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July 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:54
INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 11-July-25
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, July 11th, 2025.
It's the end of the week, the end of the day.
It's our favorite time, our intelligence community roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
Ray has been traveling in Europe and is kind enough to break away from his lecture schedule to join us, guys.
It's always a pleasure.
Thank you for the double duty.
Thank you for the information you provide me during the week.
And thank you for letting me pick your brains now.
Larry, to you first.
Why do you think Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has visited the White House and Capitol Hill three times in the past six months during the presidency of Donald Trump?
Well, this time is to lock down more aid because they were devastated by what Iran did to them over the course of those 12 days.
That's number one.
Number two, to try to see, you know, take the temperature of Trump face to face and see if he can get him convinced to make another go at Iran.
I don't think they're finished at all.
Trump, you know, Trump for his part, you know, maybe one explanation for why he's going so hard after the judges in Israel who are hearing the case involving Netanyahu's corruption is that if, you know,
if he can get get Netanyahu off, so to speak, and then get Netanyahu convinced to move forward with the ceasefire, because Trump is, you know, he's keen, man.
He wants that Nobel Prize, so he's going to do anything he can.
And so maybe to that extent, there's some additional negotiation.
But listening to Netanyahu at the end of the trip, I think Netanyahu got everything he wanted out of Trump.
Ray, I think Larry's correct.
Netanyahu was as tenacious as ever and I think as manipulative as ever.
What is your take as to how to justify three meetings?
It's actually more than three meetings.
It's three trips.
This trip alone had three meetings with Trump, only two of which were partially on television.
I think, Judge, it has to do with internal politics in Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem.
Netanyahu needs every chance to show that Trump is backing him 100%.
And these trips help that to the degree that Trump.
sort of ratifies that.
And this is, let's face it, this is Netanyahu's strongest hand.
He has the backing of the President of the United States.
And I think that was mostly where he came.
The serving of the, or giving him the copy of the Nobel Prize, well, my God, one war criminal giving a Nobel Prize nomination to another one.
I mean, that was a little bit too much to take.
But we have to laugh these things off, otherwise we'd die crying.
Right.
Larry, is there any analysis you can share about the timing of Netanyahu's trip and the decision of the Justice Department, both occurred on the same day to do a 180 on the Epstein files.
The Justice Department, the Attorney General said they were on her desk.
While Netanyahu's here, maybe I'm reading more in this than there is.
I don't know.
That's why I want your thoughts.
She and Cash Patel and Dan Bonchino announced.
There's no enemies.
There's no client list.
We never had one.
There's nothing to reveal.
You mean you don't believe in coincidence?
God Almighty.
You know, look, the client list.
does exist.
It's been admitted to by others.
Ryan Dawson has compiled it not by just sitting down and coming up with names out of his own mind, but he actually read through all the court transcripts, all the witness statements, all the charging documents, and he was able to come up with a list of 78 people that include folks like Jamie Diamond,
Robert Kraft.
Now, you published that list on your website, did you?
Yeah, yeah, Sonar 21.
Now, note, there are billionaires on that list.
If Ryan was putting their names out and saying, hey, they're on the Epstein list and, you know, he'd be.
sued if it was false.
So that's why he hasn't been sued by one of them.
That tells you a lot right there.
I also learned this week from my business partner who has brought a tax case against the Clinton Foundation that he received from one of the Scandinavian countries a flight manifest from Mr. Epstein.
And on that plane, Bill Gates, Bill Clinton and James Comey.
They flew from the island up into one of the Scandininavian countries.
Now, what were they doing?
I don't know.
Maybe attending a chess tournament, who knows.
But the point is that this administration, they're not protecting Donald Trump because I tell you, if Trump was on that list, do you think the Biden crew would have let that, you know, kept and protected that?
Oh, absolutely not.
They would have destroyed him with it.
But two things are going on.
One, protecting this as an Israeli intelligence asset.
And number two, there are friends of Donald Trump on that list.
He may not have even paid attention to it before, but once he saw his friends on that list, he's I'm not gonna let him be ratted out.
But I think it had more to do with as a Mossad asset with some CIA involvement, very likely.
Ray, was Epstein a Mossad asset and would the Mossad use sexual blackmail to control public policy of a country?
Yes, and certainly yes.
They've done it in the past.
The Nunu was captured or sort of a honeypot sort of operation, the fellow who revealed with photos what the Israelielis were doing with respect to working on an atomic bomb.
So yeah, that's part of the trade craft.
I'm not sure.
I would have to say that not only Israelis do this sort of thing, but this is done by virtually all intelligence services.
Well, do you know the extent of from your friends in intelligence Epstein's activities with Mossad?
Was he an agent?
Was he an asset?
Was he paid?
Did they have damaging information about him to the point where he was forced to work for them?
Well, obviously.
someone paid him big bucks.
Right.
Now, I don't know who exactly that was, but if you put in perspective all the people that profited from his operations, the Israelis in the first instance, and all those fellows that had this great time on that island in the second one,
they never thought that they would be blackmailable.
That's really stupid.
Why else would they be given these favors?
But, you know, someone paid and someone got them killed.
I mean, it's pretty clear, huh?
It's pretty clear.
Someone got them killed in that prison.
So will this come out?
Well, hopefully it will.
Maybe Cash Patel is going to pursue this like a bulldog, but maybe not.
We'll just have to see.
It doesn't seem like it.
Dr. Michael Bodden, who's the world's foremost pathologist and a friend of mine from testifying before me and used by the government over and over again.
has testified under oath that there's no way under the laws of physics that Epstein could have broken his own neck in the manner in which it was broken.
Larry, will Israel ever be at peace with its neighbors until they're all reduced unless they're all reduced to the status of Libya or Syria.
No, it's impossible because the entire premise of Zionism, you know, which emerged in the late 19th century, is really, it wasn't a religious.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, Larry.
Ted Cruz told Tucker Carlson that the references to Israel in the Old Testament were to the country governed by Benjamin Netanyahu today.
I had to get that in there.
I know you know this.
Go ahead.
Yeah, he forgot to understand.
that that first promise was to Abraham and to all nations.
And gee, if that promise is to Abraham, that means the Arabs, the Muslims as well, are blessed.
Correct.
Correct.
Islam is an Abrahamic religion.
So he just doesn't know his Bible very well.
But that's what's the absurdity of all of this, that this political movement that came out of basically Europe.
and with Theodore Herschel as the big advocate, who was not a religious, you know, he wasn't a religious Jew.
They premise this entire thing that God gave this land to us, but we don't believe in God.
I'm going, yeah, how does that work?
That's like being a secular Christian, you know?
No.
So there's never going to be peace there and they're never going to be self sufficient.
They are counting on Donald Trump and subsequent Donald Trump's to continue to provide them with aid at the expense of the American government.
Did you know that Netanyahu flew home with two jets that Trump gave him from the Air Force?
I didn't know the president could just give away Air Force jets, Ray McGovern, did you?
Well, did he have a foot on each one?
Was he astride the two jets?
Netanyahu is pretty, pretty agile.
No, I think it's ridiculous, and it really is a matter of time, I think.
The latest polls show that a lot of Americans don't like genocide.
A lot of Americans are seeing the photos coming from Gaza.
A lot of Americans, much fewer than eighty percent that Netanyahu bragged about having eighty percent, he said, eighty percent.
He said 80% of Americans will support us no matter what.
That is absurd.
Well, it was absurd then when he said it 25 years ago.
It's even more absurd now.
He's below 50% in my view.
If you take a nationwide poll of those who know what's going on in the world, so that's the change.
That's a salutary change.
It's just that it's coming so damn slow that hundreds of thousands more Palestinians are likely to be killed in the interim.
Larry, and I forgot to run this, so we're going to back up to Epstein for a minute.
And I know you're of the belief, and rightly so, that Trump's name is on it or the Biden DOJ would have revealed it.
But when Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, was asked by a reporter at a cabinet meeting what became of the client list before she could answer, the president said this.
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
This guy's been talked about for years.
That is unbelievable.
Do you want to waste the time?
Do you feel like answering?
I don't mind answering.
I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein.
In February, I did an interview on Fox, and it's been getting a lot of attention because I said I was asked a question.
noting that uh let's move on larry how do you explain just think about tennis match or ping pong how do you explain aid to Ukraine on again, off again, on again, increased again?
That's what we've seen in the past two weeks with Trump.
This kind of erratic behavior, I actually think there's something mentally wrong with Trump.
In fact, I've spoken to, without revealing my source, somebody who has had frequent meetings with Trump over the last 18 months said that in these last meetings, he's noticed a noticeable change related to age.
And when you listen to Trump talk, he talks in this monotone, like he's rain man with some sort of autistic disease.
But to play these kinds of games with the weapons and with war in Ukraine, Russia's just laughing at him because they recognize they're not going to get a serious deal.
So they know the game.
Praise him, tell him he's wonderful, say, hey, man, we think you too should get the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the Russians are going to keep doing what the Russians are doing.
They're going to defeat the Ukrainians.
But did you see the other day that there were four Iskander missiles that hit Kiev?
number 11 are you planning to send more weapons to ukraine uh we're going to send some more weapons we have to they they have to be able to defend themselves they're getting hit very hard now they're getting hit very hard we're gonna have to send more weapons you have defensive weapons primarily Mr. President,
you are sending more weapons to Ukraine as you said last night.
Last week the Pentagon paused some shipments of weapons to Ukraine.
Did you approve of that?
We want to put defensive weapons because Putin is not He's not treating human beings right.
He's killing too many people.
So we're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine and I've approved that.
So who ordered the pause last week?
I don't know.
Why don't you tell me?
Sir, yesterday you said that you were not sure who ordered the munitions halted to Ukraine.
Have you since been able to figure that out?
Well, I haven't thought about it because we're looking at Ukraine right now and munitions, but I have not gone into it.
What does it say that such a big decision could be made inside your government without you knowing?
I would know.
If a decision was made, I will know.
I'll be the first to know.
In fact, most likely I'd give the order, but I haven't done that yet.
when they see the American president speaking like that.
I mean, this is this is beyond what Larry's colleague has described.
Well, judge, I'm sure that the Kremlin has its own equivalent to what we used to have in the CIA at a distance, psychological profiles.
And I'm sure they've come up with results similar to what that Larry mentioned before.
The man is a radic.
The man may be sick, but he's the guy that they can deal with.
The only guy they can deal with for the next three years.
And they've said, oh yeah.
When Trump says, oh, I'm not happy.
I'm not happy with Russian.
I'm not happy with myself.
Well, the reaction from Putin's spokesperson is, yeah, well, you know, the person in the United States is erratic and not always consistent.
But, you know, we're operating on a tougher plane, on a overseer plane.
We want to develop relations.
Now, what's the proof I would adduce?
Well, just yesterday, Rubio meeting with Lavrov in Kuala Lumpur.
They met for an hour.
And what was the readout?
It said, well, you know, Rubio, here's what Rubio says.
You know, the Russians have a new and different kind of suggestion on Ukraine, and I'm going to bring that back to the present.
It's something like a step by step approach, like a road map, says Rubio.
Okay.
And the whole thing is described by the Russians as a mutually respectful dialogue on a growing range of issues of mutual interest.
So all I can say here is that the Russians are aware that this guy may be a little bit deranged.
He's the only fellow they can work with.
The Russians have the upper hand in Ukraine.
They don't need to rush.
They need to see what Trump is willing to do in terms of getting Ukraine behind him so he can move on to bigger and better things, my God, in the Middle East and in China, with respect to China.
So all I'm saying here is it's become increasingly clear that even though Trump says every other day, I'm really not happy with those Russians, the Russians just thrust it off and say, look, we think the guy is serious.
We're going to test that out.
But in any case, we're winning.
And we're just to see how much of a deal we can cut so that we don't have to take over the whole country.
Are the neocons in his administration finally triumphant?
Yeah, I would say so..
They're getting everything that they want at this point.
It's unfortunate that Trump likes to think of himself as being Reagan-esque.
Reagan, with all of his faults and flaws, he actually did a good job of selecting.
good people in positions, whether you got Casper Weinberger, a Secretary of Defense, George Schultz, the Secretary of State.
I mean, you know, I'm not saying that you agree with their policies, but at least they were intelligent, thoughtful.
Schultz was a giant but you know trump's got a clown show going on he doesn't you know he made his money part of his money on television pretending that he knew how to hire and fire people and yet you know look at what he's done and just the the lack of quality between the lights of hegseth and marco rubio you know they're just they're not even in the same league but yeah but he is uh i'm afraid continuing to follow their line.
If he had a clear vision about being Mr. Peace, he would have cut off all the weapons flows.
He would have cut off the intelligence cooperation and would have brought an end to this war there as well as in Palestine.
But instead, he enables the genocide in Palestine and he allows this war to continue.
Ray, if Rubio said that Lavrov gave him a new version of things, Rubio was naive.
The Russians have had the same five or six conditions, beginning with no NATO and ending with no military from the beginning.
What could Lavrov possibly have said that Rubio thinks is newsworthy or different and worthy of transmitting to the president unless...
Unless Rubio, who has not been part of the negotiations because Whitkov has, is first now exposed to this.
Well, Judge, we'll have to see, won't we?
Rubio's got a new set of suggestions from the Russians.
He thinks it's interesting enough to mention to the press that he's going to take them back to the president.
And he says, you know, it's really kind of funny.
It's a step by step kind of a road map.
Well, allo, that may be naive.
That's the way you do these negotiations.
Now, I'm not saying that the Russian terms have changed.
They haven't and they won't because the Russians are winning.
is that if the Neocons were completely in control, there would be no talks with the Russians, there would be no Trump reaching out to say, Oh, I'd like to meet or talk to Putin again.
There would be no hope on the Russian side that they could make a deal.
The deal is there in the offering, it's going to be heavily favored in Russia's favor, of course, and it's going to take another month before the Ukrainian army collapses.
But the deal is there for making.
And I have to make sure that people realize that at least I differentiate between the Doctor Kretschel and the Mister High.
The mister Hyde, the doctor Jekyll on Ukraine, Trump I'm talking about, of course, And the mister Hyde that enables genocide for God's sake, and worse, in joining a war aggression against Iran.
So, you know, I'll take the doctor Jekyll, and I think that's the attitude that Putin has.
He's the only guy we have.
We're talking to him.
Rubio talks to Lavrov, and Rubio says, Whoa, wait a second.
He has some good suggestions.
I'm going to take that.
So, you know, let's not prejudge this.
Let's see what Rubio comes up with or what the president says.
Well, that's not a bad idea.
I had thought of that step by step.
Oh, well, that's interesting.
Before we prejudge the thing and say that the president is really not realistic or even realistic or he dumb or he's hemmed in completely by the neocons.
But Larry, the neocons will never accept anything less than a Russian military evacuation from eastern Ukraine.
That is not only unrealistic, it's impossible.
Yeah, it's not going to happen.
Look, Lavrov had an interview last week with Magyar Nemzet, a Hungarian news outlet, and he gave the strongest, clearest outline of what Russia's position is.
And it hasn't, it hasn't, the only thing it's changed from what Vladimir Putin presented on June 14, 2024 is that he's now that the West has got to recognize that Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk,
Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv are, in fact, this is what he said.
He said, there must be international legal recognition of the new territorial realities following the accession of Crimea, Sevastopol, the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, as well as the Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions into the Russian Federation.
So, and on the agenda are the demilitarization and denationalization of Ukraine, lifting of anti-Russian sanctions, withdrawal of lawsuits against Russia, and return of illegally frozen assets in the West.
You know, that's what Rubio heard.
Well, where is I?
Larry, Larry, what's the date of what Lavrov said that you quoted?
What's the date?
It was last week.
Okay, well, I'm talking about yesterday.
Ray, Ray.
No, no, no, absolutely not.
I spoke with Lavrov, Judge, and I both spoke with Lavrov.
He doesn't go out and say this and then come out and say something different from that.
You're kidding?
Of course he does.
In private he tells us he tells Rubio exactly what Rubio said.
Yeah, look, no.
Rubio, let's entertain the possibility that Rubio's lying.
Why would he lie about this?
Why would he lie about it?
He wants to put the spin on it, Ray Larry, why is it when you talk to Lavrov, what exactly did he tell you?
He didn't say exactly what's in this message.
He said exactly what's in this message.
He told us the same six conditions that President Putin said in 2022, which Larry just articulated.
Yeah, I'm not talking about when you and Larry were together in Moscow.
What I'm talking about was Larry was there alone and he reported that Lavrov said something to him three times and where there's no justification for that because the video was out all that time and Lavrov said no such thing.
So if we're talking about what Lavrov says, we're talking about what he said eight days ago.
You're wrong on this, Ray.
Okay, then show me the proof.
Show me the video.
I just showed you the proof right here with the three paragraphs that Lavrov said to the Hungarians and he repeated it at BRICS.
You've been traveling.
You haven't had a chance to read or read this or watch it.
That's their going in position, Larry.
What he said to Rubio yesterday is what Rubio is reporting back that that's different.
You know, you can't go with the old thing.
Of course, they're going with the maximum position.
What I'm saying here is that Loft said something different to Rubio yesterday, and Rubio and the reader from the Russian side said this is a very respectful.
Let me jump in.
I'm watching two of my closest friends, comrades, colleagues who have advised me over the years and each of whom appears twice a week or more on this show, disagree with each other.
The audience would respectfully disagree.
That's right.
yes as jfk said we will disagree agreeably so on that we will finish gentlemen have a great weekend we'll see you both on monday thank you for your time thanks for the double duty thanks for still loving each other while you're throwing the punches have a great weekend you too thank you all the best to both of you guys thank you thank you man monday is a very busy day for us At 8 in the morning,
Alistair Crook.
At 10 in the morning, Ray McGovern.
At 10:45 in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
At 11:30 in the morning, Larry Johnson.
At 1:00 in the afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor.
At 2:00 in the afternoon, Scott Ritter.
Hang on to your seatbelts.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
Judge Napoleon for Judging Freedom.
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