Who Is Jay Sekulow?
On Sunday, Jay Sekulow became a well-known name when he went on TV to talk about reports of President Trump being under investigation by the Justice Department for firing FBI director James Comey after Trump tweeted Friday that he was.
Sekulow came to the media to say this tweet was not true, and held this stance on all his interviews except for Fox News, when he changed his answer about the investigation to “no one’s notified us that he is.” Sekulow got even more contradictory when he said just a couple minutes later that the President is “being investigated for taking the action that the attorney general recommended he take by the agency who recommended the termination.”
Sekulow then covered his tracks saying his statement was in regards to if there was an investigation, that it would not be constitutional, and then continued with his stance that there is no investigation.
Since then, Sekulow has been a popular name on the internet, but despite just now coming into the spotlight as part of the President’s legal team, Sekulow has been around politics and media for three decades.
Sekulow was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1956 and has spoken very personally in the past about being the grandson of an immigrant “who left Russia because of religious persecution.” Sekulow, a proud Messianic Jew, has a record of defending religious freedom. He went to Mercer University and continued with Mercer Law School before receiving his Ph.D. from Regent University.
Sekulow had his first case with the Supreme Court in 1987, when he defended the religious group Jews for Jesus for having the right to give out religious material in the airport. He next defended a high school student’s right to have a Bible and Prayer club on campus and won 8-1. Sekulow has fought a total of 12 cases in the Supreme Court, in which most he defends similar values to the president.
He also was a part of starting the American Center for Law and Justice and became chief counsel in 1991. Since then he has expanded the company globally and to over a million members.
The ACLJ has a weekly broadcast with Sekulow every Monday to Friday which appears on more than 850 radio stations. He also is no stranger to television as he has appeared on many news programs on ABC, NBC, CNN, and mostly Fox News, as a legal analyst.
TIME Magazine named Sekulow one of the “25 Most Influential Evangelicals” in America in 2005 and the National Law Journal twice named him one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers” in the United States.
Sekulow has written many books, including a #1 New York Times bestselling book called Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore, about the beginnings of ISIS, their strategies and plans.
President Trump added Sekulow to his legal team just this month, and it’s clear he’s already making a splash.
