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April 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

23:23

Aaron Maté : Russiagate Docs Released?

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	Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Wednesday, April 2nd, 2025.
	Aaron Maté joins us now.
	Aaron, a pleasure, my dear friend.
	I want to talk to you about something that you have done a tremendous amount of research on, which, as you know, is the so-called Russiagate documents and when they're going to come out and what you expect.
	But before that, I want to pick your brains on a couple of other things.
	Do you account or do you have an opinion on the recent bellicosity of the language of Prime Minister Starmer, European Commission President Van der Leyen, French President Macron?
	I mean, this is almost farcical, isn't it?
	It is farcical, but they're grappling with the fact that there's now a chief proxy war sponsor in Washington and Donald Trump, who's no longer willing to play along with This whole ruse that the NATO alliance is in Ukraine for as long as it takes.
	Trump is pulling the plug on that.
	And accordingly, he's showing Europe their place.
	They were always subordinates in this proxy war coalition.
	Yes, they provided some weaponry to Ukraine, but as a recent New York Times front page article underscores, it was the US running the show the entire time, to the point where from a US military base in Germany, U.S. commanders were choosing the targets for Ukraine to hit and helping them directly hit them.
	I'm talking about Russian targets inside of Ukraine.
	And the way they got out of this semantically, this is one of the few interesting revelations in this article.
	The way they got out of this semantically is rather than calling Russian targets targets, they called them points of interest.
	So that way, technically, they can say, no, we're not helping Ukraine select targets, simply by changing the word from targets to points.
	Well, this is Orwell on steroids.
	They can call it what they want, but this is the United States of America targeting Russian assets, which means military equipment and human beings, and causing human beings to be killed by American equipment, the triggers on which were fired either by Americans or Ukrainians.
	We've been directly at war with Russia using Ukrainians as the bullet stoppers.
	Short of sending our own troops, we've been at war with Russia.
	And this New York Times article underscores that.
	It also reveals that it was the U.S. that helped plan all these counteroffensives, this idea that we were just following Ukraine's lead.
	All that is put to the side in this article.
	It was the U.S. devising all these plans from the start.
	And amazingly, they still, in the article, The Times, U.S. sources, throw Ukraine under the bus.
	The reason they say why all this failed is not because, you know, we did anything wrong.
	It's because Ukrainians didn't follow the plan to our specifications.
	So it's incredibly cynical.
	Here's a bellicose Secretary General of NATO.
	Well, I don't know if this number is true.
	20 billion.
	NATO Allies continue our support to Ukraine.
	In the first three months of this year, allies have already pledged more than 20 billion euros in security assistance for 2025.
	I pledged.
	Exactly, Judge.
	Not delivered.
	Okay, I didn't catch that.
	That's the key word.
	It's pledged.
	There was a recent article in the New York Times about how Europe is struggling to find its identity now that Trump is pulling the plug on the proxy war.
	And there's a quote from some European leader who says, we're the coalition of the willing, but willing to do what?
	They don't even know.
	They call themselves the coalition of the willing, but they don't know what they're willing to do because they can't do anything.
	It's the U.S.
	running the show all along.
	And if the U.S.
	pulls away, it looks like Trump is doing, Has Trump pulled the plug?
	Aren't we still sending massive amounts back from a prior Congress that authorized it?
	And obviously a prior president who signed it.
	But aren't we still, isn't the pipeline still open?
	The Joe Biden pipeline?
	The pipeline is still open.
	And as long as it is, Ukraine will keep fighting.
	But when it runs out, and it will run out, then what is Trump going to do?
	Is Trump really going to go to before Congress and ask for tens of billions of dollars in additional funding for this proxy war that he campaigned against?
	Look, It's possible.
	He campaigned as the anti-war candidate.
	He campaigned against bombing Yemen.
	Now he's bombing Yemen on behalf of Israel.
	So anything is possible.
	But on this issue, given that you've seen from Trump and his top principals so much criticism of this war, saying it never should have started, blaming Biden, I just don't see Trump backing down on this one as much as he's been two-faced about war.
	On this one, I think I'll stick to his guns.
	On Yemen, Pepe Escobar says that The Yemenis' determination to continue to do their best to prevent Israeli shipping is undiminished.
	The vast majority of what Pete Hegseth and his colleagues have attacked and destroyed has been civilian infrastructure.
	The people killed have been civilians.
	There's no I think that's exactly what it is.
	The U.S. has been aiding and abetting a war on Yemen for a very long time.
	Recently, last month was the 10th anniversary of Barack Obama authorizing The signal chat,
	excuse me, In the signal chat, there was not a single syllable about the morality or lawfulness of doing this.
	It was only the process.
	In fact, if you read the whole thing, if you read what the Vice President said, you wonder if Trump even knew they were having this chat.
	That's true.
	J.D. Vance alluded to the fact that Trump might not even understand what the bombing of Yemen is about.
	J.D. Vance was opposing it, but J.D.
	Vance couldn't even articulate why the U.S.
	was bombing Yemen, which was on behalf of Israel.
	J.D. Vance said this was for Europe, even though this has nothing to do with Europe.
	This is on behalf of Israel because the Houthis on Surah Laa were intervening against ships in a bid to pressure Israel to respect the ceasefire and stop imposing a starvation siege on Gaza.
	That's why Trump is bombing Yemen.
	And it's funny that J.D.
	Vance...
	Excuse me.
	I wonder, Pepe Escobar wonders if the ships at Diego Garcia are there to attack Iran or to attack Yemen.
	Well, that's a great question.
	And Trump has been increasingly belligerent in his rhetoric.
	He's been directly threatening Iran.
	What did he tell NBC News the other day?
	That if Iran doesn't abandon its nuclear program and make a deal, then there will be bombing like we've never seen before.
	And he's also blaming Iran for the actions of Ansar Allah.
	Even though, as far as I know, Ansar Allah, the Houthis, act pretty autonomously, not at Iran's direction.
	So Trump is forgetting that he campaigned against war.
	He promised to restore peace to the Middle East.
	As we can see in the ongoing destruction of Gaza and his bombing of Yemen, he's doing the exact opposite, at least in that region of the world.
	I just want to find a tape here that I want to run for you.
	Bear with me for a minute.
	Oh, you'll get a kick out of this.
	The State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, who's worse than Matt Miller.
	At least Miller looked you in the eye when he talked to you.
	He didn't read off of an iPad.
	Here she is yesterday about Iran.
	Or it's actually three days ago.
	Cut number 18. Across the globe, it threatens U.S. national interest, which is why President Trump reimposed the maximum pressure campaign designed to end Iran's nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program, and stop it from supporting terrorist groups.
	As the president has said, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.
	He has also been very clear that the United States can't allow that to occur.
	The president expressed his willingness to discuss a deal with Iran, as we know.
	If the Iranian regime does not want a deal, the president is clear he will pursue other options, which will be very bad for Iran.
	I am bored to tears watching her read like that.
	How do the journalists perceive her as being credible when all she does is read something somebody else wrote?
	It's a great question.
	There was such relief seeing the end of the Biden administration after so much just malicious lying for so long in defense of Israel and so much disingenuous rhetoric coming from the aforementioned Matt Miller.
	But now what does the Trump administration do?
	It's Matt Miller, but even with less of an effort to even appear fair-minded, you know, The Biden administration pretended to care about Palestinian rights and about the international law.
	Now everything is all just Iran, Hamas, everything that's Hamas' fault, and it's all just the Israeli talking points, 100%.
	Whereas with Biden administration, sometimes they would say, we're going to pressure Israel to comply.
	Now the Biden administration just basically reads Israel's scripts, doesn't even bother to pretend that they are any different than the Israeli government in terms of policy.
	Now, perhaps that's refreshing, at least to me.
	They're more honest up there in their brazen support for Israel.
	But from a moral point of view, and from the point of view of people who thought that maybe Trump represented America first, not Israel first, it's disappointing.
	Talking about that, I sense no outrage, domestically or internationally, to reports of the IDF executing 15 UN aid workers, one after another, after another.
	Civilians, unarmed, Murdered execution style.
	Why is there no outrage?
	Is there so much death that doesn't phase anymore?
	That's what it is.
	This genocide has become normalized.
	Israel has carried out some of the worst crimes in human history before our eyes and with our support.
	And because our media does such a good job covering up for it and whitewashing the atrocities, it's become normal now.
	It's become normal to wake up every day and see Countless images of dead Palestinian children on your screen is if that's like a routine occurrence like the weather and so atrocities that would otherwise attract singular attention the execution of Palestinian medics Found in horrific conditions now.
	It just seems like routine.
	That's the reality.
	We're living with that You know the way I try to deal with it is listen that there have been horrific atrocities in human history horrific horrific crimes Horrific outburst of collective insanity, like the Nazi Holocaust.
	And this is just one that we're living through right now.
	We're all here for it.
	So the Israeli defense minister, whose name is Israel Katz, announced that the IDF would be capturing more territory in Gaza.
	And the spokesperson for the family of the hostages said, oh, you're trading our family members for land.
	Does that resonate with Netanyahu or not?
	Well, he doesn't care about the Hassid families, obviously.
	He could have gotten all of them released long ago, even before his forces entered Gaza, when Hamas offered to release everybody if Israel promised not to do an invasion.
	And there have been many more opportunities since.
	He doesn't care.
	He just doesn't care.
	His goal, as he's made clear, is to force as many Palestinians as possible to leave.
	He just basically Tell us what you expect the Russiagate documents, if they're revealed, to show.
	And did Trump order the Kash Patel FBI To reveal the documents from the Jim Comey years?
	Is that what we're expecting?
	Trump just signed a new declassification order, but the order is limited.
	It covers a so-called binder of documents that he tried to have released at the very end of his first term, but then mysteriously pulled back on.
	Now, what I know about this binder is it's low-hanging fruit.
	It's a lot of material about the FBI's reliance on the Steele dossier, which is the collection of Hillary Clinton-funded conspiracy theories, and also messages between journalists.
	Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were two FBI officials prominent in the Trump-Russia probe, who are very biased against Trump.
	But we know all this already.
	We know that the collusion aspect of Russiagate was a complete scam.
	The part that still endures, and that elements of the intelligence community, some, are still endorsing, is that Russia waged the sweeping interference campaign to brainwash Americans into not voting for Hillary and installing Trump.
	And I know for a fact that there are documents inside the government that call this into question.
	The House Intelligence Committee, back when it was led by Devin Nunes and Kash Patel, who was working for Devin Nunes, conducted their own review of this really important report that came out right before Trump took office the first time, this so-called intelligence community assessment overseen by John Brennan and James Clapper, who were prominent in the Russiagate fraud.
	And Nunes' committee did a review of this and they found significant failings and were very critical, including on the core allegation that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the emails to WikiLeaks.
	I know that that's in there.
	That's never been released.
	When Trump tried to release it in his first term, officials like William Barr threw a fit because they didn't want to embarrass the CIA and the FBI.
	And they didn't want to undermine this core allegation that was used not only to taint Trump's presidency by saying it was the product of Russian interference, but also that was used to drum up tensions with Russia because this led to Russian diplomats being expelled.
	This led to constant fear-mongering about Russia interfering on our pristine democracy.
	And that, just as much as the collusion aspect, was a complete scam as well.
	We know already from the available evidence that the FBI was relying on CrowdStrike, which was another Clinton campaign contractor.
	Just as the FBI was relying on Christopher Steele for its collusion investigation, it was also relying on CrowdStrike for its Russian hacking allegation.
	And as Ray McGovern has tirelessly pointed out, what did CrowdStrike He admitted, oh yeah, we have no evidence of Russian hacking.
	And that revelation was buried throughout the entirety of the Mueller probe.
	So on this core allegation of so-called Russian interference and Russian hacking, which in my opinion is just as much of a scam as the collusion aspect, we're still missing critical evidence that could be released from declassified documents.
	But so far, Trump is not moving on declassifying those as far as I know.
	All right, so what you're talking about are intelligence community documents, not FBI documents.
	Well, the FBI certainly has this information as well.
	They're sitting on stuff that I think would be interesting, but it goes beyond the FBI, because again, the CIA was involved in this.
	The CIA was involved in a domestic interference operation, framing a president, for being a Russian agent and accusing Russia baselessly of waging a sweeping interference campaign.
	And John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, was all over it.
	And so was his counterpart at the Office of Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.
	And their predecessors have continued covering up for them.
	We still have not gotten a thorough review of what they did, to the point where John Durham, who was authorized to conduct a sweeping review of all of this, he totally ignored the Russian hacking allegation because it was too big to fail.
	You just don't.
	It was like Iraq WMDs.
	It was so important to this narrative, needed to, you know, fear monger about Russia, that even John Durham, who was authorized to go there, didn't even go there.
	As I recall, Durham did little more than prosecute a low-level lawyer in the FBI.
	I think his name was Kevin Clinesmith.
	Correct. For tinkering with an affidavit that had been submitted to the FISA court.
	I mean, think about Trump.
	Trump hates You know what it's like when he hates somebody.
	Trump hates Clapper and Brennan.
	He stripped their lifetime security clearances.
	Why doesn't he just tell Gabbard and Ratcliffe, release this stuff!
	Stop sitting on it!
	The problem is John Brennan is the former director of the CIA.
	He knows a lot.
	And you don't mess with someone like that.
	You know, you just don't.
	I just think that's part of the problem here.
	These people are too big to fail.
	Even though he personally targeted and helped frame a president for treason, essentially for conspiring with Russia.
	John Brennan was all over it.
	He's still hard to touch.
	That's why, you know, when John Durham interviewed John Brennan as part of his probe, the first thing he told him was, don't worry, John Brennan, you're not under investigation here.
	We just want to talk to you.
	That's why when they interviewed Hillary Clinton, also another powerful person, they treated her with kid gloves.
	And that's why when Jim Comey Said to John Durham.
	Yeah, I'm not gonna talk to you.
	I don't want to talk to you Did John Durham go and get a subpoena as Robert Mueller did so many times for people who don't want to talk to him?
	No, because again James Comey was it was just too big to fail too big to touch and he was able to defy John Durham so for real accountability.
	Yes, it's gonna have to come from the top It's gonna have to come from Trump saying this was a scam The American people deserve to know that they were lied to about all of this, not just on collusion, but also on so-called Russian interference.
	And we can achieve that by declassifying documents that are already there.
	This House Intelligence Report from 2017 that I talked about earlier, it's sitting under lock and key at the CIA.
	That's how sensitive it is.
	There are some powerful people who do not want that to be released.
	Was this written by Devin Nunes and Kash Patel?
	Correct. Correct.
	And I've interviewed Kash Patel about this before, and what he told me was that he tried to have this released at the end of Trump's first term, and Trump was going to do it, but then top officials, including William Barr, intervened and blocked it.
	What do you expect these documents to show?
	Well, what I'm most curious about, again, for years, it's funny to think about it now because it seems so trivial, but for years this was the top story in the country.
	That Russia was waging this sweeping and systematic interference campaign in our democracy to sow division, create chaos.
	And everyone took this seriously.
	The media, rather than saying, what is your evidence for this?
	They just wrote it down as fact.
	And I know for a fact that the House Intelligence Committee under Devin Nunes looked at this and was critical and pointed out that there were some significant problems with this conclusion that again, under John Brennan's direction, the intelligence community I think?
	was a john brennan product this is not an intelligence community product in fact john brennan sidelined key intelligence officials handpicked a few people to basically say what he wanted to say which was that russia was responsible for putting trump in the white house and waged the sweeping interference campaign so i expect actually the factual basis for that conclusion that very important conclusion to be scrutinized and that's what these documents that could come out uh would do if we ever are allowed to see them
	Let me switch gears before we end.
	Here's the latest on Kursk.
	That's the area of Russia that was invaded by the Ukrainians from which they've largely been expelled.
	Cut number two.
	The government continues to support the residents of the Kursk region.
	A whole range of measures are being taken to help them, including monthly payments, as per the President's instructions.
	Today we will additionally allocate about 16 billion rubles for those who have lost their homes.
	Affected citizens will be able to use these funds to purchase or build new houses and apartments.
	We hope that these resources will help families solve this problem and, most importantly, return to normal life.
	Is that fighting still going on?
	It is still going on.
	There's still some Ukrainian forces there.
	But Russia has mostly won that battle, as was widely predicted.
	I mean, on this show, we talked about this a lot.
	Right. This incursion into Kursk was launched, I believe, in August.
	And what was happening then, that was right after the NATO summit, where, once again, Zelensky was disappointed.
	Because he was not given NATO membership.
	That was something Biden dangled in front of his face to get him to keep fighting Russia, and to get Russia to keep fighting Ukraine.
	But then when the time came for a pledge, Biden said, forget it, you're not ready.
	And so Zelensky, I think, launched this Operation Accursed to stay relevant, to change the narrative, to show something that could justify continued proxy war funding.
	And there was a lot of excitement about this at first, you know, We got the standard articles in places like the New York Times saying that this is a audacious operation, that Russia was taken by total surprise and was going to be pushed back.
	But inevitably, as was always the case throughout this war, Russia, because of its sheer size and power, was always going to push this back.
	And for Ukraine, it caused a double problem because they had to divert forces from the Donbass front, which is the most important front for Russia's perspective, to go fight in Kursk.
	And they sent forces into Kursk that had been Aaron Maté, thank you, my dear friend.
	Thanks for your time and for your analysis.
	Safe travels.
	We'll see you again next week.
	Of course, all the best.
	Coming up at three o'clock today, Phil Giraldi and at 4.15, the always worth waiting for, Max Blumenthal.

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