Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - Ray McGovern : European Paranoia Over Russia.

Aug. 4, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

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Ray McGovern : European Paranoia Over Russia.

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	Hi, everyone.
	Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Today is Monday, August 4th, August 4th.
	Where does the summer go?
	2025, Ray McGovern joins us now.
	Ray, it's a pleasure, my dear friend.
	Thank you.
	Before we get to European paranoia over Russia, which is what I want to talk to you about, I know you have some interesting observations on the recent revelations involving RussiaGate.
	The Attorney General of the United States at the time, Bill Barr, we're now in the first Trump term, appointed John Durham, a rather tenacious conservative Republican and highly regarded U.S. Attorney for Connecticut to investigate the investigation.
	He basically investigated Bob Mueller and everything that Mueller had gone through.
	He only indicted two people.
	One was a Hillary Clinton lawyer who was acquitted by a jury.
	The other was a young, almost fresh out of law school, a lawyer for the FBI who pleaded guilty to falsifying documents to a federal court.
	His report contained a 29-page appendix, which was classified.
	Last week, the appendix was declassified.
	Take it from there.
	Judge, as I said in the article I did at the time, the appendix burst upon reality here.
	The appendix is very interesting because they've been trying to get this released for a long time.
	Cash Patel, now head of the FBI, led an investigation by the House, which has been released about three or four weeks ago.
	And that was a damning thing.
	That showed that the intelligence community assessment was based on pretty much a nothing burger.
	But now we have John Durham.
	Now, I would remind our audience that John Durham has this stellar reputation.
	But in my view, what sticks in my head is that when John Brennan sent some of his trustees into the Senate Intelligence Community, Senate Intelligence Committee, computers, and it was revealed clear as day, who got him off?
	Well, John Durham was asked to look into that.
	He looked at it really carefully and he exonerated him.
	Oh, just a big mistake.
	That was a major intrusion, a violation of the separation of powers.
	Now, so I never had a good opinion of Durham.
	What he came up with this time after four years, count them, was a nothing burger.
	He didn't look into many things, and he was forced to do this appendix, even though he didn't want to include it in his report.
	The appendix takes a little explaining, but just give me a second here.
	The appendix relies largely on a U.S. intercept, the word John Ratcliffe has used, of a Russian intercept of correspondence between the Soros Foundation and the likes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, head of the DNC, and all kinds of Democratic-related think tanks.
	Okay, what does it say?
	Well, it has all manner of damaging things to say.
	just one here.
	Based on information from the DNC head Washlan Schultz, the FBI does not possess any kind of direct evidence against Clinton and her computers because of the, quote, timely deletion, timely deletion of the email servers, period, end quote.
	Well, you and I reasoned to that, of course, but that's what happened.
	Now, the main thing here is that they fingered the person, it was Julianne Smith, later appointed by Biden to be U.S. Ambassador to NATO, who came up with a great idea on the 25th of July, just as the DNC convention was beginning.
	Hey, let's blame it on the Russians, okay?
	Now, that's what's said directly in here.
	We can blacken the Russians and pin Trump close to Russia.
	Now, is there any corroborative evidence?
	Yes, there is.
	I sat and watched Julie, what's her name?
	Palmieri, Jennifer Palmieri, Hillary Clinton's PR person, tell the people at the Center for American Progress that, you know, during the convention, it was decided that the Russians hacked.
	And I was ordered to go out and sell that story to the outlets and to the cable people, and no one would buy it.
	And she later said, Palmieri, when we got back to Brooklyn, Hillary's headquarters, oh, then the intelligence people and the journalists involved in the children, they came, but still, there was no real proof from official sources until,
	thank you, Jesus, October 7th, when we know now that Obama insisted that the two most pliable vassals that he had, James Clapper and Jay Johnson, who was head of the Homeland Security, he leaned on them so hard that they put up this thing about Russian hacking, Russian hacking.
	Not even the CIA, not even the FBI at that point would buy into that.
	So he had to release these two people, and that set the stage.
	That was exactly one month before the election.
	Unfortunately, it didn't work.
	It's unfortunately for Obama and Clinton.
	But the story is very lurid.
	Now, with respect to the Russian sourcing here, what's interesting to me is that a crimes report was filed.
	They had to file a crimes report.
	And that's a report that's required by statute.
	If a leak is suspected or even anticipated, whoa.
	So they had this too hot to handle report, an intercept from Russian intercept, and they wanted to put the kabash on it.
	So they filed a crimes report, and you don't get any more dissemination once you file a crimes report.
	What we really need to know now is what happened to that crimes report.
	Because when James Comey, who was in receipt of this, was asked about this in 2020, you know, Senator Grassley, that doesn't ring a bell.
	Oh my God.
	How political, or maybe I should say how pliant or Cooperative are members of the intelligence community to do political dirty work for their bosses.
	In other words, does John Brennan or James Clapper know who in the NSA, who in the CIA, who in the DIA is likely to go along with this, even though they're not supposed to be doing it?
	Sure, that's a good question, Judge.
	These were, quote, hand-picked analysts.
	Now, one of them, a fellow named Van Landingham, Michael Van Landingham, was on PBS last night, right?
	And he was saying, oh, no, this was pristine, pure.
	We weren't, we had no political.
	Well, all this other, all this other evidence, both the House Intelligence Committee report and now the grassly revelations in this Durham report show that the political situation was such that these five hand-picked analysts, and you know, it's been said that they were all working for Brennan, and that's true, but they probably came from other agencies like the NSA, like the FBI, okay?
	And these are not analysts, these are people who, under the direction of the primary drafter, Van Landingham, came up with this kakamimi story about Putin preferring Trump and working to fulfill the aspiration.
	Now, one thing I'll just add here: let me add one thing, Judge.
	On PBS, Van Landingham was really disingenuous as I would expect him to be.
	He said, you know, the proof is in the pudding.
	When Trump was in Helsinki, standing next to Putin, and one of our courageous journalists said, Did you want Mr. Mr. Putin?
	Did you want Mr. Trump to win?
	And here's Trump standing two feet away from him.
	And Putin says, obviously, of course, we wanted him to win because he all of a sudden I've lost you, Ray.
	We can't hear you.
	We can't hear you, Ray.
	We can't hear you.
	Well, somebody pressed something, Ray.
	We can't hear a word that you're saying after you were talking about Trump and Putin standing next to each other and the reporter asking Putin if he wanted Trump to win.
	And Putin said, yes, of course we did.
	Yeah, that was a lay.
	There you go.
	Now we're back.
	All right, let me ask you one last question, and then I want to get on to the European paranoia.
	The New York Times claims that the key email on which a lot of your very lucid argument is based was in fact doctored and created by the Russians and John Durham agreed.
	Is that true?
	John Durham is all over the place in his text as well as in the appendix.
	For example, there is a quotation talking about the special services are going to help Hillary Clinton.
	Okay.
	Now, his analysts, his analysts are investigators for crimes, not intelligence.
	His analysts said, you know, that's probably the CIA and the FBI, but it could be, it could be the Russians, could be the Russians.
	Now, give me a break.
	Who's going to help Hillary Clinton win?
	And what does all the evidence point to?
	Who's the CIA and the FBI and NSA?
	Okay.
	So this is the kind of squishy stuff you get from Durham.
	Witness the fact that he wouldn't even put this in the body of the report.
	Yes, you're right.
	You're right.
	He put it in the classified.
	All right.
	Are the Europeans paranoid about Russia?
	You know, I think some of them actually believe that the Russians will attack them.
	In other words, there are some people, like maybe people in the Baltics, that didn't get the word that the Soviet Union fell apart, you know, and that there's not a scintilla of evidence that Putin had any idea of doing something dastardly toward Europe until the coup in Kiev in February 2014.
	After that, of course, and after NATO built up Ukrainian forces to the point where they were the most powerful army in Europe, except for Russia, then it all hit the fan, of course.
	But before that, there's no evidence at all.
	You know, what I like to say, Judge, for people to understand it very easily, Russia already stopped.
	Okay.
	Now, when Biden says they won't stop, they won't stop after Ukraine.
	They'll go to Poland.
	Well, they already stopped.
	When did they stop?
	Six weeks after they invaded Ukraine, there was a deal.
	The deal involved no Ukraine and NATO and other things, but that was the big deal.
	And the U.S. and the U.K. put the kabash on it.
	So did Putin want to take over all of Ukraine?
	No.
	Poland?
	The Baltics?
	No.
	He already stopped.
	And that's demonstrated by Zelensky's own negotiators, his best pal, David Arakamia, who testified, went to the newspaper and said, yeah, we had this whole thing done initially, and then Boris Johnson came in on behalf of the United States to put the kabash on the whole thing.
	So, you know, it's not like you have to have to dig very deep here.
	The Ukrainian negotiators themselves admit that they had this deal.
	And now, of course, Ukraine is going to have a much poorer deal because of what's happened over the last two, two and a half or three years.
	Wow.
	I mean, do they regard, do European leaders like Starmer, Macron, Meritz regard present modern-day Russia as if it were the old Soviet Union in the 60s and 70s?
	Well, you know, Judge, it's the height of irony.
	Does the Russian military is it the most powerful military in Europe?
	Good question.
	Yes, yes, by far, okay?
	By far, with all kinds of experience, battle-hardened veterans and weapons that won't quit, okay?
	So if you wanted to impute a Russian intention to invade the rest of Europe, well, you would have some reason to be, oh my God, if you only were a general and looking at the military capabilities rather than the political intentions, which was our fort, well, you know, you could say, oh my God, they're going to invade.
	But they won't evade yet.
	They'll evade after we get prepared.
	They will probably invade until 29 or something like that.
	Give me a break.
	It all has to do with feeding the greedy profiteering Military industrial complex, and it's our weapons that we've forced the Europeans to buy so they can help Ukraine.
	It's a fool's errand.
	It's just months away that Ukraine will definitively lose this battle.
	And when Witkoff goes to Moscow Wednesday or Thursday before the big deadline on Friday, sanctions, sanctions, sanctions, I think the Russians are going to say, look, you know, we know about you, Wall Street, you New York tycoons.
	You blew our country apart back in the 90s.
	We're finished with that.
	We're going to win.
	We don't need any negotiations here.
	But if you want to help us, if you want us to help you put some lipstick on this pig of defeat, we're willing to do that.
	And I think Putin is willing to give Trump enough so Trump can say, okay, well, it wasn't my war.
	He said that he keeps saying that wasn't my war.
	It's Biden's war.
	And people getting killed, and I stopped the killing.
	I think that out of this, out of this most recent, if Putin sees him or not, Witkoff, whether he sees Lavrov or the others, I think they'll give him the riot act and say, look, you know, we're tired.
	You say you want better relations.
	This is not going to work unless you ease off and tell those Ukrainian people to knock it off and just kind of come to some sort of paper agreement, which sort of concretizes our wins over the last three years.
	That's the way it's going to come out.
	That's a fascinating, fascinating observation.
	That would be a win-win.
	Putin would win the war, and Trump would claim he stopped the killing, and that allows Trump to continue boasting.
	You and Larry and I watched this on Friday, but I'd like to run it again and ask for your thoughts on it.
	It's so, so out of place.
	General Donahue threatening Kaliningrad.
	Chris, cut number five.
	If you look at Kaliningrad, and it's, you know, you can argue back and forth, but it's about 47 miles wide, surrounded by NATO on all sides.
	There's absolutely no reason why that A280 bubble to deter Russia, we cannot take that down from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we've ever been able to do.
	We've already planned that.
	We've already developed it.
	Any conceivable moral, legal, or even military purpose to be served by attacking Kaleningrad?
	Judge, it's delusional.
	Kaliningrad is an integral part of Russia.
	Yeah, it's an exclave.
	It doesn't have any border with Russia.
	It does with the Baltic states and with Poland.
	But my God, it's Russian territory.
	So, you know, the fact that Hekseth and the president have not told General Donahue, look, ease off, back off.
	We're not going to take Kaliningrad.
	Well, the fact that that is the case, I mean, if I were Mr. Putin and my admirals and my generals are talking about, what the hell is going on here?
	And moving nuclear subs and all this other stuff, can we depend on Trump to be rational?
	And the answer to that is no, he's unpredictable.
	So my notion is that the Russians have increased their alert status, although I have no definitive information on that, because you just can't predict what this guy will do.
	Now, do I think, like you just said, that there's room for some kind of a win-win situation or something that looks like a win-win?
	Yeah, but that will depend on two people.
	Putin willing to be that flexible, and I think he is, but Trump acting in a more, well, in a more sensible way and saying, okay, it isn't my war.
	I want to stop the killing.
	And the Russians have come and said, well, you know, Adieza will stay in Ukraine and we'll have a Cordon Sonitia, what I call a buffer zone.
	So that thing is all possible.
	And it was concluded in April of 2022, you know, 2022.
	And they can go back to that, except there are Russian provinces, at least Russia considers them Russia territory now.
	Ukraine's not going to get them back anytime soon.
	That's clear.
	And that has to do with Ukrainian entrenchments and also with Boris Johnson and the U.S. coming in and saying, don't worry about it.
	Don't sign that thing.
	We'll support you for as long as it takes.
	Remember that?
	As long as it takes.
	Well, now is as long as it takes, right?
	Then they start trying to say, well, as long as we can.
	We can't anymore.
	There are no more armaments.
	And these three, Mounts, Macron, and Starmer, they're delusional if they think that they can do what the United States was unable to do for the past three years.
	Are you surprised that European leaders are suddenly expressing an interest in recognizing a Palestinian state?
	Yeah, I'm surprised it took them so long, Judge.
	This is big.
	The worm is turning.
	I just really wish it were quicker.
	There are more people looking at more iPhone photos and realizing that this is not to be tolerated by a civilized world.
	Now, how long it's taken to get to this place, it's painfully long.
	Will somebody do something about it?
	Still remains up in the air.
	Even our Congress, of course, is so much in favor of this genocide.
	My God, supporting Netanyahu, whatever it takes.
	Now, the last thing I'll say on this is Netanyahu is a menace.
	And I've said twice on your program before that I believe that the Epstein files have such blackmail material on Donald Trump that Netanyahu has him over a barrel.
	Now, there is a report to that effect.
	A report?
	Yeah, a report from an Israeli intelligence officer, Bien Menashi.
	We know him.
	Bob Perry used to deal with him all the time.
	Okay.
	So he has this interview on going underground with Afsan Rushini.
	And he says, look, I just wish that Trump would do the right thing and just release them all.
	I care about killing people.
	I don't like genocide.
	You know, if he released them all and take the consequences, because Soto Boce, you know, he's in there full, but he ought to do it anyway.
	Please let him do it anyway.
	It's really quick.
	You ought to see.
	I saw that interview.
	Is he former Mossad basically saying he knows That Epstein was blackmailing Trump and others, and Netanyahu and his colleagues continue to do so.
	Is that it?
	He was the handler for Epstein.
	And what's his name?
	The Israeli guy who's the father of, anyhow, he used to handle these guys for Mossad.
	Okay.
	Bob Perry dealt with him because Ben Menashi would give him little tidbits, for example, about the October surprise way back when.
	All right, so that's the American intelligence asset.
	Bob Perry, who is the epitome of a distinguished investigative journalist who founded Consortium News.
	Only Cy Hirsch is comparable in proficiency and courage.
	Wow.
	Thank you, Ray.
	I know you let me take you all across the board, but we got everything in that we wanted to.
	Much appreciated.
	And we'll look forward to seeing you with Larry at the end of the week.
	Most welcome, Judge.
	Okay, all the best to you.
	Thank you.
	The aforementioned Larry, Larry Johnson, at 11:30 this morning.
	At two o'clock this afternoon, Chief Dennis Fritz.

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