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June 4, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
32:16
Scott Ritter : Is the US at War With Russia?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, June 5, 2025.
Scott Ritter will be here in just a moment on Is the United States Openly at War with Russia?
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Scott Ritter, a pleasure, my dear friend.
No matter what we're talking about, thank you very much for your time.
So in your view and from your sources and analysis, who or what was behind the drone attacks that were visited upon Russia and is President Archer?
This is a British operation, British design that conforms with the British plan of keeping Ukraine in the fight and taking the fight to Russia.
Remember, this was a plan that is supposedly a year and a half in the making.
So politically, we go back to the time of Joe Biden.
At that time, the United States was actively Now, a base is a CIA center of operations focused on a particular activity.
So you could have a CIA base that trains people in unconventional warfare, a CIA base that does, you know, A CIA base does drone warfare.
It does explosives, agent handling, the whole thing.
But they had 20 bases, which means they're pretty much covering the gamut.
This is the CIA.
During the Vietnam War, we had 16 bases.
CIA at 20 in Ukraine.
And so this British planning began when the CIA was very active in Ukraine, working for a commander-in-chief who had committed to the strategic defeat of Russia You don't carry out an operation of this complexity inside Russia unless you have long-term covert assets.
The British and the Americans both recruited significant numbers of people back in the 1990s during the downfall of the Soviet Union, the decade of chaos.
Russia hasn't cleaned them all out.
They're everywhere.
And the British provided some of these resources to enable the renting of a warehouse, getting trucks.
Configuring the trucks to specific technical specifications, bringing in the drones, providing explosives.
Where do you get the explosives?
You have to have an explosive cache someplace.
This was a British operation.
They planned it.
They executed it.
The Ukrainians were simply the, you know, provided the manpower.
The CIA knew about this.
Whether or not the CIA played an active role in this, there are some legal constraints that the CIA can't do certain things without executive permission, and they would have to get new executive permission, new finding or something by Trump.
And I don't believe Trump actually gave it to him, but the CIA was aware of it, and they didn't communicate it up the chain.
They may have provided some sort of passive assistance in this, but this was an operation carried out, and this is the part that needs to scare everybody.
A nuclear power.
Great Britain empowered a non-nuclear state, Ukraine, to launch a preemptive strike using conventional weapons against Russia's strategic nuclear deterrence.
That violates at least two clauses of Russia's nuclear doctrine.
When you violate the nuclear doctrine on the conditions under which Russia will use nuclear weapons, that means that you are Creating the conditions for a nuclear war.
Now, the British have taken the lead in saying that Russia is bluffing.
And one of the challenges that confronts Vladimir Putin today is if he doesn't respond decisively, then you sort of hardwire in the notion that Russia is bluffing.
Now, Trump and the Russians have released indications of what they talked about for an hour and 15 minutes, I guess, earlier this week.
The Ukrainians have put out their version of what they understand.
In their version, Trump asked Putin not to use tactical nuclear weapons in response, and Putin said he can't guarantee that outcome.
I don't believe that Russia will use nuclear weapons, but the fact is Putin has to come up with, this is why this is taking so long, because the Russians have to come up with a retaliation that resets their doctrine.
They have to put the British on notice that the next time you do this, it's automatic.
London disappears.
What they're going to do has to be so severe, the punishment delivered to the Ukrainians so outrageous.
And the rumor is now that they are even talking about that the guarantees they gave the United States, Great Britain, that Zelensky and the inner circle would be protected are gone.
Putin just called Zelensky a terrorist.
He called it a terrorist government.
And there's only one way you deal with terrorists in a terrorist government.
Of course, you're Donald Trump and you shake hands with him and do business with him.
But the traditional way of dealing with Putin is to kill them.
And I believe that's exactly what Putin is going to be doing in the coming days or weeks.
They're going to initiate a week-long campaign that's designed to take out the leadership of Ukraine and the strategic infrastructure of Ukraine, basically to turn Ukraine into the Stone Age without using nuclear weapons, but using weapon systems like Oreshnik that send a signal to Great Britain, NATO, and the United States that the next time Russia uses the strategic nuclear forces, it won't be with conventional warheads.
That's possible, but what politician would say, hey, let's risk general thermonuclear warfare that kills us all to get rid of Zelensky, or kill him.
If you're going to kill Zelensky, just kill him.
There's a million ways to make him die, make his plane crash.
Is it, I shouldn't say conceivable, is it feasible to understand?
Is it rational?
That John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, and Tulsi Gabbard, the head of, director of national intelligence, did not know about this?
That rogue CIA agents participated in it or knew about it and kept it from going up the chain of command?
Well, let's put it this way.
First of all, Tulsi Gabbard is the director of national intelligence.
She's not the director of the CIA.
The CIA is not responsive to her.
She manages 17 intelligence agencies and she briefs the president.
Tulsa Gabbard isn't in the CIA chain of command.
She can't issue an order and make CIA do things.
Ratcliffe is.
He's the director of the CIA.
But what we know, for instance, Gina Haspel was a former director of the CIA.
Hard-nosed woman.
I mean, she was London's station chief.
That's one of the big ones.
If you got that on your resume, you're going up the chain of command.
She went all the way up to director.
Nicknamed Bloody Gina.
Bloody Gina because, well, gosh, she ran a base.
Remember, we're talking about those bases?
Yeah, one of those bases she ran was a torture place.
But anyway, back to what the CIA should have known and should have told the president.
Well, right, but what I'm trying to say is Gina Haspel's no pushover.
She couldn't control Russia House.
She tried to.
She came in and said, they're lying to us.
They're running operations that we...
It's out of control.
She couldn't control Russia House.
What do you mean by Russia House?
Russia House is the part of the CIA Director of Operations that runs Moscow Station and runs all the covert operations against Russia.
Russia House is the center of power when it comes to intelligence operations.
Back during the Cold War, Russia House was it.
It was the center of the universe.
Moscow Station was the ultimate place you wanted to be.
I had some limited interaction with them when I was a weapons director.
And they don't answer the CIA command?
They consider their operations to be so sensitive and so important to national security that they keep the people who know about them limited, and sometimes they just don't tell people about it.
Vladimir Putin certainly knows this.
He knows about Russia, House.
He knows how it works.
Does he believe, in your opinion, Donald Trump, when Trump says the U.S. didn't know about what happened to your country last weekend?
I believe that that was an honest statement.
Well, first of all, it's not that the U.S. didn't know.
Trump said, I didn't know.
He said Trump didn't know.
He didn't say, the question wasn't, did the United States know?
The question wasn't, did John Ratcliffe know?
If the United States knew and Trump didn't, somebody between the people who knew and Trump needs to be fired.
Let me put it this way.
It's 100% certainty that the CIA knew about this operation at inception and had been tracking this operation through implementation.
100% certainty that Russia House knew about this.
100%.
And they did not report it up to chain of command because they did not want it to.
They didn't want it to be stopped.
They wanted this to happen.
So the CIA, while they may not have been the trigger pullers, were definitely people watching what was happening and cheering them on, and they didn't report it up the chain of command knowing that had they done so under this administration, the plug would have been pulled.
So they are complicit in this.
Well, they absolutely are.
They're running a rogue foreign policy.
They're facilitating a rogue foreign policy which could result in the deaths of millions of innocents.
But let's even broaden this more.
Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, two senators who have been actively conspiring against Donald Trump, flew to Kiev in the lead-up to this.
They had intimate interactions with the Ukrainian government solely to create the scenario where they had a sanctions package waiting for the Russians.
To fumble at Istanbul.
They knew in advance that something was going to happen to the Russians that would cause the Russians either not to come to Istanbul or to carry out a provocation that the Ukrainians could use not to go.
And then they would come in with the sanctions and shove it down Trump's throat.
Now, this is sedition, Judge.
Sedition.
This is treasonous behavior.
This is a violation of the Logan Act.
Lindsey Graham has no authority whatsoever to negotiate on behalf of the United States a national security and foreign policy issue.
He is limited in scope and scale to advice and consent to the President of the United States, but not to negotiate on behalf of the United States.
In a manner which contradicts the policy direction taken by the president.
Lindsey Graham is a traitor to the American people.
Oh, but Lindsey Graham is the president's golfing buddy who gets to whisper into his ear all the time.
But now it comes down to this.
And this is the tough question that has to be trumped.
Hey, the ear whisperer, the golfer, the perfume princess who you seem to be so close to, did he tell you about this, Mr. Trump?
Did your best friend whisper in your ear and say, we're going to hurt Putin?
Is there any question in your mind that Graham and Senators Graham and Blumenthal knew about this?
They may not have known about drones leaving a truck.
That's a very sensitive technical thing.
They knew that something was in the works that was going to keep the Russians out.
The Ukrainians said, we got a plan to keep the Russians out of Istanbul so that you can trigger your sanctions.
Because Trump's whole thing was, if the Russians don't want to participate in this, then I won't be able to hold back the Senate.
And so the Senate went in there, coordinated with the Ukrainians, who said, we got this, boss.
We got this one.
So they conspired against the policy direction of President Trump.
That's sedition.
Is it incompetence on the part of Ratcliffe that people under him participated in this and he didn't know about it?
He must understand Russia House and he must know how to deal with them.
Otherwise, there is a branch of the CIA, which is truly deep state, which truly operates on its own, which truly takes taxpayer funds and engages in all kinds of behavior, lethal and surveillance, without the knowledge and consent of the president or their lawful superiors.
The problem is, Judge, there's a founding document dated back to 1947, NSC 10-2, which creates the Special Activities Department within the CIA, and its tasks are carrying out covert operations, deniable operations, meaning that they say right in the legislation that the CIA must construct these operations so that if they are uncovered, they are deniable to the United States.
This means that the CIA, by its very nature, goes so deep and restricts information flows so much that they can, from the standpoint of a covert operator, CI directors come and go.
Most CI directors are political in nature.
They're not operators.
And so now I'm running this operation that's been going on for 10 years, and I got a CIA director there, and I look at him and say, I don't agree with his politics.
I don't agree with the president's politics.
We're going to continue to do this operation.
We're not telling anybody about anything.
And they've been doing that since they were founded.
The CIA is the deep state.
The only way you handle Russia, House, is to eliminate the CIA in totality and, frankly speaking, arrest most of the case officers out there because they're not good Americans.
These are liars, cheaters.
I was recruited by...
And I remember one of my final interviews with the recruiter was a veteran guy, Vietnam, doing Honduras, door kicker out of Honduras, covert ops during the Gulf War.
And we were talking, he said, we really want you.
We really like you.
But he said, the problem is, you can't lie.
And he said, if you're going to work for us, you've got to lie about everything.
You've got to lie to your wife.
You've got to lie to your friends.
You've got to lie to your boss.
You've got to learn to cheat the polygraph because you can't tell the polygraph half the stuff you're doing because you're going to go out there and you're going to be living a lie.
And he said, you're too honest.
Thank you for applying, but we can't take you.
The CIA is full of liars.
These are cheaters.
These are alcoholics.
These are drug users.
They're gangsters.
Make sure we deal with these people properly or else they'll go out and do horrible things.
When you said earlier that this may have been perpetrated in order to cause Russia to abandon any negotiation posture, the Russian Foreign Ministry Special Envoy, Mr. Maroshnik, said the same thing yesterday.
Chris, cut number four.
This large-scale incident has Ukrainian roots.
Terrorist methods are internationally prohibited, but they're used at state level by Ukraine.
Kiev is fundamentally not satisfied with the dialogue being organized.
Therefore, immediately on the eve of the next round of negotiations, a whole series of terrorist acts was committed, which emphatically sought to force Russia to abandon negotiations.
But we do not consider it possible for us to take this kind of action, because negotiations and military activities will be separated.
And as for terrorist actions, I think that their organizers will receive appropriate responses.
There will definitely be no forgiveness or backing down in this sense.
But their mission of forcing Russia to abandon negotiations by heavy pressure simply did not work out.
Professor Doctorow reports that most Russian ambassadors have been recalled to Moscow.
That would lead me to believe that the response is going to be humongous if they want their ambassadors personally warned about it by Sergei Lavrov in the Russian foreign ministry.
My understanding is that this is a week-long operation, a campaign.
That once it starts, doesn't finish until all the objectives are met.
And the objectives are to turn out the lights in Ukraine, to destroy all critical infrastructure, and to eliminate the Zelensky government.
I think one of the things they haven't decided upon yet is whether they eliminate the parliament.
One of the things that the Russians have been saying is that Zelensky is an illegitimate president and they won't deal with him and that it's up to the speaker of the parliament to step up and take charge.
They could deal with that person because constitutionally that's the person who should be in charge of Ukraine today.
But because they are now labeling the parliament and many parliamentarians as terrorists, this is a very important word.
This is why In America, we throw that word around a lot and people just start to roll.
But when the Russians use this word, there is gravitas behind this.
There is meaning.
To the Russians, words matter.
If you are labeled a terrorist, you're going to die.
Simply put, you're going to die.
And they have just sentenced Zelensky to death on international TV.
That's the reality.
What happens to the parliament, I don't know.
The Russians, I believe, are going to carry out a week-long operation that is going to be beyond anything you've ever seen, and it will put the world on notice that you don't get to hit Russian strategic...
You wrote a book called Highway to Hell, which warns...
Has this behavior, perpetrated by MI6 and Ukrainian intel, condoned by the CIA but not reported, in your view, to their superiors, brought us closer to nuclear Armageddon?
100%.
This is actually forecast in the book.
I mean, you know, every author wants to say, buy my book.
It's an essential book.
You know, it's up to you to buy it, whether you want to or not.
I'm here to tell you right now that we are on the cusp of thermonuclear war.
When you have pro-Trump generals who go on Fox News and spout Keith Kellogg nonsense about Ukraine and Russia, suddenly coming on Fox News wide-eyed going, guys, this is really close to nuclear war.
They're waking up.
They understand what happened.
What happened is not a joke.
How would we respond?
If the Mexican cartel sent trucks loaded with drones to Whitman Air Force Base and struck our B-2 bomber force up to Minot, North Dakota, struck our B-52s, and Barksdale hit our B-52s, the air element of the nuclear triad, our strategic nuclear force, and they hit them with the idea of taking them out, and then we find out that the Chinese and the North Koreans supported that.
Do you think we'd sit here and go, Gosh, no, we take them off the face of the earth because it is existential in nature.
That's what happened, ladies and gentlemen.
The Ukrainians went after Russia's strategic nuclear deterrence, backed by a nuclear power, Great Britain, and facilitated by another nuclear power, the United States.
And the Russians have every right to say that that is a preemptive strike, the beginning of a series of actions that could lead to the United States and Great Britain launching a preemptive strike against Russia.
That's why it's dangerous, because how do you preempt preemption?
With preemption, meaning you just start firing your own stuff.
Guys, this is so dangerous.
I know people are like, Scott, you keep crying wolf, because it's a dangerous time we live in, guys.
We get lucky.
Just because we get lucky doesn't mean the threat didn't exist.
This is as real as it gets.
Look at the photograph of the...
Now close your eyes and imagine they're B-2 bombers at Whitman Air Force Base.
What the hell would you think you're going to do?
And what would you want the president to do?
And then be grateful that there's a guy named Vladimir Putin sitting in the Kremlin who isn't a vindictive, revengeful kind of guy who understands the consequences of his actions.
But be prepared, because he will have to send a response that reestablishes Russia's red lines in their nuclear doctrine as a reality, not something that can be violated at will by a nation like Ukraine, on behalf of the British.
Here's Sergei Rybakov, the Deputy Foreign Minister.
Being asked if a nuclear option is on the table, Scott, cut number five.
We demand that both London and Washington react in a manner that will stop this cycle of escalation.
So how will Russia respond?
Are all options on the table or can you rule out a nuclear response?
This is a question to our military people and our Supreme Commander.
I am not in a position to speculate.
All options are on the table.
That's right.
Options are on the table.
That's right.
What is it about Vladimir Putin that Donald Trump and the American government seem not to understand or appreciate?
I actually think it's the other way around.
I think that Donald Trump, again, you know, But when Trump says, I spoke with Putin, and he spoke of a very strong response, and then Trump didn't say what he normally says.
If he does that, I'll threaten sanction.
Trump was like...
And he just left that there.
That means he respects Putin.
He understands Putin.
He doesn't take Putin lightly, especially now, because I do believe that Trump was briefed by his people and Trump had a wake-up call.
I hope it's a similar wake-up call.
If you remember when Ronald Reagan got shot, he was in the hospital bed and he started reflecting.
Then ABC News came out with the program the day after.
And he watched that program because he was sort of stuck in a hospital bed.
And he turns to his advisors and said, is that real?
Is that going to be?
He said, boss, it's going to be so much worse than that.
And he had an epiphany.
He went, we got to stop this.
And that's what turned Donald Trump around.
We began the process of nuclear disarmament.
I'm hoping that Donald Trump got a briefing from Tulsi Gabbard that said, hey, boss, they put their nuclear forces on alert and they're going to use them.
We came very close.
And Trump's like, how did this happen?
We didn't order this.
Boss, it's out of control.
The Brits are out of control.
The Ukrainians are out of control.
We may have elements here out of control.
I think that reading into Trump's statement there, he understands this is a very, very, very dangerous situation.
Can MI6 operate on its own?
Or would Starmer have authorized this?
Or Prime Minister Starmer's predecessor, Rishi Sunak?
Look, there's a video out of Starmer hitting a heavy bag.
I don't know if you've seen it.
No.
Is he a boxer?
No, no.
He's the opposite of a boxer.
He's the most effeminate punching imaginable.
And the reason why I bring that up is not just to mock him, because I am mocking him, but to point out that Starmer's not a man.
And what I mean by a man is that not somebody who, you know, there are people that can walk into a room, stare the room down, and say, if you cross me, I will have you executed in public, drawn and quartered, and that will be the end of you.
So when I ask you the following question, you better give me the honest answer or suffer the consequences.
And they go, well, he means it.
I'm going to answer it quick.
Or there's people walking in the room that, you know, we're going to be tough.
We're going to be strong.
And you're going, no, you're not.
And you just say, I don't respond.
MI6 is a rogue operation.
Their agents are out there doing things that aren't being reported back.
They get a green light from one prime minister.
They carry over the next prime minister.
They should be reported back to them, but there's no follow-through.
And so the MI6 is doing things right now that are being directed more out of the Ministry of Defense.
You know, side of the house, maybe some British deep state elements that, you know, that advise prime ministers.
But have you ever seen that show, Minister, Minister?
It's a comedy about the British, you know, yes, prime minister.
Yes, minister.
Yes, minister.
And how they literally, the minister comes in and the state doesn't want to give him anything.
It's like, yeah, you go off and play golf and drink tea and we'll do the business of government because ministers come and go.
And the British have a deep state, the civil service in there that...
A strong leader calls them in and tells them the truth.
I will kill you.
I will eviscerate you.
I will terminate you if you lie to me, and I'm going to ask you some very tough questions.
But Starmer's not that leader, and I think that you have this operation going on that's just a rogue operation by a rogue agency, but it's a British agency.
What we need to do as Americans is put the British on notice.
That if they don't bring their mad dogs under control, then we will terminate our relationship with them because what they did is put the American people's lives at risk.
Again, I want to tell your audience, you almost died two weeks ago and earlier this week because Russia had every right when the British helped the Ukrainians launch a drone attack to assassinate Vladimir Putin.
Had they succeeded, Russia would have used nuclear weapons.
And now, by launching this attack against Russia's strategic nuclear deterrence, Russia has every right to use nuclear weapons.
Fortunately, the restraint is there.
But the British think the Russians are bluffing.
The British think the Russians are bluffing.
I will tell you, Ukraine, but they will hit Washington, D.C. And that's why Biden backed down.
The Russians aren't bluffing.
There's no bluff in the Russians.
And so the British think they are bluffing.
And we're the ones who get caught up in this.
Our very lives depend now on mad dogs and Englishmen.
I want to play a clip of an American mad dog, Steve Bannon, who agrees 100% with what you've been saying, particularly about the roles of Zelensky and Senator Graham.
Chris, cut number eight.
We can't have people over there telling the Ukrainians that we're going to back.
What we're trying to do is calm this down.
What President Trump is trying to say is, look, we can't have Lindsey Graham, and particularly Zelensky, leading us into a third world war with a deep strike into Russia.
And Putin came back today and said, hey, we're going to get to the bottom of this, and we're going to see who's accountable in Ukraine and beyond.
And that was a message to the United States.
What he's doing over there right now is stirring it up.
He's giving Ukrainians false hope that we're there to support them on engaging Russia in a kinetic conflict, and we are not.
Two things ought to happen: either cancel his passport and don't land back in the country, or put him in jail if he comes back.
And people better wake up to the fact that we're getting sucked into this war.
If the intelligence community actually did this, this is an act of war against Russia.
Do the American people vote to go to war with the Russian people?
That was my friend Chris Cuomo.
We cut out the questions because we just wanted you to hear Bannon's answers on the NewsNation network.
But Steve makes some very good points.
100%.
I don't normally agree with everything Steve Bannon says.
Same here.
And when Chris presented it to me, he said, Judge, before you say no, please take a look at what he says.
It's dynamite.
No, I mean, on this, he's 100% correct.
100% correct.
And just because, you know, in the end, he said, did the American people vote to war against the Russian people?
Judges, you know, on June 18th, we're going to hold a citizen summit where we're going to have a dialogue between the Russian people and the American people in Kingston, New York.
This is so important because the American people didn't vote to go to war against the Russian people.
And maybe it's time the American people start engaging the Russian people on a personal basis, an individual basis, to realize that they don't represent a threat against us and we don't represent a threat against them.
We have to do something to change the dynamic here in the United States so that Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal don't feel empowered to run off and carry out acts of sedition against a president who seems to be clueless when it comes to what's going on around him.
Scott Ritter, you're on fire, my dear friend.
I mention again your book Highway to Hell for anybody that wants to OD on Scott Ritter.
I read the book and I wrote a blurb on it and I meant sincerely what I wrote.
But Scott, thank you very much for your personal integrity and personal courage.
And just outright knowledge of all this and your presentation to us today.
Over the top, my friend.
Thank you so much.
We look forward to seeing you next week.
Thanks for having me.
Everybody's writing.
Ritter's on fire.
Ritter's on fire.
Yes, Ritter's on fire.
Thank you, Scott.
All the best.
And coming up, talking about fire at 2 o 'clock this afternoon, if we can wake him up, Max Blumenthal.
Only kidding.
At 3 o 'clock, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At 4 o 'clock, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
At 4.30, I'm not sure where he is on the planet, Pepe Escobar.
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