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Glenn's Show Prep

ACLJ: We are drafting complaints against IRS agents, federal government

May 13, 2013
Wilson

Writer

GLENN: Jay Sekulow has been a frequent guest on the program and he has been a guy who has stood and his organization, the ACLJ, stood for a long time on freedom issues and stood against government tyranny. He is one of the main guys taking this case on with the IRS. Jay, welcome to the program.

SEKULOW: Hey, it's good to be with you, Glenn. Little known in fact, I had my first job out of law school was as a trial lawyer for the office of chief counsel, the Internal Revenue Service, and the tax‑exempt group was under our jurisdiction. So ‑‑

GLENN: Holy cow. So you need it inside and out.

SEKULOW: ‑‑ (inaudible) what's going on here and it's more than troubling.

GLENN: Okay. So tell me, you have 27 cases, and I know that one of them is not the national 9/12 group because national, when they started to file income tax and wanted tax‑exempt status, they got hassled like crazy and they just said it's not worth it and so it's really hurt them on fundraising but they just did not want the hassle from the government. They knew they were being set up. So you have 27 cases now. Tell us exactly what happened and why it's so troubling.

SEKULOW: Well, we got 27 cases. We were contacted early last year when the second round of questionnaires came from the Internal Revenue Service to these groups that were either 9/12 groups or TEA Party groups or conservative organizations and they started asking for donor information, membership lists, communications between members and members of the House and Senate or local legislative bodies and assemblies. And that's when we realized this has taken on a whole new dimension. So we simply and aggressively wrote back to the IRS. We started representing the groups and said we're not giving you that information, you're not entitled to it. We gave them the list of cases why they are not entitled to it going back to the 1950s, the NAACP cases and ultimately they were ‑‑ the questions were very aggressive and we maintained a very aggressive response. 15 of the groups have been granted status exemption. But there are still 10 pending and like you just mentioned, again, we had two that said it's not worth the hassle.

GLENN: Not worth it.

SEKULOW: Of waiting two and a half years with these intrusive questions coming in from the government. So the reaction is understandable: People got frustrated. But this was a coordinated effort in this attempt to lay the defeat of, quote, low‑level employees. I used to work for that office of chief counsel of the IRS. I was a lawyer there. The fact is the tax‑exempt group is what's called a specialty group. They are specially trained Internal Revenue Service agents, specially trained in tax‑exempt orgs. These are not low‑level bureaucrats and now we know there were meetings as high up as the chief counsel's office which is the highest level office inside the IRS. So that's nonsense. And by the way, the chief counsel and the head of the IRS are both presidential appointments.

GLENN: So let me ‑‑

SEKULOW: So they can't say this is an independent agency.

GLENN: So let me ask you this. Read the Nixon impeachment clause here. This is I think the first charge.

STU: This is out of Article II, Section 1

GLENN: Article II.

STU: Just skipping through it a little bit, but he has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to obtain from the Internal Revenue Service in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law and to cause in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.

GLENN: Okay. That was against Nixon. Better, worse, or about the same?

SEKULOW: No, this is worse because this isn't only tax information and selective prosecution. This was then going after the people that supported these organizations by requesting the donor lists, something they are not even required to put in their tax return. In other words, the tax return itself, Glenn, for these nonprofits does not include a list of your donors because they're not entitled to it. Yet the IRS asked for that. That's more than Nixon did by a long stretch. And that's where the real difficulty is. We sent out a letter this afternoon or this morning to the IRS commissioner, the acting commissioner Steve Miller as well as the chief counsel demanding that the remainder of our clients be granted their exemption immediately. And I will tell you this: We are drafting complaints against the federal government and the agents involved right now. That's in process today.

PAT: Jay, the other thing this administration is trying to do is hide behind the fact that Douglas Shulman who was the commissioner of the IRS when this happened was a Bush appointee.

SEKULOW: Right.

PAT: Can they lay that at Bush's feet now or ‑‑ I mean ‑‑

SEKULOW: Of course not, and this is why. He was finishing up his point in term, I think he had six months left on it when he made that statement. They probably gave him incorrect information. Obviously they did. I don't think he was hiding the ball. I think he was based on the information he was told. What he was ‑‑ unfortunately what was actually happening was his people within the IRS themselves were engaged in this and the chief counsel is appointed by the president. So the chief counsel was an Obama appointee and the tax‑exempt head that previously worked with the FCC. So I mean, you can blame ‑‑ you can't blame this on Bush. These letters are coming out in 2012.

GLENN: Can they separate ‑‑

SEKULOW: They can't do it.

GLENN: Can he separate himself enough to say, "Oh, boy, they were just out of control"?

PAT: They are an out‑of‑control agency?

SEKULOW: Well, here's the problem. You know, you've got Jay Carney saying it's an independent agency which is factually not true and constitutionally not true. I mean, it's ‑‑ the IRS is the enforcement on the treasury. Treasury's an executive office function. So that's bogus. That's what they are going to try to do. The question will be whether the American people buy it. And I suspect even as you said, the mainstream media has picked this up and they are running with it. They realize that this is not just a tempest and a teapot. This teapot is boiling over.

GLENN: Okay. You said that you went back to the Fifties to see this kind of abuse. I have said since we were together as a people at the feet of Abraham Lincoln, I said this is a Civil Rights Movement, that we are going ‑‑ it will catch up to us, that we will begin to understand that the tactics used in the Fifties and in the late 1800s without the physical terror ‑‑

SEKULOW: Right.

GLENN: ‑‑ except for the stuff that happened with the labor unions, those same kind of tactics are being used and this is a Civil Rights Movement now. Would you say that's accurate?

SEKULOW: I think it is. And the government which, you know, unfortunately is going back to the same attempts they made to stifle these civil rights movement for African‑Americans, for black Americans in the United States led by Dr. King, they are using the same tactics. What did they ask the NAACP: Who is your members? Give us your mailing list. Who do you get money from? And the NAACP led by ‑‑ a legal charge led by Thurgood Marshall, who did a brilliant job of taking cases all the way to the Supreme Court establishing that government has no right to ask for that information. But it's like they don't learn. It did not work out very well for the government in the 1950s, especially these states that were trying to squash the Civil Rights Movement. And it's not going to work out very well for the administration in 2013 either.

GLENN: Okay. So Jay, what needs to happen and how can the average American help?

SEKULOW: Well, I think there's going to be two things that need to happen immediately. Number one, the groups that are pending need to get the recognition because as you've said, they are getting worn out. That needs to happen, period. So that we can get in play, and we're demanding that. Number two, the people that are ‑‑ that have done this need to be held accountable and that will take place in two forms: Congress will have extensive oversight hearings. These aren't just going to be photo opportunities. This is going to be the real deal and I expect many of them. And then as I said we're looking at right now federal court action against the individual agents that were involved in this and we'll see where that goes. So we're looking at that right now.

GLENN: Jay, I appreciate it. I don't know if this would fall with you, but we were targeted and nobody cared. We were targeted by the White House for smear campaigns and for boycotting of my business.

SEKULOW: Right.

GLENN: And it was Van Jones, it was Jim Wallis, it was the labor unions, and they were all the people that were in the White House at the time that it was going on. Is there any connection at all to things like that to this?

SEKULOW: Well, I don't ‑‑ you know, there's another aspect to this, Glenn, and that is it's not just conservative Christian groups that have been targeted here. There's Jewish conservative groups that also have been targeted. So it makes sense, and they were targeted because their position on Israel was counter to what the administration's has been. And I think you could tie what happened to you, what's happening now, what's happening to these conservative Jewish groups, it's all the same.

GLENN: It is.

SEKULOW: It is stifling dissent. And when you have the government trying to stifle dissent, that's really when ‑‑ it's bad enough when individuals do it, but it's a free country. Hey, I could disagree with you, you can disagree with me, but your government doesn't get to do that.

GLENN: Most people have ‑‑ they're worn out from this.

SEKULOW: Yeah.

GLENN: Mainly from this media, that media, they just don't care. And so the media will pick something up and then they will dismiss it and then they move on and then you never hear about it again and it just gets worse. Two questions: One, if this isn't corrected, how dangerous is the IRS and this administration?

SEKULOW: Unbelievably so because if they can ask these groups for this kind of information, I shudder to think what they can ask of individuals on audits as well. So I ‑‑

GLENN: Especially with healthcare.

SEKULOW: If this goes unchecked, you've sent the IRS into a version of the CIA into the American people. I mean, the intrusiveness of it would be unprecedented.

GLENN: And what do you expect to actually happen? Do you think this is ‑‑

SEKULOW: I think heads are going to roll, Glenn. I think that ‑‑

GLENN: Serious heads or little heads?

SEKULOW: People are going to be held accountable but the question is what the White House knew when they knew I, what the appointees, the political appointees knew. But the fact that the agents themselves thought they could do this and it was sign off on by group managers and probably chief counsel's office, that in itself raises a whole specter and I don't know if we know yet where those consequences will be.

GLENN: Jay, thank you so much.

SEKULOW: Thanks, Glenn.

GLENN: It's good to have you out there fighting.

Americans expose Supreme Court’s flag ruling as a failed relic

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

In a nation where the Stars and Stripes symbolize the blood-soaked sacrifices of our heroes, President Trump's executive order to crack down on flag desecration amid violent protests has ignited fierce debate. But in a recent poll, Glenn asked the tough question: Can Trump protect the Flag without TRAMPLING free speech? Glenn asked, and you answered—thousands weighed in on this pressing clash between free speech and sacred symbols.

The results paint a picture of resounding distrust toward institutional leniency. A staggering 85% of respondents support banning the burning of American flags when it incites violence or disturbs the peace, a bold rejection of the chaos we've seen from George Floyd riots to pro-Palestinian torchings. Meanwhile, 90% insist that protections for burning other flags—like Pride or foreign banners—should not be treated the same as Old Glory under the First Amendment, exposing the hypocrisy in equating our nation's emblem with fleeting symbols. And 82% believe the Supreme Court's Texas v. Johnson ruling, shielding flag burning as "symbolic speech," should not stand without revision—can the official story survive such resounding doubt from everyday Americans weary of government inaction?

Your verdict sends a thunderous message: In this divided era, the flag demands defense against those who exploit freedoms to sow disorder, without trampling the liberties it represents. It's a catastrophic failure of the establishment to ignore this groundswell.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

Labor Day EXPOSED: The Marxist roots you weren’t told about

JOSEPH PREZIOSO / Contributor | Getty Images

During your time off this holiday, remember the man who started it: Peter J. McGuire, a racist Marxist who co-founded America’s first socialist party.

Labor Day didn’t begin as a noble tribute to American workers. It began as a negotiation with ideological terrorists.

In the late 1800s, factory and mine conditions were brutal. Workers endured 12-to-15-hour days, often seven days a week, in filthy, dangerous environments. Wages were low, injuries went uncompensated, and benefits didn’t exist. Out of desperation, Americans turned to labor unions. Basic protections had to be fought for because none were guaranteed.

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

That era marked a seismic shift — much like today. The Industrial Revolution, like our current digital and political upheaval, left millions behind. And wherever people get left behind, Marxists see an opening.

A revolutionary wedge

This was Marxism’s moment.

Economic suffering created fertile ground for revolutionary agitation. Marxists, socialists, and anarchists stepped in to stoke class resentment. Their goal was to turn the downtrodden into a revolutionary class, tear down the existing system, and redistribute wealth by force.

Among the most influential agitators was Peter J. McGuire, a devout Irish Marxist from New York. In 1874, he co-founded the Social Democratic Workingmens Party of North America, the first Marxist political party in the United States. He was also a vice president of the American Federation of Labor, which would become the most powerful union in America.

McGuire’s mission wasn’t hidden. He wanted to transform the U.S. into a socialist nation through labor unions.

That mission soon found a useful symbol.

In the 1880s, labor leaders in Toronto invited McGuire to attend their annual labor festival. Inspired, he returned to New York and launched a similar parade on Sept. 5 — chosen because it fell halfway between Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

The first parade drew over 30,000 marchers who skipped work to hear speeches about eight-hour workdays and the alleged promise of Marxism. The parade caught on across the country.

Negotiating with radicals

By 1894, Labor Day had been adopted by 30 states. But the federal government had yet to make it a national holiday. A major strike changed everything.

In Pullman, Illinois, home of the Pullman railroad car company, tensions exploded. The economy tanked. George Pullman laid off hundreds of workers and slashed wages for those who remained — yet refused to lower the rent on company-owned homes.

That injustice opened the door for Marxist agitators to mobilize.

Sympathetic railroad workers joined the strike. Riots broke out. Hundreds of railcars were torched. Mail service was disrupted. The nation’s rail system ground to a halt.

President Grover Cleveland — under pressure in a midterm election year — panicked. He sent 12,000 federal troops to Chicago. Two strikers were killed in the resulting clashes.

With the crisis spiraling and Democrats desperate to avoid political fallout, Cleveland struck a deal. Within six days of breaking the strike, Congress rushed through legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday.

It was the first of many concessions Democrats would make to organized labor in exchange for political power.

What we really celebrated

Labor Day wasn’t born out of gratitude. It was a political payoff to Marxist radicals who set trains ablaze and threatened national stability.

Kean Collection / Staff | Getty Images

What we celebrated was a Canadian idea, brought to America by the founder of the American Socialist Party, endorsed by racially exclusionary unions, and made law by a president and Congress eager to save face.

It was the first of many bones thrown by the Democratic Party to union power brokers. And it marked the beginning of a long, costly compromise with ideologues who wanted to dismantle the American way of life — from the inside out.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Durham annex EXPOSES Soros, Pentagon ties to Deep State machine

ullstein bild Dtl. / Contributor | Getty Images

The Durham annex and ODNI report documents expose a vast network of funders and fixers — from Soros’ Open Society Foundations to the Pentagon.

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.