Jay Sekulow's Golden Ticket

How a conservative lawyer leveraged Christian causes to build a lucrative
empire

By Tony Mauro
Legal Times
October 31, 2005


http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1130332860379&hub=TopStories
[excerpts]

Just the week before, Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for
Law and Justice, had cheerfully predicted that Supreme Court nominee
Harriet Miers had “turned the corner” and would never withdraw her name
from consideration.

Now, a few hours after Miers proved him dead wrong, Sekulow sounded as
upbeat as ever. “She did the noble thing,” Sekulow told the million-plus
people listening to his daily radio show on Christian stations last
Thursday, adding, confidentially, “I saw this coming.” The next nominee, he
predicted, would be a sitting judge just as worthy of support as Miers.

It was vintage Sekulow: gliding over contradictions, pleased to be a player
in nomination politics, and more than ready to play again. In recent weeks,
Sekulow, the leading Supreme Court advocate of the Christian right, emerged
as the steadiest and most visible of a dwindling number of social
conservatives willing to support Miers. Because of that steadfast loyalty,
he is likely to play a key role in campaigning for whoever replaces her.

“Jay has clearly succeeded in becoming closely linked to the Bush
administration and has become a principal salesman for Bush nominees,” says
Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People For the American Way.


[snip]

Sekulow, 49, has always been an oddity on the evangelical landscape. Born
in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Jewish parents, Sekulow still describes himself as a
“Messianic Jew,” meaning he believes Jesus Christ is the Messiah. He says
his Jewish faith never caused him trouble among Christian evangelicals.

His family moved to Atlanta when he was in high school. Sekulow went to a
Baptist college, now known as Mercer University, partly because it was near
home. There, Sekulow met a student he later described as a “Jesus freak.”
The friend urged him to study the Bible, and over time, Sekulow questioned
Jewish beliefs. “As I read, my suspicion that Jesus might really be the
Messiah was confirmed,” Sekulow wrote later.

Sekulow stayed at Mercer for law school and, after a brief period as an
attorney for the IRS, set up a private practice and real estate business in
Atlanta with law school friend Stuart Roth, who is still a partner in some
of his current dealings. Meanwhile, Sekulow’s religious views solidified,
and he joined Jews for Jesus, eventually becoming that organization’s
general counsel.

It was in that capacity that Sekulow argued his first case before the
Supreme Court, a 1987 dispute involving the Los Angeles Board of Airport
Commissioners, which tried to stop Jews for Jesus adherents from
distributing leaflets at LAX. Sekulow said he was nervous when his name was
called. “Me, a short Jewish guy from Brooklyn, New York, went before the
justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,” he wrote in an article
for the Jews for Jesus Web site. “God had brought me through that trial.”
Sekulow won the case 9-0.

At the time of his successful Supreme Court debut, Sekulow was also dealing
with a trial of another sort. His private practice, which focused on
creating tax shelters and financial deals for the renovation of historic
buildings in Atlanta, collapsed when investors sued him for securities
violations related to the renovation deals. He and his firm filed for
bankruptcy protection in 1987, and more than a dozen creditors filed suit.
A later story in the Atlanta Constitution said he left a trail of angry
investors and employees. “God brought Jay to his knees then,” a former
employee told Legal Times.

But Sekulow bounced back up, in part by creating a new nonprofit, Christian
Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), which still exists today and serves as
an important conduit for funds that finance Sekulow’s activities. “I almost
feel like God raised me back from the dead,” Sekulow told the Atlanta paper
in 1991. “It was a spiritual rebirth.”

It was 1990 when Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson decided to create the
ACLJ, and it was no accident that its acronym was one letter away from that
of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Someone has got to stop the ACLU in
court,” said Robertson when he launched the organization.

Robertson continues as unpaid president of the ACLJ’s board to this day and
frequently invites Sekulow to appear on his “700 Club” show on the
Christian Broadcasting Network.

Sekulow became chief counsel of the ACLJ in 1991 but did not fold the
Atlanta-based CASE into its operations, giving him an independent source of
funds. Former employees say this was done, in part, to keep some of
Sekulow’s operations out of Robertson’s view. Sekulow assumed full control
of the ACLJ a few years later, when its executive director left. In a
statement, Robertson said, “I meet regularly with Jay Sekulow to discuss
the activities, programs, accomplishments, and general operations of the
ACLJ and affiliated organizations, which includes CASE.”

Sekulow built the ACLJ into a formidable legal advocacy group that helped
persuade the courts to give greater accommodation to religious practices
and speech. His signature legal strategy has been to frame freedom of
religion cases as free speech battles, often — but not always — with
success. He took on cases nationwide, but nothing matched the exhilaration
of arguing before the Supreme Court, which he has done a dozen times. “That
is what juices me up in the morning,” he says.



After the 2000 presidential election, Sekulow began to work his way into
conservative Washington’s inner circle, forging ties with the White House
and Republican Congress members.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is part of Sekulow’s orbit. In
addition to his own lobbying work, Ashcroft teaches at Robertson’s Regent
University in Virginia Beach, Va., and maintains an office in the ACLJ’s
multimillion-dollar town house behind the Supreme Court. Ashcroft traveled
with Sekulow to Europe in July for a conference at the European Center for
Law and Justice, an ACLJ affiliate incorporated in France.

But Sekulow reached the pinnacle of D.C. influence earlier this year when
he, along with former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, one-time
Federalist Society head Leonard Leo, and former Attorney General Edwin
Meese III

— soon dubbed the “four horsemen” — participated in a weekly
conference call with White House deputy public liaison Tim Goeglein and
others to discuss judicial nominations and the so-called nuclear option to
eliminate filibusters by Democratic senators of conservative judges.

In a controversial Oct. 6 conference call with conservatives who had doubts
about the Miers nomination, Sekulow boasted of the recent conversations he
had had with Bush about the need to change the direction of the courts.
Sekulow went on to state bluntly, “I’m involved in three cases at the Court
this term. And believe me, I want Harriet Miers voting on these critical
cases.”

Sekulow took on the assignment of shoring up support for Bush nominees
among Christian groups, and he has done so in a variety of ways. From a
studio in the basement of the center’s D.C. town house, Sekulow has
extolled nominees John Roberts Jr. and, more recently, Miers on his daily
radio talk show, syndicated to 550 Christian radio stations with more than
1.5 million listeners nationwide. Sekulow boasts he can reach 940,000
followers by e-mail within three hours, and several times a year he sends
out upward of 2 million pieces of regular mail. He also has a weekly
television show airing on Christian networks.

[snip]


As part of the ACLJ’s plan to expand, five years ago, Sekulow decided that
the Virginia Beach-based group needed a stronger D.C. presence. In 2001,
CASE bought a town house at 201 Maryland Ave. N.E. The purchase price was
$5 million.

Not only was the town house a stone’s throw from the Supreme Court, but it
also looked directly over the ACLU’s Washington offices at the nearby Mott
House. But there was one small problem: By the time the ACLJ renovated and
opened its new headquarters, the ACLU had left the location for a building
downtown.

Renovations on the Maryland Avenue building were extensive, totaling more
than $1 million, according to CASE’s 2002 return. One redecorated
conference room featured a mural costing $41,000. But the ACLJ wasn’t done.
That same year it plunked down another $1.5 million to purchase a residence
next door to its headquarters, at 119 2nd St. N.E. Sekulow and his family
stay in the house when they are in Washington.

The D.C. town house is one of three residences used by Sekulow that were
paid for or subsidized by CASE. Another is a home in Virginia Beach that
was bought by CASE for $852,937 in 2001. The third home, in North Carolina,
is described on CASE’s IRS filings as a “retreat property.” Sekulow says
the houses are not for his family’s exclusive use.

[snip]

In 1998, Sekulow’s high-flying ways brought him in close contact with
Justice Scalia, who was scheduled to give an address at Regent University
in Virginia Beach on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.

Sekulow offered Scalia the chance to travel from Washington to the event on
a jet then owned by CASE. Was it appropriate to give a free ride to a
Supreme Court justice before whom Sekulow and the ACLJ regularly argued?
Sekulow says the jet was leased to Regent University, the host of the
event, for that trip as well as for other occasions — a fact he says was
made clear to Scalia. Sekulow, however, declined to provide a copy of the
lease document.

Asked about the ride, Scalia said through a spokeswoman that “I honestly
cannot remember” the episode. Pat Robertson also said he could not recall
the details but added that it is “common” for the university to share
transportation resources with related organizations like the ACLJ and CASE.

It was yet another sign of Sekulow’s expanding clout, but he shrugs it off
as nothing exceptional or improper. “We had a very pleasant 32-minute
flight. That’s it.”
[end excerpts]

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The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
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