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Aug. 21, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, August 22, 2025.
It's the end of the week, the end of the day, our favorite time, the intelligence community roundtable with my dear friends and longtime collaborators, Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
Larry, I'll start with you.
What geopolitical changes of note, if any, have come about from and after the Trump-Putin meeting?
in Alaska last Friday.
Well, I think Trump is now on track to get the Nobel Peace Prize because he's brought India and China together in a close alliance in a way that they never have been joined.
So I mean, you've seen, in fact, you had the Chinese ambassadors, it was either today or late yesterday in India, in Delhi, saying, this is outrageous that the United States is trying to impose tariffs on our friends here in India.
So you said they're going, wow.
you know the the decades that china and india with both nuclear powers have been you know on this powder keg along the border with those border disputes and now it's over so hey we got to give trump Trump credit for something because the fact that he threatened India with those tariffs has just so enraged the Indians, along with the Brazilians, that now they're lining up with the Chinese.
And man, they couldn't be faster friends.
Ray, are we any closer to peace in Ukraine than we were eight days ago?
Of course we are.
You know, India is interesting.
And what was just said about India is true.
Oh my God.
Do we still think that this summit was a nothing burger?
Well, I beg to differ, and I've been saying this all along, it became very clear that Trump is willing to meet Russia on an equal basis here, that there's no longer talk of sanctions or crippling sanctions either on Russia or China, that there's a talk about getting together and telling the Ukrainians, hey, look, the jig is up.
And these, you know, Snow White and the seven dwarfs.
Well, you know, I hate to hesitate, hesitate to call Trump Snow White because he ain't Snow White, not by a large Martian, but those seven dwarfs really showed their metal as they sat around the table and had Trump lecture to them and say, oh wait a second, could you leave now?
Because I have to I called my friend Vlad here in Moscow and I have to I promised to keep him up on this and could you wait outside for a little while?
I mean, my God, if they weren't humiliated by that and if they weren't shown up to be feckless and rhetorical support without any possibility of armed support or financial support for Ukraine, the game is over.
Trump has recognized, for example, you say the game is over.
But let me interrupt.
because I'm not following what you're saying.
The game is not over.
The Russians are continuing to march westward.
The game will be over when Ukraine military collapses.
That's right.
Now, now you think that's a bad thing, okay?
No, I don't think it's a bad thing.
I just don't think that Alaska changed anything.
I give Trump a lot of credit for opening up a dialogue with Putin.
What Biden did was in that respect was reprehensible, but I don't think it's bringing peace.
Okay.
Well, let me just read here from what Trump said to the to the europeans assembled before him he said you know ukrainians you know were brave as hell, but they're fighting a force.
That's the picture.
They're fighting a force that's much, much bigger and clearly much more powerful.
And, you know, it's not like they've stopped.
If you assume that you've seen the map, you know, the map is right over there, folks.
A big chunk of territory is taken and that territory is taken.
I mean, my God, go back home and deal with it.
We're out of there.
The vice president said we're done with supplying arms or money for Iran.
It's all very clear now that Trump, you said Iran, you meant Ukraine.
Yeah, I'm sorry, Ukraine.
It's all very clear that they've made an arrangement.
We're going to get together.
If the Ukrainians don't bow, if Zelensky doesn't leave, if we didn't have something in the nature of a negotiated settlement, well, as Lavrov said a year ago, what will happen on the ground is what will determine things.
Larry, is CIA still telling Ukrainians how to kill Russians?
Is American military in Rammstein, Germany still telling Ukrainians how to kill Russians?
Well, there's been an interesting development in the last week or so.
The CIA officer who was the principal liaison in Ukraine with MI6 had been designated as the new CIA chief of station in London.
And apparently, Ratcliffe was told by the White House, no, that's not happening.
So they pulled that job from him.
You know, I don't know what the exact agreement was or understanding between Trump and Putin.
What I do know is that in December of 2023, when I talked to the Deputy Foreign Minister, Pepi Escobar, and I were having a conversation with him, Sergei Rybkoff, Rybkoff at the time lamented the fact that there was no contact.
They didn't have anybody to talk to, to communicate with in the White House and in Washington.
Now it's clear that that has changed.
They neither the, you know, Lavrov nor Putin, I think, harbor.
any illusions that Trump is a stable negotiating partner.
But I think they have reached the conclusion that he's sincere about wanting to maintain communications with him.
And maybe he and Putin have agreed behind the scenes.
He says, look, I'm going to be saying lots of crazy stuff.
And you'll think I'm being aggressive towards you.
But you go ahead and finish the job militarily.
And then at the end, I'm going to have to strike.
That could very well be Trump adopting that Nixonian thing.
Didn't he famously say to Kissinger once I want them to think I'm crazy or let them go ahead and think it.
Ray, do you know if US Intel is still on the ground in the Donbass, the parts of Ukraine that are now comfortably under Russian control?
I think it's probably unlikely that they're still there.
They're sure to be there in the western Ukraine, but that doesn't matter.
Let's face it.
Trump painted himself into a corner.
He said bone crushing sanctions on the 8th of August or else you had to come to an agreement with Ukraine oh Putin okay and we're gonna do the Chinese secondary sanctions the Indian so far okay and all of a sudden became clear to him that he was very poorly advised.
This was an idiot's march, okay?
Not even a fool's march.
And so he sent Whitcoff and my boss, says Whitcoff, has really painted himself in a corner.
Can you help us?
Like, we don't want to do the sanctions and let's have a summit.
And Putin talks to him for three hours and extracts some real concessions like no immediate ceasefire, forget about that.
And sanctions, okay, we'll like.
lifting the sanctions.
So that's what happened.
It's not a nothing, Burger.
Do we know if Putin gave Trump anything in return for Trump's dropping the demands about ceasefire and Trump's public acknowledgement that NATO is not going to be, that Ukraine's not going to be in NATO, Larry?
Well, I'd say what he gave him was, you know, Mr. Trump, that election was stolen from you.
And you're correct that if you had been president, this war never would have happened.
Yeah.
And he.
He gave that to Trump.
And actually, I think he was genuinely, he wasn't just blowing smoke up Trump's skirt for this.
I think he was genuine in it.
And then you went in, and in fact, because you remember the sequence that went and Rey has talked about this extensively in the past, that when Putin presented the draft treaty to Biden in December, initially Biden was like, okay, maybe.
But then come January where Anthony Blinken basically just says no and hell no and tells Lavrov and company to go pound sand.
So it would have I could have envisioned that if Donald Trump had gotten that deal, he would have tried to make a deal.
And here's Sergei Lavrov earlier today.
I'm not sure where he is where he's saying this, but it is today., Chris cut number 18.
So bottom line, bottom line, there's no meeting.
President Putin said clearly that he is ready to meet provided this meeting is really going to have an agenda, presidential agenda.
So that's a big if.
There's no meeting planned, Mr. Foreign Minister.
That's a big if.
You're saying there's no meeting planned right now.
Christian, Christian, I am awfully sorry.
You're not listening.
There is no meeting planned.
And I am not challenging this.
But you cannot, I think, understand what I am saying.
Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda would be ready for a summit.
And this agenda is not ready at all.
President Trump suggested after Anchorage several points which we share and on some of them we agreed to be to show some flexibility.
When President Trump brought those issues to the meeting in Washington with Zelenskyy present together with his European sponsors, he clearly indicated it was very clear to everybody that there are several principles which Washington believes must be accepted including no NATO membership including the discussion of territorial issues and
Zelensky said no to everything he even said no to as I said to canceling legislation prohibiting the Russian language how can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader.
Ray, what is your read on that?
Well, they're putting the onus on Zelensky, clearly.
There's an agreement between the US and Russia.
Look, it's over to Zelensky.
Putin has always said in principle, I'm ready to talk to this guy, but my God, we have to be prepared.
We have to make sure that they're not going to just diss everything we say.
Now, those negotiations are already in progress.
Let's remember that the Russians and the Ukrainians have met.
There's some talk about raising the level of representation for those.
That would be a good thing, like maybe Lavrov or someone a little bit more senior than the fellow they have now.
But it's a dead end until Zelensky falls or is replaced or changes his attitude.
Meanwhile, the facts on the ground continue to favor Russia.
It's just a matter of weeks, in my view, before Russia could go to the Dnieper River.
And they're holding that in the back.
They're saying, Mr. Trump, we can do this.
We can do this as fast as...
But let's try to get a negotiated settlement so that we don't have to go all the way into the rest of Ukraine.
Let's have something that will give us a measure of security for the future so that we won't have to do this again.
Larry is the Ukrainian foreign minister somebody that Lavrov would respect?
Do we know who he is?
Is he a person with a diplomatic standing?
Would Lavrov sit down with him?
Lavrov would probably be more comfortable with Marco Rubio.
But the problem for the Ukrainian foreign minister and the Russians approach this very, you know, Putin's a lawyer and I don't mean that as an insult to him.
But okay.
No, no, nor do you, Judge.
But, but, but he, you know, law, as you know, law school teaches you a certain way to think through issues and to approach things.
And that's how Putin, he does approach the world that way.
And one of the things he looks at is like, how can I send even, you know, my foreign minister to sit down with a representative of a government that is illegal?
Right.
Because they have violated their own constitution.
They've violated their own law.
And when we reach an agreement, it's almost sort of, Putin is a bit naive in this regard.
They really have believed in the past, as they did with Minsk 2, that if we sign that agreement, we're going to be serious about keeping it.
And then they keep finding out that the West says, oh, we don't believe in those agreements.
Ray, if vice president Vance is telegraphing what is likely to happen and if president Trump does cut off any military supplies to Ukraine, isn't it well established that the Europeans are not financially in a position to fill the gap left by America?
That's exactly right.
There's no question about that.
So they're living in a land of illusion.
Right.
You know?
Yes, they are living in a land of of illusion, I agree with you.
So Putin has got to convince them some way or another, perhaps by replacing or helping to replace, together with other services, replace Zelenskyy.
He's the fly in the ointment, but as long as he persists in his negativism, the world looks on and says, look, the Russians and the US now agree that this thing should be wound up.
They've agreed that there should be a comprehensive ceasefire, not a comprehensive agreement, not a temporary ceasefire.
So what's holding this up?
Zelenskyy is holding it up.
Will he hold up forever?
Just as long as he loses his last Ukrainian to our great project, Project Ukraine.
Well, Larry, the seven dwarfs, as Ray calls them, don't they understand that Russia will never accept NATO troops in Ukraine, no matter what you call them.
Americans in the sky, French on the ground, no matter what you call them, no military from those NATO countries is going to be in western Ukraine with Russian consent.
Well, let me first say, as is typical of Ray, he chose a phrase.
that's both elegant and poetic.
I call them the seven pimps because the relationship between them and Zelensky has more in common with prostitution.
But, you know, Ray's right in raising the seven dwarfs because it is a fairy tale what they're working on.
Okay.
Larry, you're on a roll today.
Keep it up.
The notion that these countries where France, its current debt to GDP ratio, 110%, the UK's debt to GDP ratio, 100%.
What that means for the folks who don't, you know, not good with math out there, that means they're in the UK's case, they're spending all the money they make in one month.
And they do the same in each month.
In France, they're spending more than they make, which means they're going into debt.
And all, all of the economies, with the exception of Portugal.
all the major economies in Europe right now are growing between 0.3% and 0%, which means a stagnation, a recession.
And Portugal's growing at the rate of 1.5%, not fantastic.
So they lack the economic power.
They're facing enormous debt and they're going to buy very expensive weapons with a 10% markup according to Donald Trump from the United States and then they're going to give them to Ukraine.
Ain't going to happen.
What are they going to use for cash?
How are they going to pay for this?
They'll send Zelensky out to do personal favors.
I have one other thing here to add, please.
After the last NATO summit, conspicuously absent.
was any allusion to nato membership the year before there was a big big phrase and lots of talk about nato membership it said Ukraine is on a path, on an irreversible path toward membership in NATO.
Now, for that to be the feature of last year's NATO summit and not even mentioned in this year's NATO summit, persuades me that the only person plumbing for a membership in NATO is a fellow named Zelensky.
Not even the Europeans think this has any realistic possibility.
That's why you have all this talk about alternative security guarantees.
Excellent.
excellent right Larry before we jump to uh Yeah, well, it's not even clear, you know, with the media reports, it's not even clear that he actually made that as a serious offer.
And this, you know, Lavrov to his credit very quickly shut down and shot down any idea that there would be this kind of presence of NATO personnel or US personnel or even US aircraft allowed in that airspace.
If you go back and look at the Istanbul Agreement that was at least the draft agreement from April of 2022, it was very explicitly laid out what the actually at the time the Ukrainians and the Russians had tentatively agreed on with respect to security guarantees.
And there was absolutely no allowance for foreign troops to be based in Ukraine.
I know of no more effective way to introduce our discussion of the latest events in Gaza than a two-minute clip from the Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs.
affairs and emergency relief at the UN.
You may have seen it.
It's a long clip.
Chris edited it down.
It's quite telling.
Chris.
It is a famine.
The Gaza famine.
It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed.
Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel.
It is a famine within a few hundred meters of food in a fertile land that forces a parent to choose which child to feed, that forces people to risk their lives to seek food.
It is a famine that we repeatedly warned of, but that the international media has not been allowed in to cover, to bear.
bear witness it is a famine in 2025 a 21st century famine watched openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war.
Everyone owns this.
The Gaza famine is the world's famine.
It is a famine that asks, but what did you do?
A famine caused by cruelty, justified by revenge, enabled by indifference and sustained by complicity.
It is a famine that therefore also asks, and what now will you do?
To Prime Minister Netanyahu.
and anyone who can reach him.
Enough.
Ceasefire.
Open the crossings, north and south, all of them.
Let us get food and other supplies in, unimpeded.
End the retribution.
It is too late for far too many, but not for everyone in Gaza.
Enough.
For humanity's sake, let us in.
Ray, can you even reply to that?
I know this guy is almost as eloquent as you are and almost as moving as you have been on this topic.
I have goosebumps on my arms and this is the third time I watch this clip today.
Chris gave it to me a little while ago.
Judge, the question is, what can we do?
Right.
Medea Benjamin has an incredible clip addressed to her Jewish relatives and all the Jews in the United States to support the 21%.
only 21% of the Israeli population that is at all troubled by forced starvation in Gaza.
She's eloquent.
We really need to do that.
Now, the other thing is, how about us?
Now, Aaron Buschnell, the Air Force person who self-immolated before the Israeli embassy a year and a half ago, said this.
He said, look, I asked myself, what would I do if I were Nazi Germany or what would I do if I were during slavery?
Well, the real question is, what am I doing now with genocide in Gaza?
And I ask you the same question, says Aaron, you're doing it now.
You're doing it now or you're not doing it now.
All of us, all of us are To be unneutral is to be on the side of the oppressor.
And I have that directly from Bishop Tutu of South Africa.
Larry Jeff Sachs calls Netanyahu the greatest monster on the planet right now.
And it appears he is.
Yeah, I couldn't argue that at all.
What, you know, there is still a lot that nations can do.
And I include in this China, Russia, India, all of them.
You mean militarily?
No, cut off all imports and exports, all trade between those countries and Israel.
Stop the trade.
Well, you saw the Russians actually made sort of an indirect move on Monday when they took out the Sokar oil terminal in Odessa because that's owned by Azerbaijan and was a major supplier of oil to Israel.
That oil terminal accounts for 15% of Azerbaijan's gross domestic product.
So Israel really did send a message to Azerbaijan.
So Israel's going to have to find some replacement for that.
But seriously, if they are economically isolated, they can't stand.
They can't continue.
They will be forced to fold.
And yet, so many of these countries, including the United States and Europe, continue to trade with them and continue to allow them to keep their unemployment numbers down and to have a functioning economy.
How do we get the message?
that has rocked the three of us and the thousands watching to the person who is funding all of this and who never says no to Netanyahu.
We tell the world that we think President Trump is motivated not only by this slavish devotion to the interests of Israel, but also because Netanyahu has blackmail material on Trump in the Epstein files.
Now, I speculated about that.
three weeks ago.
Now we have some concrete evidence from a Mossad agent who handled Maxwell and his daughter and Epstein himself.
And he said, look, there's stuff in there.
Please, mister Trump, just release it.
That way You can end the genocide, you can end the blackmail.
It's very clear that there's something extra that Netanyahu has on Trump.
We ought to educate the American people because this is heinousness squared, okay?
Heinousness in forced starvation and genocide and prompted by the violation, the sexual predating, the violation of little girls.
My God, we ought to need to do something about that to let people know, look, release those Nepstein files and see what what trump is involved in and then maybe this thing can be resolved when the blackmail material is no longer there well i think we'll end it at that i still have goosebumps on uh on my arms this was just profound what he said there is a longer version i'll ask chris to post uh both uh versions but
this is profound articulate eloquent moving and uh profound Guys, thank you very much.
We'll look forward to seeing you.
Can I add some a late break?
Absolutely.
Go right ahead, Ray.
There's heinousness happening in our country too.
People objecting to people like Tulsi Gabbard denying security clearances for 37 intelligence officials.
This has hit the fan now.
And what I'm saying here is that there's a nexus here between the deep state, the Democrats, okay, and the media, and they are not, If it comes out to the American people that there was no Russian hacking of those damaging emails, what happened then?
Well, suffice it to say that this just in from the lawyer, Ty Klebenser, who's working on this thing, he says, look, the deputy director of the FBI has said.
in a formal declaration, they're looking in the same place that they found the appendix to the earlier report, they're looking for the burn bags and the prohibited access files for original records for what was denied of the FOIA personnel on Seth Rich.
So what I'm saying here is that Bognino has finally seized it by the horns, okay?
And if it comes out that this involves not only disingenuousness and playing fast and loose with the other laws, if this involves murder, and there's lots of circumstantial evidence that Seth Rich was killed by the deep state.
If this involves murder, well, that explains lots of things, especially why everybody's so tense and divided, you know, how people are coming together now to say, oh, those 37 officials from the, they told you they were great.
Don't deprive them of their security services.
So all I'm saying here is that the FBI and Tulsi Gavard have thrown down the gauntlet.
They face really, really odds that could be described as insuperable.
Let's publicize what's going on on that issue as well as these others.
Thank you, Ray.
Thank you, Larry.
We'll see you both.
We'll see you both on Monday morning as usual.
Looking forward to it already.
God knows what will happen over the weekend.
Well, let's hope nothing.
Right, right, right.
Have a good relaxing weekend, my dear friends.
Thanks.
Thank you.
And coming up, of course, on Monday at 8 am we'll be our friend, Alistair Crook at 10 am, Ray McGovern at 11:30, Larry Johnson, and probably one or two of your favorites on Monday afternoon.
Thank you for watching.
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