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March 24, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:29
LtCOL. Karen Kwiatkowski : Does Hegseth Know Whom He Is Killing?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, March 25th, 2025.
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now.
Colonel, always a pleasure.
My dear friend, thank you for joining us.
Let's get right to this issue, which is captivating the country as we speak.
And that is a text grouping.
Of the Trump administration's senior-most national security officials, plus Steve Witkoff, who is technically not in the government or the administration, but is the president's emissary to all the hotspots, discussing the bombing of the Houthis,
to which a journalist by the name of Jeffrey Goldberg was apparently invited.
By Mike Walsh, either directly or indirectly, intentionally or inadvertently, this will eventually come out.
What is your take on this, using the Signal app to engage in conversations or communications of the highest level, advice to the president, nature of military equipment?
Identity of the targets, identity of the human beings, the targets they wanted to kill.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, it occurs to me that Signal...
You remember when Trump transitioned with his team?
And a lot of these same folks were on his transition team.
He knew who he was going to appoint.
And, you know, he said he was going to privately fund that because last time he transitioned into the presidency, he was spied upon by government networks.
And so they used Signal.
And so they're used to using Signal.
They've been using it.
I don't know how the journalists got on board with it.
I mean, how, I guess, Waltz added him, but I don't understand how that happened.
But this is something that, you know, we railed against when Hillary Clinton wanted to use a BlackBerry, when Hillary Clinton used Yahoo Mail or Google Mail to do government business, so it wouldn't be subject to FOIA.
And clearly...
That's, I think, one of the perceived advantages of using Signal illegally like this.
I mean, it's not correct.
It is not allowed.
It's not approved use for government communications.
And it's also not FOIA-able, which is a problem.
I mean, Trump is trying to make the government transparent.
And for all we know, this was done on purpose, to make the government transparent.
I don't know.
I mean, I doubt it.
But it may have that same effect.
Among the people on the call, apparently, according to Goldberg's notes, was the Director of National Intelligence, among whose responsibilities is to secure the nation's secrets.
Now, Colonel, you know that something can be secret, it can be top secret, but they never classified it.
Wouldn't a decision like when to bomb?
Who to bomb and who specifically to kill?
Wouldn't that be in the nature of secret data?
Absolutely, because of the timing.
If this had been an aftermath discussion, like, oh, wow, great, and we only heard that part of it, that's one thing.
But this was imminent.
They were discussing something that had not yet happened, that was going to happen, and that needed and required secrecy.
In order to make it effective.
So I don't understand how stupid they can be to not be sure.
Well, again, you know, they're using a system.
Signal is not designed to protect government information, and it's also not approved to protect government information.
So the tool itself is not appropriate to protect the data.
So they shouldn't be using it altogether.
That goes without saying.
But clearly, yeah, this is the kind of thing they would have been discussing either in person in a SCIF or a secure facility, or they would be discussing it on, you know, the secure Intel link.
Here's Senator John Ossoff of Georgia attempting to grill.
I say attempting because John Ratcliffe, the director of Central Intelligence, doesn't want to give an answer.
But anyway, here's Senator Ossoff.
And they were discussing the timing of sending U.S. air crews into enemy airspace where they faced an air defense threat, correct?
I'm going to, Senator, defer to the other principles that you're referring to about what the meaning and the context of what they were on.
They're talking about the timing of U.S. airstrikes, correct?
Yes. Yes, and therefore the timing of sending U.S. air crews into hostile airspace, correct?
Yes. And therefore...
The time period during which enemy air defenses could target U.S. air crews flying in enemy airspace, correct?
I don't know that.
You do know that.
Let me ask this question, General Hawk.
You lead America's signals intelligence collection.
Would the private deliberation of foreign senior officials about the wisdom and timing of potential military action be a collection priority for you and the U.S. intelligence community?
Senator, it's our job to do indications and warning for both the plans and intentions of adversary leaders and for military commanders.
And would not information about the timing of air strikes allow a military to pre-position or cue air defense systems to shoot down enemy aircraft?
I think, Senator, from our perspective, any advance warning is something that we certainly are trying to protect.
Was this guy an officer in the Air Force, this four-star?
This is how they get promoted.
He must have been a buck private that worked for you and he never learned anything from you.
He can't answer a question straight.
No, no, he's not allowed.
He's not, you know, he don't want to risk his job to tell the...
The direct answer.
Those questions were very good.
Yes. I'm not familiar with that particular guy, the congressman or senator or whatever, but the questions were excellent, and they need to be asked on a lot of things.
Also, he should have asked, too, when did we, you know, I know we have an approved operation in the Red Sea, but this Houthi operation now is really out of Israel.
I mean, this is Israeli, you know, we're supporting Israel directly on this.
And the president...
Honestly, we need to continue to ask, have we declared war with all of the nations that we are fighting and bombing?
That's another response.
You know, that is something.
It's funny you should mention that, Karen, because I didn't watch the whole hearing.
Chris did when he cut many, many clips from it.
But I didn't hear.
From the parts that I watched or from any of the news reports, any comments about starting a war without congressional authorization?
Do these people just assume that the president can bomb and kill whoever he wants?
Well, they've got this weird, you know, the UA that they expanded on 25 years ago for Iraq or whatever, and then they keep adding places to it, acting as if that substitutes for...
You know, that's unchecked war.
And they're hiding behind their, I forget what the UA stands for, it's an authorization they give to the president.
That's not war.
It's an authorization to use force in these various countries.
And if Congress really, I don't know what Congress is doing.
I don't know what they do with their spare time.
But one of the things they should do is really revamp this authorization for the use of force.
And now's the time really to do it.
When there's a slim Republican majority in both houses and they don't like Trump and Trump is really sowing chaos, which is...
You know, great.
Those are opportunities to ask questions.
So we should be asking that.
Congress should be saying, look, this UA thing isn't working out.
We've bombed, you know, what, 10 countries in the last 20 years under the same authorization?
How is that even constitutional?
And that's a good question.
And I think you would find bipartisan support to really take their job seriously to keep this country at peace.
Trump ran on a peace platform.
The Congress owes it to Trump.
If they like Trump, the Republicans owe it to him to say, look, let's develop this peace message and show the country that this is another area that you, Mr. Trump, are having success in.
Because it doesn't look like it right now.
It doesn't look like he's having success.
Look, we all know what he is attempting to do with Baby Step's success with President Putin and Ukraine.
But can he really be called a man of peace?
He has greenlighted and paid for continual slaughter in Gaza and now bombing these civilians.
We interviewed Pepe Escobar yesterday from Sanaa, the capital of Yemen.
And he said and pointed out to us, you know what they did?
They destroyed residential neighborhoods and they killed civilians.
Yeah, yeah.
And... In the aftermath, even on that leaked text, they were saying, oh, it's a great success.
It was a great success.
So they have revealed not just their lack of security, but also their ignorance.
They don't even know what they're doing.
And again, I don't fault the Trump administration for not knowing what they're doing.
I don't think any of the administrations in my lifetime have had a clue as to what they're doing.
So I don't say, oh, Trump's, you know.
Any different than any other president in terms of a lack of expertise, a lack of global understanding.
They don't have that.
But to cheer what they did in their little signal chat after the fact, when they could have, all they had to do was open up their computer and they would find out what they hit.
And they hit a residential area.
I mean, you know, these, I don't know.
I think, if nothing else, it shows we cannot have...
Any respect for our government.
The average person, we really have to realize we are led by fools in Washington.
And so let that be the starting point.
And now what do we do?
Now what do we do?
What can we do?
You're looking at a video from Pepe Escobar yesterday of the destruction of a residential neighborhood.
And when we interviewed him, he pointed out the houses that were there.
And that were destroyed.
Here's Senator Martin Heinrich grilling Director Ratcliffe and Director Gabbard.
Cut number 19, Chris.
So I'm curious, did this conversation at some point include information on weapons packages, targets, or timing?
Not that I'm aware of.
Director Gabbard.
Same question.
Same answer and defer to the Department of Defense on that question.
Well, those are two different answers, but you're saying that was not part of the conversation.
That's my knowledge.
Precise operational issues were not part of this conversation.
Correct. Or wait.
This will either make you laugh because you'll think he's still...
Can you share how your information about war plans against the Houthis in Yemen was shared with a journalist in The Atlantic?
And were those details classified?
You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia,
or the fine people on both sides hoax, or suckers and losers hoax.
So this is a guy that pedals in garbage.
This is what he does.
I would love to comment.
On the Houthi campaign because of the skill and courage of our troops.
I've monitored it very closely from the beginning.
And you see, we've been managing four years of deferred maintenance under the Trump administration.
Our troops, our sailors were getting shot at as targets.
Our ships couldn't sail through.
And when they did shoot back, it was purely defensively or at shacks in Yemen.
President Trump said no more.
We will re-establish deterrence, we will open freedom of navigation, and we will ultimately decimate the Houthis, which is exactly what we're doing as we speak from the beginning, overwhelmingly.
According to Pepe, who's there, it's not only not overwhelming, they are not even hitting military targets, they're hitting civilian targets.
Hedgeseth needs to go to the Sergey Lavrov school of how to answer a question with very few words.
I wanted to give Hedgeseth a chance.
We all did, Karen, especially those of us that knew him.
I worked with him for 10 years.
I didn't think he was qualified, but it would give him a chance.
This has made things worse, and his response has made things worse.
His response made it much worse because the DOD...
It's DOD, primarily DOD information that was classified.
I mean, it's their strike.
It's their activities that they talked about on a system they're not supposed to be using.
That is, they're prohibited, actually, from using it on a system that's not FOIA-able.
I mean, this is a huge problem that needs to be corrected very quickly.
You have to take responsibility, I guess is what you would say.
Take responsibility for using the wrong system.
Something has to change on that.
But instead, he's name-calling, and then he's bringing up, you know, almost red herrings in his argument.
And it doesn't make him look...
It's not a good look for a secretary of defense.
And I'm not saying they all look good.
I mean, Rumsfeld was infuriating with his, you know, just an awful...
And so many of them are not very good.
So Hedgeseth has a low bar to...
To reach, to be a good Secretary of Defense by our standards, which are very low.
But yeah, that's not a good...
He's going to have to either correct that.
I mean, if I was his boss, if I was Trump, I don't know if it's worth a talking to or you just fire him right off the bat.
He should have shut up.
Chris, number 17. Most of the things that were covered in what was recorded in the Atlantic article should have been discussed.
In the Situation Room, in a Principals Committee meeting or a full NSC chaired by the President.
It looks to me like this was a typical Donald Trump decision,"Let's bomb the Hooties," that then everybody raced to implement without talking about the implications, including, for example, Vice President Vance apparently on this chain saying,
"I don't agree with this." I agreed with this first sentence, but honestly, Biden bombed the hooties.
A lot of people bombed the hooties.
You know, our policy hasn't changed.
We elected Trump to see that our policy would change towards peace away from war, unrelated to the signal app and the leak.
You know, I don't see a policy changing.
It looks like it's accelerating, so that's a problem.
I don't know.
Bolton. But he is right.
He's right about the first part.
You know classified material when you see it.
Watch Senator Werner express utter frustration with Director Ratcliffe and Director Gabbard about whether this is classified or not.
Cut number six.
My communications, to be clear, in a signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.
We will make that determination because if it's not classified, share the text with the committee.
There was no classified material that was shared in that signal.
So then if there was no classified material, share it with the committee.
You can't have it both ways.
These are important jobs.
This is our national security.
Bobbing and weaving and trying to filibuster your answer.
So please answer the question.
If this was a rank and file intelligence officer, Who did this kind of careless behavior?
What would you do with them?
Senator, I'll reiterate that there was no classified material that was shared in that...
Ma'am, if there's no classified materials, share.
And then, if there's no classified materials, then you can't even answer the question whether you're on the chat.
This is strangely familiar, and I think my colleagues will remember, when you couldn't answer the question, is Edward Snowden a traitor?
Well, I wish he hadn't gone there.
You and I have a strong view on that.
He hasn't even been accused of being a traitor, but be that as it may, she wouldn't answer if the initials T.G., Tulsi Gabbard, referred to her on the chat.
Yeah. Look, she...
It should have been done in a principals meeting or on Intel Link, a secure system.
And I've been to these principals meetings before on different issues.
And generally, you're pre-screened to get in them.
Obviously, no journalists are invited.
And you have the right clearance.
And everything that you talk about and all of the attendees, those who attended that meeting, is all part of the record.
And that record is all classified.
They basically conducted a meeting in the signal group chat.
Okay, fine.
You can do that.
You can conduct a meeting.
You just can't do a government DOD meeting that's, you know, your war planning or your attack planning to the Houthis.
You can't do that because by getting together electronically, you have established a principles meeting and the contents of that meeting are secured at the time that they're doing, that they're talking, and the notes to that meeting are classified.
So they're kind of playing a game.
Because they think they don't know what Trump wants to do yet, I guess.
They don't know if he's going to admit there was a problem and fire some people or try to play this thing out like, oh, it's okay what we did.
No, it's not.
It's not okay.
And they shouldn't be behaving like that.
But, you know, these characters that Trump has, you know, made his advisors, and some are good and some are not as good, but...
This is the political game.
This is the same thing.
He hates the Biden administration.
We all do.
But he has to distinguish himself from the Biden administration.
I'm not seeing anything that distinguishes him in this particular instance at all.
They are denying, denying, denying.
This is FBI comer all over again.
This is last summer's interview with the head of the Secret Service.
Remember how she wouldn't answer any questions?
Same thing.
Same exact thing.
Here's that young senator from Georgia with whose questions you were impressed earlier, Senator John Ossoff, grilling Director Ratcliffe.
Cut number four.
Director Ratcliffe, you were a member of the Houthi PC small group signal chain, correct?
I was.
Yeah, and so were the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the national security advisor, and Ms. Gabbard, correct?
I believe so.
I don't have a list of who was invited to be on.
And so was national political reporter Jeffrey Goldberg, correct?
I don't know that.
Yes, you do.
Okay, well, he was a member of the signal chain.
And the discussion included the vice president's private opinion on the wisdom of proposed U.S. strikes in Yemen, correct?
I don't recall.
Vance, quote, I think we are making a mistake.
I am not sure the president is aware of how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.
There is a strong argument for delaying this a month.
You don't recall?
I don't.
You don't recall seeing that?
Read that.
I don't.
It included the private opinions of the Secretary of Defense on the timing of strikes in Yemen, correct?
I don't recall.
Director Radcliffe, surely you prepared for this hearing today.
You were part of a group of principals, senior echelons of the U.S. government, in now a widely publicized breach of sensitive information.
You don't recall whether the vice president opined on the wisdom of the strikes?
That's your testimony today under oath?
In that setting, I don't recall.
Wait, did he come off terribly?
I mean, this to me...
Just trying to be neutral, wearing my old judicial hat is very close to perjury.
Very close to perjury.
Unless he's going to make the claim that his phone with the Signal app and the group chat was going on and he was actually doing something else on his computer at the time, not paying attention, which is something, you know, could happen.
That's conceivable.
Unlikely. But, you know, he's, you know, again, they're protecting the president.
They're protecting each other, and at the end, they're protecting themselves.
And I'm waiting for the, I hate to use the word man, but I'm waiting for the stand-up guy or gal to stand up and take responsibility.
Right. If Mike Walsh intended to invite some senior intelligence official but mistakenly gave whoever ran the chat.
Jeffrey Goldberg's number, he should stand up and say it.
It was an honest mistake.
I'll do what the president wants me to do.
This would all end if Waltz, or I guess it was Waltz that added him to the chat.
Waltz could stand up and say, you know, we shouldn't have used it.
And you know what?
I made a mistake.
I offered my resignation to the president this morning as soon as we realized it.
The end of it.
I mean, not quite.
I wouldn't use Signal anymore.
That would be an improvement.
But it would be the end of this drama.
But meanwhile, it's like we're rolling out, you know, these long extended soliloquies by Hedgeseth, which make Hedgeseth himself look bad.
All of that, of course, is making the president look bad.
So, you know, a little bit of common sense would go a long way here.
Here's Senator Heinrich.
And John Ratcliffe again.
Let's see if Ratcliffe defers responsibility, Karen.
Cut number 20. Did you just determine it was not classified or was there any declassification after the fact?
In this case, what the National Security Advisor did was to request through a signal message that there be coordination.
So you mentioned the name of a CIA I didn't mention the name.
You didn't mention the name.
And in the article the implication was that somehow that was improper.
That reflects that the National Security Advisor intended this to be as it should have been.
A mechanism for coordinating between senior-level officials, but not a substitute for using high-side or classified communications for anything that would be classified.
And I think that that is exactly what did happen.
The National Security Advisor to whom he refers brings us back to where we started, Mike Waltz.
Yeah. Who, by the way, is in Greenland today with Mrs. Vance.
You can't make this up.
I'm going to guess that that trip was planned before this stuff came out yesterday.
Yeah, that's some crazy stuff.
Yeah, this has been handled badly.
It was done wrong.
It's wrong.
It is.
You know, imagine in that question that the Georgia senator asked about, or maybe it was Warner, about the enemies of our country, or I say the enemies, but you know, foreign intel.
Intel that's aimed at collecting...
U.S. intelligence.
This is a meeting of top decision makers on an imminent act of war or an imminent military action that's being taken in secret.
And it reveals not just what they're doing in a certain timely manner that makes it important.
You could counter it, as they said.
But it also indicates relationships, habits, processes, dissent, obviously, Vance with a kind of a...
You know, a minor dissent that was very worthwhile.
But all of that information is gold to foreign intelligence operatives.
You know, and I assume reporters like Jeffrey Goldberg, but, you know, I don't understand why they can't take responsibility for something so simple, and they're going to blow it up into something far bigger than it needs to be.
It needs to be a lesson learned.
Corrective action should be applied and people should be fired.
I have no issue with, you know, because that question about would you fire an intelligence officer who did that?
Yeah. Yeah, you would.
Well, the answer to that should have been yes.
Tell me if you think Director Ratcliffe should be fired after this grilling by Senator Ossoff.
Again, Senator Ossoff.
Cut number two.
And they were discussing the timing.
Of sending U.S. air crews into enemy airspace where they faced an air defense threat, correct?
I'm going to, Senator, defer to the other principles that you're referring to about what the meaning and the context of what they were on.
They're talking about the timing of U.S. airstrikes, correct?
Yes. Yes.
And therefore, the timing of sending U.S. air crews into hostile airspace, correct?
Yes. And therefore, the time period during which enemy air defenses could target U.S. air crews flying in enemy airspace, correct?
I don't know that.
You do know that.
Let me ask this question, General Hawk.
You lead America's Signals Intelligence Collection.
Would the private deliberation of foreign senior officials About the wisdom and timing of potential military action be a collection priority for you and the U.S. intelligence community?
Senator, it's our job to do indications and warning for both the plans and intentions of...
That's my fault.
We played that already.
I'm not trying to drive you.
Nor am I trying to embarrass the Air Force.
It's interesting.
This drama is persisting.
My gut reaction, and I would think a lot of people in the government's gut reaction would be to fire the people that are embarrassing the administration and being incompetent.
There's a possibility.
Okay, Jeff Goldberg, right?
I mean, how in the heck did he get on this?
We need to get to the bottom of how he and not someone else, you know, I mean, why him?
But I'll tell you, if you wanted to get some people fired from the Trump team, then this would be a good way to do it.
And have your Democrat allies, senators, and congressmen look good.
Because Warner, I'm going to tell you, Warner's dumb as a brick.
He's my senator.
And he's not an achiever, okay?
He's not somebody that we write home about.
These questions are exceptionally good, but we rarely see Congress and Senators ask really good questions.
So you always wonder, were they prepared?
Did they get a little hint as to the kind of questions to ask once this thing unfolded?
And again, what Trump does remains to be seen.
Maybe somebody wants to get some people fired.
Do you expect the FBI to investigate this?
I don't know.
They should.
Well, obviously, if they should, then the DOD should look into it.
I mean, anybody with an interest here, laws, I think, you know, you can't use Signal to have pseudo-principles meetings.
You can't do that.
That is wrong, and that needs to be dealt with, I think.
Yeah, so whoever investigates that, FBI probably.
But there's other places you can get the information.
But really, what if you wanted to get Tulsi Gabbard fired?
And maybe you weren't so happy with Ratcliffe.
Because I know some people that aren't too happy with Tulsi and Ratcliffe.
So maybe this is the way you get them out there.
And why is Walls not sitting there in front of Congress?
Oh, because he's in Greenland looking at real estate.
It's so funny.
Well, anyway, that's wonderful stuff.
I love it.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time.
It's not our usual Q&A, but I love all of your responses and your insight.
Thank you so much.
Look forward to seeing you next week, my dear friend.
Sure enough, Judge.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Crazy stuff.
Tomorrow at noon, The World According to George Galloway right here on Judging Freedom.
At 1 o'clock, Professor Glenn Deason.
At 2 o'clock, Aaron Maté.
At 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.
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