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Sept. 1, 2023 - Sean Hannity Show
34:50
Defending Whistleblowers - August 31st, Hour 3
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Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show.
This is Jordan Secchio.
You know, one of those ideas, the greatest ideas in our country, is that we have oversight over our government and that there are members of the government, bureaucrats, people who spend their entire careers serving America, who are doing the right thing and trying to do the right thing.
You know, a lot of times we focus on the bad actors inside the government, but there are good actors and they tried to come forward.
There are protections we have placed for them by Congress so that they can blow the whistle on bad actions.
But what we have seen develop over the years is punishment for these whistleblowers by their own agencies.
We know how an important role whistleblowers play in protecting the United States government and in protecting our constitutional rights when the executive branch oversteps.
But dad, unfortunately, what we've seen now time and time again is depending on what the whistleblower is blowing the whistle on is how they get treated.
And if they're blowing the whistle on a Democrat or on the left, suddenly they are treated like or even not just treated like, they actually are end up being criminals under the executive branch.
Well, this is the problem, but fortunately, Tristan Levitt, who's got a tremendous amount of years of experience on Capitol Hill with Senator Grassley's office and other positions, also heads up in Power Oversight, a group that the ACLJ is very proud to be partnering with to protect these whistleblowers.
And Tristan, thanks for coming on the Sean Hannity Show.
Let me ask you this.
There's reports coming out right now that on your IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shapley, to be specific, that dialogue was going on between the Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States and his lawyer.
And they wanted to understand supposedly these claims that were being made by Agent Shapley.
And yet, when the lawyer asked for some verification on some data and some points on disclosure, stone silence by the government.
How do you read this?
Well, disappointingly, to put it in a word, when the Associate Deputy Attorney General reached out, his name's Brad Weinsheimer, and this came about seven weeks after Attorney General Merrick Garland assured Congress that the Hunter Biden investigation was completely independent from the main Department of Justice headquarters.
And we knew already at that time we were preparing very disclosures to Congress, and we knew that there were several things that just made that inaccurate.
But you would think that they would have learned some lesson from that.
Well, going forward, as soon as the first whistleblower letter was sent to Congress, within that next week, this Associate Deputy Attorney General reached out to my co-counsel, Mark Lydal.
And the Associate Deputy Attorney General, it's important for your listeners to understand the way that the Justice Department works, the Attorney General is out there at press conferences, right, and at hearings, but it's the Deputy Attorney General's office that does the oversight of the entire department, and that's Lisa Monaco.
And so her associates under her are her eyes and ears throughout the department.
Nothing happens there without her authorization.
So for him to reach out was interesting.
And so he reached out, he set up a call and he said, hey, you know, we're concerned that you sent this letter and we'd like to know more of the details.
It seemed a little bit like a fishing expedition.
And so Mark just said, well, we might be in touch as things go on.
What we now know, thanks to what seemed to be leaks of emails from Hunter Biden's own legal team and maybe from the Department of Justice as well, is that Brad Weinsheimer, when he had that call, already had a meeting set up for the very next day with Hunter Biden's attorney, Chris Clark, and the U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who Mayor Garland said was completely independent.
And this came about because Clark was emailing all over the government, trying to say he wanted to appeal from whatever he wanted an insurance policy in case Weiss decided to move forward.
And he got silenced until the whistleblower letter came forward.
And then suddenly DOJ put things in motion.
And so that was, again, that goes right to the heart against what Garland said.
Well, two weeks later, after we had our proffer with Congress, we explained to them what Gary Shapley would disclose.
And Attorney General Garland, again, at a press conference, reiterated Weiss's independence.
You know, after that meeting with the U.S. Attorney and Hunter's attorneys is when they, you know, thereafter this plan was hatched to give Hunter a deal with zero charges.
So not even the two misdemeanors that the public learned about eventually, but zero charges, a deferred prosecution agreement is what they call that.
And as part of their executing that, the same day that they reached out to Hunter's team in mid-May to execute that, they also removed Gary Shapley and his team from the case.
And a lot of the world heard about that at the time he was removed.
So we sent this letter saying, hey, there was retaliation.
We forwarded that to Weinsheimer and said, you said you wanted to help.
Here's how you could do it.
And it was a complete 180.
This time he said, no, no, no, we can't do anything with it.
Total hands off.
You need to talk to David Weiss.
He didn't offer to set up a meeting with David Weiss for us like you did with Hunter's attorneys.
Of course not.
Right.
Yeah.
You know, I'm going to play again the statement from another one of our clients that you originated.
And that was FBI agent Garrett O'Boyle when talked about what it was like when the FBI turns its sites on its own for being whistleblowers.
Take a listen to this.
But the FBI will crush you.
This government will crush you and your family if you try to expose the truth about things that they are doing that are wrong.
And we are all examples of that.
You know, I hear that again and again in my head, Tristan, because it shows you the danger these whistleblowers are being put in by a hostile government.
Yeah, that's right.
And I was sitting two seats down from him at that hearing when he said that.
And what he said is so spot on.
And I've seen it happen again and again that, you know, government agencies have the entire resources from the taxpayers at their disposal, all the attorneys, all the money that they want to put on something against one little whistleblower, you know, who is a gadfly to them.
And it's true, they can crush you.
And that's just not the way that it should be.
Government, you know, people's work should be supporting the people and not retaliating against those that try and help fix the problems.
The retaliation is significant.
I mean, I want to make sure people understand this.
Instead of being fired, what they do is they keep you on, you're suspended, but without pay.
And your security clearance is also suspended.
So even if you decided to quit, you couldn't go move to a job, let's say, in a private security company and use your security clearance as kind of a carrot for your position, which many people, when they do leave the public world, they enjoy the private world.
That's something important to take with them.
The FBI knows that.
The DOJ knows that.
So that's suspended.
You also, though, aren't getting paid.
And you can only take up to $7,500 of outside money.
So in a sense, they're trying to force you out onto the streets without being able to take the work you did at the FBI with you as part of your resume to find a new job.
Think about it.
I mean, that is literally, it's not just like criminally charging someone.
It's destroying someone's entire career and their family.
Yeah.
Well, and one other element that goes with that is they have to approve outside work requests.
And in the case of certainly of our common client, Marcus Allen, they have never done that.
Two different requests, and they just flat out ignored them.
And so there's arguably a constitutional claim there.
If they are telling someone, you know, not only suspending them, not paying them, but also telling them you're not allowed to do other work, even unrelated work, unless we give the go-ahead.
And they never give the go-ahead.
And so it's just another tool for retaliating.
I do want to offer people hope, though.
And the hope is because of the work of Empower Oversight and the American Center for Law and Justice, we are in federal court of appeals right now for one of the whistleblowers and pressing that charge very aggressively.
So I want it's important, Tristan, for people to have hope at the end of the day here.
Yeah, that's right.
And look, I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't think that there was hope, right?
If you just had to throw up your hands, I mean, I think part of the important work is educating people.
And part of the important work is that when people see the important disclosures whistleblowers make, even if they are agnostic or have no real views on the concept of whistleblowing, I don't know that I have strong views on it or John Dotson, a Bass and Pierce whistleblower, you know, with someone that I work closely with.
But, you know, when you see what people do and you see the commitment that they have, the patriotism that they have, you can't help but feel confidence in our country that there are good people out there that are pushing for what's right and for what's true.
And so, of course, you stand up and do what you can.
And I do believe that there is hope, not just in individual specific cases, but that people in the government who know where the problems are can help to point those out.
And if we protect them, we can get to a far better place in how our government operates.
I am very encouraged about that.
I want to encourage people to support the work of Empower Oversight.
What's the best place for people to go to get information about your good work?
So empoweroversight.org is our website.
And if people are interested in contributing to a fund that was set up specifically for law enforcement whistleblowers like our FBI clients, like Gary Shapley, that's at defendwhistleblowers.com.
So two great places for you to go.
We encourage you to do it.
Tristan, thanks for being on the broadcast on the Hennedy program.
And it's great partnering with you and your colleagues.
And we're going to get justice for these people.
I have no doubt about it.
Thanks for being with us.
Thanks so much, guys.
Take care.
You know, you look at these whistleblowers and they say things like, your government will crush you.
And then when Tristan and our teams reached out together, let me just tell you what a couple of weeks of the work of the ACLJ and groups like Empower Oversight can do.
Here is the statement on our radio broadcast.
By the way, we broadcast noon every day across the country.
You can go to aclj.org and look at our radio schedule, 12 o'clock noon Eastern Time.
Here's what he said on our radio broadcast when asked about, and he said, because he said, they will crush you how he views it now.
Take a look at the.
I even told them that ACLJ is taking me on as a client.
And I said, the time is now.
You guys can all start coming forward.
We have the legal capability.
We have the connections to Congress.
Everybody needs to be whistleblowing about the things they're seeing because I'm sure what me and others have done, we're just scratching the surface.
So he is empowered because he's got legal help.
Let me switch it, though, from that situation to the high schools and junior high schools.
Linda McLaughlin, Sean's producer, who's on this broad, you hear her voice all the time, just sent Jordan and I this article entitled, High School Horror Show, The Left Running Rough Shot at a Pennsylvania School, Active Shooters, Sexual Assault, at Graded Film, Suspensions for Prayer.
I wish I could tell you this was rare, but we've got two cases right now.
One, a student was first reprimanded for having a cross, and then the teacher took the cross out of his hands.
You can't have that.
Took it off his neck.
You can't wear that.
We got that one resolved pretty quickly.
The second one, a mother goes to a school board meeting because their 15-year-old daughter is required in a drama class to read a monologue that's pornographic.
She goes to the school board meeting to confront the school board in Las Vegas, Nevada, about how outrageous it is.
Take a listen to this school board meeting transcript.
This will be horrifying for me to read to you, but that will give you perspective on how she must have felt when her teacher required her to memorize this and to act it out in front of her entire class.
I don't love you.
It's not you.
It's just, I don't like your dick or any in that case.
I cheated, Joe.
I'm sorry.
Timmy, excuse me.
I don't, thank you so much for your thank you for your comment.
Forgive me.
We're not using profanity.
Simply, this is a public meeting.
I ask for decorum.
If you don't want me to read it to you, what was that like for my 15-year-old daughter to have to memorize pornographic material?
I'll tell you what her 15-year-old daughter and mother has done.
We're in federal court for them right now at the American Center for Law and Justice.
And we are in the last day of our life and liberty drive.
And this is where you come in, folks.
You can help us stand with these students around the country, these whistleblowers that need our help.
It's very important.
The ACLJ is a nonprofit organization.
Any amount you donate to us, we're going to get a matching gift.
And it is our life and liberty drive.
The Biden administration has empowered these anti-Christian school boards and school forces to eviscerate religious liberty.
We talked about the Christian kids.
We know about pastors being threatened for arrest for praying in front of the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. Employees banned from going to church on Sunday.
Faith of soldiers is under fire.
And we got the FBI investigating churches.
But the ACLJ is standing up to all of this, and this is where you come in.
Any amount you donate, you're going to get a tax-deductible gift.
But more important, your gift will be matched at aclj.org.
And this is the last day for our life and liberty drive.
You can be a big part of this.
Let me encourage you right now to go to aclj.org and participate in our life and liberty drive.
We are at the very end of it.
This is the last day.
It ends at midnight tonight.
We can't fight these fights without your support.
I keep saying this, folks.
These folks need us and we need you.
And together, we're going to be able to represent them and stand for our constitutional republic.
You've heard, look at who you heard from today.
Presidents of the United States, congressmen, leaders.
We're fighting back, folks, but this is where you come in.
ACLJ.org for our Life and Liberty Drive.
We encourage you to do it today.
J Seculo Band Life and Liberty concert tonight on Facebook, on Twitter, on Rumble, on YouTube, and of course, aclj.org.
That's going to be at 8 p.m.
We encourage you to watch that as well.
And you can also participate there in our Life and Liberty Drive as well during that concert.
We'll be back with more of the Hannity Show in just a minute.
Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Show, folks.
We have got a lot more coming up on the broadcast you don't want to miss.
Charlie Kirk is joining us not just as a guest, but let me announce this as a client of the American Center for Law and Justice.
And so is Turning Point USA because of how they've been treated by this government and they're silencing on social media platforms, huge platforms, you know, that Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk has built for a lot of these outside companies.
And then because of what he has to say or what he happens to believe or the candidate he happens to support, suddenly you can't reach all those millions of people that you brought to the platform by asking them to join the platform.
So we're going to be representing Charlie Kirk.
We're representing Turning Point USA at the American Center for Law and Justice.
And he's joining us next on Thursday.
And we're in federal court on that one.
And again, when you support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice at aclj.org and our Life and Liberty Drive, you're supporting that lawsuit to hold that administration responsible for silencing and engaging in viewpoint discrimination against Charlie Kirk and others, by the way, including his organization, Turning Point USA.
And then this evening at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, you're not going to want to miss it.
J Seculo Band Life and Liberty concert, live online concert tonight, 8 p.m.
You can watch it on Facebook, Twitter, Rumble, YouTube, or, of course, aclj.org.
We have a blast.
It's about a two-hour concert.
We tell stories.
We play great music.
You'll enjoy it.
We're having a blast.
So coming up next, Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA.
Big announcement, big lawsuit.
You can get more information about that at aclj.org.
More with the Hannity Show in a moment.
Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
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That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
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You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
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Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
And I'm Carol Markowitz.
We've been in political media for a long time.
Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane.
That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity.
We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor.
We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously.
So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass.
You're our kind of people.
Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen.
You know, this tune that you just heard is a song called The Wait by the Band.
It was written by Robbie Robertson, who just passed away.
And in tonight's ACLJ, JSECULO Band live concert on Facebook, Twitter, Rumble, and YouTube at 8 o'clock Eastern Time.
We actually pulled that one and we weren't planning on playing it, but since he just passed away and he wrote that song, we stuck the weight in.
So it's going to be a great evening.
We had the chance on our broadcast to talk to our new client.
And that is someone that almost really Jordan needs no introduction.
Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA have now joined with the American Center for Law and Justice.
Again, because taking on the federal government and these social media companies working together to censor conservative speech, even though they have grown and brought these millions and millions of people to these social media companies, and suddenly, just because of a word you use or a candidate you support, you can't reach those people anymore.
So here is the interview with Charlie Kirk.
We are honored to be representing Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk, an organization that has done incredible work with young people, high school students, college students, university students all across the country, teaching them about liberty and freedom and the ability to speak up and how to speak up and stand up.
But we also know these groups, like so many others, individuals and organizations, have been attacked by social media companies, deplatformed, dethrottled.
There's so many different shadow banning.
We've heard all these terms.
And it all goes back really to when we thought it was, remember it was Russia doing this.
And then the administration at the time, the Obama administration, and then the deep state under the Trump administration said, well, even if we can't prove it's the Russians, you know what?
We'll just start blaming it on the American people.
We don't want these American ideas out there.
And so we started to see organizations with very big online platforms not being able to reach the people that follow them.
We are, again, joined right now by Charlie Kirk, and we are representing, the ACLJ is representing Turning Point USA and Charlie in this legal battle.
And Charlie, let me first ask you this.
When did you first notice that all of your social media accounts, that you weren't getting the same reach that you used to?
So it really started to be significant right during the presidential election.
And I think during this process, and by the way, thrilled to be working together, guys, we're going to get all the facts, right, through discovery and all this, because based on the documents that I already made public through Twitter files and through other FOIA requests, we know that the federal government was actively involved in suppressing Twitter accounts such as ours and many others.
And there'll be more and more facts that come out, and it's illegal what the government did.
But I started to see it in the presidential election where all of a sudden, you know, we were averaging 120 to 140,000 retweets a day, which is a fair amount.
And according to Axios, we have the third or fourth largest Twitter account during the presidential cycle.
And, you know, right in the middle of 2020 election, all of a sudden we started to see that kind of taper off.
And then it really hit post-January 6th, which makes sense because, you know, after January 6th, all of a sudden this language started to get introduced.
And obviously, a new regime took the overall office where they considered my views and the views of half the country, more than half the country, in my opinion, to be that of domestic violent extremism.
And if you look at the DHS documents that have been made public and you look at the Twitter files, I was put on a do not amplify list on Twitter.
That's a fact.
And so what I want to know, and we're going to find out through this complaint and this process is decisively, in my personal opinion, is the federal government labeled my account and Turning Point USA and many others for censorship.
And the federal government is not allowed to shut up the citizens.
The federal government is not allowed to say that your First Amendment liberties and freedoms are quietly, basically being shadow banned.
And that's essentially what's happening here.
And so, and who knows how many other people, but really Elon Musk is helping make this argument possible.
I'm looking forward to working with you guys on this because with the Twitter files, we learned that there was government-private collusion to restrain my Twitter account that could have reached millions of more people and maybe even further influence the election for Donald Trump.
You know, it's interesting because the way this has worked is the Department of Homeland Security sent up these grants and went to the University of Dayton and other entities and some of these private organizations and then worked in cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security as if the Department of Homeland Security was trying to cast the blame for any censorship onto these groups, which is not going to work.
And we're going to have a very, we have a very aggressive lawsuit planned for this.
But when you look at the list of organizations that were targeted, in addition to Turning Point USA, CB Christian Broadcasting Network, the Heritage Foundation, Fox News.
And then you go up the list, you get into neo-Nazi groups.
So, you know, Charlie, the thing that's happened here is the government, it appears, and I'm convinced through discovery, and I've been litigating, I've been litigating these kind of cases for 40 years, we're going to find that the government put their hand on the scale and they put the hand on the scale to tip it so that groups like yours and others would not have the voice that you already had earned in the marketplace of ideas.
That's what's so important to emphasize here.
You had that voice in the marketplace of ideas already, and then they were squelching it once you were trying to get your message out.
That's right.
And it's illegal for the government to do that.
The government is not allowed to pick and choose which voices they want to be able to heard more, you know, be heard more than others.
And especially.
It's actually called viewpoint discrimination, which in three cases, I argue to the Supreme Court and one unanimously, all three of them.
So, and then the most liberal, justice, most conservative, the most egregious form of discrimination on speech is when you shut down one viewpoint on an otherwise covered topic.
But go ahead.
But you're exactly right.
Yeah, and even further is they did it in a clandestine way where you didn't really know it, and they called you conspiracy theorists if you said it, right?
So it was hard to prove until we have all these data points.
And we also know, and we don't know how involved the FBI was.
We know the DHS vector, but the FBI was having standing meetings with Yoel Roth at the Twitter office, and they were discussing potential censorship activities.
I lost access to my Twitter account because I tweeted about the Hunter Biden laptop for a whole week during the presidential election because they said it was Russian disinformation.
And you have to wonder, I mean, how many other voices were suppressed and how many, yeah.
And so I think this is the complaint here, you guys do such a great job, is going to be, you know, really focused and precise.
And, you know, I'm kind of a social media guy.
I got my start in the movement developing my Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.
And I think this really needs to be a hallmark case where we put the government, you know, and shine a light on how they have been actively involved in viewpoint discrimination.
But my fear, guys, and this is why I think that this lawsuit is so timely and important, what's to prevent them from doing it during the 2024 election?
Nothing right now, except that's why we got to follow this lawsuit because they're going to be on notice.
And that's what them, go ahead, Jordan.
Yeah, remember when they when they got rid of Nina Jankowitz, they didn't really get rid of the disinformation board.
They renamed it.
They just called it something different.
And now they don't want to put the focus on it anymore.
They're not going to put the spotlight on it.
They tried that, that failed.
So they tried to move along.
Nothing to see here.
But, Charlie, I think you hit on a really important point, which was it's, you know, there's people like you.
You can take a stand.
You've got a voice.
There's groups like us.
We've got our voice.
We can take a stand.
But how many more people who just gave up trying to utilize these platforms that could have reached their friends, their family, their network that they could influence, especially when you talk about politics and people voting.
And they've just said, you know what?
I don't even want to use these systems anymore because obviously somehow they're working against me or I don't want to get in legal trouble because of what I tweet or because of my viewpoint or because of the political candidate I support.
That's such a good point.
This will be harder to prove in court, I think, but there's a mass demoralization component to this, which I think you're getting at, which is people that say, why even speak if my stuff is going to be shadow banned, right?
And we were called conspiracy theorists for even introducing the idea of a shadow ban.
The great work by James O'Keefe proved with undercover videos that Twitter was indeed shadow banning.
But now to kind of complete the circle, was it the federal government that was pressuring the companies to shadow ban in the first place?
And that's like, whoa, now you're at a whole nother level that these companies were not acting independently.
And it sort of makes sense because there was this mysterious change of behavior by a lot of these tech CEOs that used to present themselves as like free speech absolutists.
You know, if you read the early writings and musings of Dorsey and Zuckerberg, they were always, you know, they were liberal, but they were like, you know, we're going to die the First Amendment.
Yeah, classic liberalism.
Right.
Exactly.
Were they being pressured by the Leviathan with other regulatory action or just pure outright law enforcement?
Well, look, I mean, here's what you got, Charlie.
We know this from other litigation we've had against the Biden administration recently.
We know that James Baker, who was the general counsel of the FBI when the whole crossfire hurricane started against President Trump.
So we know that James Baker ended up becoming the general counsel of Twitter.
So when you ask the question of, you know, how much were these tech companies involved?
And it was Elon Musk who fired James Baker because Baker was putting the kibosh on the Twitter files being released.
And Elon said, who is this James Baker?
And they said, oh, he's the former general counsel of the FBI.
So not only did they have their finger on the scale, they were specifically targeting voices they disagreed with.
And I'm not defending any tech company here either, by the way.
But they were put in a really tough situation by the government.
Let's not kid ourselves there.
Go ahead, Jordan.
Yeah, because they've got immunity.
Right.
And that's Section 230 immunity they are so afraid of.
But we've had Mark Zuckerberg went on the record and told Joe Rogan.
The FBI came into him and said, you better shut down any of the laptop stories.
And like you said, Charlie, once you put anything up about the laptop, it didn't matter if you were Charlie Kirk with millions of followers or the New York Post with hundreds of years of reporting the news, your account was shut down and you were shut out.
Yeah, and now we have, thanks to FOIA requests, which I know will be a major part of this, the DHS was doing block grants to continue the censorship regime, right?
And as you guys know, through discovery and asking for documents and stuff, I think we're going to get a really interesting picture of the modern censorship leviathan, right?
How deep is this?
How widespread?
And we know that it transcends different agencies.
We know that, right?
Just through public reporting and through the Twitter files.
And so what has now become a priority of the Biden administration is using taxpayer funding and the threat of law enforcement to try and stifle or silence political dissidents, people that disagree.
And isn't that harmonic with what the Department of Justice is doing against Donald Trump and anyone in Donald Trump's orbit?
It seems as if they want to use the full force of the government to try, not to try to win the debate, but to make that there's no debate at all.
And thankfully, we still have that handy-dandy United States Constitution that you guys at ACLJ have done a phenomenal job of actually defending for years that a fair judge looking at this, you know, with all the information put together, boy, the federal government is not allowed to shut up its citizens.
We have explicit protections for that.
Don't have to read beyond the First Amendment to get there.
Well, Charlie, it's an honor for us to represent you and TPUSA.
We're going to get to the bottom of this.
It's going to be aggressive litigation, but it's very, very important litigation.
There's going to be more ahead.
We appreciate it, Charlie.
Thanks for being with us.
Thank you so much, guys.
God bless.
Thank you.
Thanks, Charlie.
And folks, again, we told you we had a big case to announce.
We'll be representing Turning Point USA, maybe some other groups as well.
And Charlie Kirk.
These are individuals, organizations because they're individual social media accounts were shut down.
With millions of followers.
And think about the influence.
And again, this is why the ACLJ exists.
And I got to tell you, folks, this is the last day of the Life and Liberty Drive.
And I couldn't think of a better case to announce on the last day than a case going after this once and for all to get to the bottom of this.
Now, we have assembled a stellar team.
We've increased our staffing over the last several weeks, last several months, actually.
We brought in some very seasoned lawyers as well.
We've got some really good young talent that we've just hired.
And we've got some lawyers that you know from our work at the representing the former president.
Our colleague Jane Raskin is now special counsel of the ACLJ.
Craig Parshall, who's probably one of the best tech lawyers, I think, in the country, has been with us for a while now, but he's a senior counsel.
So we've got the team assembled, and this is where you come in.
They need our help, and we need your help.
And that's how we get together on this.
As you know, we've got 16 cases against the Biden administration.
And today we announced a major lawsuit on behalf of Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk against the censorship coming out of the Department of Homeland Security.
So this is where you come in.
We're not going to let conservative speech be labeled Nazi hate speech by the government, but that's where you come in.
Your support to the ACLJ is critical.
Join us today, the last day to do it.
Our Life and Liberty Drive, your gifts will be doubled.
We encourage you to take action today to support this work so we can defend groups like Charlie Kirk and TPUSA and so many others around the country.
That's aclj.org.
Hey, welcome back to the Hannity Program.
It has been our honor for Jordan and for me to sit in with on the program today, subbing in for our good friend Sean Hannity.
We have had a blast and we've had a lot of big announcements, including having the president, former president of the United States.
That's right.
Started off with President Trump.
Our announcement, of course, of representing Turning Point USA and Charlie Kirk in this fight against censorship online, which affects every single one of us and everybody listening to the broadcast right now.
And again, tonight, I encourage you to do this, folks.
Brussels, we do a radio broadcast every day at noon, one hour across the country.
And you can get in any places you get your podcasts.
Also, the concert tonight, Life and Liberty concert this evening, 8 o'clock Eastern Time.
That's on Facebook, Twitter, Rumble, YouTube, ACLJ.org.
And don't forget our Life and Liberty Drive.
This is the last day for it today.
Any amount you donate, we get at the ACLJ a matching gift.
It's tax deductible to you.
It allows us to help all of these people who need our help.
And as I keep saying, they need us and we need you.
And together, we can make a huge difference.
So again, we appreciate your standing with us at the ACLJ and also appreciate you letting us host.
And I want to thank Linda, can I thank you right here on the air?
I love when people thank me on the air, by all means.
Please.
I am thanking you on the air because, you know, this is a team.
I want to thank our team, but I also especially want to thank Linda McLaughlin, who helps put this all together for us.
We love doing this.
We love subbing in for Sean when he's out.
It's a great honor.
Thank you, everybody, for listening.
It's been great.
Absolutely.
Thank you, everybody.
Yep.
And when we, like I said, tonight, you're not going to want to miss it.
J Secular Band Concert, Life and Liberty concert tonight, 8 o'clock, Facebook, Twitter, Rumble, or YouTube.
And by the way, I guess I have to call it X now, right?
I think that's what you call it.
X?
Whatever you call it.
And don't forget the ACLJ Drive at ACLJ.org.
We'll talk to you next time.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
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I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
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