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March 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:00
Aaron Maté :
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, March 12th, 2025.
Aaron Maté will be here with us in just a moment on his observations on Ukraine and his observations on the latest in Israel and Gaza.
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Aaron Mate, my friend, welcome here.
Thank you very much for accommodating my schedule.
Before we get to your observations on Marco Rubio and his claim for a ceasefire and President Putin's likely response to it, I want to ask you a question.
Well, Trump's policy is so incoherent that I think it's hard for anyone to know exactly whether this has broader significance beyond simply an exchange that could get the American...
I don't see there being some sort of broader pact being made directly between the U.S. and Hamas.
The PLO in the West Bank was very unhappy with the Americans dealing directly with Hamas, feeling that there's no mandate amongst Palestinians for that.
But do you think this is Donald slapping Bibi in the face by sending Whitcoff to negotiate directly with Hamas?
Well, Netanyahu is so entitled and so arrogant that Anything that doesn't directly involve him, I think, will be seen by him as a slap in the face.
But ultimately, is Trump walking away from his commitment to the Israeli project of colonizing Palestinians, denying them the right to self-determination?
No. So yes, Netanyahu has voiced concern about these talks, but ultimately, I don't think Trump will do anything serious to disrupt Israeli hegemony, Israel's daily terror against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
And simply because he's not being included in these talks, yeah.
He feels left out, and he's been used to being spoiled by the U.S., so his top officials are complaining.
But ultimately, I don't think Trump will do anything serious to undermine Netanyahu.
I just don't think that's in the cards for Trump, who's been taking a lot of money from people very close to Netanyahu, including Mary Maddelson.
Is Trump doing Netanyahu's bidding when he dispatches federal agents to the Columbia University campus?
To arrest a young Palestinian who's never been accused or convicted of a crime, a young man who's married to an American whose wife is in her eighth month of pregnancy, who has received his degree from Columbia University, who engaged in very strong expression of opinions,
if you will, but never was charged with a crime by the NYPD or any relevant authorities here, and whisk that guy away.
To a hellhole in Louisiana.
Is Trump doing BB's bidding when he does that?
In targeting Malcolm Khalil, this Columbia graduate who, as you said, was kidnapped from his home where he lives with his...
This had to be given to him by someone.
And that likely is a Zionist group, a group like Baytar or one of these other extremist organizations that have been agitating.
For the deportation of people like Mahmoud Khalil.
It's such an affront on free speech.
As you said, he's not been charged with the crime.
The Trump administration has felt content to smear him and falsely claim that he has committed a crime.
They've basically accused him of supporting terrorism, of having ties to Hamas, when of course there's none of that.
There's no evidence for that.
It's a blatant assault on free speech.
And to advance that, they're smearing him.
I mean, if we had any justice, he'd be shooting...
Mahmoud Khalil would be suing the Trump administration for defamation because if you watch what's being said about him on TV, it's just lie after lie about his non-existent support for terrorism.
One official from New York, a state official, said that Mahmoud Khalil is paid.
He's a paid agent.
And when asked by CNN, well, who's paying him?
He wouldn't answer because, of course, it's all a lie.
I analyzed, Professor Jeff Sachs and I were on the phone together and we both looked at The charging papers against him.
He's not accused of a crime.
There's no facts in the charging documents.
There's no evidence described in the charging documents.
The allegation against him is that his behavior is contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States because Marco Rubio, who's the charging authority here, says...
That his behavior is contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States.
But there's not a specific allegation.
There's not a specific alleged fact of anything that he did.
As far as we know, all he did was exercise his right of free speech and free expression, which protects everyone, whether you're a natural-born citizen or a holder of a permanent residency.
Well, Judge, let me ask you.
As a permanent resident, not a citizen, Does that lessen his protection when it comes to free speech rights?
No, it does not.
It lessens his protection to stay here if he's convicted of a felony, but it doesn't lessen his right to say whatever he wants.
He could stand on a street corner and say Hamas is great, Hamas should win.
Just as you and I could say that if we believed it, it's absolutely protected free speech.
But a follow-up question for you.
I mean, this is an immigration law matter.
I'm sorry to say yes.
None of the immigration law can trump the First Amendment because free speech, aside from it being a natural right, is expressly protected in the First Amendment.
Every schoolchild knows that.
But the immigration courts, for example, the prosecutor is Marco Rubio.
The judge works for...
Marco Rubio.
This is not the same as being charged in a state court or in an American federal court where the judges are truly independent and are a different branch of the government.
But even in this rigged system, the rudimentary fundamentals of due process have to apply, have to allege something.
They can't just allege a conclusory statement.
I mean, that's totalitarian.
Yank him out of his bedroom.
On the basis of a conclusory statement articulated by someone, in this case, Secretary Rubio, whom, as you pointed out, probably never even heard of this guy.
Exactly. And listen, if you're a Trump voter, an average Trump voter, you believe in America first, is this what you sign on to?
Putting Israel first to the extent where we're going to go snatch a guy off the street, take him away from his pregnant wife and deport him because we don't like what he says about Israel?
I mean, in this country, you can criticize the U.S. You can criticize U.S. politicians, but it seems you can't criticize Israel or else you're going to face deportation.
And it's sad to me, just strictly from the point of view of this idea of America first that I know many people bought into because they were tired of the U.S. fighting all these foreign wars.
And here's Trump making such a big priority for his administration to defend Israel from its critics to the point where they're going to deport a young Palestinian who's married to...
A U.S. citizen.
I don't think this is what many Trump voters signed on to.
And Trump himself, I've heard him in the past say some fair-minded things about Israel-Palestine.
A few years ago, he pointed out that it was Netanyahu who was standing in the way of making a peace deal in the Middle East, not the Palestinian Authority.
So Trump is someone who sometimes, I think, has some sense, and he recognizes things for what they are.
But now he's in power once again, and rather than following what he campaigned on, which was America First, He's doing the bidding of his donors and putting Israel first.
And I think that's, on top of just being so egregiously immoral and unconstitutional, it's a betrayal of his own voters.
Watch this, Aaron.
Chris, cut number 14. And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America.
Hogwash. Exactly.
And listen, Trump and the Republicans had a lot of grounds to say that they support free speech because Democrats were attacking it by basically declaring anything that they don't like to be Russian disinformation and censoring it, as we saw.
We're good to go.
Actually goes even further with censorship to the point where he wants to deport someone over their free speech.
And the sad thing here, the other irony here is that this playbook of accusing someone you don't like of being a foreign asset, of being in the pocket of some foreign entity, that's the Russiagate playbook as well.
And Trump was a target of that.
Trump and his supporters were called Russian assets, Russian dupes, spreading Russian disinformation.
And now, rather than recognize how...
Very, very good point.
I don't want to ruin your afternoon or beat a dead horse, but here's Tom Homan.
The president's, I don't know, he's like Musk.
He doesn't have a legitimate job appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, enacted by Congress, but he's the president's immigration czar.
He speaks for the president on immigration matters.
It's a rather long-winded question, but the end of the question gets around to the Khalil Mohammed case.
Chris. Specifically, you know, if Lakin's law doesn't pass, if this lawsuit against the Greenlight law goes nowhere, what are the different kinds of things you would consider doing?
What are the other steps of courses of action you can do?
And specifically with that Palestinian, pro-Palestinian student from Columbia, on his arrest papers, like, what exactly does it say in terms of the charge?
I'm not familiar with that charge.
I can just tell you what my discussions have been with it, is that it's a direct violation of our foreign policy objectives.
He is, when you hand out leaflets, incite violence on the college campus, that's illegal.
Being in this country with a visa or a resident alien card is a privilege, and you've got to follow certain rules.
Resident aliens get removed all the time when they commit certain crimes, so he's no different.
And you're not going to be the only one.
And your first question is, look, Pam Bonney's already filed a lawsuit.
If she has to keep filing lawsuits, that's what we're going to do.
I'm hoping the voters of New York State see what we're doing.
And I'm not asking somebody to vote either way.
I can't do that.
But I'm saying that I think the voters, look at exactly what ICE is doing, who we're arresting.
I think President Trump has a lot of support for what he's doing.
The majority of Americans believe in removing criminal threats.
And I think New York feels the same way.
I don't know if your elected politicians do.
I know the ones behind me do.
But I'm hoping more and more we educate the American people exactly what we're doing, exactly who we're arresting.
I think there's going to be pressure put on New York to do their common-sense thing to protect the communities of the state.
So I just want to make sure you're not familiar with what the arrest charges are.
I have not read the arrest report.
I've been traveling, but I'm aware of the arrest.
I'm aware of why he was arrested, and it's justified what happened to him.
He can't say why he was arrested.
He hasn't been accused of any crime whatsoever.
And even if he did pass out literature that said support the Palestinians and commit crimes if you want to in order to support them, even that is protected speech.
And again, he says there that we do this all the time.
We deport people who've been convicted of crimes.
This is no different.
Well, this is different in part because he hasn't been charged with a single crime, let alone convicted of one.
So they're just, if he's guilty of something or if you think he's guilty of something, charge him with something.
But they haven't because they know he's not guilty of anything.
This is just a brazen assault on free speech.
And if it's allowed to stand, it sets a, you know, as everyone can recognize, it sets a very chilling precedent.
Yesterday, Secretary of State Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Walsh made the following announcement.
Tell me if you think they understand what President Putin said to President Trump in the 90-minute conversation would be the only conditions under which the special military operation would come to a halt.
And if these two gentlemen, Ruby and Waltz, know what they're talking about, cut number 13. Today we made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable.
We'll take this offer now to the Russians, and we hope that they'll say yes, that they'll say yes to peace.
The ball is now in their court.
We also got into substantive details on How this war is going to permanently end.
We have a named delegation in terms of next steps from the Russian side.
We have a named delegation in terms of next steps from the Ukrainian side.
I will talk to my Russian counterpart in the coming days.
Secretary Rubio will be with G7 foreign ministers in the next couple of days.
We have the NATO Secretary General in the White House on Thursday.
And we'll take the process forward from there.
PR ploy or manipulation using the term ceasefire, or are they really and truly ignorant of President Putin's three or four conditions for the ceasefire?
True neutrality, elections, demilitarization, no NATO ever, ever, ever.
Yeah, and recognition.
Oh, excuse me, and the territorial concessions as well.
Exactly, yeah.
Well, listen, they're hoping that Putin will walk that back, and we'll see.
What Russia's response is.
As we're recording this, Russia hasn't given their official response yet.
I know that Putin and Trump are talking about speaking on the phone in the coming days, and we'll see.
Look, it's possible that Russia will back down and give some ground here as an act of good faith, especially if they determine that the U.S. really wants to end this war and they want to reciprocate.
I'm skeptical, though, because Putin, as you said, has laid out those conditions, and it would be hard, I think, for him politically to justify backing down on that.
Unless of course, he really sees an opportunity here for a meaningful end to this war.
What I do know is that Ukraine is not going to get what they keep demanding, which is security guarantees.
From the US.
That just seems, it's so obvious that that's off the table.
Every time Zelensky brought it up, Trump shot it down at their White House meeting.
And that's not going to change.
And that is going to put Europe in a tough position because Europe needs those US security guarantees to send their own peacekeeping force to Ukraine.
Because without US backup, they're sitting ducks.
And there's no way they'll do that without the US backing them up.
So I think a lot, I guess my overall point is, I guess my overall point here is that a lot depends on this phone call.
Do you think the United States recognizes that it unleashed a monster who is now the head of the government in Syria, notwithstanding, or recognizes it now because of the attacks on ethnic minorities in Syria?
Why does the IDF just look the other way?
Why doesn't it help stop this slaughter?
It depends who we're talking about in the U.S. government.
If we're talking about Marco Rubio, who was a supporter of the dirty war on Syria, which empowered the Al-Qaeda offshoot that now rules Syria, and presided over this massacre of Alawites and Christians and others over these last several days, then no,
Marco Rubio is not going to be honest about the U.S. role.
But Tulsi Gabbard, who is the Director of National Intelligence, she is honest about that.
In fact, she called it out at her confirmation hearing.
When she was challenged on this, she said it's a scandal that we knowingly empowered Al-Qaeda.
And they are a threat now to their own country and to their region.
And we're seeing that now in action with these massacres of Alawites.
And we don't even know the real toll.
But I've gotten just personal reports from people I know in Syria.
Horrific videos, horrific photos, horrific stories.
Families being executed in their homes, people hiding in the hills.
And this is predictable.
When you flood a country...
With tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, when you fuel an insurgency that is led by Al-Qaeda, hence why Jake Sullivan said over a decade ago to Hillary Clinton privately, Al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria.
When you do all that, and when they take over, you're going to have sectarian massacres like this.
And so it's awful.
And all this could have been avoided had the U.S. not fueled this regime change war, as Tulsi Gabbard accurately called out.
And we'll see where the...
Because you have people inside Trump's White House, like Marco Rubio, who supported this policy.
And people like Tulsi Gabbard who opposed it.
Trump years ago called this out.
He said that there's an interview of him from 2015 or so where he said that, you know, look, I don't like Assad, but the alternative is far worse.
And I think we're better off with Assad in power.
So certainly Trump knows what the reality is.
But now the country, the damage has been done.
The country is destroyed.
It's still under crippling U.S. sanctions that make life even more difficult.
And in terms of why Israel is standing by, well, Israel is only content with balkanizing Syria.
And Israel has long recognized that sectarian fighting in Syria is good for Israel.
In fact, there's a WikiLeaks email to Hillary Clinton from back when she was Secretary of State from 2012, which I just wrote about in my latest Substack article, which says that basically, according to Israeli intelligence, there are positives for Israel to see sectarian conflict inside of Syria.
It's because it could draw in Iran, and that could ultimately lead to...
We're good to go.
I may have raised your blood pressure with all of this, Aaron, but thank you for your time, and thank you for your analysis, my dear friend.
I look forward to seeing you next week.
Welcome back, Judge, from Russia.
I look forward to watching your discussion with Sergey Lavrov.
I just saw that that was published today, so I'm very...
Oh, yeah, we posted it, and it's proven to be quite popular and stimulating.
You say conversation.
He does 95% of the talking.
And in fairness to him, his assistant warned us about that ahead of time.
All the best, Aaron.
Thank you.
We'll see you next week.
Right. Coming up tomorrow at 8 o'clock, Professor Gilbert Doctorow.
This is 8 in the morning.
At 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
At 3 in the afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At four in the afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
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