Radio Recap – 2020: Welcome to Election Year

2020 is here and there are new battles that we have to fight.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed that we are actually inside the election year now, gave updates on the Iran-backed attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, and of course, impeachment.

We are way less than a year away from the presidential election, but inside the election year we have the House of Representatives that voted on articles of impeachment and have yet to take any action on those votes. They passed them but haven’t turned them over to the Senate. There’s been no indication during this congressional break as to what Speaker Pelosi is going to do with it.

Are we living in a perpetual impeachment zone? We’ll find out.

President Trump said about impeachment on New Year’s Eve:

I think the impeachment thing – I call it impeachment light – it’s a disgrace. And Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed of herself. She is a highly overrated person. I know her well. She is highly overrated.

The President called it “impeachment light” because, in my opinion, they are holding onto the articles and they are afraid. They knew at the end of the road that if they turn it over to the U.S. Senate, that the President would be vindicated, that he would be acquitted.

We also discussed that some serious action in Iraq took place since we talked to you last and that was on New Year’s Eve. We’ve never seen anything this aggressive directed at our embassy and compound in Baghdad by Iraqis. This time they are backed by Iran. We haven’t seen this kind of aggression before, but it was definitely not President Trump’s “Benghazi” because no one was killed.

As ACLJ Senior Military Analyst Wes Smith described the situation:

This was not his “Benghazi”. This was not average Iraqis protesting the embassy. As a matter of fact, these were Iran-sponsored militia members protesting outside the embassy. By the way, this embassy compound is the largest compound for a United States Embassy in the world. It is multiple acres and multiple buildings. They got across the initial wall and then they burned a reception area building. They did not get into the embassy proper where the Ambassador lives and that kind of thing.

Iraq is a very unstable place and they are struggling against Iranian influence. Iran supports the Shia militia, what’s called the Popular Mobilization Unit in Iraq. What’s been going on recently, and the media is not picking up on this much, is that there have been mass demonstrations in Baghdad against Iran and against a corrupt Iraqi government because the Iranian sponsored militias have wide support in the Iraqi Parliament. Over the last several weeks as average Iraqi citizens have protested against Iran and against corrupt government officials, the Iraqi Security Forces did not let them in the Green Zone. The Green Zone is where the embassy is.

Not only did they not let the average Iraqi demonstrator into the Green Zone, they used live ammunition. They killed hundreds of their own citizens and yet, when the Iran-sponsored militia wanted to come into the Green Zone the Iraq security forces turned a blind eye. They let them into what is supposed to be the most secure area of the entire country of Iraq. That’s how they arrived outside the embassy.

We also expressed a very special thank you to all of you who support the work of the ACLJ. Because of your generous support, we not only met, but far exceeded our Year-End goal. Now we can continue defending freedom in the year ahead.

You can listen to the entire episode with more analysis from our team here.