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March 25, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
26:08
[MUST WATCH] - Phil Giraldi : Israel Attacks Free Speech in the US.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, March 26th, 2025.
Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, you have a startling and terrifying piece out on the UNS Review.
America's new free speech enemies list is getting longer and the list is getting longer.
I monitor these things for a living and you've educated me.
You pointed out a couple of Foreign people legally in America that the government is trying to deport because of their speech.
And I want to talk to you about it at some length.
But before we get there, I have to raise this issue involving the texting by senior members of the president's national security team on this app called Signal.
And the nature of what they were discussing.
You, of course, are familiar with top-secret security clearances, and you're familiar with national security.
Isn't attack plans on another government naming the time, place, and manner of the attack and naming the equipment used in the attack?
Isn't that of such a magnitude as to be a national security or defense secret, whether the Secretary of Defense has formally classified it or not?
Well, there are two issues here.
First of all is the issue itself of the information.
And I think there's a consensus, certainly a consensus growing, that this definitely was classified information.
Because when you're staging an attack on a country using your military resources overseas somewhere, you are basically creating a vulnerability.
For the country being attacked to shoot down your airplanes and sink your ships and so on and so forth.
So this is classified information because this information was revealed before the attack was going to take place.
And even the timing of it was revealed.
So this was incredible.
So that's the one issue.
Now, to me, the other issue is to someone who's been overseas.
And worked with secure communications.
The fact is that this signal is vulnerable.
Probably the Russians and the Chinese and certainly the Israelis, they all had this communication, I think, in their own pockets as quickly as it was being produced.
So this was a nonsensical method.
of communicating this kind of information.
Even the most sophisticated communication systems employed by the US and other sophisticated technical countries, these things can be penetrated very easily by NSA, by the Russian counterparts, by the Israelis, by a whole host of people.
Wow. How can the Secretary of Defense Chris, we may have that clip.
This is the shorter of the two clips of Pete Hegseth at the airport in Hawaii.
They both were of the same.
Time. One is long, one is short.
Play the short one.
Why were those details shared on Signal?
And how did you learn that a journalist was privy to the targets, the types of weapons used?
I've heard I was characterized.
Nobody was texting war plans.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Thank you.
The NSC said it was authentic.
We now know that that statement was untrue.
That he, in fact...
The reporter, who apparently is hated by the White House and hated by a lot of people, was tired of being called a liar.
And in this instance, he's telling the truth.
He published the transcript of this texting.
And it showed the war plans, which Peg Seth denied.
Do you have a handle on this?
Yeah, well, I don't have a particular handle on it, but I did read the transcript.
And to me, there's no question in my mind that our Secretary of Defense is treating this like a joke when it ain't.
And that's particularly outrageous.
And, of course, the rest of them are all covering up for this, too.
I'm embarrassed about Tulsi Gabbard.
I really thought she had more integrity than she revealed yesterday.
So this is an awful and developing situation.
Larry Johnson, of course, whom you've had on the show recently, had some very interesting words and comments.
He had an article today that came out this morning.
That is basically his spin about what this all is.
He doesn't think deep down that this was kind of an accident.
He thinks that this is very much contrived.
There was one or several agendas.
And I think that's probably a very, very good analysis.
Well, I'm going to play two clips for you.
One is Mike Waltz waltzing.
With my former colleague and friend Laura Ingram, his answers are absurd.
And the other is Tulsi Gabbard backpedaling today.
So we'll do Tulsi Gabbard first, Chris.
I think it's number 26. My answer yesterday was based on my recollection or the lack thereof on the details that were posted there.
I was not, and what was shared today reflects the fact that I was not directly involved with that part of the signal chat and replied at the end reflecting the effects, the very brief effects that the National Security Advisor had shared.
So it's your testimony that...
Less than two weeks ago, you were on a signal chat that had all of this information about F-18s and MQ-9 Reapers and targets on strike, and you in that two-week period simply forgot that that was there.
That's your testimony?
My testimony is I did not recall the exact details of what was included there.
That was not your testimony.
Your testimony was that you were not aware of anything related to weapons packages, targets, and timing.
I was very disappointed in what she said as well.
I mean, she's the senior intelligence officer there, and she doesn't give a damn who's on the phone call.
This was almost high school-ish, as was some of their verbiage, almost high school-ish, where Pete Hegseth, and we'll play the other Hegseth clip in a minute, where Hegseth says, well, most people don't even know who the Houthis are.
So blame Biden and accuse the Iranians of funding them.
Is this how the government decides whom to kill?
Yeah, it is how the government decides who to kill.
They don't have any program because a program would require sitting down and reviewing the facts and coming to a judgment that is good for the United States and might even be good For these other countries that they're looking at.
We've become a monster.
We're not quite up to the Israeli standard yet, but it's the same thing.
You lie, you lie, you lie.
You know that nobody's going to hold you to account.
The newspapers and the media are going to have this story now for a couple days, and then it'll suddenly go away.
This is the pattern we've established.
If it's about Israel or if it's about lying to go off and kill somebody, particularly if they're a Muslim.
Let's go and do it, guys.
Here's Mike Walsh.
You tell me if you can make any sense whatsoever of this, Phil.
Number 23. So your staffer did not put his...
Contact information.
No, no, no.
But how did it end up in your phone?
That's what we're trying to figure out.
But that's a pretty big problem.
That is what we've got the best technical minds, right?
That's disturbing.
And that's where, I mean, I'm sure everybody out there has had a contact.
Where it was said one person and then a different phone number.
But you've never talked to him before, so how's the number on your phone?
I mean, I'm not an expert on any of this, but it's just curious.
How's the number on your phone?
Well, if you have somebody else's contact and then somehow it gets sucked in.
Oh, someone sent you that contact.
It gets sucked in.
Was there someone else supposed to be on the chat that wasn't on the chat that you thought was on the chat?
So the person that I thought was on there was never on there.
Who was that person supposed to be?
Look, Laura, I take responsibility.
I built the group.
So somebody else's number got, I'm going to use his phrase, it's crude, but it's his phrase, sucked into the phone.
I'm not a technical person, but I never heard of this.
If you and I are seated next to each other, as we have been, at a dinner or a banquet, your contents can, and we have our phones with us, your contents can get sucked into mine, and mine can get sucked into yours.
Have you ever heard of this?
No. Even by US government standards, there's a bizarre explanation.
It's physically impossible, technically impossible, but it seems to have penetrated to the prefrontal lobes of our national security expert.
Pretty scary.
I mean, Larry will be on with us with Ray McGovern when we do the Intelligence Community Roundtable on Friday, but does Larry have an idea as to why this was done?
I mean, they brought in an arch-neocon, a human being who was once an IDF guard in a prison where he guarded Palestinian prisoners.
A guy who propagated propaganda for Dick Cheney.
I mean, were they looking for the same type of propaganda from him?
Is that Larry's theory?
Well, I think it's...
Larry obviously explained it a lot better, but I think what he is suggesting is that they deliberately brought this guy into it, expecting him to...
Create some kind of exposure, some kind of story around it, but they didn't exactly get what they expected.
There seems to be no dialogue at all about the morality, lawfulness, wisdom, propriety of bombing the Houthis.
It's all about the process.
Even Vance's argument against bombing was the time is not right.
Not it's immoral.
Not they're not a threat to us.
Not why are we doing this for Netanyahu?
He can do it for himself.
Nothing like that.
It was that the president doesn't understand the economic consequences, or I'm not sure he understands.
Maybe we should delay.
That's the only dissenting voice in all of this.
Does it surprise you that everybody accepted as a giving?
That we can kill people in another country without a declaration of war.
Well, not everybody accepts it.
You and I don't accept it.
Well, I meant everybody on the call.
Yeah, everybody on the call is in there for personal aggrandizement reasons, political careers, lots of money from the Israel lobby.
So they're in it for their own motives.
They don't really care.
About, you know, the fact that what eggs cost today or whether United States citizens will be killed down the road because of the actions that they are taking now.
They don't really care about any of that.
They're, you know, ships that are moving through and then they're gone.
And then they're replaced by another clown who basically has the same morality.
This is why our...
Our government ever since...
I see the real rot, the real terrible rot having started with 9-11.
That basically was when all the gloves came off and everything was legitimate and the United States was preening itself as the power for good and to rid the world of these terrible terrorists and so on and so forth.
So that's where I see the break.
It's been a terrible country ever since.
And I would include every president since that time.
Right. And domestically, of course, the Patriot Act and the various offshoots of it and the massive NSA spying and then Edward Snowden's heroism.
Getting a little closer to what I want to talk to you about, which is the Israeli influence on the suppression of free speech in the United States.
Chris, can you play the clip of, I don't know what the number is, forgive me, Senator Tom Cotton and Pete Hegseth at his confirmation hearing.
We don't have that.
Okay. It's where they both say they are committed Zionists.
But here is another committed Zionist.
This will aggravate you a little.
I'm doing that even though we are friends, but I want to hear your response.
It says Mike Huckabee at his confirmation hearing yesterday.
Why is the defense of Israel, the support of Israel, important to America?
Senator, a great question.
The truth is it's been very clear, as expressed by the Iranian government, that Israel is the appetizer and we're the entree.
They don't want to stop at Israel.
They certainly want to annihilate them.
They've said it over and over, and there's an old saying that when people are saying again and again they're going to kill you, you might want to take them seriously.
But they've also gone beyond saying they want to annihilate Israel and wipe it off the face of the earth.
They've said that their ultimate goal is to first take care of the little Satan, they identify as Israel, and then come after the great Satan.
Senator, that's us.
And whatever is happening to Israel, it is the canary in the coal mine.
These governments, Iran being the most notable, who want to develop a nuclear weapon and who have the audacity to wish to use it to destroy a sovereign Jewish state so that they ultimately could destroy Western civilization.
That's why it matters, Senator, and I appreciate your question because I hope people will understand this is not just about Israel.
It is about us.
And if we don't stand with them, they stand alone.
And if they fall alone, we fall next.
I've heard a lot of lunatic arguments before.
I never heard that one.
Does Iran pose the slightest iota of a threat to the national security of the United States of America in March of 2025?
Well, that was all one very well-spoken, I dare say, but it was all a lie.
None of that was true.
Iran, as far as I know, has never threatened to destroy Israel.
It has threatened to retaliate when Israel attacks it, but that has been the extent of it, and Iran has never threatened to destroy the United States.
Israel is the aggressor in all these situations, and Israel is now, with Netanyahu for 20 years now, has been trying to get the United States to do the heavy lifting, to attack Iran and destroy it on behalf of Israel, for Israel.
So Israel will be the hegemon in the Middle East.
This is what Israel wants.
And if you need evidence for what Israel's morality is like, just go take a look at Gaza right now and speculate on how this could have gone in a different direction if we, the United States and the person of Joe effing Biden, and now with Donald Trump, if these people had had the vision and the knowledge and the integrity...
To go the right way on these issues and benefit the human race?
Could they have done that?
Why is Israel, why is the government of Israel afraid of free speech in the United States?
They're afraid of free speech in the United States because the government of Israel has done more employing, admittedly,
its domestic It's all about Israel, to conceal just what Israel is all about, what it's like, what it does.
You know, taking over the media to a large extent and making sure it's singing the right song, taking over the politicians.
When back in 2010, it was declared by the Supreme Court that money was all that mattered in American elections.
Man, this was the green light for Israel, and they've been pumping it, pumping it, pumping it ever since.
Are you of the view that Zionist donors to major universities, as well as to the politicians that dangle goodies in front of those universities, are largely responsible for the types of things that you wrote about and that I talk about?
Students being yanked out of their dorms at Columbia University.
I don't know why they keep picking on Columbia.
It's right near where I am now, but students yanked out of their dorms at Columbia University because of their speech.
Yesterday, a federal judge, after holding a hearing, let the government lay out all the evidence it had against this young woman, a permanent alien resident from South Korea.
And the judge concluded the evidence against her in the light most favorable to the government was that she was standing at the edge of a demonstration watching the demonstrators.
And that that is not a basis to deport and not a basis to file a charge against her for deportation.
Well, you maybe haven't seen the one that came out today.
A Turkish woman who's a graduate student in medicine at Tufts University.
They're after her now because of a letter she wrote to the school newspaper.
Last year, one year ago, March 2024, complaining about what was going on in Gaza and recommending that the university not subsidize any Israeli businesses or any investments and so on and so forth.
And this was today.
This has been happening every day.
The charges they make are not crimes under any way of looking at it.
Right. They are starting also to go around to various universities.
This so-called panel that is going out from the Justice Department.
What did they call it?
I'm not sure what the name of it is, but it's going to be investigating 10 universities to start.
They are also starting the Department of Justice to look at social media.
So when I post one of my articles, I'm in big trouble.
Wow. We are on social media right now.
If they get a recording of this, we are in big trouble.
We know they watch this when Max Blumenthal was stopped by the board of police at Dulles International Airport.
They mentioned this show by name.
According to Max, they butchered my last name.
You'd think they'd know how to pronounce it.
Whatever. But asked him.
About something he said on the show.
Here's Pete Hegseth.
This is his confirmation hearing, so it's before he's the Secretary of Defense.
And Tom Cotton, who's the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, each trying to out-Zionize the other.
During the Biden administration, I want to give you a chance to respond to what they said about you.
I think the first one accused you of being a Christian Zionist.
I'm not really sure why that is.
A bad thing.
I'm a Christian.
I'm a Zionist.
Zionism is that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in the ancient Holy Land where they've lived since the dawn of history.
Do you consider yourself a Christian Zionist?
Senator, I support...
I am a Christian and I robustly support the state of Israel and its existential defense and the way America comes alongside them is a great...
Thank you.
So that's two very important people in the government now.
They both have top secret national security clearances.
One is, of course, the Secretary of Defense.
The other is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Well... As I kind of predicted in my article,
the thing is, once you open that window where suddenly free speech means nothing, where the government can say, because you are making it difficult for us to conduct foreign policy, as our Secretary of State was saying, and this kind of nonsense, you've opened the door for every evil, every ill to come in.
And destroy the faith that ordinary people like us have in our government and in our system and in our Constitution.
This is the real danger.
It's not just Israel.
It's just that Israel did this and was so successful at it that this is going to become a model for basically having no rule of law, having no integrity in government, and having no honesty.
Thank you, Phil.
Thank you for your courage and for your insight.
You and I are not going to back down, but these unfortunate students who are here on various visas, with the government targeting the weakest among us, this South Korean girl, she fled.
She's still in hiding.
After the judge ruled, the judge asked, is she in the courtroom?
The lawyer said, we don't know where she is.
She's still in hiding.
Well, give her my regards.
Tell her they can't.
Deport her.
They can't deport her?
They've deported hundreds of people in violation of judicial orders not to do so.
All right.
Thank you, Phil.
All the best.
Have a good day.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you very much for having me on.
Of course.
Coming up tomorrow at 8 in the morning, Professor Gilbert Doctorow at 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor at 2 in the afternoon.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at 3.30 in the afternoon.
Professor John Mearsheimer.
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