biden and the Democrats and I’m a Democrat-appointed DNI; it doesn’t matter. This is the type of scandal that makes American taxpayers say, "I don’t think I want to fund more intelligence programs if this is what they’re up to."

Will Sekulow: Once again, if you watch this broadcast, you were told from day one of the Biden administration by Rick Grenell that someone you should be concerned about in this administration is Avril Haines. You had many times mentioned that on this broadcast, so our audience understands exactly what you’re talking about.

But you also have to take the converse here because I think whenever you look at a story like this, what would be happening if this story were flipped? If it were the Trump administration—not even the President himself, but someone in an agency talked to a foreign government about rerouting money back into the United States to fund the election—it would be everywhere. There would be an impeachment. There would be mass chaos in our country over this.

And honestly, if that was something that was intercepted, there’s a lot of problems with that. That’s not what happened. They will go this far with saying we have to use things like the Steele dossier to try and get President Trump completely wiped out of public life, but when it comes to something that the intelligence agencies themselves picked up, there are crickets. There is one place you can find this: Just the News. Even in conservative spaces, you’re not seeing this as much. Maybe people have moved on. Maybe people have lost the appetite or gotten numb to this corruption. But when you’re seeing this, I’m thankful that this government is looking into this now.

Rick Grenell: I actually think that in order to restore faith in the intelligence agencies, to restore faith in the process to fund Ukraine and the war in Congress, that we need to see Avril Haines testify in Congress on this particular issue. What did she know and when did she know it? Why did she cover it up? Did she dismiss this as "this isn’t accurate, this isn’t real news, this is phony"?

Then tell us, because right now what we see is a total cover-up from the Avril Haines intelligence community where she knew that there was this scheme to take US taxpayer money from Ukrainian funding, pretend like it was going to an energy company, but it really was going to reelect Joe Biden. That’s a scandal. The fact that we caught it is fantastic, but why didn’t it come out then? And what was done to ensure that the money didn’t actually go to that campaign?

Logan Sekulow: I want to clarify something: Avril Haines is no relation. Spelled differently. I just want to make sure people don’t think this is some sort of plot that we have here. Rick, I think that’s why it’s important also that you do have someone like Tulsi in this position, and you’ve had people like you in these kind of positions—people that are not just going to say, "Well, that’s old news, we’re not worrying about that anymore." They will deep dive and continue searching for really what’s going on, even if it seems, as Will said, maybe the appetite from the news media may have moved on. That doesn’t matter to the people who we put in these positions.

Rick Grenell: We’ve got to give credit to Tulsi. She actually declassified this so that we could see the whole story, that there wasn't some mystery or some leaks that are coming out with partial information. She actually declassified the whole story. Now I think it’s up to Congress to take this declassified information and figure out what exactly went wrong. Why didn't we know about it then? What did Avril know and when did she know it?

Logan Sekulow: Thank you so much, Rick, for joining us. We are going to continue this conversation, and I want to have that conversation with you. So if you want to call in, we have one call right now about the TSA and the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. We’ll take some of those as well. We know that’s on the top of mind for a lot of people, but we’ll take calls also on this. Yes or no in the comments: does any of this really surprise you? I know you’re interested in it. I can see the numbers. A lot of you are curious about it. But is it shocking?

When we go to break, I want to know from you: yes or no? With that being said, we are also in the last day of Stop the Madness week. It’s Friday, the last day of Stop the Madness. The madness will somewhat continue, Will. Always, there will always be madness, but the special week will end today. And we want you to have a doubled donation. So right now, double your impact at ACLJ.org. We’ll be right back.

Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. Lots of you are watching right now, lots of you are just tuning in. We are discussing this report coming out from Just the News. Our friend John Solomon has been on the show as recently as a few days ago with this really in-depth coverage and this report that said the US had intercepted messages from the Ukrainian government with at least a plot to get money into the Biden reelection campaign.

Again, none of us are really shocked by this. You had a situation where Ukraine was receiving millions and millions of dollars from the Biden administration. Of course, they wanted that to continue going. And again, just because this is happening doesn’t mean now we’re saying, "Well, Russia is good in this situation." No, that’s not how this works. What we’re saying is that there is corruption happening at all levels and there is interference and influence coming from foreign governments in our own elections, and we don’t need to be numb to that, even if it’s not shocking.

And trust me, I saw in your comments many of you are not shocked. I am not shocked either at this report. But the fact that we have the report to me is actually the good news, and that is that you have someone like John Solomon and then you also have Tulsi Gabbard on the other side who are exposing really what is going on. So maybe there is hope for a future where this doesn’t happen. Because if it can be brought to light, it can then be thwarted.

Well, here’s something to think about as well. When you look at this story and it goes into detail that the intercepts even talked about subcontractors of USAID that would be possible recipients of the money that would eventually be moved to the DNC—like, this was not just a "hey, what if," this was a plan of how they could move the money from the taxpayer to Ukraine, through USAID to Ukraine, to subcontractors, back to the DNC and the Biden reelection campaign.

When you think about what the left did and the deep state did to President Trump when there were allegations that weren't vetted, they put it out in the media. They reordered a new assessment, an intelligence community assessment. President Obama ordered it. And when they said this stuff is not credible, they said, "Doesn't it ring true?" That’s John Brennan, and they went forward and they pushed and they pushed and they leaked things and they leaked allegations. And when President Trump said to Zelenskyy, "Hey, maybe you need to look into seeing if there’s corruption in your country," what happened? They impeached him.

Now think about this context. This is something that’s received. It seems to be a plot that was discussed by some sort of conspiracy within people that were in the US government and Ukraine. Does that mean that Joe Biden knew about this? Not according to this report. And honestly, I highly doubt that anything would come forward that shows that he did.

But he was President and it was his intelligence agencies. Tell me there’s not a deep state when you see that this was in the hands of Avril Haines, like Rick said. They didn’t run to Congress and say, "You’ve got to impeach Joe Biden, there’s so much corruption in this government that we are a part of." No, because that’s not what they do to their own, and that’s not what they do when the end goal is the reelection and preservation of the deep state.

That is the tale of two presidencies when it comes to information when it comes to Ukraine. Because in an I-can-see-on-the-floor, Joe Biden kept funneling money to Ukraine, he kept pushing and pushing and pushing to help Ukraine. Therefore, there must be corruption, even if there’s not an inkling of link to him to this story. That is what would have happened. But they sat on it. They didn't tell anyone. There were no leaks in the leakiest administration. No leaks.

All right, well, speaking of leakiest administrations, Will, phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. That being said, we are during Stop the Madness week telling you about the work of the ACLJ. We don’t have a ton of time right now, but I want to play this video and hopefully it gives you a minute to understand some of the incredible work the ACLJ is doing. This is of course in support of our friends at Calvary Chapel against the state of California. Take a look.

Logan Sekulow: The San Jose church that defied Santa Clara County's public health order will have to pay more than a million dollars in fines. It's like you're going to lose this freedom that you thought was here, the American dream. It's going to be gone because it was a freedom to believe as you want to believe and to worship who you want to worship. But they’re coming and saying, "No, you can't sing, you can't gather. We’ve got to fear this disease."

Calvary Chapel San Jose, just like many other churches throughout the state of California, was punished by draconian orders issued by Gavin Newsom during COVID-19. So there'd be prayer meetings and they'd come in and they'd count the people and they'd have their charts. I mean, they were definitely harassing us. Santa Clara County says the church blatantly violated public health orders during the COVID-19 pandemic by continuously holding large indoor church services and not requiring face coverings for anyone, along with little social distancing.

They fined us originally, my understanding was it was up to over four million dollars of all those five-thousand-dollar fines when you added it all up. And we refused to comply with orders that the courts recognized violated their fundamental rights to freely live out their faith and express their fundamental religious beliefs. Nonetheless, California has still decided to fine them millions and millions of dollars simply because they chose to meet.

So we appealed with Jay Sekulow now to the Supreme Court for just what’s left of all these fines. We are asking the Supreme Court to take this case not just to correct the wrong done to Calvary Chapel, but for the future as well. We saw how the government can overreach, not just at the federal level, but state and local level. The whole thing’s been five years, and they purposely said this to us early on. The county says, "We’re just going to wear you out, you know, we’re just going to attack you." They did. They told us, "Look, we have more money, we have more lawyers."

The county’s health orders did not treat churches equally to other gatherings, whether that be restaurants or sporting events. People were able to freely remove their masks and live their lives, but churches were uniquely singled out for unequal treatment because of their religious practice. Freedom for people to choose—it’s not like you have to follow the church and do whatever we say. No, it’s just let people believe in God, worship God, and don’t dictate how we do that. I mean, that’s a total violation of the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court has the authority to choose which cases it does and does not take. Whether the Supreme Court is going to take this particular case or not—if it does, then we will be going before the Supreme Court on the merits and urging the court to once and for all hold that religious freedom is meaningful even in cases of emergency, that the Constitution continues to protect the rights of churches to worship freely. Equal treatment—that's what the Constitution demands and what we hope to have the opportunity to fight for at the Supreme Court.

And once again, that is a case that we’ve told you a lot about, and remember we just got the reply from California, their reasons why the Supreme Court should not take it. We will be able to respond to that as well. And next week also, I want to give you a heads-up: we’re going to have Robert Tyler from Advocates for Faith and Freedom. He is the attorney that had it at the district court level, at the appellate level, and is co-counsel with us at the Supreme Court.

We joined alongside Advocates for Faith and Freedom to bring this case before the Supreme Court. Wonderful organization—if you’re interested in looking them up as well, faith-freedom.com. They do wonderful work based out of California. faith-freedom.com. But we’ll have Robert Tyler, Chief Counsel there, on the broadcast next week to talk more about that.

We’re not going anywhere. We’ve got a second half-hour coming up. If you don’t get us, if you’re listening on terrestrial radio, find us broadcasting live wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Rumble, ACLJ.org every day live from 12:00 to 1:00 PM Eastern time. And of course, you can find us archived later on again, however you get your podcast, we are there. Last day though, if we lose you here, for Stop the Madness, I want you to give today at ACLJ.org. Support this show, support our legal work. None of it happens without you. We’ve got a packed second half-hour. We’re going to take your calls. We’ll be right back.