Jay Sekulow: Fate of Imprisoned American Pastor a Big Topic at Trump-Erdogan Meetings

With the president of Turkey coming to visit for the first time in many years, there were a lot of topics to discuss between President Donald Trump and his counterpart, but he promised Jay Sekulow, chief counsel at the American Center for Law & Justice, that he would broach the subject of Pastor Andrew Brunson.

And, boy, did he ever follow through.

In a statement released Tuesday evening after the president concluded his meetings with the Turkish delegation, Sekulow shared what happened behind closed doors. He wrote:

I just received a call from the Vice President’s office. President Trump and Vice President Pence raised the case of American Pastor Andrew Brunson three times today with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

This is exactly what we asked the President to do and is a major sign of significant progress toward bringing Pastor Andrew home.

Pastor Andrew—a U.S. citizen—has been wrongfully imprisoned in Turkey for more than seven months because of his Christian faith. Today, Turkish President Erdogan met with President Trump at the White House. Last week, I urged the President and the Vice President when I met with them in the White House to raise Pastor Andrew’s case with Turkish leaders. Today, they did just that, raising his plight directly to President Erdogan.

We will continue fighting for Pastor Andrew’s freedom across the globe. This is a major step in the right direction toward this wrongfully imprisoned American pastor’s release.

According to other sources with information regarding those meetings, both the president and vice president brought the matter of Brunson’s imprisonment up during their discussions. It’s not entirely clear how Turkey responded, but it continues a trend in which the president has worked toward the release of wrongly persecuted Americans.

Click here to learn more about Brunson’s story.