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March 28, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
35:39
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, March 28, 2025.
It's the end of the day, the end of the week, our favorite time.
It's the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
My dear friends, welcome here.
Thank you for the double duty that you're doing.
Thank you for all the notes and tips and info that you send me.
Larry, thank you for those wonderful write-ups that you send out under Sonar 21. They come out at midnight, and they're extremely informative and fascinating.
Larry, to you first.
We've got to delve right into the signal text, because more information keeps coming out.
Is Jeff Goldberg Mossad, Larry?
He certainly would likely have connections.
The real culprit here in terms of how Goldberg got into that chat appears to be Alex Wong, Chief of Staff to Michael Waltz.
And Wong has, let's call it a charitable checkered past in terms of association with Obama.
His wife was one of the lead prosecutors against January 6th suspects.
You know, he's not exactly coming out of a mold of what you would call a Trump loyalist.
And, you know, it is beyond understandable.
Well, let's put it this way.
Here's what we know.
His article comes out on Monday.
And by Tuesday, the Democrats have this very sophisticated, coordinated signs, placards, attacks.
This was staged.
I mean, this was, I think, a hit job.
It doesn't excuse having the chat on Signal, but frankly, the policy for that had been established before Trump took office.
Let me stop you.
When you say this was staged and was a hit job, you are rejecting the Mike Walsh explanation he gave to Laura Ingraham that he inadvertently...
Involved Goldberg because he thought it was somebody else's number.
You think somebody was trying to sabotage them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Why would Mike Walsh's chief of staff want to sabotage his own boss?
Because he's got a history with Obama.
He's not a Trump fan.
This is...
There are a number of people, I've talked with, you know, Larry Wilkerson about this as well.
He knows of some specific people who are still in the National Security Council who are, to call them toxic would be an understatement.
You know, they are not Trump loyalists.
Now, you know, again, this whole thing about the process.
Oh, why did they use Signal?
Why were they chatting about this?
It ignores the real central issue that the Trump administration made a determination sometime at least a week prior to March 15th, when the bombings took place, to order the bombing of Yemen when Yemen had not done a single thing to break the ceasefire, had not launched a single attack on any ship, had not launched a single missile into Israel.
And so here was the Houthis having not taken any kind of provocative action that the Trump administration decided on its own to attack it.
That, in my view, is a war crime because they didn't attack military targets.
They ended up hitting civilian targets, as you've been able to show through your conversations with Pepe.
Ray, the target was the apartment building.
Of the girlfriend of their chief missile guy.
Now, when Mike Walsh says something like that on the Signal chat, is he not revealing serious methods of gathering intel to anybody who would look at this, whether friend or foe?
Well, the smart money says that it was Mossad.
The Israeli service that helped pinpoint that location.
But no one should be surprised that the U.S. would be adopting Israeli tactics by destroying building in which civilians still are and still live until the bomb hits.
The glee that was expressed by, oh, way to go, excellent.
I'm less interested in the provenance of this thing.
As in what it reflects about the, what's the word?
Sociopathic nature of these guys who think they can kill civilians without any declaration of war, without even mentioning this stuff to Congress.
They'll do it willy-nilly.
Why? Because they can and because Israel wants them to do it.
So, Larry, no declaration of war, no compliance with the War Powers Act.
The target was a residential building, and the human being they were targeted was not a military person.
It's a war crime, ordered by Donald Trump and facilitated by everybody or nearly everybody on that call.
One person was on the call who didn't say a peep.
Witkoff, who was in Moscow and didn't want to communicate because he thought whatever his communications were would be surveilled by the Russians.
But you said earlier, war crime.
Well, yeah, but, you know, let's go back to George W. Bush.
He was doing this kind of thing.
Then Barack Obama.
Yes. Then Donald Trump, and then Joe Biden, and now Donald Trump again.
I mean, look, it's not unique to Trump, and I'm not trying to excuse or exonerate him, but we've got a fundamental problem with our system, our society, because we accept this uncritically and have accepted it now for...
25 years.
If your theory is correct that it was Alex Wong, shouldn't there be some sort of an investigation?
I mean, we're talking about military operational plans that were exposed.
That's espionage, whether it's done intentionally or inadvertently.
I assume that Mr. Wong has a top-secret security clearance.
He should lose it like that, shouldn't we, Larry?
Well, as I understand, you know, the U.S. Code 18, that for espionage, yeah, it is distributing that information, but the other part of it is intent to do harm.
There's actually two espionage statutes.
The second one is the rare federal criminal statute that does not require intent, because we went through all this with Hillary.
So there's one espionage statute that says knowingly and willfully exposed.
There's another espionage statute that says negligently exposes.
Right, but they're going to be able to make the case because this had been communications over the signal channel had been sanctioned, approved by the intelligence community.
Now, we can go back and say that was a stupid decision.
And I'm not sure if that decision was first made under Obama or under Trump's first term or under Biden's term, but it was a decision that was already in place.
This is nothing that the Trump people did.
So that's why I think it would be very difficult to prosecute it simply because it had been an SOP.
And these kind of conversations, frankly, they occur.
The problem, I agree, I share your outrage at the lying, you know, for people who go, no, this wasn't classified.
Look, I only had 23 years handling this kind of information, and I guarantee you if I would have written a message that had contained that entire conversation, I would have had to, at a minimum, put secret no form.
At the front of each paragraph, which is how you classify messages.
And so, you know, the games are being played.
But again, that's all a distraction.
Let's focus on the fact that this unjustified, illegal attack on Yemen was allowed to happen and nobody in the United States gives a damn.
Are you surprised, Ray McGovern?
That in all of these texts, no one, not even the person who dissented from the decision to attack, his dissent was based on it's too soon, let's wait, Vice President Vance.
No one raised the moral, the legal, or the constitutional issue of A, attacking Yemen, B, attacking civilians.
Does this surprise you, Ray McGovern?
No, it doesn't, Judge, and that's the sad history of these times.
When the chief, when the emperor or the king or what's his name, only the president, okay, gathers his people around together and says, look, we're going to do this.
Tomorrow? Come on, give me a break.
Look what we're doing.
We're enabling genocide by the Israelis.
We're funding an army.
I forgot.
Tomorrow, a couple of Houthis?
You know, hello.
There's no consideration of these things.
And I would say that there's no end to this because no one, clearly, no one will be held accountable.
And that's very clear since the Attorney General has just turned down any notion of an investigation.
These people have immunity.
From being held accountable.
And they'll keep acting this way unless someone.
Is there someone in Congress?
I don't know.
Maybe the judiciary will finally say, look, you know, there's an Article I and an Article II of the Constitution.
You're not allowed to do this, Mr. King, Mr. President.
You're not allowed to do this.
It's the House of Representatives, the people's people, who decide whether we'll get into a war or not.
And you're really out of line, Mr. President.
I'm going to rein you in.
I live in hope for that day, if not coming soon.
Hang on one second, hang on one second, because this is breaking news.
Al Jazeera reports that the United States today, March 28th, hit dozens of Houthi targets in Yemen.
U.S. airstrikes hit more than 40 locations across Yemen, including in Sanaa, that's where Pepe Escobar is, with at least seven people injured.
And then I want to play the clip.
I know you want to jump in, Larry, but I want to follow up on what Ray said with a clip from the Attorney General of the United States.
And Larry, you tell me if she sounds like the chief law enforcement officer of the land or a two-bit political hack.
Number 14. In terms of the signals chat controversy that's going on, is DOJ involved at this point?
If so, why?
If not, why not?
Well, first, it was...
Sensitive information not classified and inadvertently released.
And what we should be talking about is it was a very successful mission.
Our world is now safer because of that mission.
We're not going to comment any further on that.
If you want to talk about classified information, talk about what was at Hillary Clinton's home that she was trying to bleach bit.
Talk about the classified documents in Joe Biden's garage that Hunter Biden had access to.
This was not classified information, and we are very pleased with the results of that operation and that the entire world...
Does she know what the hell she's talking about?
Well, claiming that the world's safer, no.
And claiming that the operation was a grand success, no.
And that was the point I was going to make, that in that entire discussion that took place on Signal, nobody raised the point about when we do this, what does it actually achieve?
What do we accomplish?
What goal is met?
What does this do to the dynamics in the region?
Nobody's thinking like a chess player three, four, five moves ahead.
They act like they're playing Pac-Man.
It's just immediate reaction.
Turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left.
And that's the problem.
You know, here we are now two weeks, and they hit 40 targets today, okay?
And I guarantee you the Houthis are going to fire missiles back.
They're going to fire at those ships.
They may get, you know, they may hit and sink one of those ships.
And then, you know, Trump's going to have a lot of egg on his face.
And the use of military force to accomplish a specific objective is usually the idea.
And yet the United States has a proven track record now going back 25 years where we use military force and we don't accomplish anything.
You know, Ray, I'm really aggravated at what the Attorney General said.
The FBI should investigate this, whether they're going to prosecute somebody or not, just so we can find out exactly what happened.
And how it happened.
The Department of Defense's own guidelines, Larry, you alluded to this earlier, state that operational plans are classified whether they're marked classified or not.
Everybody in the government that has a top secret security clearance knows that.
How can anybody take at face value what the Attorney General just said, Ray McGovern?
Judge, your outrage is completely warranted, but it's outdated.
Nobody gives a rat's patootie about what the law says anymore.
Now, what Larry just described is what should have happened, and we have no indication that it did happen, before Trump ordered his minions to do this kind of attack on Yemen.
There's something called a special national intelligence estimate, which Tulsi Gabbard is now in charge of.
She should have said to the President, look, before you do this, let us set out what the repercussions will be and whether it has any appreciable chance of achieving your aim, Mr. President.
Your aim, again, what did you say your aim was?
Okay, well, we could tailor an estimate to tell you how good this operation will be in those terms.
Now, that never happens anymore.
The intelligence community has not even consulted.
I'm 90% sure that Trump didn't ask for such an estimate and that Tulsi Gabbard didn't have the cojones to offer one.
So you're left with a president who is, by definition, mercurial, unpredictable.
He tells his minions to do this.
They don't say, hey, what about this or what about that?
They just do it in a kind of, well, sociopathic way.
Listen to that conversation.
I'm ashamed to be led by this kind of breed of folks that lead our Defense Department and our national security establishment.
I don't give a rat patootie how this happened.
Larry, when Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed, the three of us rejoiced.
I think that joy is short-lived.
I think she's right in the camp of the neocons now.
There's not a word in there from her unless she communicated by some other means advising against this.
Well, actually, you know, her chief of staff, Joe Kent, did weigh in on that talk.
And I don't think he would have weighed in without her support.
And he said, look, what's the rush?
Why are we pushing this?
You know, Tulsi doesn't have the strongest position within the Trump administration.
And I understand sort of her caution in watching her back.
Let's give her credit, even though this recent intelligence security threat assessment that was released on last Monday by the Director of National Intelligence, I doubt she had little input into it,
but it did reaffirm once more that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, which then raises the question because Trump and Waltz and Hegseth are all insisting the exact opposite, which is not a position supported by the intelligence community.
So I think it remains to be seen whether Tulsi will step up and insist that no, there's no justification to attack Iran on the basis that they're building a nuclear weapon because they are not.
Jeff, or when Mike Waltz said, quote, never met, don't know, never communicated with Goldberg.
Is that believable?
No. No, it's not believable at all.
I mean, you can see that photo of him right in front of him at the White House.
No, they lie, Judge.
You've got to sort of get accustomed to the fact that you can't believe a damn thing they say.
And just the connoisseur to what Larry just said about Tulsi Gabbard, She has already made her major input here.
That assessment says Iran has stopped working on a nuclear weapon since the end of 2003, has not resumed work, and the Supreme Leader has prohibited work on this.
Is Netanyahu going to show up with a Mossad report, Larry, that says the opposite in order to twist Donald's arm to get him to go along with the bombing Tehran?
Oh, I wouldn't doubt it, but I think Ray's point is spot on, that at least the intelligence community has not surrendered on this one issue.
And in fact, I suspect Witkoff, as a result of his discussions with Putin, has learned that as a result of that agreement that Russia signed with Iran on 17 January, that Russia is even in the position of guaranteeing...
That they're not going to permit Iran to build a nuclear weapon.
That is part of, if you will, the quid pro quo of this security arrangement that Russia has now signed on to with Iran.
Are you impressed with Whitcoff, Larry?
As a seemingly nice man, yes.
But as having any understanding of what he's doing, no.
I mean, his comments particularly were really...
Repugnant with respect to Hamas, where he said, oh, I haven't talked to them and haven't dealt with them directly, and I've only gone through Qatar.
And then he repeated all the Zionist propaganda about the beheadings and rapes and all that garbage.
And yet, if he was consistent, he would have followed through on what he said when he was talking to Tucker about dealing with the Russians, which is...
Hey, we have to have communication.
Both sides need to talk.
We need to hear it out from both sides.
You know what?
Great advice.
Do it with Hamas.
But instead, he's latched on to the Zionist fantasy that if they just destroy Iran, all of Israel's problems would go away, and it'll be paradise, and birds will be singing, and squirrels will be picking up nuts.
Ray, is the intelligence community today not tailoring intel to please their bosses in the Oval Office and the West Wing, as you and Larry and the others have told me for a couple of years now, was done under Biden?
The answer is yes and no.
On important matters like this, and this is of supreme importance, They even said on this Iran section that the Supreme Leader Khamenei has made sure that this won't happen, that they won't work on a nuclear weapon.
And until he reauthorizes what he forbade in 2003, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon.
That's so big.
Now, why did I say, yes, they are tailoring it?
Well, there's nothing about climate change.
Climate change is still two words that are verboten.
You think about the national security implications as well as the human implications of that.
It used to be at the top of the national assessment.
Well, Mr. Trump doesn't like to hear that, so it was non-existent in this thing.
Other things like, oh, the border and the tension and all that stuff.
That came first even before Russia, China, Iran.
So reordering the thing to please Trump's thing, yes.
Substantively, they didn't say that Putin had already lost in Ukraine.
As a matter of fact, they said just the opposite, that Putin was winning.
So there's some hope that there are enough courageous, enough honest people in the bowels of the CIA and elsewhere that they will help Tulsi to the degree she is interested in.
Telling you the truth.
How much longer can Ukraine hold out, Larry?
Well, according to Budinov, the head of one of their intelligence organizations, end of June, without renewed funding from the United States, without renewed supply of weapons.
That's the head of Ukraine intelligence.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he said that a couple of months ago.
And, you know, Putin talked yesterday.
To the sailors of the North Sea fleet, submarine, nuclear submarine.
And he spelled out, he said, you know, we have 99% of Luransk, but Donetsk and Zaporozhye and the other one up there.
Kherson, Kherson.
Kherson. We only have 70% of that.
Now, we can get the rest of it.
We can get it right quick, but we're in no rush.
And that's the reality on the field.
Most important is this midshipman asks Commander-in-Chief Putin.
This is really important.
He says, Petty Officer 2 Class Ivan Dominin.
Today the world's attention is focused on negotiations between Russia and the United States.
We have a dialogue.
If possible, I would like to hear firsthand.
A petty officer is saying this to President Putin.
Go ahead, Ray.
If possible, I'd like to hear firsthand about the progress and the outcome of those talks.
Putin. Don't worry.
Don't worry about it.
Do not concern yourself with this.
Simply carry out your service and fulfill your duty.
Laughter. Lots of laughter.
And then he says, that was a joke.
I understand that everyone in the world is looking at this closely, following these developments.
In this regard, I would like to state the following, that first and foremost, in my view, the newly elected President of the United States sincerely wishes to end this conflict for a number of reasons, which I won't go into right here, as they are numerous.
But in my opinion, the aspiration is genuine.
Now, that...
It's surprising to me that here, just a couple of months into Trump's regime, so to speak, Putin is taking the risk internally of saying, this guy can be trusted because he's sincere.
That's a sea change.
And of course, Whitcoff has said the same thing about Putin.
So you can't overlook these things.
There's going to be peace in Ukraine.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Right. These things are head-scratchers.
Trump is a monster in Gaza and a monster in Yemen and is doing absolutely the right thing with respect to Ukraine, although he should be turning off the spigot of military gear, Larry.
Yeah, except the problem is his actions in Iran, if he does choose to try to attack Iran, could undo what he's trying to accomplish with Putin.
I would think if he does either attack Iran or give Bibi the green light, the negotiations with Putin will fail.
That's the biggie.
That's why it's so unlikely.
Yeah, they got that security, the comprehensive security agreement that was signed, and it was very nuanced.
But the one section where they didn't have an explicit mutual defense clause, however...
The clause that did deal with basically, it said something, if Iran is attacked under terms of Article 51, where it's an unjustified attack on Iran, yeah, then Russia would get involved.
But Russia didn't commit itself that regardless of what fight you get into, we're going to have your back.
No, they didn't commit themselves that far.
Will Netanyahu...
I don't know.
Netanyahu is unpredictable.
Depends largely on domestic internal problems that he has there in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
I just don't know.
But if he does, the big question is, will Trump allow himself to be sucked into this thing to the degree that there'd be a worldwide recession or depression?
We'll be paying 10, 15 bucks for a gallon of gas at the gas station.
I think that being transactional and having Witkoff at his side, he'll understand that the stakes here are extremely high, not only World War III, but economic collapse.
And the Russians and the Chinese have a deep stake in preventing this.
And during those two hours that Putin and Trump talked together, I am sure.
Morally certain that Iran came up and that Putin said, look, we don't need, we don't need to let Bibi do what he wants to do in Iran.
If he does, this is what's going to happen, Mr. President.
You don't need that.
Forget about it.
Larry, same question.
Will Netanyahu attack Iran without American military support?
No, I'd say no, simply because they don't have the capability.
They require U.S. air support.
They require U.S. ISR support.
Israel, on its own, lacks the ability to actually carry that out.
As we saw on October 27th, the October 27th attack was facilitated, enabled by the United States, and even then, with U.S. support, they weren't able to carry it out or complete it.
The caveat there, in my view, is that all these...
Supersonic or hypersonic or whatever they are, bombers, are convening in Diego Garcia.
There is a widespread preparation for war, and Bibi might think that, you know, he can mousetrap the U.S. into a war with Iran, as he's tried to do many times.
This time he may be a little desperate because of his internal problems.
So I wouldn't rule it out.
It's just that the U.S. may be giving the wrong signal by sending all these heavy bombers and missiles and so forth into the area, leading Netanyahu to think, well, they'll be mousetrapped into that.
I'll just go ahead and start it.
They can't possibly stop supporting us.
I neglected to run this clip a few minutes ago when we were talking about Tulsi Gabbard.
This is the cross-examination of her by Jason Crow.
Congressman Crow, Captain, United States Army, 82nd Airborne Division, and a ranger.
Really impressed me with this interrogation of her, and Director Gabbard looked like she'd rather be anywhere on the planet at that time but where she was.
Chris, cut number 10. Director Gabbard, I want to direct your attention again to the text chain.
Where it says, just confirmed with CENTCOM, we are a go for mission launch.
Does that indicate to you that there is about to be a military operation?
Yes. Director Gabbard, earlier in this hearing, we heard about the DOD's classification standards.
I want to now turn my attention to your classification standards.
You're the Director of National Intelligence.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Classification guide says, quote, information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing for an attack, end quote, is to be classified as top secret.
Are you familiar with that?
Yes. Director Gabbard, have the Houthis indicated an ability to shoot down American aircraft?
Yes. They have, in fact, done so, haven't they?
Yes. Including MQ-9 Reapers, haven't they?
That's correct.
And that was one of the systems used in the attack recently that's the subject of this discussion, is it not?
Correct. What are your thoughts, Larry?
Yeah, I mean, you know, like I said, once we understand that this system for signal had been previously approved, and in their using it, they were sloppy.
And yes.
They discuss classified information.
But focusing on the process, to me, misses the most important point.
It's not the process.
Not a member of the Democrats was outraged about bombing and killing women and children.
Not a damn one of them.
You said classified stuff.
Get to the heart of the issue.
You're killing civilians!
And instead of making that the issue...
Ray, is the...
It's outrageous.
Is the passion to kill bipartisan and caused everybody in the government to lose their sense of morality and decency?
Of course, Judge.
And, you know, I go back to Obama.
When he authorized these strikes on American citizens, they had weird last names, but they were American citizens.
And John Brennan gave them a list every Thursday.
These are the ones you kill this week.
And if they were American citizens, like Aulaki and his son, well, they're terrorists.
We're going to kill them.
And you have the Attorney General, what was his name under Obama?
Colder. Yeah, he goes to Northwestern Law School and he says, look, the Constitution, it doesn't say legal.
It doesn't say, it says due process.
It doesn't say legal process.
And so we do due process right in the White House.
Thank you very much.
End of story.
You know, the whole...
Larry and I took one oath, one oath only.
You did too, Judge, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
That's why we have to keep putting the word out here so American citizens can see this is close to the end times here.
If we don't stand up, nobody else has got it in Congress, maybe the Supreme Court.
We have to do what we can to spread the word around, and I applaud you for pursuing these issues.
Larry, go ahead.
No, I was just going to say I agree.
We've got too much acquiescence going on.
And again, they want to play this as partisan football, the gotcha stuff, instead of dealing with the central moral question.
In God's name, how many people do we have to kill before we learn that all of our killing doesn't bring peace?
We've killed, you know, Thousands in Afghanistan.
We killed thousands in Iraq.
Hundreds of thousands.
And we've helped facilitate the murder and death of thousands in Syria.
And now in Palestine.
I mean, good God, when does it stop?
We did it in Vietnam.
Enough. Enough.
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your passion.
Thank you for your expertise.
Have a great weekend.
We'll look forward to seeing you both on Monday morning.
All right, Judge.
You too, Judge.
All the best.
Thank you.
And putting a bow on all of this today and this week is Pepe Escobar coming to us live from midnight in Yemen at 5 o'clock Eastern this afternoon.
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