SEKULOW

Guest (Male): Today on Sekulow, we have breaking news as Vice President Vance sends a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for Tim Walz. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. It’s Tuesday, June 9th, 2026. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us. Phone lines are open. 1-800-684-3110. Covering all the topics that you need to hear about today. Some breaking news items as well as, of course, what's going on in California.

Rick Grenell is going to be joining us as we did see the votes miraculously tallied in and, of course, Spencer Pratt looks to be knocked out of the race. So we'll discuss that with Rick as well as some other issues that are happening, including Vice President Vance refers former Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz to a criminal fraud investigation.

Will: A criminal referral. He sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. He didn't refer to a criminal. He said this guy—we'll find out, won't we? Imagine you have a resume and you have referrals, but they're only criminal. That's not a good referral to have at this point.

What this is, and it's on official letterhead of the Vice President, it goes to the Assistant Attorney General, Colin McDonald. This is of the new National Fraud Enforcement Division. This is DOGE, right? Also, this is involved with DOGE for people who say DOGE doesn't exist.

Logan Sekulow: Well, this in specific is a division within the DOJ that is now handling fraud investigations. It says yesterday we received a letter and report from Congressman James Comer, the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

Will: The 205-page report contains shocking allegations about the failure of senior officials in Minnesota government to address widespread fraud in the federally funded social services program in the state. It goes on to specifically point to the current Governor and Attorney General, Tim Walz and Keith Ellison, and is going on to ask the Department to respond to the referral appropriately and urgently.

So basically, open an investigation. Look into this. There is a lot of evidence in that report and we'll get into that in the next segment. But this is the Vice President of the United States, ahead of this fraud task force that was started at the State of the Union address just a few months back, is already sending a referral to the DOJ to investigate the Governor of Minnesota.

Logan Sekulow: Let's not forget that just a few short months ago, Tim Walz was running for reelection. He decided I'm not going to run for reelection. Why? Because it had become abundantly clear to his constituents that the fraud and the abuse that was happening was happening not only under his watch, but maybe with him turning a blind eye to it. Therefore, he decided I am no longer going to be seeking reelection.

So this idea that all of this is done without some kind of political malice—and we have to be careful with that. I'm not saying we don't. I'm not saying we don't look at the fact when things look like they may be politically motivated. But when you have a moment here where even the candidate themselves, the current Governor, the former Vice Presidential Democratic pick just a couple of years ago, said it’s too much going on here, I'm going to not be running.

A little where there's smoke, there's fire. What you have here is that J.D. Vance seems to be elevating this significantly. For those of you who say nothing ever gets done, remember it takes some time, but here we are. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We can talk about what that looks like moving forward and read you a little bit of this letter from the Vice President of the United States on the nice letterhead. You don't normally see Vice President letterhead. I'm looking at it. It feels like a logo I don't know if I've ever seen.

Will: That's what I'm saying. It's brand new. Maybe it’s a ChatGPT logo. They may have been like, what would a Vice Presidential seal look like? Quick, send a letter. What do you think about it? Support the work of the ACLJ. We're going to talk a little bit more about some ACLJ work as we move on within the show, but I encourage you, if you're not already, become a champion at ACLJ.org.

Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. Main topic of the day is Vice President J.D. Vance refers Tim Walz. He sent a criminal referral to the Department of Justice. Or you could say he has referred the Governor of Minnesota for criminal prosecution to the DOJ. That's the title of our show.

We should also hear from the Vice President himself on Fox last night talking about what had just happened. He went over to Fox right after they sent this letter.

JD Vance: I left the White House to come here to do this interview with you. Before I did, we actually referred this particular case to the Department of Justice for a full criminal investigation. We are not going to do what the Biden administration did and make judgments of the law before all the facts are in.

But here's what's particularly troubling about this to me is you had people within Governor Walz's office who were saying, you know what, this looks like fraud. It looks like these Somalian illegal immigrants are doing something that's very shady and then you had people who shut them down, who shut these whistleblowers down and said you're a racist or you're a xenophobe for asking questions about where taxpayer money is going. What that means to me is that clearly people weren't taking fraud seriously. Whether it rises to the level of a criminal violation, we're going to investigate it and of course, if it does rise to that level, we're going to prosecute it. We have to.

Will: Here are the four different issues that are raised by the Vice President from this report from the House Oversight Committee, but in this referral to the Department of Justice. The committee has alleged the following based on its review of testimonial and documentary evidence. And remember, this is a 205-page report.

Senior officials in the Governor Walz's office and Attorney General Ellison's office were aware of credible systemic fraud concerns in social services programs as early as 2019, despite later public statements by Governor Walz suggesting otherwise. Instead of trying to stop widespread fraud, Governor Walz's administration retaliated against employees who tried to raise concerns, going to great lengths to keep them quiet, including intimidation through regular check-ins with high-level agency officials and threats of surveillance.

These and other failures by officials in the state allowed an estimated 300 million in federal child nutrition funds and potentially 9 billion in Medicaid related funds to be lost or placed at serious risk. Fraudulently obtained funds likely ended up in the hands of international terror networks and certainly funded the lavish lifestyles of criminal fraudsters while vulnerable populations were harmed.

We know that the Vice President has been going around the country. He was just in Ohio talking about issues with Medicaid there. We know that he has been in California. We're going to get to the concerns of California in many ways later in this broadcast because of some recent things that have happened. But the ability for fraud to continue and grow in this country, whether it be through federal Medicaid funds or child nutrition dollars, it's got to stop.

When you think about a country that has so much national debt, and when the concerns of fiscal conservatives have been ignored for so long, even if we were just to deal with fraud, it would put the United States in such a better place financially and economically because you look at what's going on in California, what's going on here. If people are not held accountable—and I don't just mean the fraudsters, I mean the people that are allowing this to continue, the programs that have been created in such a loose way—and whether it's electorally like the Governor who will no longer be the Governor, he was trying to go for a historic run, or even if there is criminal culpability, something has got to be done to right the path here. If we don't, then the fraudsters are going to keep getting away with it. They're going to get more and more brazen and more programs are going to be created on top of these that allow this to continue to grow.

Logan Sekulow: Absolutely. Look, I want to hear from you about this because when we talk about this, it's also the concern. When we have Rick Grenell joining us a little bit later, we're going to talk about what's going on in California. Obviously the public, and this is not dissimilar to this because it's kind of either fraud or feels like fraud. What did they say? Doesn't it feel right? Doesn't it ring true?

Doesn't it ring true? I would say that there's even similarities in something ringing true. That obviously was a ridiculous one. But it rings true that you are seeding into people doubt. You are seeding into people thought that their money is being improperly used, that their votes aren't being counted correctly. Even if, let's say we find out he's fine, Tim Walz did nothing wrong, there was no fraud and abuse. We know that's not the case. There certainly was fraud within Minnesota, but let's say he's not held accountable.

Same kind of thing. What if we did a full investigation on what went on in California during this current LA mayoral race and find out nothing happened? Well, that very likely could be true. It could be that the votes purely—I mean, look, we've talked to Rick before for months leading up to this saying that Spencer had a very big hill to climb and to not get your hopes up too much. The difference is because the systems stink, because the systems seed doubt, they seed a part of your brain that will go, this feels unfair, this feels wrong, this feels like something shady happened.

Now you've already undone so much of the trust of the American people. We have to get back to those systems also and fix the systems. It can't just be about holding one person accountable or two people accountable for fraud or abuse that goes wrong. We also have to go back to what is creating that seed of doubt in people. Even if, like I said, even if all of the voting in California is completely accurate and this is just how it played out, it doesn't matter anymore because you have planted this seed in people's brain that will always give you a hesitation and then the democracy unfurls.

Will: That's the entire thing. Remember, I will point back to Rick Grenell where he would always say things of whenever the left is shouting about something that they see as a problem, it's typically what they themselves are doing. You go back to that whole line of we must protect democracy, you have to save democracy, democracy is on the ballot, democracy is on the line. These are the mantras of the left for years now that they have been hammering into the collective consciousness of the American people.

Here's the real thing that they've been—as they've been pointing at this, really all it meant was you have to vote for the left, you have to vote for Democrats in order to save democracy. Here's the real problem. This is not a conservative or liberal problem unless they make it this. It's what you're talking about, Logan. It's the trust in the institutions.

It is, do you believe when you go vote that your vote, your one vote is being counted and going where it's going for and that everyone else is one person, one vote as well? It's the same thing with this. Do you believe that the Medicaid system—let's take policy out of it—do you believe that the system that exists is on the up and up? Do you believe that the child nutrition programs are on the up and up?

Instead, when you have a vast swath of the American public think Medicaid, not even in a policy term of is that the best way to help people or the expansion of Medicaid is that the best way to help people in their situation, take that all out of it. If people see Medicaid and immediately think that's just an entire institution ripe for fraud, I don't trust Medicaid. Or you start to think if someone is saying they're on Medicaid, I think they're a fraudster.

If you don't keep the programs clean, if you don't administer them to the American people for the people that need them, for the reason they were legislated, and you allow it just to be a cesspool of fraud and theft of your taxpayer dollar, it creates division not just between the American people where you look at individuals that may need that assistance and say I think you're just a fraudster—that's bad in and of itself—but you think our government can do nothing big and nothing good because all they do is open up doors for people to steal your money.

Logan Sekulow: Absolutely. What do you think about that? Phone lines are open. 1-800-684-3110. Look, the ACLJ is hard at work too, so I want you to become an ACLJ champion if you can. That's at ACLJ.org/champions. Will, this feels very much like the way your daughter described our show, which I think you need to tell this story because if you're a long-time listener, this is great.

Will: She was trying to explain to her friend, they are second graders rising third graders, trying to explain what we do here when we do this broadcast. Her friend goes, "Do they rehearse?" She says, "Not really, but they prepare and then after they prepare, it's a bunch of people in a meeting, a lot of people talking, then they go in and they say, 'Blah blah blah, we can't keep doing this.'" That's how she described what this broadcast is.

Logan Sekulow: I mean, that's the most accurate description of this show. Blah blah blah, we can't keep doing this. Phone lines again are open for you. 1-800-684-3110. I want to hear from you whether you're watching on YouTube, whether you're watching on Rumble, whether you're listening on terrestrial radio. Give me a call. 1-800-684-3110. Throw in the comments too where you're watching from. Next break, I'll just be watching those. I like seeing because it's a worldwide audience and I always love seeing all of the places that we reach with this broadcast.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We do have some phone lines open and some people have called in already at 1-800-684-3110. 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard on the air today and I want you to give me a call. Let's go ahead and take a call right off the top. I want to go to Eric in North Carolina. Go ahead, Eric.

Eric: Hey, thanks fellas for your work. I'm literally just angry, ticked off, frustrated at what's going on with Republicans when it comes to the SAVE America Act. Fraud begets fraud. What's happened over there with Spencer Pratt over there in California, of course, and even linked to what's going on in Minnesota and Tim Walz.

The SAVE America Act is the very thing that's going to stop fraud that's going on such as in Minnesota, but also would make the elections that happened over there in California where Pratt was literally robbed because the SAVE America Act type of procedures that would have prevented this from happening, he lost because it wasn't in place. So these conservatives, so-called conservatives, the John Thunes, the Murkowskis, the Tom Tillis, they're over here saying, they're not realizing that they are literally destroying not just their party, they're destroying their country and they are actually enabling fraud to continue because it leads to more fraud. So I'd love your comment on this, but I'm really angry.

Logan Sekulow: Well, Eric, a couple of points there. One, the SAVE America Act specifically wouldn't necessarily affect the mayoral race in California, nor would it necessarily the Governor's race because those are state elections and the SAVE America Act would be more related to federal elections. There would be a differentiation there and so California could continue to make their own state rules in that situation.

We think we know how they would go. But I do understand your frustration and I think it actually is the perfect example of people trying to do something. Now, I am frustrated with certain Republicans as well that aren't moving it. I don't necessarily blame the majority leader, John Thune, as many people do because there is only so much you can do. We are always here to tell people, be careful what you wish for in some ways.

The SAVE America Act right now, even with the ones that are voting against it that you mentioned, Tom Tillis and Murkowski, they would still have to get over the filibuster. That's the issue. I am not for what people want necessarily John Thune to do, and that is to scrap the filibuster because, especially we have a midterm election coming up. What happens if you lose the Senate? Then they start to push through every single terrible leftist program and there's no check on them anymore. They push it through and they keep going until they get everything they want.

So the filibuster, while imperfect, especially the way it is—there is the talk of the talking filibuster, etc.—I don't want them just to scrap the filibuster because I know what comes after. We get one thing, we get a SAVE America Act through, but they will get everything they want because they are uniform with their leftist ideology, unlike Republicans. There is actually a very wide array of conservatism and moderate on the Republican side for better or for worse.

Will: Back to the entire thing, we do talk about what happened in California. This is something, if you get the ACLJ emails, I printed this one out today. It’s great. It comes from Jordan and it's the subject line is "Deja Vote," a little cheeky there, little funny because it's talking about what we saw in L.A. of it seeming like you see the same thing over and over, Eric, you're talking about this.

The frustration, and this is something we actually have a brief at the Supreme Court. We represented members of Congress, I believe it was 29 members of Congress. This has to do with that after-the-election counting. There's actually up at ACLJ.org you can read it. The fight for Election Day is now at the Supreme Court. ACLJ brief addresses key arguments. It's already been heard. This is Watson v. The Republican National Committee.

We should have an opinion at the end of this term about this. As we represented 29 members of Congress, the key question is this: Does federal law require that mail-in ballots be received by Election Day, or can states extend that deadline by days or longer after the election is concluded? This, once again, federal elections, but could have trickle down to things like the mayoral—that is one of the big problems with the mayoral race in L.A. It’s that if they were sent by the day of the election, they can get them up to 10 days later.

How would that work? How did it take 10 days if you live in L.A. and sent it in L.A., it took 10 days to get to the election office? Don't know, but if it's postmarked by that day, they can still count it for up to 10 days. That's a big problem. What we are arguing at the Supreme Court is that Election Day means Election Day. They have to receive the ballot by then, not just be postmarked by then.

That's what we represent members of Congress on. We hope to have that decision soon. The term is not much longer, only a few weeks. Normally they are done by the end of this month. So we will hopefully get a good opinion in that, that is kind of setting the rules. A lot of times the states have to, if they're receiving federal support for their elections, even if it's a state election, will have to conform to those rules too. But Eric, it's a problem.

It goes back to that. They say they want to save democracy over and over and over again, but all of the things they do to continue to win in their agenda, in further their agenda, makes people trust that democracy less and less. Let's say all those votes are on the up and up. Let's take this hypothetical. No one's going to believe me in the chat. That's fine. Let's say it does.

Logan Sekulow: It's not about whether it is on the up and up. It’s just the emotional drive that comes when these kind of delays happen and tranches of votes show up. That's what I'm saying. It's beyond whether you believe it to be true or not. But let's say every single vote's on the up and up, every statistical anomaly is just that, an anomaly, but it exists.

It takes the credibility and throws it out the window and it makes people trust the system less and less. It's a danger to the democratic process. What happens the next time? There doesn't have to be this mirage or this red mirage that they call it, because people just quit voting. They feel so defeated. I think that's kind of the game plan to some degree as well.

As someone would once say, blah blah blah, we can't keep doing this. People are saying they need shirts that have us saying that, "We can't keep doing this." Phone lines again are open for you. We are headed to a break. If you lose us in your local market, if you're listening on terrestrial radio, there's other ways you can enjoy our show. You can see us. See our pretty faces. 1-800-684-3110 is how you call in. You go to ACLJ.org. You go YouTube, you go Rumble, you go Facebook. We're there anywhere where you see a livestreamed video typically.

We are there broadcasting this show and then it's archived. However you get your podcast and that archive, by the way, happens in minutes, sometimes seconds after the show is over. So if you do miss the show, you can always go back and listen. You can share it with your friends. All that's available also on the ACLJ app.

This is the moment where I just tell you all the different places we are. We do that and look, we could get some sort of maybe better financial deal signing an exclusive deal with a network or exclusive deal with some sort of distributor. We don't want that. What we want is the most people to be able to see this show, for the most people to hear about the cases the ACLJ works on, for the most people to be informed about what's happening in the world.

Where you don't even have to log in or you don't even have to have a paywall. It’s not what we do here. That's not the kind of business we're operating here because we are supported by you. So when you decide to give, understand it's creating this ecosystem that's available for free for everyone to stand and share and to be on broadcast. Not free to us. We got to pay for all of this. Crew, space, all the things that you would imagine that go into running this kind of business.

But it's because you support the work. And you who really helps are what we call ACLJ champions, people that give on a recurring monthly level. That could be $5, it could be $500. Phone lines are jammed though, but I want you to scan that QR code. This break is really short. In that time, think about becoming an ACLJ champion. We're back in less than a minute. So don't go anywhere or find us again archived later on however you get your podcast. We'll be right back.

Guest (Male): 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. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And 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. ACLJ.org.