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Sept. 4, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:08
AMB. Chas Freeman : A Runaway Presidency.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom.
Today is Thursday, September 4th, 2025.
Ambassador Chaz Freeman will be with us in just a moment on a runaway presidency.
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And now is the time.
Ambassador, uh, good morning to you and good day, and thank you for uh accommodating my schedule.
I know this is not your usual day, but we have a truncated week because of the Labor Day holiday.
Uh can the President of the United States uh kill anybody he wants without due process?
Apparently, um this was a precedent set by Barack Obama uh when he killed American citizens in Yemen.
Um typically assassinated them.
We've now seen uh the president of the United States commit murder on the high seas.
Um the normal procedure for uh uh intercepting a drug uh uh trafficker uh is uh to arrest the trafficker, seize the drugs, uh interrogate the the trafficker, uh, and do what you can to cut off the organization that supported him.
In this case, uh we have an allegation that is all there is, uh, that it's uh uh boat uh with eleven people on it that we uh killed, um uh was somehow connected to uh Venezuelan uh drug uh dealers.
Uh we didn't stop the boat, we didn't interrogate anyone.
We just murdered them.
And um, I don't think uh much as this may appeal to some people, um, tough guy stuff.
Uh it is I don't think it uh does anything for our reputation except uh destroy it.
Um I think here there's one other point.
I gathered that from uh Marco Rugo that um the initial uh approach that the US Navy proposed to take was exactly the one consistent with international law and practice.
That is intercept the boat, interrogate about the people aboard it, seize any drugs on it and so forth.
Um they were overruled by the president who ordered them to kill the people on the boat.
So this is about as clear a case of murder as you can come up with.
Well, I could not agree with you more, uh, Ambassador.
And I'm thinking of the um murder of uh Osama bin Laden and his family.
He hadn't been charged with any crime.
Uh, it'd been followed for uh a number of days by intelligence agents and military, uh, all of whom could have arrested him.
But they didn't have the authority to arrest him because he hadn't even been indicted.
I'm thinking of Anwar Al-Alaqi and his son.
They are that's the case to which you referred.
They are American, were American citizens.
One was born in Virginia, the other was born in New Mexico.
They were seated in an outdoor cafe in Yemen when President Obama ordered them evaporated effectively by a drone.
I'm thinking of President Trump assassinating General Soleimani, who was uh on his way to have lunch with his counterpart in Iraq to talk about a peace treaty.
I mean, how should defense department?
Here's one for you from your days as a former deputy assistant.
I think I have the title correct, Secretary of Defense, whatever you were, you were the smartest person in the defense department at the time.
It should have been the Secretary of Defense, but uh how should military officials respond when they're asked to commit murder?
We're not talking about shooting at troops from a country at war with us in wartime, that is hardly murder.
We're talking about what happened two days ago on the high seas.
Well, uh, there are codes of ethics for the US military.
Um, we come out of World War II when uh German um uh military uh officers uh said, Well, uh that I was just following orders.
Uh and we came up with a very clear uh ethical set of uh principles, rules for our military, which says that uh and any legal order it should not be followed.
Uh so uh this was clearly an illegal order.
Um, and it is, I'm sorry to say, uh, quite a nasty commentary on the extent to which our military now hides behind orders rather than exercising ethical judgments.
Didn't we learn going back to the Nuremberg trials that I was just following orders uh is not uh a uh a morally uh appropriate response.
I'll tell you who who also made non-morally appropriate responses as Secretary Heggseth and Secretary Rubio, neither of them could come up with a legal justification for this.
They both uh Heggseth in his typical uh way gloried in the precision strike and the utter devastation of the boat and demise of the eleven people.
Rubio gloried in this is the beginning of uh of the end uh for the cartels, and you're coming after us, we're coming after you.
These guys have both to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution, which includes the Fifth Amendment, which couldn't be clearer.
No person shall suffer the loss of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
Absolutely correct.
Um you have to say that uh our government is depraved, morally depraved.
Um it believes the ends justify the means, it practices the law of the jungle, it no longer follows the constitution or the rule of law, it does not believe in due process.
Uh and uh we're seeing more and more evidences of this, and this is this incident is uh uh about as clear an example as you can get.
Uh transitioning uh ambassador to uh Israel.
There seems to be a lot of public opposition from very significant people in the Israeli government to Prime Minister Netanyahu's uh stated intentions to invade uh uh and occupy Gaza, particularly Gaza City.
Max Blumenthal says there's not much left uh to uh to Gaza City.
However, the uh head of the military has objected, the head of Shindet, their spying or domestic FBI organization has objected, the head of Netanyahu's own Security Council has objected, and Netanyahu's own foreign minister has objected.
Are these objections as uh Aaron Mate has called them just performative, Or are they substantive and might they give Netanyahu and his crazy regime pause?
Well, I think they are derived from two um considerations.
The first is, in fact, uh the military realities uh that um essentially uh Israel has deprived Gaza of order any uh any uh orderly uh governance, uh and it's not in a position to provide the governance that is required,
and from a military point of view, therefore uh Netanyahu's continued continued uh efforts to destroy Gaza through the use of force um and to focus on the remnant of M.S. uh there while killing huge numbers of in innocent civilians makes no sense at all.
And so I think you have a professional military judgment and an intelligence judgment at work here.
But there's another issue, and that is that there are people in Israel who understand very well that they are putting the entire uh Jewish population of the world at risk.
Uh people who the Jewish tradition is one of a great um attention to ethical reasoning, uh, but it has died in Palestine uh with the state of Israel, uh run by uh uh uh an alternative to Judaism, which is Zionism.
They're very different.
And if if American Jews and Jews in Europe and elsewhere um support Israel regardless of its departure from any standard of decency, uh they place themselves at risk.
And um they imperil the entire reputation of Judaism uh as a just uh uh religion uh based on ethical reasoning.
So the damage to Judaism and to Jews outside Israel is also a consideration.
Israel depends on the support of the diaspora and the evidence and the uh persuasiveness of the diaspora with foreign governments like our own, uh, which uh prop up uh the regime in in Israel.
And that that is all in jeopardy now, as well as the uh standing of Jews generally.
Um Matt Miller, who spent four years uh attempting to justify the uh Biden uh State Department's uh absurd uh destructive foreign policy with respect to Ukraine, Israel, and whatever other hot spots he was being asked about, gave a 14-minute interview in which he is more or less coming clean.
You know, we've ripped him apart from pillar to post, uh, both before and after his time in office, but I give him credit for what he said.
Chris has edited the 14 minutes, we're not gonna play all 14 minutes of it.
Chris has edited it down to two.
It's very profound his observations uh of Prime Minister uh Netzanyahu, whom Professor Sachs and Scott Ritter have referred to as a monster.
This is a very low-key Matt Miller, but his observations of Netanyahu are historic.
Chris cut number three.
But I did never fully understand how the lead up to October 7th with the government of Israel facilitating payments from another country to Hamas wasn't a bigger issue.
It's consistent with the pattern we saw for many months.
They were always looking for ways to add conditions or uh make the terms more difficult.
The government of Israel came back with its insistence on keeping troops in the Philadelphi quarter.
We were really close to a deal, and the Prime Minister added these new conditions, and then we presented a proposal to bridge those differences, and the prime minister accepted that proposal.
And the proposal was very clear uh about when Israeli soldiers would withdraw from Philadelphia, somehow it managed to leak that he told the families of hostages that Israel would never withdraw from Philadelphi, which of course was a complete contradiction of the position that he had taken.
We spent at every level of government in the national security establishment an enormous amount of time trying to get this ceasefire over the line.
And when anyone said anything or did anything that made it more difficult, it's incredibly frustrating.
Will it be true to say that you wanted a deal, a hostage deal more than Israel?
I believe that's true.
The secretary was laying out all of our concerns to the Prime Minister and to the rest of the war cabinet.
And he said, without a plan for the day after the conflict, you're going to be dealing with an insurgency in Gaza forever.
You have continued instability in the West Bank.
You are making it impossible to realize the dream that the state of Israel has had since its founding.
You're going to be bogged down here fighting this war for years and decades to come.
And the prime minister said, you're right.
We are going to be fighting this war for decades to come.
That's the way it's been.
That's the way it's going to be.
Well, that is one skilled liar calling out another, namely Netanyahu.
And it's no revelation that Netanyahu is insincere, breaks his word, does everything possible to undo alleged agreements that he's reached with others.
And I would note, however, that Mr. Miller, who worked for Secretary of State Blinken, who was in practical terms a member of the Israeli work admin, was properly called out during his time as spokesman.
He was given the nickname Smircula.
It's interesting to see him expressed a bit of contrition, but he doesn't really come to grips with the main issue, which is genocide.
He's talking about little tactical maneuvers that were going on between a United States essentially colluding with Israel and the Israelis.
And so I'm not sure, Judge, that I agree with you that he has really redeemed himself.
Well, I think you're right now.
He probably should have resigned and blown the whistle.
We now know he saw Netanyahu moving the gold posts.
We now know he believed Netanyahu to be a liar.
He must have recognized the Antony Blinken, I come first as a Jew and second as a Secretary of State, indicative of what you said, that he was a facto member of the Israeli War Cabinet.
He did nothing about it until now.
He could have caused quite, stirred quite a pot, had he said three years ago what he said yesterday.
Well, I think, you know, he's revealed himself to be the classic apparatchik, somebody who dissembles in the interest of promoting the interests of the government he serves.
To some extent, any government official is in a position of having to advocate policies that he or she may actually disagree with.
That is entirely proper.
That is to say, nobody elected a government bureaucrat.
The President of the United States was elected for the government.
And he, the president of the United States, has the constitutional authority to create policies, which the permanent bureaucracy should follow.
But there is a limit.
And he clearly crossed the limit.
I think when you become a cog in a wheel of deception to the extent that he was, you really dishonored the idea of a professional civil service.
Can you draw a line from the um murders of uh Alaki and his son to the murder of General uh Solomani to the murders of the uh 11 so-called unproven,
uncharged drug dealers to Trump's supposed statement to Netanyahu, just get it over with, do what you have to do, and the financing of the murders of uh Palestinian civilians.
And it ends with President Trump's absurd statement that the Constitution uh gives him the power to do whatever he wants.
Um, and that he has not, and and it is accompanied by the judgment that there are no moral constraints on what he can do.
And we've seen this kind of uh behavior accelerating uh uh over the years uh and now becoming the norm.
So there is no moral or legal constraint on the president, and the people who work for him apparently have no ethical standards at all.
Chris uh number one, and then follow it with the historical one that we found for Ambassador Freeman involving a statement by the person for whom he was the chief translator in Beijing on the same subject matter.
I would have much more respect for Pritzker if he'd call me up and say, I have a problem, can you help me fix it?
I would be so happy to do it.
I don't love not that I don't have I would have the right to do anything I want to do.
I'm the president of the United States.
If I think our country's in danger, and it is in danger in these well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal by definition.
Exactly.
Exactly.
If the president uh if, for example, the president uh approves something, approves an action, uh, because of the national security, or in this case, because of a threat to uh internal peace and order of uh uh of significant magnitude,
uh, then uh the president's decision in that instance uh is one uh that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law.
Amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
And that, of course, uh uh that statement by uh President Nixon, who uh despite his enormous ability as a uh statesman, uh, had uh severe personality problems and ethical issues, is unfortunately what has guided our country in recent decades.
And the attitude about uh presidential lawlessness was the same.
And and in Trump's case, he's buttressed by one of the most disreputable Supreme Court opinions in the modern era, uh, involving uh presidential uh immunity.
I'm sure his lawyers reminded him of that before he ordered the murder of these 11 people on the boat, which wasn't even according to uh Latin American sources, wasn't even aiming for the United States on its way to Trinidad.
Well, I don't know uh where the boat was headed, but I do know that uh under the normal definitions of international law, we just committed an act of piracy.
Ambassador, it's a pleasure to uh chat with you.
I didn't even get to all my questions on Ukraine, but they'll still be relevant next week, I'm sure.
I'm afraid so.
Um have a good day.
Uh thank you, Ambassador.
All the best.
Uh we do have a good day coming at nine o'clock from nine o'clock in the morning Eastern U.S. time is 11 o'clock at night in Shanghai, Pepe Escobar.
Anya Parampil at one this afternoon, more on what happened with the uh murders off the coast uh of Venezuela.
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