Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - INTL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 5-September

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

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INTL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern : Weekly Wrap 5-September

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	Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom.
	Today is Friday, September 5th, 2025.
	It's the end of the week in the U.S. on the East Coast.
	It's the end of the day.
	It's our favorite segment when we catch up uh and wrap on the events that occurred in the previous week or intelligence community roundtable with my dear friends Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson.
	Ray, to you first, can the president of the United States order the murders of people who are not at war with the U.S. and who are not committing an act of violence at the time he orders them murdered?
	Well, I'm not even a lawyer, Judge, but I know that the answer to that is no, he cannot.
	Right.
	It doesn't take a legal scholar.
	That's the point to under to uh to understand that.
	What what about Larry?
	The people who are ordered to do it, can they who know that it's illegal, immoral, unconstitutional.
	Can they refuse to carry out his order?
	Yes.
	And let me say, you know, over 23-year period.
	I I scripted, I was involved in the scripting of about 253, 254 military exercises for the joint special operations command.
	This you know includes the tier one units, Delta Four, SEAL Team Six.
	And in each of those exercises, there always comes a point where you issue an execute order, an execution order.
	That doesn't mean to kill somebody, that means to launch the operation.
	But within that X order, there is there are listed rules of engagement.
	I never saw in those 23 years and 253 exercises, rules of engagement that said you are authorized to kill somebody who's not carrying a weapon and who's not shooting at you.
	Never so uh what should have happened here is uh the military commanders and in the chain of command should have resigned in protest.
	Uh now that we also have to consider that this thing may actually not have happened, that this may have been AI generated, because it doesn't make sense.
	You know, those three outboard motors on the back, they suck out a lot of gasoline.
	We're told that this was ferrying drugs to the United States from Venezuela.
	Do these people not understand how far that is?
	It's 1300 miles as a crow flies.
	No way could they have uh traveled that distance.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So that I mean, or they could have had stopped at the uh floating gas station somewhere out in the you know, the Caribbean or the Gulf of America or Gulf of Mexico or whatever.
	But number one, and if you're hauling drugs, why are you carrying 11 people?
	You could have another bag of drugs on there for each one of those people.
	So I mean, the whole thing doesn't add up.
	But the the fact that they say, oh, trust us, we know that they were bad guys.
	Okay, so they're bad guys.
	We're carrying drugs.
	Stop them, intercept them, take them into custody, take the drugs into custody, and then put them on display and say, here's the evidence.
	No put them on trial or interrogate them, negotiate with them, find out where the drugs came from, who their dealers are.
	Ray, what is the role of Intel likely to have been uh in this event?
	Well, let me just say that you know, we talk about rules and regulations and laws that the laws, uh, rules schmools, you know, doesn't matter anymore, all right.
	Now they're gonna rename the department of defense.
	My candidate was for the department of macho masculinity.
	Okay, you better not say that too loud because the guy in the Oval Office might pick up on it.
	Well he doesn't have to pick up on it.
	He's addicted by it.
	And so is uh was the guy Hillsick uh Hetzik and the others, you know, it's crazy.
	No, there's no reason to do this.
	It was uh kind of a response to uh what Trump said, Well, let's do something.
	I mean, well, God, what's going on in China now?
	My guy, they're all against us.
	Let's show us, let's show the world that we can do something.
	And everything Larry said, of course, is completely true.
	It's it's make no sense at all.
	Now, as far as the special operations folks, you know, uh Larry, I'm sure did really good scripts, but what they did in in practice, you know, I don't know, they they they follow orders, and there's very very seldom the case that anybody would say, now wait a second, you want me to kill people with a just cause I quit.
	Well, uh, that doesn't happen very much.
	I can't remember it happening in decades.
	Yeah, no, I agree.
	You know, there should have been resignations in the lead up to the uh invasion of uh Iraq in 2003.
	Nobody did, right?
	Nobody spoke out in protest, right?
	But what I what I am saying is there they're still with his in the in the culture of of the the guys who are the operators that uh they usually there and there are exceptions to this, but they're usually pretty pretty strict about we got to have the rules of engagement because they understand they can get their ass hung out there and they want to make sure they have cover,
	and and not just because they're gonna get threatened by bad guys, they recognize their own chain of command or throw them overboard in a heartbeat sometimes if you with the right, you know, with the uh certain kind of commanders in charge.
	Do do our conservative uh republican friends who are applauding this realize that uh a president Gavin Newsom or a president Bernie Sanders could declare some right to life protester or somebody saying things he doesn't want to hear as a narco-terrorist and blow them away by the same standard.
	The DOJ and the uh White House legal council.
	I don't know who the White House Legal Council people are, is about 150 of them, but I do know the DOJ is some of the smartest lawyers in the country.
	They've had five days to come up with a legal justification, they don't have one yet.
	Yeah, yeah.
	All right, Larry, um you did a lot of work recently on comments and insights from uh President Putin that he shared in a lengthy uh speech and QA from Beijing.
	I'm just gonna play a small portion and I'll let you expand on it because your examination of this was of the full speech.
	This is just of the core of it.
	Chris cut number two.
	And after we, at the insistent urging of our Western European colleagues, withdrew our troops from Kiev, the situation immediately changed, and we were told almost verbatim, now we will fight until either you tear our heads off or we tear yours off.
	I don't remember whether I've ever said this publicly or not, but that's roughly how it sounded, only in cruder terms, but quite openly and oddly enough, in a sort of cumradly way.
	So now it's either us or you.
	Well, and this all continues.
	Did he tell the press in that lengthy unscripted uh press conference in his typical methodical detailed, practically footnoted style?
	Yeah, he proved proved his chops as a lawyer, and and then and I mean that as a compliment, not as not as an insult.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, dear Larry.
	Yeah, but you know, uh, because sometimes when you call people a lawyer, boy, that you know, I I've worked with organized criminals who are actually more honorable than some lawyers, but that's that's off topic.
	I get it.
	He went he went through and explained.
	He said, Look, I'm happy to talk to Zelensky, but let me tell you why it's really probably a waste of time.
	He says, It is true that the Ukrainian constitution stipulates that if you're at war, you know, you you're not gonna hold elections.
	But he said, There's nothing in the constitution that says when a president's five-year term comes up, and he and if there is a you know um state of war or there's uh martial law that therefore the the term of the president gets extended.
	He says it doesn't say that.
	What it says is that the president, the power is passed to the head of the Rada, the the like the Speaker of the House.
	And he says, So, in that case, that would be the person that we should be talking to.
	He says, But you know, I can talk to Zelensky, but what's the point?
	He said, Because he does not legally in a position to make any decision and to sign anything that's going to hold up under the Ukrainian constitution.
	And he didn't miss a beat.
	You know, he wasn't searching for words, and he just, you know, he laid that out.
	And then he also went in and had an extended discussion about in response to uh Friedrich Mertz calling him the worst war criminal of the 21st century.
	And instead of him reacting, you know, he doesn't get emotional with that and doesn't uh hurl insults back, but that was in the context of that piece that you just played.
	He went on to say, look, uh, we had negative we signed an agreement in 2014, and that agreement was going to uh find a way out that this would have been peaceful.
	He said, and a month later, in February of 2014, the West launched a bloody coup against us.
	So he he was rehearsing it all.
	His positions on these issues had not changed a whit, and he didn't take debate from Donald Trump.
	Instead, you know, when Trump made that thing about uh She uh Putin and uh Kim of Korea of North Korea conspiring, uh Putin played it off as uh you know that Donald Trump, he's a jokester, right?
	Right.
	Uh Ray, or let me let me add that judge to uh what Larry just said, please uh you rightfully praise him for having done this.
	I I read it in the middle of the night, and I said, you know, this is really good.
	Maybe I can shorten it and print it out.
	So I'm gonna read you the other side of the story.
	And that is what Putin said about the United States.
	Here it is.
	Nevertheless, it seems to me that if common sense prevails, it's gonna be possible to agree on an acceptable way to end this conflict.
	This is my assumption.
	Moreover, we can see the mood of the current U.S. administration under Trump.
	It is not just about their calls, but their genuine desire to find a solution.
	I I believe there is a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel.
	Second time in two weeks, he's used that term, a light or hope at the end of the tunnel.
	Uh, let's see how the situation unfolds.
	If not, we will have to address our challenges through a military means.
	He goes on to say that among all those guests in China, there wasn't one that criticized his approach to anchorage, nor did anyone speak ill of the current Trump administration.
	Now, this is after after rehashing all the betrayals that the Biden administration and those before so he's he's going out on a limb, and I would ask you all why do you think he says these things if he doesn't actually have some hope or expectation that in the in the final analysis he'll be able to deal with Trump and come with something more than a complete surrender of Ukraine, let it let it prosper, but let it not be a threat to Russia.
	Larry, I think Ray's analysis is spot on.
	But do you think that Putin would settle for anything less than the original demands?
	No NATO, Ukraine Ukraine neutral, and the Russian speaking no bless are part of Russia.
	Oh no, no, yeah, he made it very clear.
	He's got this fine line that he's walking.
	But on the one hand, he says, look, they're gonna write the West has got to recognize that uh the five oblots that we have right now, Crimea, Zaporizhia, Harasan, and that's the Hans, those are permanently part of Russia, those aren't going back, they're not going anywhere.
	And in the future, once this uh once this military affair is concluded, if the people in Odessa or Dnipro Petrov split Sumi, if uh if they vote to be join Russia, then uh you know that's their choice.
	We're gonna honor that.
	And if they prefer to stay with Ukraine, we're gonna honor that.
	So he's been very clear.
	But he says, no NATO uh in Ukraine, and just today reiterated it at the uh Vladivostok uh uh Eastern Economic Summit.
	Uh he said, look, any NATO troops that go into Ukraine, they're gonna be legitimate targets and we'll kill them.
	Well, that's uh that's the law.
	That's the law of war.
	If uh if Ray, if Meritz, who's crazy, if um uh the president of France Macron, who's a megalomaniac, if Starmer, who's barely hanging out to office, if they put troops uh on the ground, they are legitimate law in Ukraine, they're legitimate lawful targets, are they not?
	Yeah, I just hope to God they don't do anything that foolish because you're right, they will be killed.
	Uh what do I want to say here with respect to uh additional comments on what Larry so so well?
	Oh, yeah.
	He says, uh, look, um uh Poutine.
	Uh we're we're happy to have regional security arrangements, but not at the expense of other people, and there's been no talk at Alaska or anywhere else about trading ground for some kind of guarantees.
	We never spoke about guarantee.
	So, you know, he's been level-headed, and it's me and saying, Look, this is the real situation, deal with it.
	And Trump, this worries me, Judge.
	Worries me greatly, and and uh um this has been spoken about before, particularly by Larry.
	Um Trump is not well mentally.
	I mean, I had a chance of the weekend to watch some of his QA.
	My God, the guy is sick, and that means something to people like Putin looking on and saying, What the hell might they do?
	So this is the what the flying the ointment here.
	My god, they can't depend on a reliable partner, which has resumed calling the Americans partners.
	He may be a partner, but he's crazy, and what will he do next?
	They don't know.
	Yeah, Ray is are CIA agents still on the ground in Ukraine, and what do you think they're telling Langley?
	The end is near, or keep sending equipment, we can pull this out.
	Well, it's the latter.
	We can hang in there, you know.
	You just give us what we need.
	Uh, but it doesn't really matter what the agents on the ground will say.
	They'll always say from their myopic perspective, it's what he's being told by uh by the head of the CIA by Tulsi Gabbard, and my God, when you think about December 2022, the year of the invasion, uh Tulsi Gabber's predecessor said, Don't worry about it.
	Uh the Russians are on the back foot.
	Uh they they're losing arms and they have no indigenous capabilities to build the arms.
	We're just sitting fine.
	December 2022, uh, six months later, Putin gets up and says, on the advice of uh Jim, not Jim, but Bill Burns, uh, the Russians have already lost, and their military has been shown to be a disgrace before the whole world.
	Now I hope that there are enough level people in the CIA and working for Tulsi Gabbard that they're giving Trump a better idea, but from Trump's mouth, there's no guarantee about that because he keeps saying the Soviet the Russian economy is falling and the Russians are running out of the soldiers.
	My God, so I don't know if he matches this stuff or he gets it, but my God, it's very, very dangerous from this from the Russian point of view.
	And Judge Yeah, let me chime in with I'll give you one real world example during the Contra Wars back in 1986-87.
	It really is ancient history, but uh we had a couple of analysts from the Nicaragua branch, uh Fulton Armstrong was one, and uh they went down to to Honduras and they were verbally attacked by the case officers, and but not the the case officers attacked him by saying, What the hell?
	Why aren't you guys reporting what we're sending back?
	And they go, Well, what are you talking about?
	What what turned out your old buddy Jack Devine was involved with this where they were put quashing the intelligence that was coming back from the officers on the ground.
	Wow.
	So they were it was actually being they didn't want the that bad news to be reported to the White House.
	So we don't know right now if the case officers that are there deployed forward, if they're accurately reporting, or if they're play playing politics, you know, I both are possible and they can both happen at the same time.
	But uh you you don't need the intelligence officers to tell you, you know, it's like if it's raining outside, you don't need to look turn on the television and watch a weatherman to tell you that it's raining.
	Okay.
	Time for another footnote, uh, Judge.
	Another little footnote.
	Yeah, okay.
	Uh I was working on the PDB.
	At times I was acting chief for what's PDV.
	The President Daily Brief.
	Okay.
	I used to brief it downtown every other morning, early morning to Ronald Reagan's chief advisors, vice president, secretary of state, and so forth.
	And when Ronald Reagan was awake, I'd brief him as well.
	Now, the question is when we had a draft on what was going on in Central America, Bill Casey told us we had to coordinate it with the operatives running Iran running the country in Nicaragua.
	Now, do we obey that?
	To the letter we obeyed that.
	Do we take into account the operators' points of view?
	Only if they made any sense because they never got to see the PDB, so we there were never never any reclamas.
	So this was the start of politicization.
	You never let the operators comment on your final product, except in this instance where Casey's no, you don't want to say anything that will turn the noses around of the people we got working in the field to defeat those communists in Nicaragua.
	Wow.
	All right, Chris has a very interesting video, which may be of the people you're talking about.
	Larry, watch this.
	We are being arrested right now for interrupting a foreign affairs hearing on nominations because the US is complicit in genocide.
	They are complicit in the slaughter of babies.
	The United States government is complicit and justified.
	You have an obligation to the Constitution of the United States.
	I'm a disabled veteran.
	Daddy!
	No.
	Daddy.
	We have to come away.
	There's a genocide.
	There's a genocide!
	You are all complicit in a genocide!
	Oh!
	You're complicit in a genocide!
	You're complicit in a genocide!
	Addie, there's a genocide!
	Addie!
	Addie, there's a genocide!
	Come on, Addie!
	That's a genocide.
	You are completely in genocide of the Palestinian people.
	You are completely come on in the room.
	Come on.
	The Israeli terrorists are committing a genocide, and the U.S. Congress and Senate are complicit in funding the bombs that are forcing children to be slaughtered and massacred.
	The Israeli chairs are forced starving children.
	Arresting us for speaking out against genocide.
	Stop the bombs.
	The U.S. That was Colonel Aguilar.
	That was that Colonel Aguilar.
	That was Aguilar.
	The only person missing there was Ray McGovern.
	Who's who's been there?
	Can Hamas effectively prevent the IDF from invading and taking over a Gaza City, Larry?
	they can inflict a heavy price on Israel.
	Israel's got every military advantage over Hamas.
	But uh the one advantage Hamas does have, and the various Palestinian groups, because this is it Hamas is not the only one.
	Uh Palestinian Islamic Jihad is fighting as well.
	There uh there are there are several other uh you know guerrilla units that have formed.
	Um you know, I think uh Israel would be with the ultimate brutality out, they could slaughter everybody in there and kill their own hostages in the process.
	But um you know, I think what has been demonstrated so far as Hamas has still got enough um firepower that they're able to inflict losses on the Israeli forces that are at least causing the commanders to say, Whoa, wait a second, we can't, you know, we we can't afford this.
	They've also had to activate uh to try to activate another 70,000 reservists, but a lot of the reservists are refusing to report.
	So Israel's got some real uh significant internal problems as they try to, you know, they think that they can kill their way out of this.
	I don't think they can.
	Uh and but it is, you know, this is a little bit reminiscent of what uh you know what the Nazis did to the Warsaw ghetto.
	Uh they had it surrounded, and they they just tried to bomb it into oblivion.
	The difference is uh the Hamas fighters, they do have uh firearms, they do have ammunition, they do have RPGs, they do have sniper rifles.
	Now, how they're getting resupplied, that's a whole nother interesting question.
	Is um CIA and MI6, RCIA and MI6 Ray on the ground in Gaza?
	Uh CIA probably not, in my view.
	Uh, they don't have to be.
	Mossad is sort of like a branch of the CIA.
	Everything they do or most of everything they do is shared with us.
	So uh it's sort of academic.
	Uh you can see from the outside what's going on there.
	Uh there are a couple of glimmers of hope.
	The Israeli economy is falling flat on its face.
	Uh the Houtis have done great damage to them, and now other countries are beginning to deny the export of arms and stuff like that.
	It really depends on whether whether um Trump, who has acknowledged that the sentiment in our country has changed about the slaughter in Gaza, whether he has any conscience at all, whether he is still being deterred by what Mossad has on him, uh, courtesy of Jeffrey Epstein.
	I believe it's becoming clearer and clearer that Mossad does have copious material on Donald Trump having to do with violating underage girls.
	And I think that works on his mind here, and you're just not gonna tolerate that because it would disgrace him, might even impeach him.
	Do you share that view, Larry?
	Yeah, I I think what Trump is doing, he's creating an issue uh uh out of something that should have been a slam dunk for him.
	He had promised transparency, and you know, these files, everyone keeps focusing on quote a client list like there's a little black book, but what you have are all of these women who have come forward as whistleblowers, as uh affiants, test uh testifying about what was done to them.
	And their their testimony is out there, it's it's officially recorded in depositions.
	Release that because they name names.
	Uh, and I don't know if you saw this week James James O'Keefe with his uh honey trap operations.
	What O'Keefe does is he hires a lot of attractive women and then puts them on dating apps, and they target uh men in the i both they did it in the Biden administration and they're doing it in the Trump administration.
	Yeah, didn't they just target somebody from the DOJ?
	Yeah, yeah.
	He was like he was like a deputy director or something, and there he was telling this this girl that he's trying to pick up, yeah.
	You know, what we're gonna do is we're gonna we're gonna black out all the republican names and just put out the democrat names.
	When they and we're going to bribe Ghlaine Maxwell, yeah, yeah.
	And so then when it comes out, he's oh I didn't say that.
	I was I just trying to get over on a girl, you know.
	You know, just to add a little, uh, the women who are coming out and speaking through tears now, yeah, understandable are the ones that survived, are the ones that didn't commit suicide.
	Okay, you're right, uh Ray.
	One of them uh, I think who was involved with uh Prince Andrew on that nefarious island committed suicide in the past year or so in her in her mid-40s, you know, this stuff happened uh 30 years ago.
	Wow.
	Hey more can I make can I make one comment on uh unrelated, but uh when Donald Trump uh threw a threw his fit about uh not getting a big honorable mention at the Chinese victory parade on uh on September 3rd, uh, because of all the great sacrifice the United States uh made in the war in the Pacific.
	Clearly, he got his education about what the United States did in the Pacific from watching John Wayne and Sands of Iwo Jima.
	Okay.
	Well, we know he doesn't read.
	Well, and I guarantee you, I bet 90 98% of Americans out there who are and even the ones watching this do not understand that in the war in the Pacific in World War II, uh, that war for the Chinese started in 1938, and from 1938 to December 7th, 1941, the United States did not say one damn thing in protest of the Japanese killing all those Chinese.
	Number one.
	Number two, the Chinese army fought 70% of the Japanese army throughout the entirety of World War II.
	In other words, we, the Americans, only faced 30 percent of the Japanese army during World War II.
	We lost 110,000 Marine soldiers and sailors in the Pacific.
	The the Chinese, three and a half million soldiers died, and between 15 and 20 million civilians were killed by the Japanese.
	So I can see President Xi saying to John Trump, what are you talking about?
	Yeah, you played an imp you played an important role, but we're the ones who pinned down the bulk of the Japanese army, so you weren't fighting 100% of it in the Pacific.
	Here's what uh here's Trump's latest uh post dripping in sarcasm.
	Looks like we've lost India and Russia to this is today to deepest darkest China.
	May they have a long and prosperous future together, President Donald J. Trump.
	Geez, how did we lose India to deepest darkest China, Mr. 50 tariffs?
	That was the craziest thing ever done.
	Let me add a little thing about World War II.
	When you're old as I am, you have a perspective that might help.
	Um seems to me that we've fought with the Russians to defeat the Germans and to defeat the Japanese.
	We also helped the Chinese a little bit, you know.
	So what's happening now?
	Oh, we're arming the Japanese and the Germans with uh intermediate range nuclear missiles to hit our old ally, the Russians.
	I mean, hello, you couldn't make a film out of this.
	No one would go see it.
	Right.
	Gentlemen, thank you very much.
	A great uh a great conversation as always.
	Uh, and we'll look forward to thank you for your double duty.
	And but these conversations are terrific.
	I wish we had more time for them.
	We'll look forward to seeing you uh both on Monday morning.
	Great.
	Thank you.
	Have a great weekend.
	Have a great weekend, guys.
	All the best.
	And on Monday, of course, Alistair uh crook at eight o'clock, Ray McGovern at 10, Larry Johnson at 11:30, and uh probably some of your uh regular uh favorites uh in the afternoon.
	Thanks for watching.
	Have a great weekend.
	Just the policy for judging freedom,

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