All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:48
[MUST WATCH] SCOTT HORTON : The US Started the Ukraine War.
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, September 9th, 2025.
Scott Horton, he of the fabulous book Provoked on the origins of the Ukraine War will be with us in just a moment.
But first, this.
While the markets are giving us whiplash, have you seen the price of gold?
It's soaring.
In the past 12 months, gold has risen to more than $3,000 an ounce.
I'm so glad I bought my gold, that's not too late for you to buy yours.
The same experts that predicted gold at $3,200 an ounce now predict gold at 4500 or more in the next year.
What's driving the price higher?
Paper currencies.
All around the world, they are falling in value.
Big money is in panic as falling currencies shrink the value of their paper wealth.
That's why big banks and billionaires are buying gold in record amounts.
As long as paper money keeps falling, they'll keep buying, and gold will keep rising.
So do what I did.
Call my friends at Lear Capital.
You'll have a great conversation, and they'll send you very helpful information.
Learn how you can store gold in your IRA tax and penalty free, or have it sent directly to your doorstep.
There's zero pressure to buy, and you have a 100% risk-free purchase guarantee.
It's time to see if gold is right for you.
Call 800 511 4620, 800 511 4620, or go to Lear Judge Knapp.com and tell them your friend the judge sent you.
Scott Horton, welcome here, my dear friend.
Long time no see, and it's a pleasure to be with you.
Thank you, Judge.
Um you have written this fabulous first rate second to none and level in in the amount of research done and information-conveyed book on the origins of the war in Ukraine called provoked.
I was happy to get an advanced copy and to endorse it uh for you.
But before we get there, to the latest uh events of international uh import, the uh IDF uh attack on a civilian neighborhood uh in uh cutter.
What do we know?
Did they succeed uh in killing uh the Hamas leadership that had been lured there?
Uh or did the Hamas people who were there as negotiators and and thus immune from attack under international law, uh escape this assassination plot.
Well, Judge, I'm sorry to say I don't know the uh answer to that question uh at this point of uh you know who all was killed in the thing.
I do know, as you said there, that it was a civilian neighborhood that they hit, and the Israelis uh in their arrogance are calling it the summit of fire.
Where, as you said, these are people who are supposed to be completely protected by international protocol, right?
Um the diplomatic satchel and the rest.
No, we'll just do an air strike on a neutral country that they're at peace with uh in order to try to assassinate the people that they're negotiating with.
You know what, Your Honor?
We're real sorry.
We were trying to work it out, but we have no partner for peace.
Because you know, we kill them all.
Um that's their MO.
That's what they've always done.
And somehow that excuse uh has been able to continue to work.
Um, although I think it's wearing pretty thin.
Is there any way that the United States did not know about and authorize this?
I mean, the U.S. controls the airspace and cutter, and the Israelis who of course always get a yes from Donald Trump, like they always got a yes from Joe Biden, really wouldn't Spring this on the White House without telling them in advance, would they?
I doubt it.
I agree with you that it's almost certain that they would have gotten permission and then what?
So Trump just told them, yeah, go ahead.
Why do I care?
Even though they're an ally of ours, this is the where Central Command is headquartered is at Qatar at the Al-Ulid Air Base there.
I always say it wrong, but whatever.
Um, this is a major America, the major American military installation uh in the Gulf, you know, along with the army in Kuwait and the Navy in Bahrain.
I mean, this is uh, you know, maybe uh America's most important asset there in, you know, and it by the way, of course, as everybody who watches your show already knows, Judge, but is worth reminding everyone that when Benjamin Netanyahu wants to voice Hamas onto the Palestinian people so he can call them all terrorists, who does he go to?
He goes to the Qataris, and as we know from his own intelligence officers who ratted on him and his political opposition who ratted on him for this, that he sent the Mossad to really lean hard on Qatar to make them finance Hamas when they didn't want to anymore.
And uh Netanyahu went and you know, by the laws of collective guilt, he's allowed to kill any Palestinian in the Gaza Strip because they happen to be ruled by Gaza and so uh by Hamas.
So by reverse popular sovereignty, they're all responsible for Hamas's actions and their lives are forfeit.
And yet Netanyahu is the one who did more than anyone to voiced Hamas on the Palestinian people, and then including even lean on the Qataris to give money directly to Hamas to support that regime over them, just so he has the excuse, as he put it repeatedly.
If you want to prevent a Palestinian state, you have to support Hamas in the Gaza Strip, just because they make such great scapegoats.
How do you think Netanyahu's letter nominated?
I can't even say this with straight face, nominating Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize uh was received uh by the people that um decide on these things.
I mean, you can't make this up before you even answer that, and I asked it in jest.
Uh Chris informs me, uh, out from Al Jazeera, Suhail Al Hindi, a member of Hamas's political bureau.
This is just five minutes ago, Scott, confirms the group's leadership that was targeted in an Israeli attack in Doha has survived, but at least two others not in the group leadership were killed.
This, of course, uh uh contradicts what the Israelis claim.
But the Israelis also claim they did this on their own, and the United States knew nothing about it.
This is obviously Netanyahu trying to cover uh trying to cover for uh Trump and Whitcoff uh luring Hamas in.
Why would Hamas ever negotiate with the Americans or with the Israelis again after an incident like this?
Yeah, only because they're in such a position of weakness that they, you know, essentially had no choice but to try to find compromises.
I was just reading this morning, um, drop site news has some real good insight into uh the Hamas negotiators there in um in Qatar just previously before this bombing, and they're talking about how you know Trump brought up a new list of essentially an ultimatum for them,
a deal that the Israelis signed on to that has Hamas essentially giving in on virtually everything, and they said that they're 90 per 98 percent of the way there, they're willing to climb way, way down on all their demands, but they need to have the full withdrawal of the IDF from the strip and you know, un you know, unlimited, essentially no no official limitations on the amount of aid that can come in and this kind of thing.
They're still sticking with that.
But they're willing to back down on virtually every other thing.
But if Netanyahu agreed to that, wouldn't his government collapse because those right-ling fanatics who want to starve uh uh the people in Gaza and who want the IDF to own, operate, and run it until they sell it to Trump's son-in-law, uh, they'll quit the government.
Yeah, yes, that's right.
And listen, where are all the other parties in Israel to say, don't worry, Netanyahu?
We will form a coalition with you if you'll end the war, right?
Where's everybody else?
They're all to the right of Netanyahu, I guess, at this point, right?
They're just it's really a sad situation.
Um, switching over to uh Ukraine, you have done more than anyone from an academic uh and publishing perspective to expose the neocon American origins of uh the the current conflagration in Ukraine,
going way back in history, but of course, more poignantly in the 1990s and in the 2000s, including Trump's arming the Ukrainians to the teeth after the 2014 uh code.
Do you get any blowback, any pushback from uh the deep state over these kind of exposes?
I mean, you've exposed things in your book provoked that nobody else has exposed.
Yeah.
Uh well, you know, uh I'm sad to report to you, Your Honor, that uh I don't think that my voice has ever been uh prominent enough for anyone to be very concerned about any headway I was making, you know.
Um I I'd like to think that that's beginning to change now.
Um that you know I know these books are getting in front of more and more eyeballs here, and and people are starting to understand, you know, the important thing then there are uh credible but severely revisionist takes on all this recent history, right?
That you don't have to be a Chomsky, you could essentially be like me as uh Ron Pauline as free market as you can get, George Washington's constitution and all of that, red, white, and blue, and yet you don't have to believe in any of this stuff because it's all a bunch of lies, and none of it's in America's national interest, and anybody could tell you that at this point, as Colonel McGregor says, time wins more arguments than reason.
This is all been for not, and so I think more and more people are um are cluing into that, you know what I mean, and are getting educated on that.
So, no, I haven't faced any particular uh persecution.
And I know this is probably a logical fallacy, you know, to see it this way, but it seems like whenever people criticize my work, they're always just swinging and missing and completely you know missing the point entirely.
And so, you know, I don't know.
Um I I haven't uh I I don't think I've been uh made to have to reconsider any major uh you know planks of my argument, if that's the question.
Oh no, no, no, that's not the question.
I'm just wondering if you got under their uh under their skin, because a lot of what you have in there, I mean, all of what you have in there, uh, is irrefutable.
What is your uh take?
And and I think you recently wrote a piece on this on Ukraine after Zelensky.
Actually, hold on to that question.
Is Zelensky President Zelensky, former President Zelensky, as the Russians in my view quite properly uh refer to him, uh free to surrender or negotiate, or will it mean his assassination?
Yeah, well, I think there's a real danger of that, and even Andrew Kramer from the New York Times said, hey, when these guys talk about killing the president, it's a credible threat.
This is not like just some wing nut threatening to kill Joe Biden and they wrap him right up.
They won't necessarily protect Donald Trump, but the average president gets you know protection from the national government if someone's uh threatening to kill him.
In this case, these guys are powerful enough, they've overthrown the government twice before with American help, of course, and British help, but still um that even the New York Times reporter Andrew Kramer said, hey, when they threaten to kill the president and and or overthrow his regime, that that's credible.
They have to take that seriously.
And people like Dmitry Yarosh and Andrew Beletky have threatened to murder Poroshenko and and uh since 2019, Zelensky, if they would dare to compromise with the Russians on any of this, and you're on.
I know that you cover this daily on your show about how Ukraine is losing this war, they're losing this territory.
Uh maybe they're losing men at regular speed, the territory in slow motion, they're losing and losing and losing.
It's been all downhill since at least September of 22, and really since February of 22.
And yet, the whole attitude is it's just like in America in 2004 and five.
Remember how they would say, Well, we can't quit now, or else Then our guys who have died will have died in vain.
So we have to keep fighting now.
It's just basic sunk cost fallacy.
And then that means that any president who's willing to compromise, he's betraying all the men who laid down their lives in honor and glory for the sacrifice of the defense of the country and all that.
And that's the way they see it in the harshest terms there.
And so, no, I do not believe he has freedom of action to compromise with the Russians at all.
And this has been the case since he came into power in 2019.
He tried to negotiate under the uh the new um German foreign minister had proposed a new deal called the Steinmeier formula for implementing the Minsk II deal, basically reordering the order of operations for implementing the deal, but in a way that would be acceptable to both.
And Zelensky was looking into it, and then the Nazis said, Yeah, but we'll kill you.
And he said, Oh, okay, no.
They held no to capitulation rallies all across the country and and threatened to overthrow the regime and lynch the guy from a tree.
Is this personal um is his personal protective detail still MI6 because he can't trust his own people to protect them?
Oh, I don't know.
That's a very good question.
I will say though, that if you go back to say 2000 and I believe 19, the great Aaron uh Mate, who I know uh you have on all the time, um, he interviewed Stephen Cohen, the uh Russia expert from I forgot what university, and we'll see.
Yeah, Steve Cohen was on the faculty of Princeton when I was he's no longer with us.
Oh, okay.
He was on the faculty of Princeton when I was an undergraduate there.
Oh, okay.
And so I remember him telling Aaron Mate that listen, all it takes is a few Marine Corps bodyguards to protect the president, let him know that he's safe, and then hey, a little bit of help from American intelligence and/or police to round up the leaders of these Nazi groups and just neutralize them.
We know their names.
There's not that many.
And so you just you get them, and then things will be okay.
You won't have to worry about that threat any longer, and then he can proceed to negotiate.
And that's the kind of assistance that America could have provided.
And yet, as Cohen told Matte, they had no interest in doing that.
They would rather see conflict.
Right.
All right.
Now back to what I started to ask you uh earlier.
Uh, a post-war Ukraine.
I mean, can it be uh truly neutral, peaceful, and prosperous, say in the Swiss or Austrian model, or will these uh banderists be fighting for control of the place against whatever form of government is there?
We know it's not going to be NATO because the Russians will never allow it, but whatever form of government operates the remainder of Ukraine when the special military operation uh is over.
Who will it be?
Yeah, well, so um, you know, as you're referring to, I have a new piece there at anti-war.com with uh my co-author John Weeks and at the Libertarian Institute as well about this guy, Andrey Belitsky.
It's called Blitzkrieg Blowback.
That's about the danger that this guy, he's really the main ringleader of what was called the Azov Battalion and then the Azov Regiment, and then later the Third Separate Infantry Division, and they've now been made the Third Army Corps.
And this is essentially the old Patriot of Ukraine gang, uh, you know, made into a paramilitary group, and they essentially operate outside the chain of command.
And Belitsky has made it clear that he has these political aspirations in the past and presently.
Uh, there was, I'm sure you guys talked about on the show.
I missed it, Judge, but this uh uh article whitewashing Belitsky in the London Times, and then a few days later, they uh did another one with one of his buddies who was involved in the Odessa massacre of 2014 and who again threatened the president and said if he tried to compromise with the Russians, he'd be a corpse, first politically, then literally.
He said, another one of these very credible threats by these guys to murder the president.
So now um Belitsky is, I believe, in the running with only three or four others to succeed uh Zelensky when and if he ever holds elections or if there's a putsch of some kind.
And Belitsky judge, he's the one most often quoted.
Whenever anyone, if anyone's familiar with the uh literature on the reality of the uh Nazi movements in Ukraine since really 2000, well, really since the 90s, but especially since you know the 2014 putsch and all that.
You'll see this quote over and over again where he says, uh, we must lead the white race on a crusade against the Semitic-led Untermension, which means subhumans.
And this is the most often quoted uh bit About these Nazis, because it's pretty catchy kind of a thing.
But the thing is, I had that whole speech.
I found it on the Wayback Machine on the Azov Battalion's old website.
And it's your, you know, typical Nazi fanaticism, uh, you know, completely off the deep end kind of stuff about how the Ukrainians are their own species, not just a nationality, but they're their own species, and they must combine as one organism for the glory of the greater Superman to conquer all of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and just in all in the name of Aryan values and whatever, right?
That you would expect some insane Nazi on meth to be spouting off, right?
Is this guy's entire take?
And in that London Times article, he denies it, says it's Russian propaganda, but it's from the Azov Battalion's own website.
So don't give me that Joy Reed uh revisionist stuff about hacked websites.
Um, and so that's who this guy is, and he is a Hitlerian, um, and and descended of the Hitlerians that did fight.
Well, the Russians are never going to allow him.
The Russians are never going to allow him in.
This war will go on forever.
That's yes, sir.
I'm and this is the problem.
And I did say this right at the beginning of the war that this war, and I wrote the book provoked.
I mean, this is majority America's fault here.
I mean, Putin's responsible for his behavior.
But I I put the the uh blame very much on the American Empire for instigating this.
But why I'm the Russian partisan, I'm a Texan, and I'm I gotta be realistic about this.
This invasion was was cruel and immoral and illegal in many ways, but it was also a mistake, Judge, because what has happened is the Russians have removed anyone who likes them from Ukraine, right?
Has drawn a new line around them and left a rump Ukraine when the war finally ends without Donetsk, without Zaprozia and Kherson, or at least most of them.
Um now they have a rump Ukraine that absolutely is going to elect if they have to or or suffer Beletsky type leaders, Banderist, far right wing nationalist from here on out.
Remember, America used to have to overthrow the government there every 10 years or so because the wrong guy kept winning, right?
And so, but that's never going to happen again.
And now, just as you say, take the next step.
Well, so what are the Putinists gonna do when you have uh Belitsky and a bunch of Banderites?
Um, no more fig leaf of the democratically elected Jewish leader, Zelensky, but outright Hitlerians running the place where they're just gonna have to keep going, right?
It's a government program.
They caused themselves a problem, and now they are they've painted themselves into a corner.
Now they have to at least keep expanding the size of the corner.
And you do you subscribe to the uh thesis that uh Putin's patience, I'm doing air quotes, is not the moral virtue of patience, but he's slow and methodical because he wants to kill as many Ukrainian soldiers as possible, so they don't have to go through this for at least another generation.
Well, there may be uh a lot to that argument.
I mean, I know that Daniel Davis and Colonel McGregor and others, and hell of Zelensky claims this for the other side too, that everybody agrees they're fighting a war of attrition, so it's not just a war over pieces and parcels of land, um, although obviously they want to take certain railroads and certain cities and whatever when they can, but it's a matter of trying to grind up the other side's men as much as any other thing.
And and yeah, and and I think you're right, that's part of the economics of this whole thing.
That well, if we're going to be left with uh pseudo-Nazi uh rump state uh left over, uh run by these now so-called war heroes uh from the last war, then at least we're gonna have to do everything we can to grind them down before that, which is just another part of the tragedy here when they should have called this thing off a long time ago, and they could have negotiated.
Back, Judge.
Um, I was surprised to hear this.
It was originally just a Travel and I heard from the Trump people, but apparently this now is coming from the Kremlin that they are willing to climb down on Zaprozia and Kursan and draw the lines more or less where they are.
Uh, as you know, one third of Kursan is on the other side of the river, and they still only control two-thirds of of each of those provinces.
And Putin said, Look, we're willing to draw those lines where they are now.
They get to keep their so-called land bridge to Crimea and the Azov coast there.
But he said, But the Ukrainians have to walk away from what they still control of Donetsk, which is like a quarter, I believe, almost a quarter of Donetsk, Which they do not want to turn around and walk away from.
But that's a pretty severe concession from the Russians.
Uh, it's the potential basis for negotiation here if you could get reasonable men running Ukraine.
But I just think that that's too tall of an order.
That's not what's going to happen.
And of course, you have the American and British influence egging them on.
Well, the American less, but still to a degree, the American and European influence continuing to egg them on to keep fighting.
Is it called Pro Is your podcast called Provoked, or is it called the Scott Horton Show?
Well, I got two.
The Scott Horton Show is my interview show.
I got 6,000 interviews going back to 2003.
And then my new show is called Provoked, named after my book.
But uh that's uh my show with Daryl Cooper, the great uh historian martyrmaid.
And we do that, uh, runs every Friday night here on uh YouTube.
Well, congratulations on uh all your uh success and thank you for the time that you spent with us, my dear friend.
We hope to see you again soon.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much, Judge.
Sure.
And coming up at two o'clock, Max Blumenthal on all of this, particularly his insight on the U.S. and the Israelis luring Hamas into a false sense of security, only to try and murder them in Doha.
▲
Export Selection