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May 30, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
33:42
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 30-May
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Everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, May 30th, 2025.
It's the end of the day, the end of the week, and this time the end of the month.
It's our Intelligence Community Roundtable with my dear friends and longtime collaborators, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
Guys, welcome here.
Thank you again for the double duty this week, as is always the case.
Larry, you have been writing extensively.
I wrote a great piece that captivated me last night on the potential Israeli-Hamas agreement.
Is that still in the offing?
Yeah, so far it's on again, off again, on again.
Depending upon the source, Hamas has either rejected it or Hamas is being pressured by Qatar to accept it.
Or Hamas has reservations and hasn't made any final decision.
So, you know, it is clear that the Trump administration's putting pressure on Qatar or asking Qatar to intervene with Hamas and that Qatar is doing so.
But Hamas is, you know, they're not fools.
They're taking a very careful look at this to make sure that, you know, I think one of their concerns is that, for example, during a hostage turnover, that Israel was going to be able to continue, still be able to conduct, quote, military patrols, which is just an excuse for carrying out military strikes on Palestinians.
So the hostage...
Water, food, medicine, fuel.
No.
Does it provide for the removal of IDF troops from Gaza?
Nope.
It keeps them in place and actually gives them a chance to expand.
So, Professor McGovern, why on earth would Hamas accept this?
I don't know.
It probably won't.
Jeremy Scahill, who's an excellent reporter, on the scene and in contact with really good reporters.
Trump, also on the scene, says that Hamas sees this as a trick.
And, you know, we've been through this before.
There was a nice four-stage proposal, right?
And Trump was committed to it.
And then all of a sudden, after one or two stages, it fell apart.
So I'm from Missouri.
I don't see much progress here, given what little we know about the actual proposal at this stage.
You know, Trump just had a 90-minute so-called I'm pretty sure I heard him say he expects to announce soon, as soon as today, an agreement.
Now, I don't know if this is just his way of putting pressure on Hamas.
He'd be foolish to announce Hamas.
But, you know, he works in his own way.
Do you think he'll accept this?
Personally, I don't think they will.
And it's going to make Trump angry.
But the traps that are in there, as Ray pointed out, are significant.
There are other reports that this, you know, last week, first of this week, that Whitcoff had made some promises to Hamas based upon releasing the last American-Israeli hostage.
And the promises that Whitcoff made were empty.
They were not followed through.
So, you know, Hamas is understandably leery.
Of trusting anything that's coming out of Whitcalf's mouth.
The other point of concern is anything that's overtly acceptable to Israel is probably a clue that it's bad for the Palestinians.
Now, the counterbalance to this is Israel is coming under increased international pressure and domestic pressure.
You've had Eful Olmert.
I think you've shown that on your show this week.
Come out and condemn in the strongest terms Israel's war crimes.
You've had continued criticism from another former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak.
Germany, Fred Mertz.
You know, not Fred Mertz of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo.
It is the same name, right?
Yeah, I thought about that.
Lucy!
The fact that the three of us are laughing at this really shows our age.
Yeah.
But, you know, even Mertz in the past, he's been very deferential to Israel, who was even coming out and condemning the starvation of the children.
Europe as a whole is turning on Israel.
So Israel's position diplomatically is getting weaker, not stronger.
And yet, balanced against that is even if Netanyahu goes, even if they go, 82% of the Israelis still favor the genocide against the Palestinians, so they've got a problem.
One of the retired IDF generals, I guess like American generals, they're not going to speak out on politics or on the behavior of the government until they retired, referred to the so-called Israeli-backed Ray, introduction of aid into Gaza.
This is an unbelievable phrase as controlled starvation.
Now, this is a so-called, this is not what the UN wants.
This is the Israeli and US-backed, controlled starvation.
Such little food that the recipients are fighting each other for it, and those fights are an excuse for the IDF to kill them.
Such little food.
I can tell some from a personal experience.
I fasted yesterday on 250 calories to be in solidarity with my Veterans for Peace colleagues all over the country doing this.
My son, the doctor, said, Dad, don't do it.
So I did it just for one day.
I was not capable of doing much at this time yesterday, okay?
So just think about it.
So, yeah, it's unconscionable and it's nice that other people are speaking out against it.
We have the power, that is, our president has the power to prevent it, to call Netanyahu and say, look, that's it.
And we have to create enough pressure.
And I think in various ways, people are getting mobilized to do that.
Each person has to do something.
It's no longer possible to say, well, it's not my fight.
It's a human.
It's a humanity problem.
we need to pitch in and make sure it stops.
Chris, excuse me, I said Chris, Larry, President Trump revealed that, A, do you believe he did that?
And B, would Netanyahu comply?
Well, yeah, Netanyahu will have to comply because Israel is incapable on its own of being able to carry out and sustain an attack on Iran.
And without the backing of the United States would then also face a guaranteed retaliation that would level devastation and destruction on Israel like it's never seen.
I am aware that orders, what are called execution, that orders were issued that put the U.S. military in a position to carry out a collaborative With Israel to attack Iran, those orders now have apparently been rescinded.
And Trump is ordered to stand down on those.
So, yeah, I think this is, I don't think he was just gaslighting people.
I think he was sincere that they genuinely believe they're close to a deal with Iran.
Because, look, candidly, Trump needs a victory.
After his claims that, you know, with his tariffs, oh boy, they're going to line up to kiss my ass.
Well, the only one that showed up was Starmer.
What conceivable constitutional, legal, moral, military justification would there be that Trump could give for the United States attacking Iran because they didn't agree to do something that they haven't done?
Because Iran attacked Israel in retaliation for Israel attacking Iran.
Now, like Larry, I believe that you get my drift, right?
Yes, of course we get your drift.
Larry said you ate food today because if you were fasting today, we wouldn't know what the hell you were talking about.
Somebody else said that yesterday.
Yes, your doctor's son.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry for interrupting.
You're right.
No, it's just that, you know, I was listening to a news broadcast earlier, and they were talking about Trump saying something about China, something pretty outrageous.
And the newscaster said, and get this, it was not immediately clear what President Trump was talking about.
So, caveat, folks, it is never immediately clear what Trump is talking about.
What is clear?
If he wants this Istanbul thing to happen again on Monday, on June 2nd, that's the backdrop to all this.
As long as he and Putin want to force this thing through, whether to get a negotiated settlement or just to embarrass the Ukrainians so that nobody decent will support them anymore.
And decent, I don't include those coalition of the Ukrainians.
So what we have here is a backdrop of a mutual intention by both leaders, both presidents, Putin and Trump, to create a better relationship with one another.
That's new and that's a window that could close at any time because both Putin and Trump know that neither of them is very long for this world.
Given what they've taken on with respect to Trump, and given the people that tried to shoot down Putin's helicopter with respect to Putin.
Okay, one or two more questions about Israel, and then we'll get to Putin and the helicopter and General Kellogg and all the other things that happened this week.
the the Comments that Trump made today, or your learning, Larry, of military preparedness, what does the military preparedness consist of?
There are 90,000 American troops in the Middle East.
Is he talking about a land invasion or just air for Israel?
No, it'd be support via air refueling, support via ISR platforms to go out and collect intelligence, try to pinpoint locations to be attacked, having combat search and rescue teams prepared to recover pilots who might be down.
So it would be entirely an air operation.
The likelihood of inserting ground forces into Iran, not only would it be suicidal, it would be stupid.
And it really would create more of a problem for Trump.
But again, it looks like Trump is now ordered to stand down on that.
I hope that's true.
Because the United States would be putting itself into a position that, once again, just as the Houthis defeated us in the Red Sea, Iran would be able to lay a smackdown on the United States that is never, again, never experienced in this way.
Okay.
Moving over to Russia, the attempted assassination of President Putin.
Could that have happened without the collaboration, assistance, or knowledge of CIA, MI6, and Mossad, Ray?
It's hard to say, Judge.
My guess is that it could have.
We don't know exactly how this thing was ordered.
But the chances are, I guess, that with the precision that they swarmed and surrounded his helicopter, that they must have had some sophisticated intelligence.
Whether the Ukrainians could come up with that themselves, I don't know.
But surely, in my view, there are bilateral discussions between the Russians and the Americans about how this came to pass and whether they shouldn't jointly complain to the UN or some other way.
Now, the other thing is that this was a security lapse.
I mean, they shouldn't have had the president's helicopter going so close to the Ukrainian border going down the course.
And my experience when I was over in Russia, we flew from Moscow to Sochi, and I said, "Oh, how long did that take?
Four and a half hours." I said, "Wait a second.
Sochi, Krasnodar, two hours." No, no, four and a half hours.
Why?
Because we have to go way to the east, so we're out of the line of fire from Ukrainian missiles.
Whoa!
So if that kind of security lapse is so embarrassing to the Russians, that's another good reason why they might want to tamp it down and treat it in a confidential way.
You can be sure, in my view, that they've raised it with the Americans and say, now, who enabled this?
Did you have any hand in this?
And I don't know what the answer really is.
Larry, same question to you.
Wouldn't Russian intel, what you guys have both told me is excellent, wouldn't Russian intel know?
If American intel fingerprints were on this?
Probably.
You know, look, I think it was this clearly, whether it was provided by DOD elements or CIA elements or a combination of the two, or through British intelligence, that there clearly was Western involvement.
Now, which will make the conversation with Trump and Putin on the next go-round quite interesting.
I'm sure Putin will raise the point.
He says, you know, Mr. Trump, I understand exactly how you feel in the aftermath of the attempt to kill you because I, too, have experienced that.
But Putin's got enough class and intelligence that he's not going to make it a confrontational point with Trump.
He's not going to be threatening, but he knows how to send the message that, hey, we know what's up.
Or at least to compel Trump to consider that, you know, maybe you don't have full control of your intelligence and military services.
Because, you know, clearly they've not told you about why we, the Russians, launched the attacks on Kiev and the other points in Ukraine on May 24th and 25th.
They obviously kept you in the dark, not only about the assassination attempt on me, but about the 1400.
Drone attacks into Russia.
So, you know, Putin's, he's actually playing a strong hand with Trump, and his approach in that way will not necessarily put Trump on the defensive, but it will put Trump in a position where he's going to have to acknowledge that, oh, I didn't, because as he said, I had never heard that, I didn't realize it, but he hasn't taken time to get himself informed since he was told that last Sunday.
Isn't it inconceivable, Ray, that Trump hadn't heard about it when the reporter asked him the attempt on President Putin's life?
First part of the question.
Second part of the question, Ray, as recently as just 45 minutes ago, he continues to insult President Putin.
And how does that resonate in the Kremlin?
Well, we know how that resonates in the Kremlin.
The president's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has said, This is a really complicated situation.
There's a great deal of emotion going around, and we attribute this to emotion.
And we prefer to talk, as Lavrov has said many times, directly with the president.
In other words, what I said before, it's not possible to believe what the president said.
It's very hard to interpret.
And we don't take it as gospel.
What we take as gospel is what official channels we use now between Rubio and Lavrov and the president and Putin himself.
That's what we care about.
So, you know, what I see now is there's a challenge to Ukraine.
I'm not sure that they have accepted the invitation to join talks in Istanbul on next Monday.
I'm not aware that they have.
So they have a big challenge.
Will they come?
And if they come, will they have a paper that they're supposed to exchange with the Russians?
If they do, that's something.
If they don't, then there'll be a temptation on the part of Trump to say to Putin, these people are not serious.
Go ahead.
We're out of here.
You Europeans, you think you can bail Ukraine out?
Lots of luck.
We tried.
We're not going to be doing that anymore.
Before we get to the Europeans, Larry, the Guardian of London reports that Russia has amassed 50,000 troops at the border in northeast Ukraine.
Colonel McGregor says it's closer to 100,000 troops.
What does this tell you, whether the colonel is right or the Guardian is right?
Isn't it an enormous number?
Well, it's not enormous.
It's large.
You know, the Russians are experts in masquerading their various moves.
And we don't know, is this designed to create in the Ukrainian mind the perception that, oh my God, they're going to come in there, they're going to attack through that, and we have to reinforce it.
And so in order to get Ukraine to have to redeploy already limited combat forces to an area to prevent a possibility.
Or if they've actually been able to assemble 100,000, maybe they're absolutely going to come in from that direction.
The reality on the ground right now, particularly over the last three weeks, and especially in the aftermath of the May 9 celebration and commemoration of Victory Day, Russia's accelerated its offensive operations all along the line of contact.
There is not a single piece of territory that Ukraine has taken and held in that period, whereas there's a growing long list of village after village, town after town, that Russia is taking.
So this is, you know, some suggest that, oh, well, we've got to wait for the Russian offensive.
I would argue the Russian offensive actually started end of March after Russia secured Kursk.
But it's a gradual escalation, but they're definitely coming in a way with a level of force that will break the Ukrainian line.
Do we understand how close to the end the Ukrainian military is, Ray?
Well, you know, I don't.
There are a lot of military specialists that say, ah, just a month, but we've heard that before.
The important thing here is the buffer zone, okay?
Now, Putin himself has said, you know, we're going to have to create a buffer zone.
Where would that be?
Sumy, up there where the Ukrainians attacked Kursk, okay, in August of last year.
That's not going to happen again.
We're going to have a buffer zone.
How long would the buffer zone be?
Well, Medvedev, the former president, said, well, it may have to be almost all of Ukraine.
And he shows a map, and there's a little sliver of Ukraine in the West.
That would be Ukraine.
Well, the saving grace is that Putin is too smart for that.
He doesn't want to have another Vietnam for him, okay?
He doesn't want to take most of Ukraine.
So he's going to take a buffer zone, and that's what the 100,000 or 50,000 troops are doing up there on the border.
They're going to go into Sumy.
They're going to take it, okay?
And then it's going to be a question of geography.
And Lavrov himself, three.
Almost three years ago said, look, these weaponry and stuff, that has to do with geography.
We're going to go as far west as we have to to make sure we're out of range of the sophisticated weaponry that is being given for Ukraine.
I want to play a clip for both of you.
We mentioned Chancellor Mertz a little while ago with respect to his criticisms of Prime Minister Netanyahu, but here's the other side of him talking about missiles going to Ukraine.
Chris, cut number seven.
There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine, neither from the British nor the French, nor from us, nor from the Americans.
This means that Ukraine can now also defend itself, including, for example, by taking actions such as attacking military positions located within Russia, or by targeting other strategic sites as necessary.
Until recently it was not able to do that.
Until recently, with very few exceptions, it also did not do that.
Now it can.
In jargon, we call this long-range fire, meaning equipping Ukraine with weapons that can attack military targets in the rear.
And this is the decisive, this is the crucial qualitative difference in Ukraine's conduct of the war.
Russia attacks civilian targets completely ruthlessly, bombing cities, kindergartens, hospitals, and nursing homes.
Ukraine does not do that.
And we place great importance on ensuring that it stays that way.
But a country that can only confront an aggressor on its own territory is not defending itself adequately.
So and this defense of Ukraine is now also taking place against military infrastructure on Russian territory.
So Larry, put aside for the moment the inaccuracies in there about how Ukraine is fighting and how Russia is fighting.
How dangerous is this talk?
About long-range fire.
Well, the long-range fire that they're talking about would be the Taurus missile.
So its maximum range is 300 miles, you know, 500 kilometers.
So if Ukraine was able to launch at Moscow and they took it right up to Kharkiv, which sits there right on the border of Russia, it still would fall 100 miles shy.
And this goes back to why Putin is pushing the buffer zone back.
They'll reach a point where that 300-mile range of the Taurus, even if that's ever fired, will be confined to Ukrainian territory or territory that's not in the existing borders of Russia.
The danger of the Taurus is not its distance, not its range, but it does have the potential that it could be loaded with a nuclear Ray,
if Ukraine receives and fires these things into Russia, Doesn't that expose Germany, German land, German buildings, German military to legitimate, lawful retaliation by the Russians?
It does, Judge.
Whether that would happen would depend on whether it was more than a pinprick.
We have a very cautious leader in Russia.
He's not going to be provoked by Germans that Russians have a long history with, let's face it.
The propaganda in Russia now is really aimed right at this Merz fellow and the business with respect to the Tauvos.
Now, Nivenzia at 10 o 'clock this morning at the UN Security Council addressed this directly.
He says, "Look, this is not going to be tolerated." And we will have all options to respond to this.
Is there no common sense left with the people in Berlin?
After the German militarism, all during history, are we to expect still more of it?
My bottom line is, look, Nabanzia also said, look, if these Telvus missiles are screwed together with screwdrivers in Ukraine, They're still German, and there will be retaliation.
I think that's the case.
The big thing that Nebenziger says is, we're not going to tolerate another Minsk.
So when we get to the table again, no more mints, no more ceasefires without a basic understanding of what our interests are.
Larry, Scott Ritter and Colonel McGregor both say that Mertz is the most dangerous person.
Is there a basis for that conclusion?
Well, just by his reckless statements of light, but again, you've got to recognize whose interests he's serving.
He's not serving the interests of the German people.
He's serving the interests of BlackRock.
BlackRock has an enormous financial investment in Ukraine, and unfortunately for BlackRock, So they're looking at exposure in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
So Mertz is under some, I think he's under some significant pressure from BlackRock to do something.
But, you know, he can, his mouth already got him into trouble.
And Pistorius, as Ray noted earlier, has walked it back.
But in the event that Mert somehow gets to make the decision and tries to send forward a Taurus missile, Berlin, Dusseldorf, you know, I guess Dusseldorf is where the Taurus is manufactured at the Rheinmetall factory.
They get to eat a Reschnick or two.
Wow.
Well, they wouldn't be able to deal with that.
There's nothing that can take that down or defend against it.
Is there, Larry?
No, no.
I mean, at this point, no technology has been developed by the West to defeat it.
Yeah, and they're in serial production now.
Another thing about Merz, people should know, you know, I'm not a devotee of James Clapper's theories about genetics.
For example, when he said the Russians are almost genetically inclined to be Violent and so forth, blah, blah, blah.
But, you know, this mouse has a lot of genes from Nazis on his father's side, on his grandfather's side.
I mean, he's been around, you know, he was cultivated in this Nazi era.
And so, you know, that may be playing some kind of a role in here.
I mean, if they're used to all this stuff, you think of Germany, Hugo Hallis, okay?
And that the U.S. will protect Germany no matter what, which is passé, but he may not realize that.
So it's a problem.
He's a real problem.
And I would say that if he follows through on some of this behavior, that Scott and Colonel McGregor are probably right in saying that he'd be the worst, you know, Adolf Mao since the first Adolf.
Actually, Judge, you're probably more dangerous than Mertz.
Richard Macron, at least if she's within striking distance of you.
I forgot to mention earlier.
Sorry.
That's all right.
I'm supposed to say this.
The Mertz piece was an AI translation, and if you notice, AI is so good today, they actually manipulate the lips, so it looks like he's speaking, and they purport to claim this is what he would sound like if he spoke English, or when he obviously does speak English.
When he speaks in English.
It's extremely dangerous under Article 5 of NATO.
If he strikes Russia and Russia strikes Berlin, what are we going to do?
Activate our troops to invade Russia?
Strike Russia back?
No.
There's got to be a vote.
In fact, NATO's got to be unanimous on that.
Trump would tell them to go fly a kite.
It's their own doing.
Yeah.
He would, and he needs to make that clear to them now.
And the Russians, you know, there were that intercepted communication about two years ago between the head of the German Luftwaffe and several of his senior generals, and they were saying, "Oh my God, the Taurus." You know, we would need to be on the ground to equip that thing.
And the Ukrainians are good at the screwdrivers, but we have to do the more technical work.
So it wouldn't work without us.
So there's a proof, abundant, that it would take German people on the ground in Ukraine.
So this is serious stuff.
I'm glad that Mautz has backed off a little bit.
I hope that the SPD can put some kind of reins on this guy because he's a dangerous person.
Gentlemen, thank you very much.
Great conversation.
To me, it went by like that.
Have a great weekend.
We'll see you both at your usual times and places on Monday morning.
We'll be there.
Thanks.
Deeply, deeply appreciated.
Boy, do I truly deeply appreciate the roundtable because Larry and Ray devote so much time and share so much expertise.
On Monday, Alistair Crook at 8 in the morning as usual.
Ray McGovern at 10 in the morning as usual.
Larry Johnson at 11.30 in the afternoon as usual.
And one of our other regular guests sometime later on in the afternoon as well.
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